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The Literary Armamentarium

or
Books that the Homeopathic Physician
Cannot do Without, and Something About Them
by Benjamin Woodbury, MD

Read before the Connecticut Homeopathic Medical Society,
Derby, Connecticut
October 20, 1931

The request of the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Homeopathic Medical Society for me to present a paper on the subject of Books That the Homeopathic Physician Cannot Do Without, and Something About Them, reminds me that there is after all no subject that is more important from the standpoint of the homeopathic physician than his literary equipment.

What is meant, briefly, by this literary armamentarium?

In the first place, it must be taken for granted that the homeopathic physician, like any other physician, must have had at the outset of his career:

...and, if he is destined to succeed, a certain inborn or indwelling love of his fellowmen and the innate desire to become to the fullest extent in his power, a healer of the sick.

He must, either consciously or unconsciously, embody in his cosmos, or more specifically perhaps within his ego, that divine purpose so well set forth by our immortal Hahnemann in the first paragraph of the Organon, namely:

"The first and sole duty of the physician is to restore health to the sick. This is the true art of healing."

The edition just quoted is the First American, from the British Translation of the Fourth German Edition, by Stratten, of Dublin. There is another version by Dudgeon that is much better known, that reads thus:

"The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed."

The late Conrad Wesselhoeft of Boston renders it thus:

"The physician's highest and only calling is to restore health to the sick, which is called healing."

And Fincke, one of the most profound thinkers of the Hahnemannian wing of the profession, in an unpublished translation of the Fifth edition transcribes this same passage as follows:

"The physician's highest and only calling is to make sick people well, which is called healing."

However we may translate this remarkable aphorism of Hahnemann's, we are brought face to face with the dignity of the physician, his superior worth in the world of men, and-the high calling to which the God, All-Heal has called him.

I am reminded here of the story of a small boy who was asked by someone who had called at his father's office, and was about to turn away in disappointment, if he knew where his father, who was a physician, could be found.

"I do not know," replied the sturdy little fellow, "where my daddy can be just now, but wherever he is, I am sure he is helping somebody."

If this be the end and aim of the student of medicine, and of the homeopathic physician, I am sure his future career will be a successful one. Thus to heal the sick, to make sick folk well, is the be-all and the end-all of the physician. It is to the wisdom of Bacon that we are indebted for the observation that of the making of many books there is no end; and John Milton has remarked that...

"a good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

Richard le Gallienne has said in one of his exquisite romances that...

"...books are the good Samaritans that find us robbed of all our dreams by the roadside of life, bleeding and weeping and desolate; and such is their skill and wealth and goodness of heart, that they not only heal up our wounds, but restore to us the lost property of our dreams."

and

"...a library is a better world, built by the brains and hearts of poets and dreamers; as a refuge from the real world outside; and in it alone is to be found the land of milk and honey which it promises."

If this sort of works obtains in the secular, why should it not apply likewise to the scientific or medical shelves? I believe there is a world of romance hidden within the mighty tomes of all ages, and who shall say that there is not a divine afflatus in the man of science or the man of medical learning as well as in the poet or the dilettante?

Before entering into more details respecting our subject, let me call your attention to the general opinions of some literary minds concerning books.

If we are, first of all, as interested in books for their own sake as the late Dr. Crothers' Old Librarian (Among Friends, p. 96) we can never allow them to suffer from lack of care. For there is much neglect that may befall a book, especially an old one.

But here again modern ingenuity has devised ways and means for the permanent preservation of a library of books that are well worthy of the collector's notice.

In the antiquarian's "convention of books" cited by Dr. Crothers, the books themselves assume the responsibility for the care not of themselves but of their readers, and arrange them carefully in order and groupings, and decide upon their various merits.

For books in their own way set great store by their readers, and when a book misplaces its readers, or loses them, it is looked upon as an especial faux pas. It is no small achievement for a work to look after a large collection of miscellaneous readers, and to select those that are worthy of cultivation.

It has not perhaps occurred to some of us that there is a specificity among readers as well as among books. Yet such, Dr. Crothers would have us believe. This gifted author and critic also wrote another essay entitled The Hundred Worst Books in which he says that:

"Like all the lower organisms, poor books multiply prodigiously, though the total number is kept down by a corresponding mortality.... The worst books sink speedily into the depths of oblivion. It is in these black waters that we must dredge for our specimens."

Fortunately, homeopathy boasts of a multitude of good books, and of a comparatively small number of bad ones, even applying all the strictures that the critic of general literature would unfeelingly employ. Certainly the works of Hahnemann, Jahr, Boenninghausen, Hempel, Hering, Kent and Allen, (to mention only a few of the earlier compilers of homeopathic literature) measure up to a high literary value.

