CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

cathartic, diuretic”, or whatever it may be, and to tell the maladies it us used in and the
quantities to be administered.
Now Hahnemann pointed out that these terms, “stimulant”, “sedative”, “antispasmodic”,
and c., were more or less question-begging terms, and conveyed no real information. He,
therefore, proceeded to construct his Materia Medica, not of adjectives, but of facts.
Therefore it is that in opening a Homoeopathic Materia Medica we are confronted with a
list of symptoms, arranged in definite order under the heading of each remedy described.
These symptoms are the effects – “positive” effects, Hahnemann called them –
experienced by Hahnemann himself and the other “provers”, who tested them on their
own healthy persons. Hahnemann called his Materia Medica a “Pure” Materia Medica,
since it was made up of the unadulterated effects of the remedy in question, free from the
taint of question-begging adjectives. In order to use a drug with definite effect, it was
necessary, as he showed, to be able to find out just what the drug had done. The
homeopathic Materia Medica consists of the record of these definite effects of drugs,
observed either in provings or in poisonings.
Since Hahnemann’s day thousands of observers have been at work adding to the
provings he made, and it has been necessary to arrange and rearrange the matter which
has accumulated. First of the Materia Medica compilers after Hahnemann was George
Heinrich Gottlieb Jahr. Next came Timothy Field Allen, whose Encyclopaedia of Pure
Materia Medica, in ten volumes, completed in 1879, is a permanent endowment of the
homeopathic school. Contemporary with Allen, and earlier in the field, though is work
was later in appearing, was Constantine Hering, whose name I place second only to that
of Hahnemann himself in the annals of homoeopathy. Hering has left also ten volumes,
which he has named The Guiding Symptoms of the Materia Medica. Only three of these
appeared in his lifetime; the rest were ably and faithfully edited by his literary executors.
My own contribution to this work of arrangement consists of the three volumes of my
Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica completed in 1902, in which I have sought to
give a somewhat new setting to the material gathered by my predecessors. The bald list of
symptoms hitherto presented in homoeopathic materia medicas wanted, it seemed to me,
a practical introduction of a more extended nature than bad been heretofore attempted.
Moreover, It seemed desirable to bring the entire number of remedies hitherto used into
one uniform arrangement, so that they could be got at any time. This my work has
effected. It has also, as I think, made the Homeopathic Materia Medica a more readable
entity, and a more possible study than it had previously been. Hahnemann introduced
many of his remedies with prefatory remarks of the greatest practical value, but it was no
part of his plan to do this systematically. I have endeavoured to present in my
introductions the clinical experiences which have accumulated since Hahnemann’s time.
The symptom-lists which constitute the real body of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica,
are arranged, for the sake of reference, under the different anatomical regions of the
body. Thus it is possible to find out under any remedy the exact symptoms it has
produced in the head, eyes, ears, stomach, limbs, and c.; so that when any case of disease
arises, presenting symptoms in any of these regions, the medical man is able to compare
his case with the remedies which seem to him most closely to correspond.
But for the full use of the Homoeopathic Materia, another kind of work is required,
namely, the Repertory. The Repertory is an index or concordance in which all remedies
having caused any particular symptom may be found. So that the prescriber who has a