90 
The  American  Materia  Medica. 
(Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\   February,  1910. 
coming  evils  from  within  and  correcting  home  faults.  The  "  eclec- 
tic compounds  "  of  old  were  within  a  reasonable  period  practically 
exterminated  by  him  and  his  adherents.  Conglomerations  (syrups, 
compound  tinctures,  powders,  "  shotgun  mixtures,"  etc.),  with  a  few 
exceptions,  were  irresistibly  decried.  The  theory  of  diseases  being 
treated  by  names  was  combatted,  both  with  ridicule  and  with  argu- 
ment. The  specific  action  of  a  drug,  not  the  guessing  of  the  effect 
of  a  mixture,  became  his  slogan.  The  individuality  of  a  single 
remedy  was  studied  in  connection  with  its  action  in  varying  phases 
of  disease  expression.  No  longer  was'a  disease  viewed  as  an  invad- 
ing enemy  known  by  a  name,  but  as  a  rational  departure  from  the 
normal,  in  which  a  systematic  wrong  might,  under  many  disease 
names, cry  for  the  same  remedy.  The  doses  advocated  were  very  small, 
and  for  the  therapeutic  action  only,  never  the  physiological  shock. 
Such  views  were,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  revolutionary.  An- 
tagonists from  wTithin  the  eclectic  school  called  Scudder  a  pseudo- 
homceopath.  They  resisted  and  combatted  him,  separately  and  col- 
lectively. Serenely,  however,  Scudder,  unruffled,  pursued  his  care- 
fully devised  course.  Neither  vindictive  nor  personal  was  he,  his 
object  being  the  eradication  of  the  questionable  materia  medica  part 
of  eclectic  medication,  and  the  rational  application  of  drug  remedies 
where  it  could  be  proven  that  they  exerted  a  direct,  kindly  influence. 
Never  torture  a  helpless  man.  Why  should  the  sick  be  fed  drugs 
and  doses  that  the  well  cannot  eat?  That  was  his  argument.  He 
sought  in  homoeopathic  literature  that  which  the  homceopathists  had 
in  his  opinion  established,  and  he  credited  them  therefor.  He  like- 
wise sought  the  good  that  he  felt  had  been  established  in  Thom- 
sonian  directions,  and  to  the  followers  of  Thomson  he  gave  a  kind 
word.  With  no  less  care  he  searched  the  materia  medica  of  the 
regular  school,  culling  freely  therefrom  and  giving  credit  therefor. 
But  in  it  all,  his  doses  were  attenuations,  as  contrasted  with  any- 
thing preceding  him  in  eclecticism,  and  many  were  the  kindly  reme- 
dies, before  untouched,  that  he  introduced  to  replace  those  more 
severe.  He  claimed  that  the  simplest  form  of  the  remedy  was  the 
one  that  the  physician  could  best  comprehend,  either  in  action  or 
dosage,  and  rejected  polypharmacy  and  its  conglomerates  as  neither 
scientific  nor  rational.  He  demanded  in  eclecticism  that  the  reme- 
dies employed  should  be  simple  pharmaceutical  preparations,  of 
established  drugs,  under  their  true  scientific  names.  "  Let  the  doctor 
do  the  prescribing  and  know  what  he  prescribes,"  threaded  his  argu- 