Let us examine some of the treasures to be found in the literary armamentarium of the homeopathic physician:

First, let us go back to the fountain head, and see what contributions were made by Hahnemann himself that are still worthy of a place in modern times. Hahnemann's chief works include, as is well known, The Organon, The Materia Medica Pura and The Chronic Diseases. There is much, however, in his Lesser Writings that is worthy of the consideration of every physician of whatever method of practice.

In his monumental volumes, Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work, Dr. Richard Haehl of Stuttgart has included a list of the Essays and Works of Hahnemann. By actual count, this list embraces no less than twenty-two extensive volumes of Translations and Revisions of the leading medical writers of the times, from the year 1777 to 1800.

Of Hahnemann's own works and essays, there are sixty listed from the year 1779 to 1810 which marks the publication of the first edition of the Organon. And from this time on until 1833 there are various editions of The Materia Medica Pura and The Chronic Diseases, with such epoch-making papers as:

This list includes some twenty-two or more essays, also introductions by Leber and Lich and Kammerer of Ulm. And finally, his sixth and last edition of the Organon, with his own annotations, as presented to the profession through the energies of Drs. James W. Ward and the late William Boericke of San Francisco.

What ones of these works can the homeopathic physician do without? Certainly not the great triad - The Organon, The Materia Medica Pura, and The Chronic Diseases.

I have long conceived the idea of formulating a list of homeopathic works to occupy a similar place in the library of the homeopathic physician as that so popularly known at one time as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of Books. This the great educator set forth in his Harvard Classics (Collier, NY, 1910).

This collection consisted of fifty selected volumes which, when one had carefully familiarized himself with them, would enable him to become a man or woman of culture. Dr. Crothers naively remarked of this Five Foot Shelf that:

"There are little jealousies among books, and it is impossible to please all of them. The old Librarian was conscious of this when, in a corner of the hall, he saw a number of books chosen for their especial serviceableness being seated on a divan five feet long.

"Each as his name was called came forward with a look of modest merit, while betraying a momentary surprise at his neighbor."

In the above-mentioned essay, Doctor Crothers makes reference to between ninety and one hundred authors. Let us see how comprehensive a list of homeopathic works one could select for a five foot shelf.

Hahnemann, we are told by Bradford, gives in his article on Arsenical Poisoning no less than 861 quotations from 389 different authors and books, in different languages and belonging to different ages, and gives these references "accurately both volume and page"; and Haehl informs us that in his Dissertation on the Helleborism of the Ancients he was...

"able to quote verbatim (and give the location of the passages concerned) from manifold German, French, English, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic medical writers and he could examine their views - either in disagreement or in extension. He quoted from more than fifty more or less known doctors, philosophers and naturalists."

Such was the wisdom of Hahnemann!

To return to our own homeopathic classics. As the director of the Bureau of Publication of the American Foundation for Homeopathy, I have frequently been asked to compile lists of homeopathic reference books which can be recommended for the use of the laity, for beginners in homeopathy and for more advanced study.

A partial list of such works was published in the Homeopathic Survey for January, 1928, and in the Homeopathic Recorder for April, 1931 will be found a paper read before the Foundation Post-Graduate Summer School on The Homeopathic Library and How to Profit by It, which outlines in a general way the fundamentals of homeopathic literature and their uses in the library of the homeopathic physician.

In the lists of reference works on homeopathy suggested for library and home study the textbooks were arranged in four groups as follows:

If we were to select from this list of three hundred or more works fifty volumes for our five foot shelf of homeopathic classics we might well condense the above groupings about thus:

Group I
MATERIA MEDICA

HC Allen's Keynotes
Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura
Hering's Condensed Materia Medica
TF Allen's Hand Book
Boericke's Pocket Manual of Materia Medica
Boger's Synoptic Key
Clarke's Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica (3 vols.)
Farrington's Clinical Materia Medica
Gross' Comparative Materia Medica
Kent's Lectures on Materia Medica
Guernsey's Keynotes to Materia Medica
Hughes' Manual of Pharmacodynamics
Wheeler's Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Homoeopathy
Choudhuri's Repertory (with the Materia Medica)
 

Group II
HOMEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY

Boenninghausen's Lesser Writings
Clarke's Homeopathy Explained
Close's Genius of Homeopathy
Dunham's Homeopathy, the Science of Therapeutics
Dudgeon's Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Homoeopathy
Fincke on High Potencies and Homeopathic
Gram's Characteristics of Homoeopathia
Hahnemann's Organon ( 1st Edition, Everyman's Library Edition and 6th Short Edition, Boericke)
Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases (Theoretical Part only) (translated by Prof. L. H. Tafel)
Hahnemann's Lesser Writings
Joslin's Principles of Homoeopathy
Kent's Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy
Kent's Lesser Writings
R Gibson Miller's Outlines of Homeopathic Philosophy
Wheeler's The Case for Homoeopathy
 

