SOME CASE HISTORIES WITH PASSING COMMENTS ON POINTS OF INTEREST



  Homœopathy is such an extraordinary method that some people who have not studied medicine can practice it and cure many patients, but it is much better to have completed serious university studies in medicine and if possible to have been the apprentice of a specialist.  When I went to India I was really very much impressed by the quality of knowledge shown by homœopaths who had only rather rudimentary notions of so-called scientific medicine.  In India, with its four hundred million inhabitants, the demand for doctors is so great that it is not possible to impose on all of them long and thorough studies.  And yet all these ‘half-doctors’ do a great deal of good.


  I have told you the story of this poor fellow who suffered from a fistula in the heel which was continually suppurating.  He had been given Silica, Hepar, Echinacea, Sulphur, in fact all the remedies which we know for suppuration - all without the slightest result, unfortunately!  And when I saw this patient I immediately thought that this was a good example of a tubercular fistula.  I gave himTuberculinum bovinum 10M and in three weeks this fistula completely healed.  That is why you have to know something about medicine.  I do not think one can really practice Homœopathy seriously without being at the same time an excellent allopath!


  Monsieur Fortier BERNOVILLE  always wanted us to write a book on the limits of Homœopathy.  Well, the limits of Homœopathy are the limits of the homœopathic physician, because what you cannot heal other people can heal.  Therefore, for each one of us the limits are the limits of our knowledge.


  I’ve seen so many cases where there really didn’t seem to be anything that could be done, and yet healed them.  And that is why I cannot place any limits on Homœopathy.  Do you remember the case of septico-pyaemia with peritonitis after a suppurating appendicitis which had been abundantly treated with penicillin and other antibiotics?  This patient was considered to be lost and yet he was saved by one dose of Arnica 10M and Pyrogenium 10M.  And think of all those epidemics of cholera in HAHNEMANN’s time, and the cures that were made thanks to Cuprum or Camphora by doctors of that time, among them the famous Dr. CHARGE of Marseilles.  Do you remember the case of the young girl with malaria?  She had consulted all the great doctors of Europe with no other result than a change in the hours of her crises. One dose of Nux vomica 10M to antidote the remedies she had previously absorbed, followed by one dose of Natrum muriaticum 10M - yes, ordinary kitchen salt that has been dynamized - and she was completely and rapidly cured!  So where are the limits of Homœopathy?  It all depends on our own competence. If we have an acute or serious case we must be careful to give ourselves a time-limit, and when it is passed we must turn to Allopathy.  Even HAHNEMANN tells us that when hours and minutes count and our remedy doesn’t seem to work we are justified in giving allopathic remedies; but after that we must return to general medication as soon as the palliative remedy has finished its action.


  When I must give an injection of morphine or a sulfamide or an antibiotic I am never happy or satisfied.  At the beginning of my practice I was called out at 4 in the morning for a hepatic colic, and I couldn’t find the remedy, so I administered an injection of morphine and returned home absolutely disgusted with myself.  Of course this was a palliative, and it stopped the pain; but just think of all the secondary troubles that came on to prolong the convalescence.  This was simple palliation and a displacement of the problem, camouflage, putting a muzzle on the illness, but a muzzle which did not advance the patient one step towards a cure.  Of course when one is a beginner in Homœopathy one doesn’t start by treating appendicitis and complicated cases.  One has to start with simple things.


  Homœopathy can also be palliative but such palliation never has the inconveniences of allopathic palliation because it doesn’t bring about secondary or toxic symptoms.  However, homœopathic palliation is difficult and needs knowledge of the local action of the drugs.


  The question of modality is very important in Homœopathy, and especially the questions of laterality, and hourly aggravation.  Why do certain patients have all their symptoms on the left?  Why do others have a headache always at 2 in the morning?  We haven’t any idea; but this is so interesting, because we know which remedies have precisely the same characteristics!  In the same way, we don’t know why people sleep on their stomach, or why certain heart patients feel the need to lie completely flat, or on the left side; but we do have remedies with exactly these characteristics.  This doesn’t mean in any way that one has to give a remedy based on these  modalities.  It means that these modalities can put us on the track and help us to find the right remedy.


