Chapter II.

=Rosin-Weed among the "Allopaths."= Rosin-weed never got into the Pharmacopoeia but it is none the worse for that. More people have been poisoned by the drugs inside of the Pharmacopoeia than by those outside of it. Except the few comments by western and southern medical journals, it was practically unknown in the dominant school, as shown by there being only one reference to it in the Index Catalogue. This is an article by Dr. Q. J. M. Goss, of Marietta, Georgia, in the _Nashville Journal of Medicine_, 1887, xx, page 60, in which Dr. Goss praises rosin-weed highly for its power to cure catarrh of the mucous membranes, comparing it to the balsams, cubeb and turpentine, and relating the cure of two cases of asthma.

In the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine, there is a thin pamphlet by Dr. Goss, entitled _New Medicines_, which I suspect to be taken chiefly from Dr. Hale's _New Remedies_, in which he says of silphium laciniatum, "It has proved for me one of the best remedies in humid asthma. I have made several brilliant cures with the tincture of this plant and the tincture of ptelea trifoliata in doses of 30 drops each four times a day in simple elixir.... In acute diseases of the mucous membranes, the dose should be small, 5 to 10 drops; but in chronic inflammation, the dose may be 30 drops of the saturated tincture. It is a valuable remedy in chronic bronchitis and tracheitis. It will soon become a popular remedy in mucous diseases."

This prophecy of popularity was scarcely borne out; for, with the exception of the article by him in 1887, rosin-weed drops out of sight and is found in no books published in the last forty years.

=Pharmacology.= For the following information, I am indebted to the Botanical Department of Parke, Davis & Co., whom I wish to thank for their unfailing courtesy in replying to my inquiries about this little known plant:

"Rosin weed is a general name for all species of the genus _silphium_ of which there are more than twenty species; some of these species, however, have special names. Three species are usually mentioned as being used for medicinal purpose. We list them with their synonyms as follows:

Silphium perfoliatum, Lin. Indian cup, ragged cup, cup plant, rosin weed.

Silphium terebinthinaceum, Lin. rosin weed (true), prairie dock.

Silphium laciniatum, Lin. Syn. S. gummiferum, Ell. compass-plant, polar plant, pilot plant, rosin weed.

It is more than probable that all the species of the genus are equally effective from a therapeutic point of view."

We have always used the fluid extract of the herb. Goss and Hale used the tincture of the fresh leaves and so the homoeopaths have always used it. Since looking into the history of the plant, I recall a remark of that wise old physician, Rademacher, in regard to chelidonium. _Ich bin kein Freund von Extrakten._ He preferred the tincture of the fresh plant. Tinctures of the fresh plant were Hahnemann's preference too, and it may well be that with rosin-weed also, the tincture preserves the medicinal power better than the extract.

=Mode of Action.= If the proving of rosin-weed made by Dr. Hall is reliable, we must conclude that rosin-weed cures the symptoms that it produces in the healthy and it must be regarded as acting on the homoeopathic principle. I must own that I am a little suspicious of provings that match so closely the long established popular use of a drug and, in this case, believe that we must wait for confirmation of this proving before accepting it as sound. Rosin-weed has always seemed to me to be a harmless herb, which is shown also by its use among children as chewing gum. I have never noticed the "tonic, diaphoretic or diuretic effects" attributed to it in eclectic medicine and believe that they must be feeble. The only unpleasant effect that I have noted is nausea after large doses, sixty drops or more, and this in very few patients. Vomiting is rare, is never serious and ceases spontaneously when the stomach is empty of the drug.

At the Baltimore meeting of the American Institute of Homoeopathy, where the use of rosin-weed in hay fever was first reported, Dr. John Sutherland, of Boston, made the proper criticism that if rosin-weed was harmless and could not produce any effect on the healthy body, he could not understand how it had any power to cure. To this, I had no answer except that I had both taken and given large doses for many years to patients of all ages and had never seen any symptoms develop. Another speaker suggested that, like calcarea and silica, potentization would develop pathogenetic powers that were not evident in the crude drug. This I have never tried. As related in the chapter on Bacterial Vaccines, I suspect that the curative power of rosin-weed in hay fever lies in its power of relieving a coexisting catarrh, of which theory we have the confirming evidence that other methods that cure catarrh, nasal operations, bacterial vaccines, homoeopathic remedies, have often cured a coexisting hay fever. Since that discussion, I have found Dr. Hall's proving. It would be a pleasure to find that our old family remedy for hay fever really acts on the homoeopathic principle but I believe that the question needs the verification of further proving.

Transcriber's Notes:

Footnotes have been placed at the end of chapters. Obvious punctuation errors repaired. All oe ligatures have been replaced with "oe" (eg: "homoeopathic")

page 52 "posioning" changed to "poisoning" (uric acid poisoning) page 57 "familes" changed to "families" (gouty familes are especially) page 69 "urid" changed to "uric" (so-called uric-acid disorders) page 95 "Immutiny" changed to "Immunity" (Passive Immunity) page 97 "Inthe" changed to "In the" (In the Centralblatt für)