A 
BRIEF HISTORY 
OF THE 
MATERIA MEDICA 
BY SAMUEL BANCROFT BARLOW, M. D., 
Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the New York Homoeopathic Medical College. 
REPRINTED FROM TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF IIOMCEOPATIIT. 
BOSTON: 
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 
1 8 6 9. A 
BRIEF HISTORY 
OF THE 
MATERIA MEDIGA. 
SAMUEL BANCROFT BARLOW, M. D., 
Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the New York Homoeopathic Medical College. 
REPRINTED FROM TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF IIOMfEOPATU Y• 
BOSTON: 
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 
1 8 6 9. A BRIEF HISTORY 
OF THE 
HOMOEOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA. 
S. B. Barlow, M.D., of New York. 
The Homoeopathic Materia Medica now stands before the 
world peerless,—the noblest monument of human perseverance 
and discriminative skill which has as yet been permitted to 
cheer the heart of man. Having for its sole object the good — 
the highest, holiest good — of mortals, it may well lay most 
righteous claim to the highest commendation, if we may not say 
adoration, of the race, and challenge almost an equality in boun- 
teous thanksgiving from mankind with that which is awarded to 
the system of moral healing, designed to elevate man from the 
ruin and degradation of sin, and place him on a plane “ a little 
lower than the angels.” Although yet in its infancy, and mea- 
suring its existence by a few decades of years, — a period only 
equal to the common allotment of human life, — it has already 
attained a growth, a perfection, and a usefulness which might 
well put to shame the panegyrists and apologists of the pre- 
ceding schools, hoary with antiquity, but which are merely the 
shapeless, arbitrary, ill-assorted and cumbrous accumulations of 
many centuries. Homoeopathy is in all its youthful freshness 
and growing vigor. It is based on a law of Nature, as old as 
Nature herself, and which will be as lasting. It can, with 
all propriety, boast of a symmetry in its growing perfections, and 
a power for good from its adaptation for the relief of suffering 4 
humanity, which could not he predicated of any other system or 
collection of the appliances of the healing art, without mockery 
and absurdity. Already can it display an apparatus mcdican i- 
num, founded on an unswerving and unalterable law of matter, 
and able to lay just claim to immortality. 
Time, which ever has displaced, and ever will displace, arbi- 
trary systems, will never be able to abrogate or overturn this. 
It is based deep down upon everlasting foundations, and will 
remain as long as disease, the manifestation of violated laws 
of health, shall be found upon the earth: nay, it will usher in 
the glad day when pain, sickness, and death shall be banished 
from this fair heritage of God. 
In 1786, Samuel Hahnemann, a true seer, discovered the con- 
nection between the pathopoietic. and the therapeutic action of 
drugs upon the human body. Thus he laid the foundation of a 
method of curing disease, as simple and as efficacious as it is 
safe, pleasant, and beneficent. For the first time in the length- 
ened course of centuries was the old, insecure, and often dan- 
gerous and hurtful Galenic method replaced by one of a benefi- 
cence, safety, and efficacy which will ever be the theme of praise 
of mankind. 
In 1790, Hahnemann first promulgated to the world the dis- 
covery which he had made in 1786. As a result of this publica- 
tion by the master physician of the eighteenth century, the 
world of medicine was moved to its centre; the good were 
struck with awe and admiration; the bad with astonishment, 
culminating in opposition, detraction, and persecution. The 
good man was unmoved by the clamors and persecutions of his 
brethren, and went forward by the command of the Divinity 
within him, enlarging his view's, perfecting his beneficent im- 
provements; securing converts, friends, and collaborators in 
the noble enterprise of disenthralling his race from the shackles 
of a tyranny which had held the medical world in uninterrupted 
and almost unquestioned sway for twenty-five centuries. He 5 
was unmindful of toil, of suffering, of opposition, of calumny, 
and of ignominy at the hands of his professional brethren, if so 
he might press forward to the finishing of his task,—a task 
which was to enroll his name with mankind’s greatest benefac- 
tors, and which, in his own day, was to disarm all the most 
dreaded and fatal diseases of half their malignity and terror, 
and ultimately to prepare mankind for measurable exemption 
from disease and suffering. 
In all these labors of love, the noble band of friends who 
gathered around him, converts to his doctrines, whom he had 
electrified with the holy fire of his genius, were greatly useful 
in carrying forward the provings of drugs upon the healthy. 