  I remember a girl who had eczema and asthma at the same time.  I gave her several remedies without any great result and felt rather discouraged, until one day, when I was visiting her mother, I found her in the middle of an attack of asthma and she was sitting absolutely straight on a chair.  Well, in the Materia Medica we have a remedy with exactly this symptom: Kali carb., and in fact it also had the other symptoms of the patient.  So of course, Kali carb. permanently removed both her asthma and her eczema! Have a good look at your patients.  Observe what they show you whilst they are alive, not the manifestations that you will find in their coffin!


  We must be like a caricaturist who looks for some special feature - something strange or different, belonging to one individual and not another.  Of course one must also make a diagnosis and be able to speak in those terms to one’s colleagues, but aside from the pathological diagnosis it is more important to establish the diagnosis of the patient.  Therefore, look for those little signs which are curious, strange, rare and characteristic.


  Yes, we can accumulate and retain as many symptoms as possible, but the interesting thing about these symptoms is their quality, and that is why afterwards we have to sort them out and evaluate them.  Homœopathy is a medicine of nuances.  What would you think of an artist who strums on the piano without any nuances!  What would you think of a painting where all the colours have the same value!  In Homœopathy we don’t give to all syphilitics the same remedy, nor to all heart patients.  Of course not! We must look for nuances; nuances which characterize the living patient - before he enters his coffin.


  Do not neglect the nosological diagnosis.  You have to take it into account and then forget about it in prescribing for the total patient!


  There is something which I recommend strongly.  Always have with you a little notebook and divide its pages into two columns.  In one column, when you have a good therapeutic result, you indicate the remedy and the reference of the case.  And in the other column you indicate the diagnosis.  It is very nice afterwards to come back to it when you want to make a study, or prepare some publication.  It is a pity to lose your experience and not to share it with others.  That is pure egoism!  You must not only cure, but spread around you your experience, publish what has been transmitted to you.  That is why this group exists, and that is why our clinical cases are always well received.


  I found in this way many indications of diagnoses and remedies .  In this way I cured with Bryonia a great many appendicitis, although the localization of the appendix corresponds rather more to Iris tenax.  There are many kinds of Iris.  You all know Iris versicolor which is so often indicated in those migraine headaches preceded by luminous zig-zags.


  For a long time I looked for the remedy corresponding to the accumulation of gas localized exclusively in the splenic corner of the colon and giving pain in that region.  Well, the remedy is Momordica balsamina, and I’ve often had very good results with it.  Yet we do not like giving remedies on only one symptom, and should never do so.


  In acute cases it is the 200th potency which I find most successful.  Once I tried to use the M potency to start a case, or for acute cases, and changed my homœopathic kit accordingly, replacing all my potencies with M dynamizations.  Three months later I returned to 200. The result was absolutely different.  The M potency doesn’t succeed well when you give it from the start.  The Germans tell us that they don’t believe in high potencies!  For them anything above the 30th is something enormous, and they call that ‘schwindel’, or dizzy!  In France there is the contention between the single remedy and polypharmacy, but in Germany the contention is about the potency and the dilution.  I must add that they have started changing their minds!  At the Congress of Bad Godesberg in Germany a few years ago I presented a paper on high potencies which left everybody rather perplexed: they didn’t only congratulate me but, would you believe it, they even gave me a prize for the best work at the Congress, and it was  a bronze medal of HAHNEMANN!  Recently they asked me to come to Munich to give a paper on Homœopathy and especially the ways in which to approach acute and chronic states.  They were very receptive and asked very intelligent questions and this trip pleased me very much.  They even honored me in two speeches - one in French and the other in German - and undressed me completely, analyzing my whole biography!  I must admit that it was all perfect, and I was deeply touched.


  Also remember that there are no small remedies in Homœopathy.  Aconite, Gelsemium and others when they are indicated, are very great remedies.  There was once a woman who saw somebody jump from a window on the eighth floor and commit suicide: and of course this was not something very nice to witness.  So after that terrible experience the person who saw it suffered for years from dreadful headaches.  Aconite 10M cured her rapidly.  And you know the story of the man who was taken with a buzzing in his ears, from the moment he received news of the death of a friend by telephone?  No one could cure that buzzing afterwards - until one single dose of Gelsemium 10M removed it completely!  It is as uncanny as switching on a radio-button to exactly the right wave-length, and hearing Tokyo all of a sudden, when a moment before there was silence!


