Jahr GHG

from GHG Jahr, Forty Years' Practice (Paris, 1868), the preface:

IT was in the year 1827 when I made my debut in the practice of Homoeopathy, at a time when the only resources at our command were the Materia Medica Pura of the founder of our school and a few cures reported in Stapf's "Archiv,'' and in the "Praktischen Mittheilungen'' (Practical Communications.) With these scanty means we had to get along as well as we could, and, by a diligent and attentive study of the drugs with whose pathogeneses we had become acquainted at that time, familiarize ourselves with the characteristic symptoms of each drug and its special indications, in order to avail ourselves of them for therapeutic purposes in such case as might present themselves for treatment. This was no small task, which could never have been accomplished, if the Materia Medica of that time had contained the large number of drugs that are offered at the present time to the beginner in homoeopathic practice. But since the number of drugs known at that time, did not exceed sixty, and among these only twenty had been proved with exhaustive perseverance and correctness, we had it in our power to study them thoroughly without too much trouble; to become fully acquainted with the specific effects of each drug and ... to apply them as such in accordance with their symptomatic indications.
...
At this time such a careful study of our Materia Medica is unfortunately no longer possible to the beginner in Homoeopathy. Overwhelmed by the accumulated mass of drugs and clinical observations, he scarcely knows which way to turn for at least one ray of light in the chaos spread out before him ...