"WE ARE NOT AS BAD AS WE SEEM."
SOME
LOCAL AND GENERAL
EXCRESCENCES OF HOMZEOPATHY,
BEING
REVIEWS OF
DR. HERING'S
"HOM(EOPATHIST, OR DOMESTIC PHYSICIAN,"
AND OF
THE HOM(EOPATHIC "MATERIA MEDICA PURA,"
BY JOHN F. GEARY, M. D.
These Articles have already appeared in the "Philadelphia" and " North American" Journals "of Homceopathy," as portions of the series called " Our Literature."
PHILADELPHIA:
HENRY B. ASHMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER,
GEORGE STREET ABOVE ELEVENTH.
SOLD  BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1858.



OUR LITERATURE.
A REVIEW.*
"2D CIT. I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in
great danger, I re-cover them."-JULIUS CESA.R. ACT I.
WHEN the spirit of freedom first shines upon the
minds of men, who have suffered from time immemorial
under the heavy hand and the galling chains of despotism, inspires them to break their bondage, and hurl
the tyrant from his seat of power, nothing is more
natural, than that the laws and usages under which
they had been held in thraldom-whether written in
statute-books, or received from father to son, as indisputable tradition-should follow the fate of the despot,
and be wiped out from the archives of the nation, or be
nullified by new. codes; and that their memory should
perish as the days of darkness and fear had faded from
the minds of the people. Or when, in days of moral
gloom and unholy superstition, a light from.heaven
breaks in upon the soul of some anchorite, in his
secluded cell, directs his researches to hidden records
in which are stored the disused, overlaid and forgotten
truths of everlasting life, and prompts him to lift them
up as a standard to the nations; and when these nations
kneel in simple reverence and unaffected adoration,
* See Philadelphia Journal of Homceopathy, for August and September, 1855.



21
words: " How to apply the medicine"-" ist, by smelling; 2d, by taking one or two globules; 3d, dissolved
in water."  Upon the first of these modes the greatest
stress is laid, from which we are to infer that Dr. Hering deems it to be the most efficacious, as well as from
the minute directions given as to the mode of closing
one of the nostrils and then " smelling at the lower part
of cork"-doing which once or twice is thought sufficient,-and in dealing with children it is thought best
"' to hold it to the nostril when asleep 1" Now a careful
perusal of Hahnemann's works will show that he was
by no means so confident on this point, and that his
faith was wavering, weak and unsettled in the efficacy of
"smelling."  Nor have the credible records of the qualified practitioners of our school in this country or
abroad, been more fortunate in confirming the advantages claimed for it by Dr. Hering. Indeed, it seems
very clear to us that the reputable members of the profession have studiously "turned up their noses" at this
dogma. One of the best informed, most accurate and
reliable members of our school —Dr. Dudgeon, of London, says with regard to it: "I confess I have never
had the courage to employ it in acute diseases, nor the
impudence to use it in chronic ones. I cannot conceive
a case in which it would ever present advantages over
the other methods of administering the remedy."-Lecture 18, page 511. So that, on the whole, we feel justified in pronouncing it one of those wild vagaries, which
men, like Dr. Hering, who are more singular than
sound, adopt for the sake of doing something out of the
common way, and for which vagaries we should not, as



28
contributes much to sleep to fancy you had to write with
a very long pole, on a high, exceeding high wall, the
year and date in very large letters, first in figures, then
with letters"! There is only one thing that could at
all improve this piece of medical wisdom, which is, that
the long imaginary pole were a real pole, and that the
sleepless man would actually use it upon the "very high,
exceeding high wall;" in that case we assure him he
would, after the necessary muscular effort, sooner sleep,
and be less a dreamer. Perhaps it would make this result doubly sure if he were to go out and collect 101
" decent-looking" paving-stones and bring them in a bag
into his bed-room.
In no less than three different piaces,-pages 223,
and 274-5, is MESMERISM called into requisition, with
full directions how to make the passes in straight lines
and high curves! so that it is not thought sufficient that
honioeopathy should be an improvement and an advance
upon the old system, but this contemptible humbug, execrated and despised by all sound thinkers and well
educated men, must be foisted in to patch up what Dr.
Hering thinks the failures of the former. We trust it
will be henceforth distinctly understood that these abominations are anything but. Homoeopathy.
One more novelty from this mass of confusion and
folly, and we have done with it.
Page 245. " Lying oneself sore.  This may be avoided when a vessel of water is placed under the patient's
bed, and renewed every day. If water alone does not
serve, then dissolve some globules of No. 15 in it"!
And in case this never-to-be-forgotten remedy should
fail to cure " lying oneself sore,"-bed-sores, we should



29
think-there is another more far-fetched remedy still.
"A soft buck-skin may be laid under the patient, the
hair turned down and the tail end toward the feet of the
patient! by these means it may be avoided or cured!"
Now, then, surely, "' thereby hangs a tail i" Upon the
surface of " the water under the patient's bed" we shall
not raise a ripple, nor shall we disturb the globules that
sleep in its silent depths and send up their healing
powers through bed and bedding, by virtue of some
profound mystery of nature revealed only to Dr. Hering, doubtless, by divine ordination! But on taking our
leave, permit us to take also one turn out of the " buckskin:"-and while thus pleasantly shaking it up, let us
part with friendly smiles and merry faces, with the satisfaction, that, if in this book we have found no philosophy, we have found plenty of "' fun:""Semel Bryanus O'Linn bracca indigebat,
Frater dedit rubrm bovis pellem quam habebat,
Hocque corpus cruraque noster induebat,' Frigido jucundum est,' Bryanus dicebat."
"Brian O'Linn had no breeches to wear,
So they bought him a buck-skin to make him a pair;
The wooly side out and the fleshy side in,' It is pleasant and cool,' says Brian O'Linn!" —BRALLAGHAN.
Reader, the case for the Crown and Majesty of Homoeopathy and Science is before you; would that the
counsellor had been more capable and the pleading of
a higher order, for your sake,-but a noble and a just
cause can well dispense with the outward display and the
extraneous circumstances of pompous show. —It is yours
to pronounce the verdict; it shall be, it must be, " guilty
upon all the counts!"
3*



39
peculiarity of the most gifted minds to reject a mass of
mere words, while they eagerly embrace new ideas,
grapple with new propositions, and store up new facts
for future use. These form the elements of the man of
genius. The great work which stands at the head of
our list, taken as a whole, must be allowed to be unquestionable in its integrity as a history of such provings as were made by the founder and those who aided
him in his personal labors,, and must necessarily form
the solid ground-work of a true system of Materia Medica.  It was by these provings that the clear light of
medical reformation first broke through the clouds of
time-honored fallacies and superstitions.
But if Hahnemann intended to claim  any higher
place for this work than that of a mere symptom list,
it is certain that, like many other great men, his judgment was led captive by his zeal, and caused him to
overlook all scientific method, while he threw together
in one confused heap grand masses of purely elemental
principles, which require some less gifted hand to disentangle, arrange and mould them into a shape that
shall subserve the great object he had so much at
heart.
Great discoverers have seldom been mechanical
enough to turn to practical advantage the truths which
their genius had drawn from heights and depths beyond
the reach of ordinary workers. And it is but fair to
admit that in recording his drug-symptoms, Hahnemann
did not display such acuteness and clearness in arrangement and system, as one would expect from so sound
and original a thinker. Or, perhaps, in his earnestness