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THE

HOMEOPATHIC TIMES.

A MONTHLY JOURNAL

Of Medicine, Surgery, and the Collateral Sciences.

VOL. VII.

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER, 1879.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES.

YELLOW FEVER,

BY JAMES A. CARMICHAEL, M. D., OF NEW YORK. Of this frightful scourge, which so devastated the southern portion of our land during the last summer, and which, as I now write, is again reappearing in Memphis, Tenn., and causing its inhabitants to flee in terror from its ghastly presence, I venture to suggest a few thoughts, with the hope that they may serve some good purpose in stimulating renewed effort on the part of the profession to discover the hidden and mysterious source from which this grim visitant springs and extends itself with all its appalling and desolating effects; and only relents in its onward march of death when beneficent Heaven shall send upon healing wings the kindly frost and reanimating cold, to destroy the prolific germ which creates and recreates, and to temper and quench the solar heat in which it thrives and riots. May I ask your indulgence of some convenient space in your valuable journal, in order to inquire somewhat minutely into the history, nature, etc., of the malady under consideration, whereby we may be made more familiar with it, and thus be enabled to come nearer to the hope of staying and modifying its virulence and malignity.

What is yellow fever? On referring to the history of the disease and the synonyms by which it is distinguished and known, we find that it is denominated variously in different portions of the earth, thus: febris flava pestis Americana; febris putrida icterodes; f. maligna biliosa; f. toxica cholosis; pestilentia hamogastrica; typhus icterodes; fievre jaune d'Amerique; ochropyra; f. gastro-hepatique, vomito prieto; vomito negro; mal de Siam; Barbadoes, Barcelona, and Gibraltar fever, etc. It will be seen that nearly all these various names have distinctive reference to its poisonous effects upon the body, also upon the blood, and consequently upon the secretions and excretions of those vital organs, whose functions are devoted to the regeneration and purification of the body.

Locality of origin of yellow fever. The fact is clearly established that yellow fever is essentially a tropical disease, and manifests itself in its most malignant and deadly forms in those portions of the earth which are subject to excessive and long-continued solar heat. Its special home may be distinctly traced to the Antilles, West India Islands, and the adjacent portions of the continents of North and South America; but it occasionally invades countries of similar situation and latitude in the old world.

The influence of continuous heat in promoting various forms of animal and vegetable decomposition and disintegration, and also disseminating it by a species of filtration through the medium of the atmosphere, is a fact of universal acceptance, and if the materies morbi

No. 6.

be acknowledged to exist in this infinitesimally attenuated atmosphere, then it is here that we must look for the foul exhalations that contaminate and destroy. I leave a more extended inquiry into this portion of our subject for the future, as it involves the consideration of some of the theories and speculations which have already been presented for scientific investigation. A few words in relation to the differential facts appertaining to different portions of the earth, and their liability to certain diseases and immunity from certain other diseases, may, perhaps, throw some light on our subject. One of the most remarkable peculiarities in the history of disease and its manifestations is, the matter of its specific election for certain localities and its avoidance of others. This may be seen in a few examples which may be given, thus: the chabalongo, or typhoid fever of Chili, which is described as a peculiar fever and exclusively endemic to Chili, and though not communicable, is evidently a disease of specific origin;" the verruga, or wart fever of Peru; the beriberi of Ceylon, which in the Singhalese language signifies "great weakness," that being the special accompani ment of the disease, the same word in Hindusthanee signifying "a sheep." the patient walking doubled, and imitating the movements of a sheep; elephantiasis Arabum; cholera in India; the plague of the Orient; smallpox, China 1,200 years B. C., etc., etc. I might mention many other forms of disease, but these suffice to show the fact of local election.

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Again, as respects the influences of climate, heat and moisture, and also the interesting inquiry into the effects of earthquakes in developing disease. The potential influences of climate are too well known to need more than a mere passing reference. I require only to cite the changes observable in the inception, growth and maturity of tubercle, and the prolongation of life by removal to a more congenial clime, where, for a time at least, the work of the fell destroyer may be stayed. Particularly are climatic influences observable in those climates in which the ozoniferous ethers most abound, and whose disinfecting properties are well known and clearly established, as also the purifying principles of the hydroxyl of Frankland, or the antozone. As respects heat and moisture, I have already adverted to the prolific source of the dissemination of yellow fever by constant and unintermitting heat; but another agent is also present in the form of moisture, whereby decomposition of animal and vegetable matter is promoted and quickened, and pabulum afforded to the infected germ.

