A Dictionary of Practical MATERIA MEDICA Volume 2: Homeopathy

PREFATORY NOTE TO VOL. II
I CANNOT allow this volume to go to the world without an allusion to the grievous loss therapeutic Art and Science have sustained since the appearance of its predecessor. By the death of James Compton Burnett the world loses one of the greatest therapeutic lights of his generation. To his intimates Burnett was this and he was something more─a whole─hearted friend, a resourceful help in the face of difficulty, and the most inspiring of comrades. It is thus a singularly bitter disappointment to me that he did not live to see completed a work in which he took a keen interest, and in which is embodied so much that is his own.
Reviewers of Burnett's works have sometimes complained that he used outlandish remedies, concerning which there was no information accessible. In view of these strictures, I once said to Burnett, now a good many years ago, that I had a great mind to write a materia medica dealing entirely with the remedies he had either introduced or used in original ways. "And a very good thing, too!" was his rejoinder. The project was not destined to take actual shape, but in the present work something better has been done. So far as Burnett's work is known to me, through his writings and from conversations, the special knowledge he possessed of different remedies will be found presented, not in an isolated setting, but in its proper place, together with all related knowledge at my command. References to Burnett's name will be found in profusion throughout this work─I may mention the articles on Quercus, Urtica, Scirrhinum, and Thuja as a few examples─and it is no small consolation to me to feel that his influence will live in my pages as well as in his own books.
Dr. Cooper's share in the present volume is more direct. When the first volume appeared Cooper signified his approval of it in a variety of ways, and, among others, by offering to read the proofs of the second. As he is my authority for much new matter, I very gladly availed myself of the offer, which has been carried out in no perfunctory fashion. Cooper has opened up his notebooks, and has spared no pains to give me the fruits of his reading and experience, which last is of especial value since much of his practice is with single doses of remedies. His additions I have treated in the same way as published documents, and have incorporated them in the text, distinguished, for the most part, with his name or initials (R. T. C). Cured symptoms which he has given me I have enclosed in brackets in the Schema, unless the wording of the symptom shows the fact. Symptoms produced or aggravated are named as such in the text.
Submitting my proofs to Cooper in this way was, in effect, putting my work to a severe test. There are few things more difficult to accomplish than to condense another person's writings in such a way as to satisfy the author whose writing is condensed. I take it as a satisfactory evidence of my general accuracy that of all the material I have taken from Cooper's writings or oral communications, he has not found it necessary to make alterations in any essential particular.
Bracketed symptoms, as a rule, mean cured symptoms, as also, do symptoms with the name of a disease in brackets at the close. But I have not undertaken in this volume, any more than I did in Vol. I., to distinguish all cured symptoms from pathogenetic ones. Some passages will be found in square brackets with the initials "H. N. G." at the close. These passages are quotations from Henry N. Guernsey's Materia Medica.
In compiling Vol. I─(A...H), before I had ascertained the amount of space which I should have at my disposal, I did not always repeat in the Schema all the symptoms mentioned under the heading of CHARACTERISTICS. This omission can be easily made good by writing such symptoms in the margin of the Schema; but in Vol. II.─(I...Z) I have treated myself with more liberality in the matter of space, and have sought, as far as