The names of Boenninghausen, Stapf, Noack, Trinks, Hartmann, 
Riickert, Hcring, Kurtz, Hayncl, Roth, Schroen, Attomyr, 
Muller, Mayerhofer, Griesselich, Gross, and many others, will 
ever be remembered with honor and gratitude ; while tneir prov- 
ings stand as monuments of their perseverance, and furnish 
models which have not,'as yet, been surpassed in excellence, 
and peradventure never will be. 
In 1801, Hahnemann published a work on the efficacy of 
small doses of medicine, and of Belladonna in particular. The 
minute dose of the truly homoeopathic drug is a necessary corol- 
lary from the fact that like cures like, and that the sick organ- 
ism has its susceptibilities greatly exalted toward all agencies 
and instrumentalities possessing the attribute of similarity to 
the morbific cause. The question of the dose can never be 
settled by dogmatism so long as a multitude of causes are oper- 
ating in human bodies to render some more and others less 
susceptible to drug action. Those causes and their resultant 
differences, call them constitutional, idiosyncratic, or by what- 
ever other name you please, must remain, as long as man 
remains either a transient or permanent nidus for miasmata of a 
personal or of a more general origin. We can never too much 
admire the acuteness of genius which led Hahnemann thus early, 6 
and, as it were, at the very initiatory period of his greatest of 
all medical discoveries, to apprehend the corollary of the small- 
est doses being able to cure diseases. 
In 1805, he published an essay on a new system of medi" 
cine, based upon pure experience; and, about the same time, 
another and very learned disquisition upon the utter, palpable, 
fundamental, and radical insufficiency of all precedent systems. 
These two last named publications were entirely unanswer- 
able, and were mighty helps in preparing the European mind for 
the reception of a system which now begun to show that it was 
destined to revolutionize the world of medicine, and ultimately 
to become universal. 
This same year, 1805, was signalized as an era in Hahne- 
mann’s life, by the publication at Leipzic of his “ Fragmcnla de 
Viribus Medicamcntorum Positivis, site in sano corpore humano obser- 
vatis." This may be called the first work really pertaining to a 
new and truly rational materia medica which the world had then 
been permitted to see. It was a most worthy commencement 
of a labor which, however much derided then by interested 
bigots, charlatans, and knaves, now stands a monument worthy 
of the admiration of the scientific world. 
In 1810, Hahnemann gave to the world his New Organon of 
the Healing Art, the very grammar of rational medicine,—a 
gospel which the sophistry and the malice of all the opposers of 
homoeopathy have never been able to invalidate, a foundation of 
which not even one stone can be loosened. 
The great work—the immortal conception of a gigantic mind 
—was now to be ushered in for the benefit of earth’s millions 
in all future ages. I allude, of course, to the Materia Medica Pura 
of Hahnemann, in six volumes, the publication of which was 
commenced in 1811, and completed in 1820. Incomplete in 
its first issue, of course,—for the provings (probata) which were 
to complement its deficiencies were still being carried on by 
Hahnemann and his friends and co-workers, both in the profes- 7 
sion and among the laity, — yet, even in its incomplete condition, 
it evinced a skill and order of arrangement which filled and 
satisfied the demands of science, as they were urged in favor of 
the new melhodus medcndi. 
The Vienna provers executed some really able scientific work 
in the way of provings of new drugs and re-provings of old 
ones. Some of them were truly exhaustive, and will stand as 
models for all future time. They will ever be regarded as 
monuments of the skill, the perseverance, and earnestness of 
those true and self devoted men. Their labors were recorded 
in Stapf’s Archiv, from 1822 to 1840, or even later. A 
proving of Thuja, made by the Vienna physicians, was a 
truly Herculean work, which developed powers and capabili- 
ties in that drug of which the heart of man could never before 
have conceived. All honor to those glorious creators of medi- 
cal knowledge the elements of which had lain hidden from the 
foundation of the world ! 
In 1830, Dr. Wesselhoeft practised in modo Hahnemanni, 
among the Moravian brethren in Pennsylvania, and was instru- 
mental in instituting a homoeopathic association which bore 
the title of “ The Northampton Homoeopathic Society.” Up to 
that time, and to about 1836 or 1838, there were no books of 
note on the science of homoeopathy in the English language, 
and the students of the system were obliged to go to the Ger- 
man for what they wished to learn of its value and uses; and, 
as to most Americans that language was unfamiliar, the study 
was truly “ a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.” Some 
few mastered the German sufficiently to enable them to consult 
the Materia Medica Pura in that language, while others used 
what could be found on the subject in the French language; 
many more had not been able to make progress in u the new 
Gospel of Healing,” until the Organon and Jalir’s Manual were 
published in English, which was done about this period. 
