The homoeopathic therapeutics of rheumatism and kindred diseases

Preface

Skill in any department of science or art is only acquired by care and painstaking. Especially is this true of the art of healing the sick by the science of Homoeopathy. To carefully obtain the symptoms in their entirety in each case of disease, and then to search with equal care until those symptoms are duplicated by a remedy — this is what brings us to our goal — success.

There is no royal road to a knowledge of the Materia Medica. Its stores are inexhaustible, but their possession comes only by persevering labor.

In no class of diseases has Homoeopathy shown its superiority over other systems more distinctly than in the treatment of rheumatism. Cases are rare of this painful and widelyprevailing complaint, which will not yield to the indicated remedy. There are those who confine themselves to a half dozen or less of the polychrests in the treatment of rheumatic affections, and when these fail, as fail they must in some cases, they fall back upon salicylic acid, or declare the case incurable.

A more complete knowledge of the resources at their command would lead to better results. This monograph has been written with the object of placing, in a readily accessible form, the more important symptoms which should guide us in treating patients suffering from rheumatic and kindred diseases. Because a physician has had no previous experience with a remedy, is not a sufficient reason for refusing, or neglecting to use it, in a case where it is indicated. It a remedy fully covers a case, it should be given, although previously unknown as curative in that form of disease. A con-

4 PREFACE.

servative course may usually be a safe one, but there is a form of conservatism which goes backwards rather than forwards. The physician must be active and progressive, else he will be outstripped by a more daring competitor.

This work, while resulting from the author's twenty years of constant study, and the treatment of those complaints termed rheumatic, is necessarily largely compiled from other sources which it seems unnecessary to mention.

That it may meet the wants and expectations alike of the

young physician, and those of wider experience, is sincerely

desired.

D. C. Perkins.

January 1st, 1888. ■*