Up to date that identical patient has had neither a "fit" nor any approximation thereto, and that fact is an occasion of this paper. One who already discerns the first gray shadows of that night which comes to all, does not now write at the urging, or the itching, of the Ego. He disclaims any merit, having evinced only a monkey-like imitativeness. He had from the Infinite, the gift of a good memory, and an old book, picked up one happy day at a street stall, flashed into recollection some twelve years later, and enabled him then to imitate the much earlier doing of its worthy author—
"Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
This dead worthy—he that was James Thacher, M. D.—more than any other, made known the virtues of Pothos fœtida, and gratitude for what his book had taught me to do made me feel that to write up this forgotten remedy were the fittest return that I could make for his well doing.
A second incentive, ample enough, is found in the fact that the first homœopathic paper on Pothos fœt. has never had a faithful translation into our language, and has not been critically reproduced in any other. A study of the Homœopathic Bibliography, as given in this paper, will teach an impressive lesson not only to the real student of Materia Medica, but also to those who assume the responsibilities of editorship.
A third inducement, and perhaps a pardonable, is the singular fact that much search in our literature has not enabled me to find any assistance of the clinical application of Pothos fœt. by a homœopathic practitioner. If any reader knows of any such, he will greatly gratify the writer by making it known.
An Empirical Bibliography.[K]
1785. Rev. Dr. M. Cutler.—Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Boston.
1787. D. J. D. Schoepf, M. D.—Materia Medica Americana potissimum Regni Vegetabilis. Erlangen. (Not in my possession. Quoted from Barton.)
1813. James Thacher, M. D.—The American New Dispensatory. Boston. (This is the second edition wherein Pothos is mentioned for the first time. Our citations are from the fourth edition. Boston, 1821.)
1817. James Thacher, M. D.—American Modern Practice, etc. Boston.