CONTENTS  P.No.

  Introduction  iii   

  Dr. P. Schmidt - A Tribute  vii

1.   Sports Injuries    1   

2.  Defective illness  7

3.  The concepts of truth and law in medicine   51

4.  Remedies for the emergency kit  57 

5.  Homœopathic remedies for asthma  67

6.  The life of Dr. James Tyler Kent  69

7.  Children’s remedies  79

8.  Some case histories with passing comments on points of interest  83

9.  Remedies against the three chronic miasms of

  HAHNEMANN (Psora, Sycosis, Syphilis)  89

10. Thorny tale of splinters, slivers, and nails  101

11.  Little doses - big results!  Homœopathy for animals  105

12.  Therapeutic and Pathologic diagnosis –

   The Physician’s Responsibility   113

13.  On potency choice and homœopathic potentisation  119

14.  Some Opthalmological Cases treated with high homœopathic potencies  127

15.  The Dosage used by HAHNEMANN  139

CENTRE FOR EXCELLENCE IN HOMŒOPATHY

INTRODUCTION

  The aim and objectives of the ‘Centre” is self-evident – achieving excellence in Homœopathy especially in the field of therapeutics.  The road to excellence has been cut by our pioneers and their true followers.  We have only to go along that road – no doubt we have even now amongst us many who continue to strengthen our Art so that we can go ahead easily.

  Thelast century gave us some great teachers like James Tyler KENT, Stuart CLOSE,Cyrus BOGER, Herbert ROBERTS, M.L.TYLER, J.H. CLARKE, Pierre SCHMIDT and manymore.  We are quite familiar withmost of them through their writings.  But the contributions of Pierre SCHMIDT who spanned almost the entirecentury – 1920s to 1980s have not been compiled and made available tous.  His teachings are available inthe journals.  The list of sucharticles (French, German and some in English) is quite long.  Pierre SCHMIDT’s teachings are the mostextensive and modern.  In the lastdecade we have seen the rise of new ideas whicharevery fascinating.  These new ideashave found a great following.  Thoseof us who have been taught in accordance with masters like von BOENNINGHAUSEN,HERING, LIPPE, WELLS, ALLENs, KENT, BOGER et al. have found no deficiency inthem. It is also our experience that the new ideas do not lead to anysignificant ‘improvement’ in cure of diseases.

  Othernew ideas: ‘Revolutionary’ Homœopathy, ‘Rediscovered’ Homœopathy and‘Predictive’ Homœopathy, and so on, have also sprung up each claiming to besuperior to the established therapeutic techniques!

  Itis the innate strength of Homœopathy as laid down by HAHNEMANN and practised bythe great Masters of the 19^th & early 20^th Centuries,that notwithstanding all these Neo-homœopathy, genuine Homœopathy is growingstronger.

  Ithought that it will be good service to provide as many articles of PierreSCHMIDT as I could collect, translate some, and give them all in oneplace.  Towards this end, Part Icontaining 15 articles are brought out now.  The Part II likely to be ready soon,will contain many more, most of them yet to be translated into English..

  Possiblysome of you would have read some articles in this collection already.  Still I am endeavouring to give manyarticles of SCHMIDT in one place andit is better that way.  I am surethat these teachings would help every homœopath to become better homœopath andcure the sickwhich is his/her only calling.

  “Much as I own Iowe

  The passers ofthe past

  Because their to and fro

  Has cut this roadto last,

  I owe them moretoday

  Because they’vegone away”

  -Robert Frost.

   K.S.SRINIVASAN.

DECEMBER 2003. 

Dr. PIERRE SCHMIDT (1894 – 1987)

A TRIBUTE

K.S.Srinivasan

  In the death of Dr. Pierre SCHMIDT, on the 15^th October 1987 at 93 years of age, the world of Homœopathy has lost one of its great masters.  For well nearly 70 years he has been the greatest exponent of Hahnemannian Homœopathy.

  Dr. Pierre SCHMIDT was born on 22^nd July 1894 and after obtaining his medical degree studied Homœopathy under great homœopaths like Dr. Francois CARTIER, Leon VANNIER, John H.CLARKE, Margaret TYLER, Sir John WEIR, Cyrus M.BOGER, William DEWEY and others but mainly under Dr. Alfonso Eugenia AUSTIN and Dr. Fredrica GLADWIN of the USA.  In turn, Dr. SCHMIDT has trained many homœopaths; the foremost among them are the late Drs. Elizabeth WRIGHT-HUBBARD, Jost KÜNZLI, Jacques BAUR and Will KLUNKER.  We still have with us others trained by Dr.SCHMIDT, like Diwan HARISH CHAND.

  HAHNEMANN’s 50 millesimal potencies came to light to the English-speaking world only through Dr. SCHMIDT through his essay “The Hidden Treasures Of The Last Edition Of Organon.” published in the British Journal of Homœopathy in July/Oct. 1954.