Group III
REPERTORIES

Allen's Boenninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket Book
Bell's Repertory of Diarrhoea
Boger's Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Field's Symptom-Register
Gentry's Concordance Repertory
Hering's Analytical Therapeutics (Vol. 1 only one published)
Jahr's Repertory and the New Manual
Kent's Repertory of the Materia Medica
Knerr's Repertory to Hering's Guiding Symptoms
Lippe's Repertory to the More Characteristic Symptoms of the Materia Medica
Lee and Clark's Cough and Expectoration
Shedd's Clinical Repertory
Worcester's Repertory to the Modalities
Lilienthal's Homeopathic Therapeutics
 

Group IV
THERAPEUTICS AND HOMEOPATHIC PRACTICE

Arndt's System of Medicine
Baehr's Science of Therapeutics
Burnett's New Cure for Consumption
Carleton's Homeopathy in Medicine and Surgery
Cowperthwaite's Text-Book of the Practice of Medicine
Dewey's Practical Homeopathic Therapeutics
Guernsey's Application of the Principles and Practice of Homoeopathy to
Obstetrics
Jahr's Forty years' Practice
Nash's Leaders in Homeopathic Therapeutics
Pulford's Leaders in Pneumonia
Raue's Special Pathology and Diagnostics
Royal's Textbook of Homeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine
Schuessler' Tissue remedies
 

It will be observed that in compiling even a five foot shelf of homeopathic books, many well-known works must needs be omitted, owing to their bulk; as, for example, Allen's Encyclopedia, of ten volumes, and Hering's Guiding Symptoms, likewise of ten volumes.

Of the latter sets of books it might well be said that no library could be considered complete without them. Yet here we have listed only The Handbook and the Condensed Materia Medica.

Bartlett's three-volume work on Practice might well be included, as this is the latest work of its kind from the pen of a living author, and contains an up-to-date resume of-the general field of medicine, including homeopathic therapeutics.

There are countless smaller works, such as Burnett's classic monographs, Dudgeon's Essays, bound volumes of Skinner's Organon, Kent's Journal of Homoeopathics, many of the essays of Clarke, Wheeler, Weir, Tyler, and other modern writers, which should find a place in the library of every homeopathic physician.

The above list and many not here mentioned are books which the homeopathic physician cannot well do without. In case-taking, such works as Boger, Close, Kent, Nash's How to Take the Case and Find the Similimum, Bidwell's How to Use the Repertory, Margaret Tyler's Repertorizing and How Not to Do It, are of inestimable value.

In the study of philosophy one should familiarize himself with all of Hahnemann's works. He should know Kent from cover to cover, and he can read with profit Joslin and Carroll Dunham, many of the essays and introductions of Hempel, and the lectures of Stuart Close.

He must have read the Lesser Writings of Boenninghausen and the latter's translation of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. He should know materia medica thoroughly, the materia medica of no fewer than one hundred remedies, and should have a comprehensive knowledge of the thousand more which comprise the complete materia medica.

He must have read such comprehensive works as Bradford's Life of Hahnemann, Haehl's Samuel Hahnemann, His Life and Work, Ameke's History of Homeopathy, and be familiar with Bradford's Pioneers.

He must be more or less conversant with homeopathic bibliography, he must be familiar with the Boenninghausen Method, the Kent Method, and with the use of different types of card-index repertories.

He must be familiar with, and have in his possession, if possible, a varied collection of the works of the old masters, and bound volumes of early homeopathic journals. Such an array, transcending to an immeasurable degree any five foot shelf of collected works, would constitute a comprehensive library for the studious and conscientious homeopathic practitioner.

The student of homeopathic classics, the bibliophile, the true connoisseur of Hahnemanniana could never cease to wander amid the fascinating highways and byways of homeopathic literature. The libraries of the pioneers of our art consisted of such an omnium gatherum.

Many of these libraries have been in recent years bequeathed to our generation. Happy indeed is he, and fortunate, who is the possessor of such a literary armamentarium.

Whenever possible, may each and every one of us gather together these literary treasures. For what a priceless treasure is a book, of whose possessor it has been so well said:

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

From:
The Heritage of Homoeopathic Literature
copyright 2001 by Julian Winston
Reprinted with the permission of the author

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