From an interesting brochure entitled "Physics of the Infectious Diseases," by C. A. Logan, I gather the following suggestions respecting earthquakes and their powers in developing and evolving the movements of various diseases, as also a novel and ingenious mode of accounting for these formidable terremotos." In relation to the supervention of diseases and the direct connection between the manifestations of an earthquake and the sanitary condition,im

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mediately following it, I quote from a communication Again, with that form of disease, now common among to the Chilian "Protomedicato by Edouard Sève. He says: "Les tremblements de terre influent considerablement sur l'état sanitaire du pays, chaque secousse violente est suivie d'un grand nombre de maladies nerveuses, de fluxions de poitrine, de grippes, etc., et je eonnais un cas de folie survenu à Valparaiso à la suite des violentes secousses du 7 Juillet, 1873." Earthquakes influence very considerably the sanitary condition of the country; each violent shock is followed by a great number of nervous affections, pulmonary and nasal catarrhs, etc.; and I knew of a case of insanity following the severe shocks of the 7th of July, 1873." Again, in relation to the immunity enjoyed by certain regions of country from infectious diseases in con sequence of the frequency of earthquakes, I quote: Two propositions may here be announced. First, that throughout the wholly rainless districts of the Pacific coast of South America, and with the limitation previously mentioned, in those where the earthquake energy is most strongly and constantly developed, the existence of a large number of the infectious diseases which devastate other parts of the world is unknown; and second, that in such portions of it alone as possess a rainfall, or heavy mists (garuas), during a limited part of the year, are any of these diseases to be observed, and then, perhaps as a rule, after the winter earthquake season has passed."