  Dr. SCHMIDT has lectured and written extensively and has always held on to HAHNEMANN’s teachings and KENT’s expositions.  His lectures in French on homœopathic philosophy are well known and excerpts in English have come in the old ‘Recorder’.  A complete translation of all his works in English is yet to be available.

  Dr. SCHMIDT has contributed most to the homœopathic Repertory; he has given many additions obtained out of his extensive, world-wide homœopathic practice of many  years.  His “Defective Illness” gives many additions to the repertory. His lecture on the “Art Of Case-Taking And Interrogation” is well-known and the questionnaire is so formed as to elicit response which would help us to locate appropriate rubrics in the KENT’s Repertory.  Many of his articles which appeared in the Cahiers du Groupement Hahnemannien were translated into English and published:  “Sports Injuries; Remedies For The Emergency Kit; The Concepts of Truth and Law in Medicine; Reactive Remedies of Organic Nervous Complaints; etc.”  Many therapeutic tips lie scattered in his writings, not all of which have found their entry into the repertories:

  “Lancinatingpains about the heart: 

  from base to apex at night:  Syph

  base to clavicle or shoulder:    Spig

  apex to base:    Med

    Constricting pains about heartregion:    Cact.,Spig., Carb-ac., Sulph.

    Trio in geriatric heart:  Aur-m., Bar-c.,Sec.

  Dr. SCHMIDT though commended the ‘high’ potencies never said that lower potencies should never be used.  In one of his lectures he has said that the experienced homœopath would need the use of the entire range - from the mother tincture to the MM, DMM.

  Heallowed many to use his large library containing rare books, eg, H.C.ALLEN’sKey Notes used by Dr. AUSTIN with the additions made by him, BOENNINGHAUSEN’scopy of the Therapeutic Pocket Book his additions, corrections, etc. Hislibrary in Geneva contains over 2000 titles and is now administered by the ‘Foundation  homoéopathic Pierre Schmidt’.

  Oneof his great acts was the building up of the LIGA in 1925.  After over 60 years of its founding the LIGA  hasnowsplit vertically.  FortunatelyDr.SCHMIDT did not live to see the ‘split’.  However, the LIGA is still active.

  Perhapsthe greatest loss of Dr.P.SCHMIDT was the theft - by Dr. K.C. MITTAL of India,it is said - of his copy of Kent-hand-corrected repertory.  This stolen copy could not be restoredto Dr. SCHMIDT despite complaint to the Interpol.  Subsequently, however, different‘revised’, ‘enlarged’ editions of Kent Repertoryhave been published - within the last 15-20 years - all said to be based on the‘Kent-hand-corrected’ copy of the repertory!  Dr. Ahmed CURRIM of the USA has said inthe Washington Congress of the LIGA in 1987 that he traced the ‘stolen’ copy inIndia and succeeded in taking possession of it in much mutilatedcondition.  Strictly speaking thisretrieved copy, however mutilated etc., should have been restored to Dr. SCHMIDT as it is hisproperty.  Anyway, this theft of the valuabletreasure from Dr. SCHMIDT by a homœopath (Indian) to whom it was entrusted towork with, and the claim of the many new editions said to have been based on‘Kent-corrections’ will remain a very mysterious and shameful part of thehistory of Homœopathy.

  Dr.SCHMIDT’s insistence on genuine Homœopathy and homœopathic organisation isreflected in a letter he wrote to the editor of the ‘Journal of the AmericanInstitute of Homœopathy’ (Dr. E.W.HUBBARD), in 1964:

  “Ireceived the reprint of ‘Athletic Injuries’ .  I regret that the part about Acupuncturewas included, for I wanted only the strictest Homœopathy to appear in myarticles. I am ever very busy like yourself, and myobject now is to train pupils to transmit the torch of Homœopathy, trying to havemy colleagues profit by my precious library.

  “Ido not get away from the idea of  organizing a forum amongclassical homœopaths, probably in America where we can reunite all those whowere inspired by KENT and HAHNEMANN to exchange opinions in the domain where weneed clarification and precision: Repertory , Materia Medica, Teaching,Therapeutics, etc...”

  Elsewherehe says “Study the Materia Medicathoroughly and diligently, study the Organonagain and again and the philosophy of KENT.  One of these days you will becompensated richly for that. Because Homœopathy makes great demands of coursebut it compensates with high rewards.  It is certain: Homœopathy, practiced by earnest, persevering physicianswho take pleasure in their work produces full satisfaction of material,intellectual and spiritual respects.”

  The proper way to pay homage to Dr.SCHMIDT is by keeping the torch of genuine Homœopathy burning with brilliance and to have a forum as envisioned by him, free from politics.

