Inclination to take deep inspirations with hollow feeling in the chest, later with contraction in the fauces and chest.
The difficulty of breathing is better in the open air.
Pain in the crest of the right tibia.
Rheumatic troubles increased.
Sleepy early in the evening.
All troubles disappear in the open air.
In attempting to analyze this "abstract of symptoms," to see if the internal evidence tends to show that the recorded effects are genuine results of the drug, it is well to remember that these provings—for we infer that three observers participated therein—were made in the light of the empirical history of Pothos fœt. The said history was on record before the date of these provings, and it cannot have escaped Hering's eye; he was too wide a reader for that. He was, beyond doubt, aware of the pathogenetic effects observed by Bigelow—headache, vertigo, temporary blindness, vomiting, even from small quantities. Having, then, this clue to its physiological action, these symptoms should reappear in his proving if his imagination furnished his symptoms. As only a mild headache is noted in the Correspondenzblatt, it is evident that these provers did not work from a pattern. It is also evident that the usus in morbis did not suggest the Allentown symptomatology, for the anti-asthmatic virtue of Pothos fœt. is one feature on which the greatest stress had been laid, and yet the only pathogenetic suggestion of its applicability in asthma is: "Sudden feeling of anxiety with difficult (or oppressed) respiration and sweat, followed by stool and the subsidence of these and other pains." Who ever heard of an asthma relieved by stool? Who could have invented such an odd modality? As it stands it is an unicum, and by every rule of criticism this single symptom-group gives the stamp of verity to the Allentown "abstract of symptoms." But there is other and singularly convincing evidence of the genuineness of this abstract. As the reader is aware, Thacher had emphasized the efficiency of Pothos fœt. as an anti-spasmodic in hysteria, although the "key-note" that indicates it in hysteria had wholly escaped his discernment.
Now this very "key-note" appears in the Allentown pathogenesis, but so unobtrusively as to show most conclusively that the prover who furnished it did not recognize its singular import and value. Such testimony is absolutely unimpugnable by honest and intelligent criticism.
It is also apparent that some of the less pronounced of its empirical virtues are reflected in the proving. For instance, Thacher found it efficacious in "erratick pains of a spasmodick nature." Is not this "erratic" feature reproduced in such conditions as:
"Headache, of brief duration, in single spots, now here, now there?"