CakePHP - Am I using routing incorrectly?

[CrimpJiggler]

I have 5 tables for different kinds of substances (plants, compounds, products, preparations etc.), and I don't make a controller and views for each of these tables, it would make more sense to use a single controller for each of them, so heres what I did, I added this to the routes.php file:

Router::connect('/Substances', array('controller' => 'menus', 'action' => 'display', 'main'));

Router::connect('/Compounds',array('controller' =>  'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Plants',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Preparations',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Products',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Ailments',array('controller' => 'Substances'));


Router::connect('/Plants/:action/*',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Preparations/:action/*',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Products/:action/*',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Ailments/:action/*',array('controller' => 'Substances'));
Router::connect('/Compounds/:action/*',array('controller' =>  'Substances'));

so now they are all directed to a single controller called Substances. In case someone tries to go to /Substances, I routed that to a static, main menu page. In the SubstancesController.php file, I added this:

public $uses = array('Formulation','Compound','Preparation','Ailment','Plant');

and now to find out which table it needs to load the data from, I get the model name from the URL:

$this->modelName = Inflector::classify(explode('/',$this->request->url)[0]); 

 Its up and running, but I'm starting to encounter glitches. I have a feeling I'm doing things the wrong way. I'm hoping some experienced cake programmers here can give me some tips on how they'd handle this kinda scenario.