***************************

  SOME COLLECTED WORKS OF DR. PIERRE SCHMIDT

SPORTS INJURIES

  Homœopaths should be able to bring rapid relief in sporting accidents.  These do not differ essentially from other accidents, but one must know:

  1.  if the sportsman can continue his game,

  2.  if he can recover completely after a certain time. 

  Excessive anxiety before a competition or a tournament: Gelsemium 10M (one dose).

SKIING

  A skier who sprained his ankle in the Swiss Alps received Rhus toxicodendron 200 and after local massage he was able to finish the race which was planned, twenty-four hours after his accident.

  Shocks:  All accidents have a certain amount of shock.  Arnica 200 gives very good results, or Arnica 200, 1M, 10M, in progression six hours apart.

  Wounds:  Make a dressing with Calendula, and give Calendula 200 every six hours.  If the wound is more important make a dressing of gauze saturated with Hamamelis lotion, Witch Hazel.

  Fractures:  Symphytum 30 right from the beginning stops pseudoarthrosis.

  A dressing of clay and cabbage leaves and homœopathic Symphytum taken orally cured a case of pseudoarthrosis in the knee in a patient who had been hospitalized for a year with this complaint.

BOXING

  Shocks:  Arnica 10M, two doses twenty-four hours apart. 

    Nervous shock, Nervous fright before a fight:  two doses of Gelsemium 200.

  Wounds, Contusions, and Fractures:  For the wounds, a tight dressing with Calendula Ø diluted in a soupspoon of water.  This will stop bleeding, favor healing, prevent infection.

  For bruises on soft parts of the body, with or without ecchymosis, Arnica 30, or 200, three globules every half hour until the pain diminishes.  Contusion of hard parts of the body, such as bones, needs Ruta 200, one or two doses one hour apart;  as you know, this is a great remedy for the bones and  the periosteum.

  For joints, Ruta 30, 200, and 1M one hour apart, and let it act.

  Fractures of the Bones of the Hand or the Fingers:  They will repair much more quickly with Symphytum 30, two or three times a day for one week.

  But if the ends of fingers have been crushed, with pain along with the nerves, we give one dose of Hypericum 10M, or else Hypericum 30, morning and evening for several days.  If the nervous system is involved, the high dilutions are very successful.  I remember a dentist who perforated the end of his finger with one of his instruments; he had a very painful neuritis which nothing could alleviate: one dose of Hypericum 10M and everything was over in forty-eight hours.

  Sprains:  With distension or tearing of the ligaments or the tendons,  Rhus toxicodendron 30, three globules morning and evening for several days.

  Black Eye:  When there is a strong ecchymosis which is better from cold water, Ledum 200, two or three doses several hours apart.  If the black eye came in a moment of anger or rage during the fight, the patient needs Staphysagria, which will work in the same way but much better:  One will notice that when Staphysagria is needed there is usually no amelioration from cold water.

  If there are no modalities,  of course the specific for a black eye is always Symphytum 200, two or three doses two hours apart.  If that is not enough,  Arnica 10M, two doses twenty-four hours apart.

  Ruta acts on the eye also, but differently:  it acts on the sight, on the focusing of the eye, but not on ocular bruises.

  If  the pain is particularly intense, think also of Hypericum 200, if Symphytum has not helped.

  If one gets an insect in the eye, or some small foreign object, it will be rapidly eliminated, or the conjunctiva reaction will be very much relieved, by Coccus cacti 200.  One needs to have this remedy in one’s pocket when one travels in a convertible or on a railway which still uses coal.  There is something else which helps; massage the other eye, and this helps the eye that was injured:  this is the Chinese way of symmetrical treatment.

  Contusion of the Head, blows, shocks, from the blows of boxing: immediately, Arnica 10M two doses half an hour apart.  If the blow was more violent and one suspects concussion,  Natrum sulphuricum 10M should be considered, one dose, or perhapsCicuta, if there are convulsions.

  The after-effects of concussion, which sometimes manifest years after the blow, can be cured sometimes with Natrum sulph., or according to some authors, with Lobelia acetum 200 and 1M, twenty-four hours apart.

  Contusion of the Base of the spine, from falling on the Seat: Of course one thinks of Hypericum 10M administered immediately and again one or two hours later.  One has similar contusions of the coccyx frequently in horse riding or ice hockey.  One should in such cases massage locally with oil of Millepertuis.

  Suppurating wounds on the head:  They heal more quickly if the patient takes Calendula 200 in addition to usual local dressing.  Think also perhaps of Pyrogenium 10M.

  Nasal haemorrhage:  Arnica 200 every five minutes and dab the nose with gauze moistened with a solution of Calendula, two drops to a soupspoon of cold water.  For a nose bleed which has not been caused by a blow, Calendula is not indicated as much as China 6 or 200, which should be given every five or ten minutes.  If this doesn’t help, some drops of Ferrum phos 6 on a wad which one introduces into the nostril.

