ANTIPSORICS IN THE ATROPHY OF INFANTS

From LESSER WRITINGS of

E.A.FARRINGTON

The following collection of symptoms is the result of a protracted study of a case which cost the writer many anxious hours. Failing by carefully selected remedies to even relieve the patient, it was determined to sift our Materia Medica as thoroughly as time and other engagements would permit, in order to find whether any antipsoric or deep-acting drug could be found suitable to the case.

This fact will explain the lack of complete system in the paper, and also the defective relation existing between the first and second parts, the latter containing some symptoms and additional drugs not found in the former. These defects there was not time to correct.

In arranging the symptoms the writer has not restricted himself to the pathogenesis of genuine atrophy, the tabes mesenterica, which is essentially tubercular, but has included symptoms of Rachitis, Scrofula, and simple indigestion, with attending marasmus.

In several instances, however, especially in the repertory, mention is made of symptoms known to be characteristic of someone or other of the diseases included under the general term atrophy. But in so doing the writer by no means wishes it to be inferred that he would teach that therapeutics is dependent upon pathology. The latter helps him in obtaining his “totality”, abridges his phraseology (as, for example, when he writes scorbutic sore mouth—Mercurius— meaning thereby all the well-known buccal symptoms of that remedy), and acquaints him with the unmodified course of disease. But when he has his case well-understood, the symptoms, subjective and objective, must be submitted to the rules of Homœopathy, not to the restrictions of so general a science as that of pathology.

If omissions are noticed, let it be the pleasure of each one to mention them. If the paper does but call forth a healthy criticism, it will fulfill a useful purpose, and save some one hours of labour, and mayhap a mother her darling child.