This is the proper place to mention the work of Dr. Hering 8 
on Serpent Poisons, which was published in 1834, entitled, 
“ WirTcungen dcs Schlangengiftcs,” a work which embraces an 
amount of information on a most interesting subject for which 
the profession will be ever thankful, flis proving of Lachesis 
has furnished the profession with one of the most potent reme- 
dies we possess; and the frequent use of this article for more 
than thirty years past has fully confirmed in my mind the fact, 
that that proving was an exhaustive and most reliable one. It 
has often been found adapted to symptoms and groups for 
which, without it, I could have found no reliable remedy. Great 
honor is certainly due to Dr. Hering for his many and valuable 
contributions to the Materia Medica of our school. 
On May 27th, 1835, at a meeting of homoeopathic physicians 
at Allentown, Pa., it was resolved to have a hospital and school 
of homoeopathy. In pursuance of that resolution, “ The Na- 
tional Academy of Homoeopathy ” was chartered by the Legisla- 
ture of Pennsylvania, February 25, 1836, and Dr. Constantine 
Hering, a pioneer of homoeopathy in America, — having arrived 
in this country, at Philadelphia, about the year 1833,— was 
elected its first President. 
The fruits of this enterprise were soon seen; for in 1836, 
wras issued from the Academy press in Allentown the first 
American edition of the Organon in English, from the British 
translation of the fourth German, with improvements from 
the fifth German edition. In the same year, 1836, was also 
published, “ G. H. G. Jahr’s Manual of Homoeopathic Medi- 
cine; translated from the German, with improvements and 
additions, by C. Hering, M.D., in two volumes: Allentown, Pa., 
at the Academical Book Store, 1836.” 
The nearly simultaneous appearance of these two most 
indispensable works in the English tongue was a perfect God- 
send to such American physicians as were unable to read them 
in German, and gave an impetus to the study, adoption, and 
practice of homoeopathy, which could not be resisted. The old, 9 
proud, haughty, dominant school of medicine was surprised. 
Many physicians soon adopted “ the new medicine,” whilst 
many more wearied themselves and all their friends in fruit- 
less endeavors to overthrow it by arguments, or by endeavors 
to hoodwink and deceive their fellow-citizens by stupendous 
mendacity. Those efforts to disparage the new science met 
with signal failure. The new system grew and spread and 
strengthened itself by patient, honorable development, going 
on from year to year, increasing in the popular favor, until 
it has become a power in the world. All honor to the noble 
spirit which animated the Academic corporation at Allentown, 
and gave to Americans the much-needed facilities for the acqui- 
sition of the knowledge of a rational system of medicine! 
Soon, in 1838, followed a “ Repertorium,” of “ G. H. G. 
Jahr’s Manual of Homoeopathic Medicine; translated from the 
German, by authority of the North American Academy of the 
Homoeopathic Healing Art: with an Introduction and some 
additions, by C. Hering, M.D., Allentown, at the Academical 
Book Store, 1838.” This was a noble offering in aid of the 
American practitioner,— such an aid indeed as those can never 
sufficiently appreciate who enter the ranks of homoeopathy at 
any period since the issue of that work. The physicians of 
those days supposed they had reached the ne plus ultra in the 
way of a guide, and scarcely permitted themselves to wish or 
to hope for any greater. By its help, it was now quite feasible 
for the earnest student to select remedies by the strict rules of 
art for the majority of his cases. 
But the American mind, ever more active, persevering, and 
inventive than that of other countries, rested not until Jahr’s 
Manual, under the editorial hand of the late much-lamented 
Hull, was issued from the New York press in two volumes, 8vo, 
in 1841 and 1842. This was the crowning glory of the litera- 
ture of homoeopathic medicine in America. Although it is not 
without imperfections, it will hardly be denied that the aspira- 10 
tions of eager learners scarcely dared to desire or to conceive of 
anything superior to those magical volumes. 