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The

us, cerebro-spinal meningitis, we are familiar, also with the periodicity of its reappearance, with its phenomena, with the success or non-success of its treatment, the post-mortem changes observable; and yet we have no knowledge of its cause; we call it malarious, thereby using a convenient term to excuse ignorance. In none of these affections, however, can any affinity with yellow fever be traced, but we come now to an inquiry into the nature of certain other forms of disease, which may be said in many respects to bear a similitude to yellow fever, because of their belonging to that character and class of diseases to which a specific name has been given, viz., the toxæmic diseases, or those in which poisonous elements have been introduced into the blood, and by some energetic and mysterious power which they possess, this source of life and health is poisoned at its fountain, and instead of nourishing and vitalizing as before, it now becomes the baleful agent for the transmission, to every part of the body, of decay and death. Diphtheria, for example, so called from the Greek word prepa, a skin or membrane, and which false pellicle enables us to distinguish the disease, is another of the so-called toxamic affections, and the membrane is but the indication of the poison that is moving through the mazes of the circulation, mildewing and corroding every organ and fibre, and anticipating the corruption of death ere the vital spark As respects this author's novel views of the causation shall have fled. Do we know the nature of this deadly We of earthquakes, he " does not accept the generally ac- agent, whence it comes, and whither it goes. cepted theories of earthquakes, as resulting from ten- speculate and theorize without end, and the very mulsion or vibration of the earth's crust by reason of the tiplicity of our speculations but makes our ignorance gases generated by an internal molten condition of the the plainer. Puerperal fever, resulting in pyæmia, globe;" "but is directly caused by the actual transmis- septicemia, embolism and a host of other ills incident sion of a certain form of energy from point to point, cov- to child-birth, are all familiar to us, but do we know ering the manifestation of the attendant phenomena.' the cause? One will say malaria, another, the retention This form of energy he believes to be identical with of morbid matter in the blood during or succeeding the electricity, and calls it "terrestrial lightning.' process of parturition, another, the presence of the antecedent events of a pronounced earthquake are living animalcule bacteria floating in the blood. And generally of a meteorological character, and closely here we approach for the first time in the discussion of connected with conditions of atmospheric electricity, our subject, what may help us possibly, in the solution so much so that an earthquake may be predicted weeks of the difficult problem before us, viz., the Fous et origo in advance. In the instance of the terrific earthquake mali in the production of yellow fever. Again, another at Riobamba in 1794, a prodigious number of shooting grim horror rises up before us, we call it hydrophobia, stars were seen at Quito before the shock occurred, and and its very signification, fear of water, because of its Humboldt tells us that on a certain night preceding a inspiring its victim with a fear of nature's cooling and shock, the mountain Cayembe appeared surrounded refreshing fluid, tells too plainly of the venom that is with meteorites for an hour." But for the lack of holding its high carnival of death in the alleys and space, it would be most interesting and instructive to portals of the body of the doomed sufferer. Do we pursue this subject at greater length; we must return, know the nature of the virus that is doing this deadly however, to our legitimate inquiry into the nature, etc., work? We do not, and yet there is the same amount of yellow fever, and, first, by means of a comparison of speculation, and in some instances old ideas and old with other diseases with which we are familiar, and theories are revamped, and with a little clever gilding which, though in some instances primarily imported, are promulgated and proclaimed with an excathedra have now become part and parcel of the pathological authority as novel and original, and as the solution of history of the country, we are enabled to reach some the great mystery. Another toxæmia may be cited to definite conclusions respecting its habitudes, and the which an affinity may be traced to the disease under morbid phenomena by which it is distinguished. Let consideration, viz., the forms of typhoid and typhus, us first consider some of the points of difference be- though with many points of difference. In that form tween the virus, if it may be so designated, which may of the latter which has been called typhus siderans— be supposed to produce yellow fever, and that which from sido, I sink-and in which a fatal issue, attended engenders that class of diseases implanted in the system with nervous symptoms of great violence, may superby contact or by hereditary transmission. Syphilis, vene on the third or fourth day after seizure, a resemfor example, we know to manifest a certain series of blance may be recognized in certain concomitant morbid phenomena, as also to invade certain portions symptoms and in its rapid termination. Thus I might of the body inflexibly, as the result of impure sexual go on, citing disease after disease, and by comparison contact, transmissable also to succeeding posterity. Of with our subject matter endeavor to reach the end we the nature of this peculiar virus, and its modus operandi desire, viz., the true cause of yellow fever. Let us in determining its particular effects, we are utterly turn, then, to its earnest contemplation, and explore as ignorant; and yet we readily observe and recognize critically as may be this perplexing and inscrutable these effects. Scrofula, another form of disease, show mystery. And here we are brought en face with the ing itself after its own special order, and invading all prevailing opinion of its cause in the vaguely-expressed to whom the hereditary taint may be imparted. Who can tell what scrofula is, and why, by election, it should What is the germ theory? The word germ—from find its home in the glandular system? The same may gerere, to produce-is variously interpreted by different be said of the invasion of the pulmonary structure by authorities, but all having reference to its prolific and tubercle, another instance of hereditary transmission. repeating capacities and powers. To illustrate this

germ theory.