  My teacher, Dr.AUSTIN, was saved from malignant erysipelas by KENT, when he  was delirious.  He had been examined by the best homœopaths and allopaths of New York, and was dying.  His temperature was very high.  He was very agitated and had this important characteristic: disassociation between the pulse and the temperature. By telephone KENT indicated Pyrogenium 10M every hour, and the next day 50M every two hours.  Dr. AUSTIN came out of his delirium, his temperature came down, and thanks to that prescription he was able to live 25 years longer.


  Once I attended a colleague from Dijon who suffered from the kidneys and a high temperature.  Later on we learnt that this was a peri-renal phlegmon because the abscess opened up and the pus was emptied into the urine.  Here again, Pyrogenium did the trick.


  Somebody recently spoke of Natrum sulph, and asthma.  You know that Natrum sulphuricum is the king of the hydrogenoids, and that its characteristic is aggravation from humidity.  You already know this extraordinary story of the young man whose remedy was typically Natrum sulph; as soon as he went outside in humid weather he got an attack of asthma almost immediately.  After carefully studying his case I gave him Natrum sulph. 200, then M, then 10M, and although he improved, the crises kept coming back and he had to keep using his inhaler.  He was quite satisfied to feel better, but such results didn’t satisfy me at all. I gave him other remedies which had absolutely no effect: this was in fact a failure.  And I was very mortified!  So I followed the advice of  KENT, and took up the case again, as though I had never seen it before.  Once again I came up with Natrum sulph.  So I used the Q dilution (quinquagentamillesimal) starting from the beginning, and was following exactly the last indications which HAHNEMANN left us.  One gives one globule which is diluted in a flask of 125 cc. of water (adding a teaspoon of alcohol so that the water will not spoil, the patient shakes this flask 10 times and adds, one teaspoonful of its liquid to one glass of distilled water, stirs it, and takes one teaspoonful of this in the morning and another at night.  Then he throws out anything remaining in the glass of distilled water, starts all over again the next day with  a teaspoonful of the portion in a glass of distilled water... and so on.


  Well, this asthma completely disappeared and was cured.  It took two whole years, and just recently he started again to have a little attack of asthma because he started drinking too much!  I made him stop drinking and gave him his remedy once again.  Since then he is perfectly well, no more attacks!


  Quite often the general remedy will help you to make a diagnosis which you didn’t think about at first.  I remember a caretaker, a person of respectable corpulence, who came one day to tell me of her turns.  She was around the menopause and suffered from hot flushes with faintness. Sometimes her mouth felt dry, and other times it didn’t.  Her feet were cold, her hands damp, and she had some nice symptoms of Calcarea.  So I gave it to her, and a few days later she came and told me that she had a taenia.  So in this case Calcarea was not only the remedy which cured the patient, it also enabled me to make a diagnosis!  Calcarea is one of our great remedies for taenias.  In Allopathy you don’t see things like that.


  Don’t always pay much attention to numbers - whether they indicate tension or sugar in the urine.  What is important is the behaviour of the patient.  If he eats with pleasure, sleeps well, and doesn’t suffer anywhere; if he feels happy within himself, what more do you want!  What does it matter if he has 1.8 grams of sugar if he can live with his illness and stay like that without getting worse?  It is the same for high blood-pressure.  If your patient feels well, don’t interfere and try at all costs to change the reading of his tension, rather try to keep him in good shape to the end of his days.  Of course one can bring the blood pressure or the sugar count down with allopathic remedies; but in doing so, more often than not, the patient after temporary improvement gets worse and passes over to the ‘other side’.  Then one says, “he was cured, but he died”!


  The important thing is his balance.  It is so often wrong to seek for perfection when he bore his pathological disorder perfectly well and became accustomed to it.  He compensated for it.  When we look for perfection we quite often end up in disaster: the sickness is cured, the patient dies.  It is especially in things like this that the doctor must be intelligent and thoughtful - above all, he must know his psychology!

- Homoeotherapy, February 1975