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Gelsemium

Red

I

We consider the Crowning Pharmaceutical Success in the line of a Gelsemium preparation to be the elegant Specific Medicine, Gelsemium Red.

Characteristics. This preparation has the following characteristics. It is of a rich crimson color, and can not be mistaken for a common fluid. It has no unpleasant odor, being practically odorless. It does not change in quality from age, neither precipitating nor undergoing other alteration. In medicinal proportions it mixes without precipitation with water, glycerin, syrup, simple elixir, dilute alcohol, or other ordinary prescription diluents. It possesses the full therapeutic properties of fresh Gelsemium, without such objectionable products and by-products as may be found in ordinary preparations of the drug.

The dose is the same as that of the old style Specific Medicine Gelsemium, that stood for decades as a standard. However, its cleanness and clearness, its perfect dilution without precipitation, and its ready assimilation, makes Gelsemium Red exceptionally attractive, effective, and pleasing to the patient.

A Beautiful Experiment. To a half tumbler of clear water, add one fluid drachm (or less) of Specific Medicine Gelsemium Red. There will be no precipitate. Add now half a teaspoonful of baking soda. A beautiful, fluorescent, ultramarine blue color results.

Specific Medicine Gelsemium Red is made by means of the recently discovered Lloyd's Reagent, which enables us to exclude the inert coloring matters of the crude root. The preparation carries the full therapeutic qualities of the drug, (alkaloid and otherwise), and it is, in every wise, a perfect pharmaceutical compound.

Commendations. In a therapeutical sense, the reports of physicians who have used Gelsemium Red speak for themselves. These reports will be printed soon and mailed on request. They are of exceptional value, because of the great experience of their authors in the direction of the clinical use of Gelsemium in disease. Within a year thousands of physicians, in even stronger terms, will commend Gelsemium Red to their brother practitioners. The stocks of all jobbers are now being supplied with "Gelsemium Red," at the usual list price of Specific Medicine Gelsemium. (Send for descriptive pamphlet).

December 1, 1914.

LLOYD BROTHERS,
Cincinnati, Ohio.

GEORGE W. BOSKOWITZ, M. D., Editor.
JOHN W. FYFE, M. D., Associate Editor.

Subscription, $1.00; To Foreign Countries, $1.24 Per Annum.

Contributions, Exchanges, Books for Review and all other communications should be addressed to "The Eclectic Review," 260 West 86th Street, New York City, N. Y. Original Articles of interest to the profession are solicited. All rejected manuscripts will be returned to writers. No anonymous letters or discourteous communications will be printed. The editor is not responsible for the views of contributors.

VOL. XVIII. NEW YORK, AUGUST 15, 1915

No. 8

Coalition of Schools.*

I have read with deep interest the articels in the Eclectic Medical Journal, August issue, entitled "How About a Coalition?" by H. T. Webster, of California. The two editorials-"Coalition of Schools," "Coalition of Interests"-and Dr. Carmichel's very interesting article, "Union of the Homeopathic and Eclectic Schools" quoted from an article in the New England Gazette.

Let me start by saying that I have no quarrel with the Homeopaths and no advice to give them; but to the Eclectics I desire to say that to adopt any of the plans suggested, to my mind, would be fatal to their interests, and I should like to be recorded right here as one of the members of the eclectic school who "violently dissent" from the statements made by Dr. Webster.

I am willing to have the eclecticism that I teach and practice called "empiric." I believe in empiricism in medicine. I believe that empiricism has done more for humanity than scientific medicine, so called. The carefully recording of facts in medicine by observing people is the basis of our practice, and I believe that the majority of the members of our school, if they do not agree with me, certainly disagree with Dr. Webster.

But my purpose is not to discuss names or the particular principles of the Homeopathic and eclectic schools. I do not believe that a union of the two schools would be helpful to the eclectics or give them any advantage in legislative fights.

Anything that could be gained by such a union, I believe, could be better attained by individual effort. The eclectics should be left free to accept the aid and assistance of any set or combination of interests, be they Homeopaths, Hydropaths, or drugless healers, so long as they are opposed to the common enemy.

*On account of its importance and for the convenience and better understanding of our readers who may not have seen the August issue of the E. M. J., we reprint in this issue the articles and editorials above referred

to.

