Keynotes of the homoeopathic materia medica

Preface
by
Dr Donald MACFARLAN

One of the distinguishing features of homoeopathy is that the cure is accomplished by administering a medicine, the characteristic symptoms of which correspond with the characteristic symptoms of the patient. Within its distinctive sphere it is quite unfailing and immutable. Homeopathic medicines, following the analogy of nature, are all specific - definite agent with a definite purpose with power only for the fulfillment of its attainable object. Quite apart, however, from this viewpoint treatment is traditional theory and traditional practice which may be truly termed anti-pathic in application. The modus operandi may best be exemplified by example - a patient has pain, its opposite, opium is given. The malady is not cured, but stifled by stupor, only to awake with renewed violence with the wearing away of the effect of the drug and demanding augmented dosage for fugacious assuagement at each successive return. Homoeopathy, on the other hand, chooses a remedy capable of producing the same pain. It is directed solely to the part affected in minimal dose. From this action a cure results, for two similar diseases cannot exist in the same body at the same time.
The effects of medicine can only be ascertained by provings on the healthy human and the symptoms which these medicines have produced constitute the bulk of the Homoepathic Materia Medica. In order to effectively cure, it is first necessary to ascertain the characteristic symptoms of the patient, as Hahnemann teaches in the "Organon," and next, to find the medicine which corresponds in the characteristics with those of the patient, which is done by means of the Homeopathic Materia Medica.
Characteristics symptoms show the peculiarities and differences of medicines, and have been ascertained by repeated verifications of symptoms obtained by provings on the healthy and cures on the sick. In one case the locality may be characteristic, as, for instance, under the apis mellifica, the right ovary, and under lachesis, the left ovary; in any case the sort of pain may be characterized as the burning-stinging pain of apis mellifica, or the burning-like-coal-of-fire pain under arsenicum album, or a gnawing pain under ruta. In another instance the conditions may be characteristic, as the ameliorations by heat under arsenicum, and the amelioration by cold under iodine and vice-versa; or conditionally the time of day, as under nux vomica, in the morning, lycopodium 4 P. M., arsenicum from 11 P. M. till 2 A. M., or in another instance the concomitant symptoms as cough with stitches in the small of the back (or rectum) under nitric acid, or cough with paleness of the face under cina. In some instances the mental symptoms may be characteristic, as convulsive and maniacal deliriousness with biting rage under belladonna, extreme mental excitability in association with pronounced sleeplessness under coffea cruda, or aggravated mental apathy with comatose states under arnica. Again the cause may be quite characteristic, as the effects from getting wet while in a perspiration, which comes under the pathogenesy of the rhus toxicodendron.
From a casual observance of these views it will be at once seen that the fundamental doctrine in homoeopathic theraputics is the doctrine of individualization. Man becomes affected primarily in his internals, and by this is solely meant his affectional and intellectual spheres of consciousness, which in point of face, make up the man himself, for it is the will and understanding which form the real individual. Sickness it its essence is a derangement proceeding from the innermost which spreads towards the outermost and it is a realization of this fact which has made homeopathy a distinct science of theraputic law. Consequently the homoeopathic physician views pathological tissues as results or ultimates and tries to perceive how the entire man has been changed from first to last, from min