BY AD. LIPPE, M.D., PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Dr. Bayes has answered an article written by me and published in the November number of the AMERICAN HOMOEOPATHIC REVIEW, under the misconception that I had completely distorted the purport of his questions on doses, dilutions and characteristic symptoms for the selection of the remedy, published in the October number of the London Monthly Homoeopathic Review, Vol. VII.

While I am confident that I have not in the least distorted the purport of Dr. Bayes' questions, I must decline to go over them again and shall now take up his questions as he asks them at present.

Dr. Bayes says, at the end of his answer, “my charge against Mr. Wilson does not lie in the fact of his having given Lycopod., but in his having given way to vacillation and uncertainty when he had recognized 'a characteristic indication,' and possessed a remedy which corresponded to it.”

If the fan-like motion of the alae nasi was one of the symptoms of the patient and characteristic of Lycopodium, it was not to be supposed that Mr. Wilson, on account of the presence of that single characteristic symptom, would select that remedy. If his vacillation, according to Dr. Bayes, consisted in the marking down of eleven medicines for study, I must differ with him very widely. Mr. Wilson was anxious, and he had good reasons to be so, his patient was in great danger, he wanted to find the truly curative remedy, the one whose characteristics corresponded most closely with the characteristic symptoms of the patient, and after due reflection and study he found Lycopodium the one remedy, corresponding in all particulars with the symptoms of the patient, and also having the peculiarly characteristic symptom of the fan-like motion of the nostrils which was not characteristic of any of the other medicines marked for study. Mr. Wilson did not vacillate, but administered the remedy, and the patient was cured. Would the patient have been cured if Mr. Wilson, instead of following Hahnemann's practical rule, implicitly had chosen the remedy according to to pathological indications? Would Tartarus emeticus so chosen have cured the patient? Dr. Bayes continues, “in like manner, if olfaction will cure in hours, why give medicines in a form, which he confesses, takes days to affect the same end? So also, if to give a single dose is the Hahnemannian and safe and successful mode for the administration of medicines, why give frequently repeated doses? The answer to all these questions the Doctor finds in Hahnemann's writings, but I shall say a few words in answer. If olfaction has cured, it has done so before any other medicines have been given unsuccessfully and unhomoeopathically, and thereby a perversion of the normal condition has been produced. Very sensitive patients are frequently benefited by olfaction, but by what logic does Dr. Bayes arrive at the assertion that because olfaction has once cured an acute attack of pleurisy, this olfaction shall cure a case of complicated pneumonia? or, shall cure always? does Hahnemann in any of his writings say that olfaction will cure all cases?

One single dose is administered and the result waited for without interference in most cases, and a favorable result follows, except when by previous treatment a perversion of the normal condition has been produced, but when, as in the ease in question, the normal condition had been perverted by treatment not homoeopathic, but based on fallacious pathological speculations with remedies also used by Homoeopathists but by them only according to the Hahnemannian rules and the homoeopathic law of cure, it was prudent to give the patient, who was in great distress, one dose dissolved in water, and administered this one dissolved dose in small fractions till the improvement was fully established. I can not see that any principle, and less that three principles are involved in the different modes of administering medicines under different circumstances. The administration of medicines in various forms depends on practical rules; the selection of a remedy is done on a principle; the dynamization theory depends on a principle, etc. The practical rules have been laid down by Hahnemann, and if Dr. Bayes will accept his testimony and his advice, he will find quite a collection of them in his Chronic Disease, in his Materia Medica and in the Organon.

Mr. Wilson does not claim to have discovered an improvement on Hahnemann's method, he has followed Hahnemann faithfully and diligently with many others, and like them obtained the same result; and no doubt the improvement on the Hahnemannian method claimed by those physicians who are giving low dilutions and even massive doses is an illusion, depending solely on a want of knowledge of Homoeopathy and of Hahnemann's teachings. Or, if there can be one more reason for it, it is the desire to coquette with Allopathy, by, as they say “stopping short where began the great error of the great man,” by dropping the ridiculous pellet, returning to sensible doses, and a preposterously pompous demand for more Physiology and Pathology to assist in the selection of the curative remedy. They hope thus to flatter them into our ranks, they really think Allopathists will accept this caricature as “Homoeopathy.”

The case in question has proved to Dr. Bayes that one of the characteristic symptoms of Lycopodium is the fan-like motion of the alae nasi. We thank him for his frank testimony, when he says “I have lately had two such cases in two young children suffering from sequelae of badly treated scarlatina. I gave Lycopodium³⁰ in both cases, with immediate and permanent good result. I am glad to add this testimony to Mr. Wilson's careful observation.”

Dr. Bayes ventured on the hazardous experiment of administering medicine guided by some little characteristic symptoms, while no doubt all the other symptoms of the two children also corresponded with Lycopodium; or did Physiology and Pathology assist him in the above cures? or, does he know, and if he knows, will he be so good as to inform the Homoeopathist what pathological conditions cause fan-like motion of the alae nasi? Dr. Bayes is, I think, committing himself very fast, and if he follows for a time only his present impetus, if he investigates, tries the experiment and succeeds — if he takes all of Hahnemann's practical rules and applies them as he finds them, he will no longer believe that the characteristic indications in accordance with Physiological and pathological knowledge will ever indicate the curative remedy in intermittent fever, or in hooping cough, or in any other disease, he will further thank Mr. Wilson not only for his careful observations and the publications of them, but also for exposing the very villainous translations of Dr. Hempel, by showing his many omissions, commissions and perversions, and he will find also that Mr. Wilson has not been engaged in a game of hair splitting with Drs. Hempel and Dudgeon (who can never establish by bold assertion that ”Fuse“ is leg or foot at option. Fuss is pes, foot and never leg in good literature. Hahnemann, above all men, was pedantic on that point); he will farther discover that the English homoeopathic literature is in a sad condition, and I hope he will materially assist us finally to improve this state of things by participating in the establishment of a publishing society of standard homoeopa thic works.