One of the very strong points that we try to make in these legislative fights against the A. M. A. and its satellites is that the laws that they are trying to have passed are proposed by the medical politician whom we despise and denounce. A committee such as referred to in Dr. Felter's second editorial would, I believe, place us in exactly the same category. It would be a committee of medical politicians representing two schools.

And now, as to the future. It looks dim at present and many are asking "What can be done?" I have had some experience in the management of a medical college, and have, for nearly forty years been active in the affairs of the National. I think I know its shortcomings and its needs, and I will tell you what I think is necessary to place the school on a permanent and firm foundation. I do not believe that a medical college or any other educational institution for that matter, can be properly supported by the fees from students, so my first thought is for you to rally around one of your existing medical colleges and give it a proper endowment. The next step necessary, in my opinion, would be to liberally endow in such a college the chair of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, and finally to properly select and properly finance a Publicity Committee.

Hints and Winowings.

Eclecticism, embodying as it does, a system of specific medication, has often been misunderstood by some of our brethren of the older school of medicine, for to them specifics in medicine mean specifics for the entirety of diseases. Such prejudice as may have existed against the Eclectic school has no doubt been largely owing to needless ignorance of the teachings of the school that was originated as a protest against the harsh methods of practice in vogue a century ago. It has always been especially a school of materia medica, and as such has evolved a most efficient system of therapeutics, known as "specific medication." The term specific medicine, as used by Eclectics, means a specific for a pathologic condition-not for a disease as a whole. It is just here that we are misunderstood. Modern Eclectics divide diseases into their component parts, and their conception of a specific remedy is a drug that will oppose and remove wrongs of these individual parts, manifested by symptoms or disease expressions. In testing drugs for this purpose the direction of their action and their influence over the parts acted upon are thoroughly studied. If repeated trial of a remedy, under exactly the same conditions, demonstrates the fact beyond a doubt that it will remove a certain symptom it is deemed a specific for the condition or abnormal state manifested by such disease expression, and the symptom is regarded as a specific indication for the drug being investigated. This statement has been re

at

peated times without number, and still it seems a hopeless task to tempt to convince some physicians of the fact that Eclectics do not, and never have, advocated specifics for diseases as nosologically classified.

The history, principles, aims and aspirations of the Eclectic school of medicine are well pointed out in an able article written by Dr. A. F. Stephens who in part says:

"Eclecticism came into existence, not as an antagonist of men, but as a protest again certain methods of men. It had its birth at a time when mighty evolutionary problems were in the solving; a period when the virile seeds of freedom and individual liberty of thought and action. had begun to take deep root in the fertile soil of expanding intellectuality. It did not seek to destroy opportunity in medical research, nor has it ever opposed the efforts of those working in other fields of scientific discovery, although it has opposed, and does now oppose, some of their processes and theoretical conclusions. Its honest intention has been, to act as a co-laborer with other schools. Its work, instituted at the beginning of the last century, led into fields that had not been properly cultivated; into regions which in fact, if not new, had been almost, if not entirely, neglected. In its search for more kindly acting means and methods with which to supplant those which it condemned, the research drifted, naturally, into the investigation and development of the therapeutics of plant drugs. In the passing of time, the bitterness of opposing forces often led to personal antagonisms, but there was no thought on the part of Eclectics to antagonize the good in others, but to oppose with all their power, wrongful methods and harmful practice, as they viewed them. They had no other thought than to give credit where credit was due, and to recognize, in all, that which was of worth.

"That the beginning of the crusade of the Eclectics for an improvement in means and methods of medication was justified, evidence now shows conclusively, in that the cruelty of bleeding, blistering, salivation and antimonial poisoning, then the standards of therapeutic practice, has been condemned by the entire profession, as well as by the American people in general. This is attested by the fact that all of the barbarisms just named have been discarded by practitioners of all schools, who now condemn them as energetically as did the early protesting Eclectic physicians.

"In breaking away, as the early Eclectics did, from the crudities. and fallacies of the practice of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, they naturally turned, as already remarked, to a study of the American plant products and their therapeutic possibilities. These plants were generally unknown to materia medica at that time, their medical properties being hidden in the secret archives. of Nature. This divergence of the Eclectic school into a region of

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