vast subject would require a deep investigation into the primeval records of departed ages that glow again the interesting arcana of cellulology and histology, in a renewed life through the archæologic ardor and which is not the purport of our present inquiry. The research of Schliemann and others, until, indeed, the synonyms of the word germ, viz., blaste, blastema, truth of the sacred interpretation through the mosaic cytoblast, germinal vesicle, proligerous disk, tache em- record of the very existence of the earth, and its anbryonaire, etc., etc., signify "the rudiments of a new tiquity is questioned and denied, and the theologic being not yet developed, or which is still adherent." world is made to stand aghast and confounded. In Here I quote at length from Lionel Beale. He de- view, then, of these wondrous things that are constantly nominates the germ to be " a living particle which has being evolved through man's untiring industry and rebeen detached from already existing living matter, search, may we not hope to reach the solution of the capable of developing into new forms, and of exciting inquiry that so much concerns us now, in view of " the in the body changes of a fermentative or putrefactive pestilence that walketh in darkness?" In the infininature; the germs being poisonous, diseases are the re- tessimal and countless host that people the air, and in sults of the changes induced by such poisons. Of these the inscrutable powers with which we have seen them microscopic germs, the air contains vast quantities, to be endowed, we reach the reason for the popular differing entirely in their nature, their mode of origin, belief in the germ theory, and its creating and propaand in the results of their development. In the same way gating powers, and the destructive and desolating there is reason to think particles of living matter, diseases resulting therefrom. capable of giving rise to the most serious and fatal dis- I here make copious extracts from an interesting eases of which man is the subject, are carried to an paper furnished to me by Z. F. Smith, a most intelorganism which is in a state favorable for their recep- ligent gentleman living in one of the Southern States; tion and germination." Also Tyndall: "There exist in it embodies the general idea and opinion concernthe atmosphere particles of matter which elude the ing the subject of this paper. In speaking of the microscope and the scales, which do not disturb its phenomena, causes, etc., of yellow fever, he says: "The clearness, and yet are present in it in so immense a general conclusion is, that yellow fever cannot origimultitude that the Hebrew hyperbole of the number nate, even during the summer season, in the United of grains of sand on the seashore becomes compara- States, but it is so purely of tropical origin, that it must tively unmeaning." Indeed, the simplest processes of be imported each season of its return. But the recent fermentation show under the microscope teeming outbreak at Memphis, and other exceptional appearmyriads of bacteria, ordinary mildew stands high in ances at former times, would seem to indicate that its the scale of organization, and innumerable other forms germinal poison may be preserved under certain conof phyto-parasitic life, viz., germs and sporules of ditions of protection from the destroying effects of mould and various fungi, vibriones, monads, schizomy- cold in winter, and from the neutralizing effects of discetes-so-called because of their reproduction by fission infectants. Indeed, it is now a most vital and interest--the contagious and infectious bioplasm of Beale, in- ing question, whether we shall ever again have the fectious molecule, etc., all make manifest to us the fact assurance that the winter frosts or other destroying that the air which we breathe, and in which "we live agencies shall totally eradicate the elements or germs and move and have our being," abounds in infinitessi- of the disease from our country, and enable us to quarmal animal and vegetable life, and that we illustrate antine, with certainty of exemption, against foreign immomentarily "ab initio ad finem," the truth of the words portation. From all that has been written and said on of wisdom that fell from the lips of the ancient philos the subject, the germ theory appears the most plausopher, when he declared that "Life is a constant struggle ible." After speaking of the effects of heat and moisagainst death;" indeed, we have only to contemplate the ture in producing a suitable atmosphere for maintainsimplest processes which are continually at work in ing the life of the germ, and promoting its propagathe wide realm of nature, as well as in our own bodies, tion, he continues: "An impure atmosphere may be to see that reparation and decay make up the great produced in any given locality by the combinations of business of life. What, then, do these results of scien- heat and moisture and decomposing matter, and none tific research and these revelations of the microscope of these endemics or epidemics break out, if the miaspermit us to know? The expression used by the poet, matic germs or animalcules are not brought within the The sun breeding maggots in a dead dog,” contains atmosphere to propagate and produce miasmetic poison. an epitome of much of the knowledge given to us by If our winter frosts should kill all the germs after a scientific exploration; the animated life springing from season of cholera or yellow fever, neither could again corruption and decay, but reveals the fact of parasitic break out, unless the germs were introduced from a life universal and unending. The reanimated glories foreign country. Even if the exotic germs were imof the chrysalis that shimmer in the light and gladden ported, no disease could be epidemic, unless the germs the view, are born in decay, and the dull and ineffectual were brought into an impure or propagating atmosgrub has passed into nothingness and death, in order phere," etc., etc. that life and beauty may live and glorify nature and nature's God. How beautifully does Beale describe this life in death in his charming work upon "Bioplasm." He says: "All bioplasm must die. By its death marvelous things are produced, and wonderful acts are performed, Every form in nature, leaves, flowers, trees, shells; every tissue, hair, skin, bone, nerve, muscle, results from the death of bioplasm. Every work performed by man, every thought expressed by him, is a consequence of bioplasm passing from the state of life; ceasing, in fact, to be bioplasm, and becoming non-living matter with totally different proper ties," etc. The unfoldings of science are producing daily and hourly a mighty revolution in the minds of men; the interpretations of the marvelous cell and its wondrous and almost omnipotent powers by Schleiden, Schwann, Haeckel, Virchow, Huxley, Beale and a host of others; the illuminated pages of thought that by geologic research have been and are being exhumed from the hitherto silent and secret recesses of the earth;

From the same intelligent source I have been favored with the peculiar phenomena of another form of disease from this under discussion, but evidently of kindred nature, because of its being of germ origin.