  Vipera redii 200 also acts very well, especially if the patient has varicose veins on the legs.

  Cramps of the Calves:  Cuprum 200 ten minutes before the fight will obviate this inconvenience.

  A blow over the Heart:  This can bring atrocious pain, with the feeling that the heart is clamped in a vise. Arnica 200 for the blow, and compresses of cold water to which ten drops of tincture of Arnica have been added, to be applied over the heart.  If this does not help, Cactus 200 every half hour.

SOCCER

  In offering the following advice we do not mean in any way to belittle the competence of those who follow and tend professional soccer teams and know the accidents which can happen, or the usual kind of first aid which is given in these accidents.  But it can greatly help their task and bring about much more rapid relief.

  Sprains and Straining of the Ligaments:  These are the accidents in which one finds most often, shock, blows all over the body and especially on the bottom of the shins: there are also the results of overstraining the muscles in running rapidly.  These are very rapidly relieved with Rhus toxicodendron 200, morning and evening, or Rhus toxicodendron 30, 200, and 1M, four hours apart.  Locally one can apply a few drops of Rhus toxicodendron ø in alcohol, gently rubbing the sprained part.  I haven’t tried this but HAHNEMANN advises local application of Rhus toxicodendron, in dilution.  Remember that Rhus is the remedy of articular rheumatism aggravated by cold and damp, and that is more suited to soccer  players who have had accidents before.  If, on the contrary, cold dampness ameliorates, give Ledum 30, 200, and 1M same doses.

  Old sprains which bring after-effects: intermittent pain, swelling, unexpected recurrences, all these call for a remarkable remedy, which is Strontium carbonicum; it should be given in potencies of 30, 200, 1M, successively.  Remember also that Strontium carbonicum is a chosen remedy in all grave shock after abdominal surgery.

  Kicks:  Muscular ecchymosis of soft parts of the body: calves, legs, thighs, buttocks, respond to Arnica given in the same way asRhus, especially since every violent blow brings a nervous shock, which Arnica, especially in high dilutions, handles perfectly well.

  If Arnica or Rhus do not give rapid results, think of a remedy which is not often used in these cases, but which is to be found in the third degree in the Repertory:  Conium 30, 200, and 1M.

  If Conium does not give results, which would be most surprising, give Bellis perennis, also in ascending doses.  This is the remedy of blows on the breast of a woman.

  Synovitis: Almost always after a sprain or a stretching of a ligament one will administer three doses of Rhus toxicodendron 30, 200, 1M, one after the other.  If this involves a blow on the knee or on the heel, with periostitis, give Ruta in the same doses.

  Dislocations, Luxations:  They are to be treated after reduction with Arnica 200, three globules morning and evening for several days, and after this, if necessary, by Rhus toxicodendron 200 same dosage.  One may have to continue the medication for several days.

  Fractures will heal more rapidly if you give Symphytum 30, three globules morning and evening for a week or more.

  If the patient says to you after a sprain or a fracture, “since my accident I haven’t been sleeping too well”, give him a dose of Sticta pulmonaria 200, which will make him sleep.  This remedy has the following characteristics:  it does not usually act upon insomnia, except after fractures and accidents.

  Contusions or blows from a collision of the head against someone else’s head or a blow from a ball: Arnica 30 or 200, every half hour for three or four hours.

  Epistaxis from a blow during a match:  Ferrum phos 200 succeeds very well and allows the patient to continue playing, otherwise think of Arnica 200.

  Tendinitis: A remarkable remedy for tendinitis, of the same family as Rhus, is Anacardium 200, one dose morning and evening for several days; it soothes the inflammation.  If not, one can always try Rhus toxicodendron, which generally succeeds better with horses, whilst Anacardium is  more successful with men.

ICE HOCKEY- CRICKET- TENNIS- BALL GAMES

  Muscle pains, wrenched muscles, sprains:  Arnica 200 morning and evening.  If this doesn’t help, Rhus toxicodendron in successively higher potencies.

  Blows Directly On The Head: from a ball or a bat, Natrum sulph. 30, 200, 1M, four hours apart.

  Blows on the legs: with a bat, are also generally treated with Ruta 200

  Blows on the fingers, which often happen in ball games: if the end of the finger is crushed or torn, Hypericum 30 or 200.  Apply local dressing with Hypericum Ø in alcohol solution.

  Sunstroke: Glonine 30, 200, 1M, one hour apart, otherwise Belladona 200.

