Electro-homoeopathic Medicine a New Medical System

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Tan very favourable reception which has been given by the English public all over the world to this translation of Count Mattei’s latest and most matured exposition of his system of Electro- Homœopathy would have led to an earlier issue of this Second Edition, were it not that the publica- tion has been delayed by the necessity of making arrangements for the right of continuous re-publi- cation in the future.

The subject of Electro-Homoeopathy, and its special claim on public notice, has been fully brought before the public by the papers written in various periodicals, especially Lady Paget’s article in The National Review and Mr. Stead’s very admirable historic and biographic surveys of the system in The Review of Reviews. It is now pretty generally allowed that the system of Count Mattei has vindicated its claim to earnest and practical investigation. Testimonies to its value are constantly accumulating, and its representa- tives may now be found in civilized countries all over the world.

My own conviction regarding them is that they form a large and important province of the older Homeopathy of Hahnemann, and that the two are destined to work side by side in friendly co Electro-Homoeopathy operation. And so far as is approved, its success is a witness in favour of the more refined, infinitesimal Homoeopathy of the earlier Hahnemannians rather than the somewhat coarse material methods of allopathizing with Homœopathic resources, which in many places have supplanted it. The globules of Mattei, and his first, second, third, and even higher dilutions, help to authenticate the claim made by the best practitioners of Homoeopathy that medicine should be administered in such a form that its mere physical, chemical, and physiological qualities re- treat into the invisible, imponderable, insensible conditions of infinitesimal substances. Here chemical analysis can have no place: we do not pretend to employ such measures and weights as even the most delicate scales and meters of the laboratory can verify. And therefore, when the analyst reports that he can only find sugar or water or spirit in our preparations, we have only to thank him for confirming the sincerity of our infinitesimal professions. We accept his analysis, while we demur to his assumption that all the potencies of matter are capable of detection by the tests and re-agents which he employs. It is necessary to make this principle well understood, because some of our friends have been painfully surprised and embarrassed by the confident asser- tions of competent chemists that our agents are destitute of remedial force, simply because they find nothing which can be registered in a formula or expressed by decimals. It seldom occurs to our scandalized friends to consider that some of the most virulent poisons in nature-poisons of plants, poisons of serpents, poisons of atmospheres-would yield equally negative results in the same investi- gation. The truth is that the ruling medical faculty has surrendered itself to the viceroyalty of chemists and microscopists-a microbe must be found for every disease and a chemic symbol for every remedy; and so the whole realm of infinitesimal and occult forces is entirely with- drawn from its observation. We, however, owe no allegiance to the Bureau of the Chemical De- partment of the Scientific State, and we decline to dress in their livery.

So far as Electro-Homœopathy is concerned, it is necessary that we should stoutly vindicate its claim to be judged by vital, and not mechanical, tests. And it may here be added that the limits of desirable, or even necessary, attenuation are by no means defined by the directions given in the Those who are making text of this volume. practical use of our methods will do well to remem- ber that its best results have often been achieved by the most refined use of the medicines, and that while in most cases the first dilution is not too strong, in a large number of deeply-rooted chronic disorders relief or cure must be sought third, “glasses,” OF by the use of second, or even dilutions; and often, even while these are em- ployed, the dose must not be too frequent. These are practical matters which can scarcely be ex- pressed in definite rules; experience must deter- mine in each case what degree of attenuation

should be employed. It would have been possible to expand this already somewhat too ample volume, by including a number of diseases which are not directly tioned. But inasmuch as in all diseases treated by Electro-Homœopathy the first consideration in the selection of remedies is the type to which the patient belongs, so the treatment of cases not directly described may in all cases be inferred by a study of the general law of selection, and their application to analogous cases. It is indeed in this that the special advantage of Electro-Homœo- pathy consists. It does not profess to individualize the case, as in the delicate medical portraiture of ordinary Homoeopathy. It is enabled by the singularly comprehensive range of action of the remedies it employs to treat cases according to their constitutional type, while the peculiarities of the individual case are utilized in deciding the potency and combinations of the medicines. In all cases the clue to a prescription must be sought for, not only in the special rubric of the case, but in the chapter which treats on general Indications, and the description of the sphere of action of the remedies.

A preface is not the place for recording detailed cases; but I may be permitted to refer to some which have come under my own care and obser- vation, illustrating the action of the several groups of remedies which Electro-Homœopathy employs.

First as to the Angioitic group: In heart diseases the efficacy of these is undoubted. A short time since I saw a child suffering from Pericarditis, breathless, unable to lie, emaciated, pallid, suffer- ing with the pain and anguish peculiar to heart disease. In a few days all these symptoms subsided, and the child, without losing all traces of heart disease, ceased to be inconvenienced by it. In other cases the heart murmur, showing valvular disease, has gradually ceased.

In Scrofoloso, remedies with their wide range of action have been useful; for instance, in an inveterate case of Eczema of twenty years’ con- tinuance; in another of Acne, with pustular eruption over a large part of the body; Cataract in another case; in innumerable cases of Dyspepsia of various types; in Rheumatism, in its chronic form, with extreme sensitiveness to atmospheric changes; and in many inveterate Neuralgias.

The Canceroso remedies generally succeed in arresting the advance of Cancer. Even in inveterate cases, where cure is impossible, symptoms.