The season of 1854 was one of great drought, the severest and most protracted in the Ohio valley known for half a century; I was then farming in Henry County, Kentucky. Situated one hundred and fifty yards northeast of my residence, and one hundred yards from the servants' houses, in line with both, was a pond of water covering half an acre of ground. From the adjacent pasture and fields the washings for thirty years had left a deposit of earth filled with vegetable matter, two feet deep upon the exposed bottom; there was some animal matter also, from the very small fish which perished with the drying up of the water. About the first of September I began the work of cleaning ont the accumulated deposit, and carted it to an adjacent field, where it was dumped for manure. The work was not more than half finished before a disease broke out in

the servants' quarters, which my family physician, a gentleman of high attainments and ability in his profession, called 'typhoid flux.' Six of the servants were attacked with the disease, which developed in a very malignant form. Three died. In the earlier stages of the appearance, my wife, with our first-born babe, went eight miles to spend a day and night with her parents' family in an adjoining county. The child, then eleven months old, was attacked with the same disease, and died in ten days. My wife's mother, sister, and one other of the family who nursed the sick child, besides six of the servants of the family, were taken down in a few days with the same disease, and the mother and three of the servants died. Living one mile northeast from my residence was a neighboring family named Holland. Our summer and early autumn winds blow almost continuously from the southwest and directly toward Holland's house. In one or two weeks after the appearance of the typhoid flux' in my own family, the same attacked several members of my neighbor's family, and two of his children died with it. There was no further appearance of the disease. The physician gave it as his decided opinion that the disease originated from the excavation and exposure over a large surface of ground of the deposit of earth and vegetable and other decaying matter with which it had been fully charged by the accumulations of thirty years, and which had been held imprisoned by the overlying water of the pond until that season," etc., etc.

And now the question arises: If death comes through the air we breathe, and if death be, as we all know it to be, protean and multifarious in its forms, phenomena and effects, then may we not believe that the agencies of death, inhabiting the medium in which we live, are not only as multifarious in their character and powers of destruction as the various forms of death which they produce, and is it unreasonable, rash, unnatural or unscientific to declare that for every form of death which can possibly be traced to germ source, a true infectio vira is the inexorable product of a specific germ, producing of its kind and no other, in all diseases of an infectious nature, while a contagium vivum is equally the product of the specific germ that can beget of its kind, viz., the contagious form and no other. If, then, yellow fever be produced by the absorption by the body of elements inhabiting the air, and denominated germs, and if it be reasonable to suppose that there are certain germs that can generate an infectio viva specifica, which shall exhibit the peculiar phenomena which we call yellow fever, and which can produce no other form of disease, then may we be cheered by the hope that a step has been made in our anxious search for the causa mali. Of the transportability of yellow fever by fomites, and of the necessity for fumigation, disinfection and destruction of articles of clothing, etc., that may contain the deadly germ, and from which it may escape and poison the air into which it may be liberated, and also of the obligation of strict quarantining against importation, so self-evident a necessity needs no discussion here. The streets of Memphis are paved with what is called the Nicholson pavement, which is of so destructible a nature, and the effluvia from which is in many places so offensive, that it might be regarded as an extensive fomes from which disease may be irradiated and disseminated through the surrounding atmosphere. Another peculiarity was observed during the epidemic last summer at New Orleans. It was noticed that the disease attacked certain portions of the city which were remarkable for cleanliness, passing over in its course other portions which abounded in all manner

of uncleanness.

May not this be accounted for by what might be called a substitution or displacement, by which the germs laden with the virus of the yellow death were substituted, displaced, or perhaps neutralized by the noxious effluvia from the depots of filth, etc. Again, it is reported that last year in Memphis, during the

height of the epidemic, a yellowish hue was seen upon white paper, as also a peculiar odor in the air, showing an intense and concentrated contamination.

With the consideration of two remaining subjects, I propose to conclude this paper; and, as has been said of the postscript of a letter, they, in my judgment, will contain whatever of good may result from this investigation. They are: 1st, the effort to establish the unity or similarity of the specific germ of yellow fever, and certain animal poisons with whose effects we are familiar; and, 2d, to show that this idea is largely sustained by the result of the observations of the "Homœopathic Yellow Fever Commission" ordered by the American Institute of Homœopathy, and who embodied their observations of the disease in New Orleans. From this report, I propose to extract at length.