  Tennis Ball in the eye:  Symphytum 30 every half hour.  If that doesn’t work, Hypericum in the same way.  Consult an oculist to see if there is hemorrhage of the eye or of the chamber of the eye:  massage around the eye and, if Symphytum and Hypericumhave not acted, give Bothrops 200 or Crotalus 200 which are admirable when there is a simple hyphaema (haemorrhage of the anterior chamber of the eye)

  Tennis elbow,  Epicondylitis: very good results with Rhus toxicodendron 10M, also acupuncture.  The English recommend Agaricus 6, three globules per day for two weeks.  The repertory indicates especially Ambra grisea.

  Traumatism to the Genitals:  from a tennis ball: one thinks first of all of Arnica.  If the pain is very bad, Hypericum.

ATHLETICS

  In addition to ecchymosis, strains, distensions, sprains, and tendinitis, mentioned above, athletics can cause different kinds of lesions.

  Coup De Fouet:  This is an excruciating pain in the calves which runners get, and it is a great handicap to them.  It happens especially after excessive training.  Agaricus 6, three globules morning and evening for one week, and even during training to avoid a new attack.  When this condition is so intense, that the patient cannot even move,  Bryonia 30, three globules every half hour until sedation.

  Cramps in the Calves or in any other part of the leg, especially after forced exertion:  Cramps from flexion are excessively rare.  Most patients have their cramp when they stretch in the morning, for instance, in bed.  The remedy is Cuprum 200, three globules every ten minutes until the condition disappears.  It is a good idea to place a large key in the bed  at the feet. ( Roger A.SCHMIDT, M.D.,  recommended Calcarea carbonica, as being almost specific for charley horse.)

  Wounds from shoe spikes:  Runners have this problem.  It  is very painful and causes infection sometimes.  Calendula mother tincture, two drops in a little boiled water will often stop the bleeding and the infection.  If the bleeding is not pronounced and if the infected part is white, swollen, and cold, use Ledum every hour until the pain goes  away.  If, on the contrary, there is strong bleeding, Crotalus horridus 30 or 200 in the same way.

  Over Exertion of runners:  Arnica 30, 200, 1M, four hours apart or after a race, will permit the continuation of intensive training.

  Weakness of the Knees: in runners who suddenly feel as if their knees would give way or bend:  Calcarea phosphoricum 30 or 200 morning and evening for several days.

  Weakness of the Ankles: same as for knees.

  Wounds of the feet, suppurations of which  are long to heal: one dose of Silicea 10M

SWIMMING

  Swimming has its own pathological manifestation in additions to cuts, blows, and strain common to all sports.

  Exhaustion:  One dose of Arnica 10M taken during the race itself will act very rapidly.

  Cramps in swimmers are helped by Cuprum 200 every ten minutes, or preventively.

  Sting from Sea Anemones, Blue-bottles, or Jellyfish:  Ledum  30 or 200, three globules every quarter of an hour until the pain eases.  If this remedy isn’t enough the specific remedy is Acetic acidum 200, once or twice a day for several days.  An English doctor reports that this remedy cured an incipient cataract caused by the sting of  a jelly fish.

  Sea sickness can affect the swimmers if the sea is too rough.  There are two kinds to consider: the kind that starts with cold sweat and a constant desire to swallow his saliva will be healed with Tabacum 30, three globules every hour.  The other kind:  strong nausea, vertigo, tendency to faint, sudden loss of orientation, will respond to Cocculus 200, every half hour, or three doses before the race.

TETANUS

  Tetanus is today a very unusual complication of wounds.  From the beginning Arnica 10M if the tetanus manifests, the specific is Stramonium 10M or 200 (opisthotonus), then Tetanotoxin 10M, three doses every twenty-four hours.

The Layman Speaks, September 1977. 

DEFECTIVE ILLNESSES

  This is how I translate the expression ‘Einseitige Krankheiten,’ which we find interpreted in the other translations of the Organon into French, as “partial illnesses,” which of course, is a mistake.  This is what HAHNEMANN  says in Paragraph 172: “A similar difficulty in the way of the cure occurs from the symptoms of the disease being too few - a circumstance that deserves our careful attention; for, by its removal, almost all the difficulties that can lie in the way of this most perfect of all possible modes of treatment (except that its apparatus of known homœopathic medicines is still incomplete) are removed”.

  In Paragraph 162 HAHNEMANN  had spoken of fragmentary remedies that have not been sufficiently tried which he calls: “Unvolkommene Arzneikrankheits-potenz”.

  In the next edition of the Organon it will be a good idea to complete the expression ‘defective illnesses’ and say, rather, ‘natural defective illnesses’, in contrast to these pathogenesis which have not been sufficiently developed. 

