Mode of Action. If the proving of rosin-weed made by Dr. Hall is reliable, we must conclude that rosin-weed cures the symptoms that it produces in the healthy and it must be regarded as acting on the homœopathic principle. I must own that I am a little suspicious of provings that match so closely the long established popular use of a drug and, in this case, believe that we must wait for confirmation of this proving before accepting it as sound. Rosin-weed has always seemed to me to be a harmless herb, which is shown also by its use among children as chewing gum. I have never noticed the "tonic, diaphoretic or diuretic effects" attributed to it in eclectic medicine and believe that they must be feeble. The only unpleasant effect that I have noted is nausea after large doses, sixty drops or more, and this in very few patients. Vomiting is rare, is never serious and ceases spontaneously when the stomach is empty of the drug.

At the Baltimore meeting of the American Institute of Homœopathy, where the use of rosin-weed in hay fever was first reported, Dr. John Sutherland, of Boston, made the proper criticism that if rosin-weed was harmless and could not produce any effect on the healthy body, he could not understand how it had any power to cure. To this, I had no answer except that I had both taken and given large doses for many years to patients of all ages and had never seen any symptoms develop. Another speaker suggested that, like calcarea and silica, potentization would develop pathogenetic powers that were not evident in the crude drug. This I have never tried. As related in the chapter on Bacterial Vaccines, I suspect that the curative power of rosin-weed in hay fever lies in its power of relieving a coexisting catarrh, of which theory we have the confirming evidence that other methods that cure catarrh, nasal operations, bacterial vaccines, homœopathic remedies, have often cured a coexisting hay fever. Since that discussion, I have found Dr. Hall's proving. It would be a pleasure to find that our old family remedy for hay fever really acts on the homœopathic principle but I believe that the question needs the verification of further proving.

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