As respects the unity or similarity of the specific yellow fever germ and certain animal poisons. Let us take first, for example, that animal virus of which we know the least, and whose effects are most dissimilar to the phenomena presented by yellow fever, and gradually work our way to those poisons which bear a close resemblance by their effects to the disease in question-Rabies Canina, or hydrophobia. This fearful disease, as we know, is the result of the introduction into the body of a virus generated in some unknown manner in animals of a certain class, to the production or secretion of which they seem more prone during the prevalence of long continued heat. Of the nature of this virus, science fails to give us any adequate idea, the researches of chemistry fail to interpret it satisfactorily, and though the suggestions accruing to postmortem examinations be ever so learned and ever so exhaustive, the mystery still remains silent and unknown. Of the phenomena of this poison, however, we are cognizant from repeated opportunity of observation. We mark the prodromic nervousness of the unhappy victim, the furtive, ferrety look, the oppression of the mind by the constant apprehension of the coming horror. Soon the physical phenomena begin to show themselves, the involuntary spasm of the throat at sight of water, only to be conjectured and explained by some mysterious irritation by the virus of the pharyngeal, laryngeal and œsophageal plexuses, through the nerve currents supplying these organs, the glottis feels the influence, and from the involuntary spasm to which it is subjected, the vocal sounds heard represent, strangely enough, the barking sound of the animal from which the disease has proceeded. Then comes the invasion of the spinal cord by the deadly virus, and racked by frightful spasms and convulsions, the sufferer is delivered over to anguish and death. Here, then, is an animal poison showing its power along the nervous tracts of the body, and totally unlike that by which yellow fever is characterized.

Glanders. In this we find the inoculation of the body by the glandrous poison received from the horse, for example, and death may supervene with the peculiar phenomena observable in that disease, also in the poisoning of curriers from handling the skins of dead animals. We may note, too, the effects of the absorption of poisonous elements from the human body, by wounds received in dissecting. So I might enumerate other diseases resulting from animal poisons, but which differ entirely from the poison that generates yellow fever. But there is a class of animal poisons whose effects are in marked affinity with what we see in yellow fever, and they are what might be called the ophidian poisons, or the poisons of certain deadly reptiles of the serpent kind. I need mention only two, viz., the cobra di capello, or hooded snake of the East Indies, and our own native rattlesnake, the crotalus horridus of natural history. From the bite of these reptiles there is infused into the body a virus of most intense malignity, and which might best be described in the unexampled words of the immortal bard when he makes the ghost to say to Hamlet:

"Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ear, did pour
The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And with a sudden vigor, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood."

What are the manifestations in yellow fever from which we may suspect an affinity with these poisons, so deadly in their nature? Does the disease pursue the course pursued by diphtheria,cerebro-spinal meningitis, aud other so-called malarial diseases, does it present the spasmodic or convulsive character of hydrophobia, tetanus, epilepsy, etc? Does it not resemble in the rapidity of its course that other fatal scourge of mankind, cholera, and yet essentially differ from it in the effects produced by the toxæmia which occasions each, viz., that whereas in cholera the blood is rapidly deprived of its serum, as seen in the fatal rice-water discharges in yellow fever, the virus expends its force upon the red globules of the blood, whereby the vital fluid becomes diffluent and incoagulable,and the equally fatal vomito prieto, or black vomit, ushers in the closing scene of departing life. The virus of the reptile" holds equal enmity with the blood of man," as seen in the rapid dissolution and the mottled skin that tells of the toxæmia. May we not, then, venture to believe that the germ which contaminates in yellow fever is akin to the venom of the reptile, and therefore animal in its

nature?