  Illnesses which show only one side, or one aspect, of their reality are called ‘Einseitige Krankheiten’.  We are not talking here about partial or fragmentary illnesses, because they are illnesses which involve and represent all of the individual; but we mean that they do not show themselves completely.  That is why I have called them defective illnesses.  On the other hand, “Unvolkommene Arzneikrankheits-potenz” means ‘incomplete pathogenetic dynamisation’, which is a fragmentary drug that has not completely developed its action for want of sufficient proving, or for want of provers sensitive enough to react in all their faculties and organs:  It isn’t the fault of the drug, but of circumstances which have not allowed it to develop all its potential richness.

  Paragraph 173: “The only diseases that seem to have but few symptoms, and on that account to be less amenable to cure, are those which may be termed One-sided, because they display only one or two principal symptoms, which obscure almost all the others.  They belong chiefly to the class of chronic diseases.”

  Paragraph 174: “Their principal symptom may be either an internal complaint (e.g. a headache of many years duration, a diarrhoea of long standing, an ancient cardialgia, etc.), or it may be an affection more of an external kind.  Diseases of the latter character are generally distinguished by the name of local maladies.”

  The local illnesses, or the local maladies, which HAHNEMANN speaks about here, are in fact localized illnesses:  The only local illnesses that we recognize in Homœopathy are the result of traumatisms.  An eruption, a keratitis, an appendicitis, etc., are localized affections and not local.  Among these localized maladies there are, for instance, warts, discolourations, intertrigo, strabismus, or squinting, aphthae, haemorrhoids, alopecia, etc.

  We have therefore to consider three kinds of ‘defective illnesses’:

1.  Illnesses defective because of the patient:  Because there is a lack of real symptoms

expressed by the patient.  The patient tells you what is wrong with him:  I can’t sleep, I have no appetite, I feel tired.  What can you do with symptoms like those?  Nothing at all, because they are far too vague.

2.  Illnesses defective because of the doctor:  They are defective because of the lack of

symptoms discovered and collected by the practicing homœopath.  In this case we must consider different insufficiencies:

a. Insufficient questioning: The doctor doesn’t know the modalities and concomitants that he has to look for while questioning the   patient.

b. Ignorance of the four principles of questioning the patient:

  i.  the doctor keeps interrupting his patient.

  ii.  the doctor asks direct questions to the patient which can only be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

  iii. the doctor asks questions grouped under two alternatives, obliging the patient to choose one of them.

  iv.  the doctor doesn’t know really how to ‘direct’ the questioning!

c.  Finally, there is the doctor who is too hurried.  The patient has no time to answer because the doctor keeps asking questions too quickly; or else, if the patient is rather talkative, the doctor stops listening to him; or else he can’t get an answer from a timid or an intimidated patient who does not dare to answer, or is too shy to answer.  One mu  st know how to encourage the patient to say everything that he wants to say.  This is when we should repeat many times: Isn’t there anything else? And what else? Haven’t you forgotten anything?  One must push the patient into  a corner until he has nothing left to say at all.  Only then can you start questioning him.  Or, if it is taking too long, you can say to him: “That is very important.  We will come back to that at a later date”.  After five or six consultations like that your patient will have exhausted everything he has to say.

  But I insist that you take the trouble, before starting  to question the patient, to ask him whether he is sure he has told you everything.  If not, at the end of your consultation, you may see him pull a little paper out of his pocket and start reading it.  Then the whole thing has to start again.  If not, he may say to you (with what cheek):  “Doctor, you have no time to listen to me, and I couldn’t tell you everything!”

d. Then there is the doctor who interprets symptoms in his own way to simplify, or to save time, because he is in a hurry, leaving aside subjective symptoms and paying attention only to objective or immediately verifiable symptoms.

3.  Finally we have illnesses which are defective by their symptoms.  These are illnesses which do not show themselves.

HAHNEMANN adds:

  Paragraph 175:  “In one-sided diseases of the first kind it is often to be attributed to the medical observer’s want of discernment that he does not fully discover the symptoms actually present which would enable him to complete the sketch of the portrait of the disease.”

  Paragraph 176:  “There are, however, still a few diseases, which, after the most careful initial examination (paragraphs 84-98), present but one or two severe, violent symptoms, while all the others are but indistinctly perceptible.”

  In this connection we must here remember the famous sixth paragraph of the Organon about the six categories you have to think about.  Every homœopath must know these six categories, which the doctor must constantly have in his mind.

  Paragraph 6:  “The unprejudiced observer - well aware of the futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no confirmation from experience - be his powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every individual disease, except the changes in the health of the body and of the mind (morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms)  which can be perceived externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the deviations from the former healthy state of the now diseased individual, which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him, and observed by the physician.  All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait of the disease.”

  And then HAHNEMANN expounds these six categories:

1.  First of all,  there are those which come up during the questioning and are told by the patient himself.  One must therefore listen to what he says (or read what he writes)  about his personal feelings and let him take as long as he likes.  I insist on this.  One must corner him completely until he has said everything he has to say.