Since that period, however, the literature of homoeopathy has 
increased with such a flood-like rapidity, that the most studious 
among us have hardly been able to keep pace in their reading 
with the issues from the press. Although this literature em- 
braces works in all the departments of homoeopathy, yet that of 
materia medica can fairly boast of its full share. Since 1842, 
Hull’s Jalir’s Manual has passed through many editions, with 
notes, emendations, improvements, additions, corrections, etc., 
by a considerable number of editors; and, notwithstanding the 
frequent issue of elaborate and costly works on the materia 
medica, all of which have much and peculiar merit, this cannot 
fail to be and remain one of the most cherished of the standard 
works of reference to the homoeopathic practitioner, perhaps 
for decades or centuries to come. 
The Materia Medica of Teste, though never completed, has 
points of excellence which were not found in such as preceded 
it; and if some able hand shall ever perform the pious duty of 
supplementing and completing the work of Teste, his labors will 
be blessed to the latest generations. 
The Syrvptomcn Codex of Jahr is an immense storehouse 
of symptomatology, with not an inconsiderable amount of physi- 
ological and pathological information which will forever endear 
it to the student and the practitioner. 
I should do injustice were I to omit the most honorable men- 
tion of Hempel’s Lectures on the Materia Medica,—a work con- 
ceived in a truly scientific spirit, and carried out with an ability 
which does its truly devoted author immense credit as a culti- 
vator of a scientific field which is too apt to be found sterile 
and uninteresting. He has the rare merit of having treated 
the study of materia medica in such a manner as will ever render 
his book one of the most truly welcome works on this science, 
which has as yet appeared in this or any other land. 11 
In 1846, a little band of workers, under the guidance of the 
late Benjamin F. Joslin, M.D., of New York, made a proving of 
Rhus radicans, which was so far complete as to enable the pro- 
fession to avail themselves of its useful properties in a multitude 
of cases. The scientific arrangement of the material thus 
obtained was performed by Dr. Joslin in that careful and pre- 
cise manner which was characteristic of him. His mind was of 
that accurate, methodical, and mathematical order which would 
insure the greatest completeness and usefulness in the work. 
He was trained and schooled in studies calculated to insure the 
most critical accuracy in whatever scientific labors he might be 
called to perform. 
A large number of provings of various extent and merit, from 
those of a slight and imperfect character up to such as are 
complete and exhaustive, are to be found in the various reviews, 
journals, and other periodical publications devoted to the inter- 
ests of our schools. In many instances, even short and frag- 
mentary provings have given valuable hints and aids in the treat- 
ment of a wide range of morbid affections. A case in point 
occurs at this moment to my mind; viz., the proving of Cactus 
grandiflorus, by Dr. Rubini, of Italy. Many similar cases have 
been scattered through the journals for many years. 
For two decades of years past, the physicians of America have 
contributed their full share to the improvement of our materia 
medica. This fact is worthy of honorable mention, at least, 
when it is considered that ours is a new country, and that but 
little more than one-third of a century has elapsed since the 
introduction of homoeopathy in America. 
The New Provings of Prof. Hale possess many points of 
merit and seem destined to become a favorite with the profes- 
sion ; yet I have found it not a light task to teach the student 
and young practitioner how to use in a truly homoeopathic mode 
the facts and information with which the work is crowded. 
Doubtless its industrious and ingenious compiler will so im- 12 
prove its future editions, which are certain to be demanded, as 
to render it a work absolutely necessary to the physician, and 
the ground of a fame sufficient to satisfy the desires of the most 
ardent ambition. Since the above was written, a second edition 
has been published, much enlarged in matter and not less im- 
proved in manner. 
The very elaborate, accurate, and costly works of Professors 
Lippe and Gross, both of which are designed to facilitate the 
acquisition of a truly accurate diagnostic of the materia medica, 
though well conceived, are yet, in some material respects, imper- 
fect. They fall much short of that degree of usefulness which 
their authors intended them to reach: still they do unspeakable 
honor to their authors, and will soon be found indispensable 
helps to the student, even if he has possessed himself of most 
of what has worthily preceded them. Both these works may 
reasonably lay claim to the honor of being the most truly philo- 
sophical treatises which have, as yet, ever issued from the press, 
in any age or any country, upon a subject so difficult, intricate, 
critical, and abstruse as the attempt to simplify and systema- 
tize the wayward, multitudinous symptomatology of our materia 
medica. 
In 1849, there was published in French, a 12mo volume of 
150 pages or more of provings by members of our School in 
Brazil. In 1854, it was published in Spanish. The same work 
was again published in an English dress in New York, in 1859. 
