Proceeding after the manner which I have described, it is no wonder that Homœopathists make out such a wide range of symptoms for each remedy. The symptoms said to be produced by nux vomica, with all their various conditions, amounted some time ago to about twelve hundred. How many the recent researches of Homœopathists have added to them I know not. Even chamomile, a simple mild tonic, as it is universally considered by our good mothers, has three full pages of symptoms ascribed to it, beginning in this formidable way—“Rheumatic drawing, tearing pain, with a disabling numbness in the parts affected, most aggravated at night, frequently with continued thirst, heat and redness of one cheek, and hot perspiration on the head in the hair—vehement pains, almost insupportable, leading to desperation, aggravated by every movement. Pains mitigated by warm cataplasms—beating pains as from occult suppuration—cracking in the joints, particularly in the lower extremities.”
The mental effects of chamomile are thus given. “Hypochondriac paroxysms of anxiety, as if the heart would break—restlessness, with anxious groaning and tossing about—irritable readiness to weep, with whining and howling, frequently on account of old or imaginary offences—aversion to music, &c.”
If one who knew nothing about chamomile should read over the three pages of the effects attributed to it, he would be justified in supposing it to be a fit agent for inquisitorial torture, instead of being the innocent thing which all nurses and old women think it to be.
The effects of sodii chloretum (common salt) occupy four and a half pages. Its mental effects are thus described. “Melancholic sadness, with searching for many unpleasant things, much weeping, and increased by consolation—sorrowfulness about futurity—anxiousness, also during a thunderstorm, chiefly at night—indolence, aversion to talk, joylessness, and disinclination to labor—hasty impatience and irritability—easily frightened—hate of former offenders—fretfulness and disposition to angry violence—inclination to laugh—alternation of fretfulness and hilarity—great weakness of memory and forgetfulness—thoughtlessness and mental dissipation—misusing words in speaking and writing—inability to reflect, and fatigue from mental exertion—awkwardness.”
The mental effects of sulphur are thus given. “Sadness and dejection—melancholy, with doubts about his soul’s welfare—great inclination to weep, frequently alternating with laughing—inconsolableness, and reproaches of conscience about every action—attacks of anxiety, in the evening—nocturnal fear of spectres—fearfulness and liability to be frightened—restlessness and hastiness—caprice, moroseness, and ill humor—irritability and fretfulness—disinclination to labor—great weakness of memory—diliria and carphologia—mistaking one thing for another—philosophical and religious reveries, and fixed ideas—insanity with imagination, as if he were in possession of beautiful things and in abundance of everything.”
The description of all the effects of sulphur occupies seven pages, and if it be a true description, it certainly must be a very terrible thing to take sulphur.
There is a great show of accurate discrimination on the part of Homœopathists. Extreme niceness of observation is claimed to be absolutely requisite for the successful practice of Homœopathy. The distinctions which are made in regard to symptoms are not only minute, but sometimes laughably so.
Pain is divided into simple, rending, pressing, tightening, rasping, rheumatic, stinging, jerking, periodical, contracting, burning, boring, spasmodic, cutting, bruizing, cramping, drawing, compressing, constringing, sore, disabling, squeezing, &c. Some of these distinctions our ‘allopathic’ mind cannot comprehend. Perhaps the acuteness of a Homœopathic mind may recognize the exact difference between pressing, compressing, constringing and squeezing pains, but I confess that I do not.
All these different kinds of pain are produced by different agents, and different agents cure them. Not only so, but the same pain requires different remedies, as it appears in different parts. Thus while one remedy cures a pain in your whole neck, quite another one cures the same pain in the nape of the neck. Different remedies are required to relieve the same pain in the shin, the heel, the ball of the foot, the toes, &c.
I counted up in the Repertory, twenty-four kinds of toothache, in addition to a great variety of other sensations in the gums, the teeth and the roots of the teeth. Besides, there are fifty-five conditions under which toothache appears, resulting from different agents. Some of these are a little singular. Thus Rhododendron is apt to produce toothache in a thunderstorm, and therefore, according to Homœopathic reasoning, is the appropriate remedy for toothache which is particularly disposed to come on in a thunderstorm—a disposition of toothache of which I never heard before. The remedy for toothache which comes on when riding in a vehicle is sepia—no remedy is mentioned for it when it comes on when riding horseback, or going on foot. Homœopathic researches have not extended as yet to these points. Pulsatilla is the remedy for toothache in the spring, but there is no remedy especially for it in summer, autumn, and winter. Such gaps in Homœopathic experience ought certainly to be filled up.