2.  Symptoms obtained and listed by questioning people around the patient.  There are things that the patient doesn’t say and which the doctor quite often doesn’t see but that the people around the patient know;  for instance,  night convulsions or other manifestations that take place during sleep, little faults of character, signs in the gait, certain attitudes, etc.

3.  Symptoms observed and noted by the doctor, with all the possible means at his disposal including x-rays, laboratory tests, physical examinations, and so on.

  After his first symptom triad, HAHNEMANN gives us a second.  Here again the first translation we have is wrong.  The first translation of the Organon, in fact, tells us something which we have never understood, that is, that one recognizes illnesses in three manifestations: signs, accidents, and symptoms.  I racked my brains for a long time trying to find out just what these three things meant.  This, in fact, is what they mean.

4.  Subjective symptoms felt by the patient himself, symptom often not objectively verifiable and very often minimized or neglected by the treating doctor.  Homœopathy is always interested in subjective symptoms because it is interested in the patient, in his personal reactions, in everything concerning him; while ordinary medicine is interested in objective symptoms, in the illness, to make a diagnosis, for which a treatment will subsequently be prescribed.

5.  The signs are objective symptoms that can be measured, auscultated, felt, verified, identified, seen,  and perceived, by all the means at our disposal either by our senses, or by the microscope, or all the apparatus used to detect symptoms or all the means known to the laboratory.

  That is why, for us the homœopaths, there are no illnesses without symptoms, because any illness which doesn’t  reveal itself to us through manifest symptoms can be discovered by laboratory techniques.

  And the same thing applies, for accidents:  The more blood there is, the more horrible it is and most of the time the less serious it is!  But when we see just a small drop of blood coming from the ear or the nose, we know that it is much worse than something else which horrifies everybody around us.  The small symptoms are always more  important than the big ones.  And in fact, it is the same in opthalmo-diagnosis.  It isn’t the big spots on the eye which are important but the very small details, sometimes hardly perceptible.

6.  Accidents, unexpected symptoms, casual or accidental symptoms, all of them are symptoms occurring from accidents:  burns, insect bites, wounds, etc.

  We see, in addition, that ‘defective illnesses’ can present us with different possibilities: 

1.  There aren’t enough symptoms, or not enough that can be considered usable.

2.  There are too many symptoms.  When you have a big muddle of symptoms, what can you do?  I remember having questioned a patient when I was studying with Dr. GLADWIN of Philadelphia.  After questioning the patient for half an hour, which I thought was very thorough of me, and for which I even expected some congratulations.  I had 40 symptoms, for which I had sweated... in English!  She rejected them, one after the other, not one of them being of any use... I was really mortified.  “You cannot”,  she said (for this was a female doctor, if you don’t mind), “prescribe in any rational way on these symptoms because they are all common, too frequent, too vague, or too general:  tiredness, depression, insomnia, headaches, constipation, diarrhoea, without any modalities at all”.

  The patient may also make  things up that didn’t happen, and he gives you symptoms that you cannot make head or tail of, things that change each time.  Still, we see very few patients who tell fibs or totally invent what they tell us!

3.  There is also the question of symptoms that the patient won’t tell you willingly because they are embarrassing, humiliating, shameful symptoms.  You will find a remarkable description of these in the Organon, paragraph 93.  It is up to the doctor to discover them with tact and psychology.  I must tell you that opthalmo-diagnosis often helps us a great deal in this matter.  I have often spoken about the flattening of the pupil at 12 o’clock:  In the left eye it means sthenic manifestation, and in the right, asthenic, depressive.  In the left eye it would indicate rage or repressed anger, for instance; in the right depression and sorrow.

  I have already told you the story of the young woman who had one of the highest positions on the O.M.S.  She was divorced because she had married a fellow quite beneath her, a sort of moron.  After that she met a diplomat from Paris who courted her and promised to marry her.  They were to marry at Christmas.  She was very happy to have found, at last, someone worthy of her.  And a few days before Christmas the suitor called her on the telephone and said that he unfortunately couldn’t come, he had to leave, and wouldn’t be there for the wedding!  She never heard from him again.  She came to see me, saying, “Doctor, I am heartbroken!”  I looked in her eyes.  At the top, at 12 o’ clock, in the right eye there was absolutely no flattening.  In the left there was an enormous flattening.  So I said to her:  “You are not heartbroken at all.  You feel enraged about your self-esteem, with repressed anger,”  Then she looked at me with tearful eyes and smiled, and said:  “Yes, Doctor, I rather think you may be right!”  And, of course, this was a case of Staphysagria not at all Pulsatilla or  Ignatia.

  So the examination of the eyes will allow you to discover mental symptoms that you cannot find in any other way.

  We can also find very useful symptoms which the patients do not tell us without asking a single question, by observing the handwriting, the lines of the hand, the nails, the wrinkles of the face, the ears.