It is every way a creditable production, both in its scientific con- 
tents and in its manner of handling or arrangement. Many of the 
articles of which the pathogenesis is there given are really of 
great power and value. So the work forms a valuable contribu- 
tion to our store of knowledge. 
In 1853, the American Institute of Homoeopathy published, 
at Philadelphia, a volume of 300 pages, 12mo, of American 
provings of a reliable character. It is well arranged, is a val- 13 
uable contribution to the literature of our materia medica, and 
has been of great use to the profession. 
Richard Hughes, M.D., has written a work on the Materia 
Medica, in two volumes, the first of which was published in 
London, by Turner & Co., during 1867. It gives promise of 
rare usefulness to the student and young practitioner. It is 
written in a style so simple and pleasing that ft must inevitably 
become a favorite with all classes of the fraternity of homoe- 
opathists. I know no work in our homoeopathic literature so 
calculated to obtain a universal popularity as this. Students 
will read it with such a zest as is manifested by the young, in 
reading Robinson Crusoe, or Gulliver’s Travels. * 
The great and pressing want with us now is some new and 
improved mode, better than any hitherto made known to us for 
studying the materia medica,—a method which shall render the 
acquisition of a competent knowledge of it, for practical purposes, 
more facile and less laborious and irksome than any hitherto prac- 
tised. Very many plans and methods have been from time to time 
devised and promulgated, some of which were really ingenious 
and useful; still, a better plan is yet a desideratum. Knowing 
well the character of the American mind, I deem it not too 
much to hope that some ingenious and fortunate individual will 
yet strike out some complete and effective method which shall 
confer immortality upon his name, and procure for him the bene- 
dictions of all homoeopathists. We may possibly see this 
before many years. We cannot know who the fortunate discov- 
erer is to be, but the prize thus to be won ought to stimulate 
the inventive genius of every true lover of the science, until 
the result is reached. 
In the bright future, when years and centuries and ages shall 
* The work of Dr. Hughes (1st vol.) has been reprinted by Mr. Radde, of 
New York, with the addition of a full and complete index, which was a 
desideratum not found in the English edition. 14 
have lapsed; when better governments and better laws shall 
have succeeded to those under which we now too often suffer; 
when the laws of health shall have become perfectly understood, 
and their adoption and observance shall have become the rule, 
as now they are the exception; when all the cognate branches 
of the science of medicine shall have been improved to their 
acme of possible perfection; when, as a consequence of the bet- 
ter condition of the physical man, his mental and moral status 
shall have evinced an approximation toward the angelic state, 
— what may we not expect from our ever-growing, ever-per- 
fecting materia mcdica ? What, but the rescuing of the race of 
man from most of the moral and physical evils which now seem 
his inheritance, and which now beset him with such demoniac 
malignity? What, but the reproduction of the Golden Age, 
when the lives of men shall be measured by centuries, as now 
by decades and lustrals; when sages and seers and poets and 
prophets shall sing the happiness of the race in Arcadian vales; 
and man, regenerated and rejuvenated, once more enjoy the felic- 
ities and glories of the primeval age! 15 
POSTSCRIPT. 
I have not the vanity to think for a moment that the estimate 
I have made in the preceding essay of the value of the labors 
of the several persons of whom I have there spoken will be 
universally, even if generally, approved. I am too painfully 
aware that there are some who are disposed to depreciate the 
labors of all our writers; to belittle the efforts and productions 
of such men as Hering, Hull, Lippe, Gross, Hempel, Hale, and 
many others in our own country, to say nothing of European 
authors. But believing, as I do, that all the writers named, and 
many others, had no other wish than to promote the sacred 
cause of homoeopathy by their labors, I am bound to accept the 
results for what they were intended, however short they may 
have fallen of the mark; and, although much of what we have 
from our best writers is necessarily imperfect, yet it is all 
worthy of honorable mention. 
As it is not in my nature to “ damn with faint praise,” all I 
can say is that the estimate I have given of the men spoken of 
and of their labor is my own, — given to please no one but 
myself. Neither do I desire to displease any one. The value 
I have expressed as attaching to the work of any and all men 
is such as I believe will be found ultimately to be sanctioned by 
time and experience which are ever “ the great touchstone ” of 
truth, when applied to the labors of mortals. 
s. B. B. 
55 East Twenty-first Street, 
New York, June 1, 1868.