Day after day, those who effect to disbelieve the doctrines of Hahnemann, are dishonestly adopting his practice. In fact, we scarcely ever take up a work on medicine, or a periodical issuing from the allopathic press, without having such instances of dishonesty revealed to us. We use the word “dishonesty” in this sense, that while those who have really discovered the curative effects of drugs possessing a homoeopathic action, are contemned and ridiculed because they avow such discoveries — their opponents are mean enough to enter into their labors, and without even an acknowledgement. A recent instance of this kind of appropriation is to be found in the following statement in the Lancet of January 81,1863.

“The Fresh Juice of the Aloe and the Parenchyma of the Aloe Leaf in Dysentery.”

“A correspondent (Agathon) had forwarded us an extract from a Barbadoes paper, in which it is asserted that the fresh juice of the Aloe is a valuable remedy for dysentery. An incision is made into the leaf, and the juice which exudes collected and given fresh in half ounce doses in half a pint of milk; or the end of the leaf being cut off and all the juice drained out, it is peeled and the parenchyma, which is gelatinous and transparent, cut into pieces and chewed.

“This is not bitter, but imparts a sense of coolness to the throat, as the exuding moisture is swallowed.

“In both these forms. the writer asserts, the Aloe exerts a soothing, almost narcotic effect, arrests the bloody discharges, restores the natural action of the bowels and effects a speedy cure in all stages of dysentery.

“If there be any truth in this, it is a happy coincidence that Aloe flourishes in the greatest abundance where the disease most prevails.”

Now, in the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, we find under the head of Aloes:

”Abdomen. — Malaise, pressure, tension and heat in the region of the liver. Fullness, heat and distention of the abdomen; beating, boring and stinging in the umbilical region, stool is preceded by colic, emission of a quantity of fetid flatulence. Violent cutting in the abdomen.

”Stool and Anus. — Bilious papescent stools, the whole body becoming hot during the evacuation, with a feeling of malaise in the region of the liter. Evacuation consisting of fecal matter, bilious, not aqueous, not very profuse, having a peculiar putrid smell. Discharge of mucus by the rectum, looking like membranes. Discharge of large clots of mucus by the rectum. Frequent watery, sanguineous stool*. Bloody stool with violent colic. Pinching previous to the diarrhea, which is accompanied by tenesmus.”

The foregoing are the results of the “proving” of Aloes on previously healthy subjects — and in accordance with the Hahnemannian dogma “Similia similibus curentur ” — Aloes is the fit remedy for similar symptoms, the result, not of Aloes, but of a natural disease.

As this drug has been thus proved by Homoeopathists — and has, by them, been used in cases of dysentery so long — why should our allopathic brethren so unfairly, nay so dishonestly, appropriate a remedy so homoeopathic, without a word of acknowledgement?

Nor must our lay-readers suppose that, in speaking of the juice of the leaf, our allopathic colleagues are referring to some portion of the plant which differs in its medicinal action from the officinal Aloes; for, “the finest kind of Aloes is obtained by evaporating the juice which flows spontaneously from the transversely-cut leaves” (Pareira).

Homoeopathists and Allopathists have both long known the Aloes was a purgative, holding rank, according to Vogt (Pharmaco-dynamik, Bd. II. $ 334 — 2le Auft.) between Jalap and Rhubarb; or, according to Pareira, between Rhubarb and Senna. Homoeopathists, however, have long known, also, that Aloes is remedial in certain forms of diarrhea and of dysentery, the natural result of its homoepathicity to those states; but, it is only now — post totidem annos — that some allopathic practitioners discover accidentally — (for surely no Allopathist could stultify his creed by claiming in this case the merit of inductive reasoning) — that a drug which will cause symptoms resembling dysentery, will, also, cure such symptoms when they result from natural disease. — Monthly Homoeopathic He view, London, March, 1863.

The symptoms quoted in the above article, from the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, are taken from the American translation of Jahr's Symptomen Codex (Jahr's New Manual), and the proving is, in this work, credited to the Allg. Hom. Zeit., Vol. XX. Here we find an extract from a fragmentary proving by Dr. Buchner, of Munich.

Since these works were published however, we have the very admirable proving of Aloes contained in Dr. Hering's Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen, and which comprises all that Buchner and Kurs published in the Allg. Hom. Zeitung, and Roth in the Revue Specifique at Retrospective de la Matiere Medicale, and in addition the excellent contributions of Helbig and those of Hering himself and the physicians of the United States, besides all that is valuable on the subject in allopathic treatises on Materia Medica. We hope, with Dr. Hering's kind permission and co-operation, to present in future numbers of this Review, more or less complete summaries of this and other valuable provings contained in the volume referred to. At present, it may not be amiss to quote some symptoms of Aloes, bearing immediately upon the relation of that drug to dysentery.

“Tenesmus, the whole day.

“A constant desire to go to stool.

“Feeling of tenesmus in the rectum near the anus, rather towards the perineum.

“Tenesmus without evacuation.

“Tenesmus with simple evacuation of wind.

“Tenesmus with soft stool — with scanty stool.

“Violent tenesmus with the stool which was preceded by cutting in the abdomen, and attended by burning in the anus.

“Bloody, slimy stools, with cutting in abdomen and tenesmus.

”Tenesmus of the rectum when passing water.

“He must go to stool very soon after eating.

”Sensation at if stool would pass, when standing

“After stool, sensation in the rectum as if more would come.” D.