In 1875 and 1876, he wrote papers advocating the use of sub-emetic doses of ipecacuanha in the treatment of dysentery.
He discovered that emetine, the active ingredient of the ancient emetic ipecacuanha, is an amoebicide and therefore effective against amoebic dysentery.
The child was put in the care of the Gascon doctor Monsieur Bouillac; the doctor administered emetics and had the child bled.
In antiquity, an effective emetic based on white hellebore and a bitter oval seed (which Hahneman believed was the seed of Erigeron or Senecio) was mixed by the physicians of Antikyra, a city of Phokis in Greece.