Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, 3 volumes

Approximately 1000 remedies with information about clinical uses, essence, keynotes, relationships, alternative names, causations and symptoms by location. The author states that he has deliberately chosen to have no grading of symptoms by differences in type, since he has so often found his indications in symptoms not distinguished by type.

A pulling together of Allen's Encyclopedia, Hering's Guiding Symptoms, and Hale's New Remedies. The clinical uses of the remedies are discussed, cases are given as examples of use, and then the remedy symptoms are listed using the Hahnemann schema. When some felt that the work was too long, Clarke replied: "My work is a dictionary and I have never found a dictionary that explained too many words." The first volume was issued in 1900. Volumes 2 and 3 were completed in 1902.
If one needed just a single materia medica, this set might serve the purpose. Although the materia medica in the Hahnemann Schema is of use, the real "gold" of this work is found in the narrative that precedes the listing, where stories of the remedies are related, snippets from Burnett, Skinner, and Cooper are found, and unique characteristics of the remedy under discussion are presented.

This commentary is reprinted from The Heritage of Homoeopathic Literature with permission of the author Julian