And now, lastly, I desire to present certain extracts taken from the Report of the Homœopathic Commission already adverted to. After a discussion of the "Causes and Prevention of Yellow Fever," in which the known facts of locality, heat and moisture, prevalence of certain winds, calm weather, unbroken by thunder-storms, decay of vegetable and animal matter, inefficient drainage, deficiency of ozone in the atmosphere, etc., etc., were enumcrated, there followed interesting statistical details of the comparison of the mortality in allopathic and homeopathic practice. Want of space prevents the recital here of these details in full, but I record with great gratification the summing up, which I give in the words of the report: "From all these approximations, because there are so many sources of error that we can only call them approximations, we may safely infer that during the last epidemic, in hospital and in private practice, in great cities and in small towns, among whites and blacks, among adults and children, the homeopathic system has been eminently successful, strengthening the faith of its friends, commanding respect of its enemies, and extending its salutary influence in all directions. Again: "Notwithstanding the possible fallacies of the numerical method, and the possible errors of medical reports, and although some allopathic physicians may have made exceptionally excellent records, and some homœopathic physicians exceptionally poor records, still, surveying the matter on a large scale, in different places and at different times, the work of many physicians and the treatment of thousands of cases, we are compelled to believe that the homœopathic method is uniformly more successful than the method of the old school." Lastly, in relation to the treatment of the disease, the report goes on to contrast the remedies used in allopathic practice, viz., blood-letting, leeching, blistering, calomel, quinine, saline purgatives, antimonials, sugar of lead, bismuth, creosote, turpentine, carbolic acid, capsicum, ether, carb. ammon., iron, musk, strychnine, etc., etc., with the simplicity of the homœopathic, which found in "aconite, belladonna and bryonia for the first stage, and arsenicum, carbo. vegetabilis and crotalus for the second" all that seemed necessary to combat the disease and relieve its every stage. In conclusion, I would especially call the at

tention of the reader to the use of the crotalus, or rattlesnake poison, for which was claimed by the commission such eminent success after black vomit had declared itself. If, then, the virus of the reptile, when administered in this most dangerous symptom of yellow fever, be capable of arresting and controlling it, we believe it to be because of its homeopathicity to that condition. If, too, it be homoeopathic to that condition, does it not go far toward establishing an unity or identity between the nature of the poison itself and that of the germ which begets and develops yellow fever? In other words, does it not permit it to be considered of an animal nature? With the hope that this interpretation of the causa mali may be entertained at all, the object of this paper will have been accomplished.

HOMOEOPATHY VS. MATERIALISM.

BY E. N. E., BALTIMORE, MD.

That much vexed and most vexing question, "potency," how long is it to be vainly discussed? Are not some of the productions upon this subject almost enough to make a pious man require a dose of Anacardium? But then the question would very naturally arise: Anac. high or low? But nonsense aside. What does our master, Hahnemann, teach? His guiding principle in the practice of medicine was to treat disease with the smallest dose of the crude drug that would cure, without producing its toxic effects.

This is sufficient explanation why attenuation was first initiated. In the beginning of his career of the practice of medicine, under the law of similars, Hał nemann used crude drugs; but the amount of dose was reduced as its efficiency continued to be proved, until he had reached a point where common sense told him substance could no longer exist.

He could not ignore the action of attenuated drugs, he could not deny the evidence of his senses. What was the result? When Hahnemann reached this point, he began to theorize in the abstract; he had no actual facts, no tangible existing data from or upon which to found an explanation of potentized drug action. Hahnemann's mind was too active to let the subject rest without at least a hypothetical explanation. He was prone to theorize; it was upon theory that the now established law of similars was first founded, or, more properly, it was through theory that the law was discovered. As a natural consequence his master mind evolved a number of theories; some, minor points, side issues, not bearing directly upon the great law of cure. Knowing that drugs would cure diseases in minute doses, and in doses that were actual y immaterial, infinitessimal, Hahnemann, after days and nights of close mental application, announced to the world his dynamization theory. After all that has been written against this theory, we are just as far from having its truth disproved as at the morning of its birth.

In the North American Journal of Homeopathy for Feb., 1879, is an article by Martin Deschere, M.D., in which the action of potentized drugs is explained as the result of certain electrical conditions, both in the tissue-cells of the human body and in the potentized drug. Cell growth by fission is the result of inherent magnetic cell-force. The cell nucleus is a magnet. All nuclei elongate and become spindle-shaped when about to take on the process of fission. The two extremities are of opposite polarity: positive and negative. The polarity of the cell is affected, the electrical equilibrium disturbed, and disease is the result. The negative nucleus pole attracts positive material; it is the regenerative cell-pole. The positive nucleus-pole attracts negative material; it is the secreting and excreting cell

*N. A. J. H., Feb., 1879, page 325.

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