THERAPEUTICS OF DEFECTIVE ILLNESS

  HAHNEMANN has the following to say about this:

  Paragraph 177:  “In order to meet most successfully such a case as this, which is of very rare occurrence, we are in the first place to select, guided by these few symptoms,  the medicine which in our judgment is the most homœopathically indicated”.

  A little before that he says in paragraph 166:  “Such a  case is, however, very rare, owing to the increased number of medicines whose pure effects are now known, and the bad effects resulting from it, when they do occur, are diminished whenever a subsequent medicine, of more accurate resemblance, can be selected”.

  This shows that most often it isn’t only the patient’s fault, but above all the doctor’s fault.  It is up to us to know our Materia Medicasufficiently well, to know what we have to ask.

  I must say that the disciples of KENT have a great advantage.  First, simply by opening KENT’s Repertory they have a whole list of questions they can ask, which is to their advantage.  Secondly, they know that all these questions have  corresponding answers in the Materia Medica, which is another advantage.  When we know our way around our repertory, we have there a considerable spectrum which allows us to ask questions that a doctor without a repertory cannot know, and therefore cannot ask, simply by relying on his memory.  This is an enormous advantage over all other practitioners.

  Paragraph 178:  “It will, no doubt, sometimes happen that this medicine, selected in strict observance of the homœopathic law, furnishes the similar artificial disease suited for the annihilation of the malady present.  This is much more likely to happen when these few morbid symptoms are very striking, decided, uncommon, and peculiarly distinctive (characteristic).”

  Paragraph 179:  “More frequently, however, the medicine first chosen in such a case will be only partially, that is to say, not exactly suitable, as there was a small number of symptoms to guide to an accurate selection”.

  Now we come to the question of the so-called accessory symptoms, about which HAHNEMANN writes, as follows:

  Paragraph 180:  “In this case the medicine, which has been chosen as well as possible, but which, for the reason above stated, is only imperfectly homœopathic, will, in its action upon the disease that is only partially analogous to it - just as in the case mentioned above (Paragraph 162, et. seq.), where the limited number of homœopathic remedies renders the selection imperfect - produce accessory symptoms, and several phenomena from its own array of symptoms are mixed up with the patient’s state of health, which are, however, at the same time, symptoms of the disease itself, although they may have been hitherto never or very rarely perceived; some symptoms which the patient had never previously experienced appear, or others he had only felt indistinctly become more pronounced.”

  You see, HAHNEMANN thought of everything.  These are revealing symptoms, which were hidden and now are laid bare.  So you see that the expression ‘partial illness’ was not accurate.

  These new symptoms can perhaps be linked to the secondary symptoms, or the iatrogenic symptoms of our allopathic colleagues, who are always striking the edge of toxicity with all their new drugs.  After all, we must remember that allopathy is interested in finding out just how much of a drug the patient will tolerate:  whereas we, the homœopaths, deal in the minimum effective dose!

  Paragraph 181:  “Let us not object that the accessory phenomena and the new symptoms of this disease that now appear should be laid to the account of the medicament just employed.  They owe their origin to it [1] certainly, but they are always only symptoms of such a nature as this disease was itself capable of producing in this organism, and which were summoned forth and induced to make their appearance by the medicine given, owing to its power to cause similar symptoms.  In a word, we have to regard the whole collection of symptoms now perceptible as belonging to the disease itself, as the actual existing condition, and to direct our further treatment accordingly”.

  Paragraph 182:  “Thus the imperfect selection of the medicament, which was in this case almost inevitable owing to the too limited number of symptoms present,  serves to complete the display of the symptoms of the disease, and in this way facilitates the discovery of a second, more accurately suitable, homœopathic medicine”.

  Paragraph 183:  “Whenever, therefore, the dose of the first medicine ceases to have a beneficial effect (if the newly developed symptoms do not, by reason of their gravity, demand more speedy aid - which, however, from the minuteness of the dose of homœopathic medicine, and in very chronic diseases, is excessively rare), a new examination of the disease must be instituted, the status morbi as it now is must be noted down, and a second homœopathic remedy selected in accordance with it, which shall exactly suit the present state, and one which shall be all the more appropriate can then be found, as the group of symptoms has become larger and  more complete. [2]

  This is something which KENT often repeats.  You have given a remedy and the result isn’t brilliant.  Instead of starting immediately to give a whole lot of other drugs, question your patient again, complete your examination, and you will see that quite often the remedy will manifest itself without any difficulty.

  In addition, this paragraph raises the question of lack of reaction, if we have proceeded as we should ...  Here it is well to remember that  we must differentiate between two categories of reactions:

  The drug has been really well chosen, based on a serious case-taking.  Its origin and preparation leave no doubt about its effectiveness; it corresponds to the patient’s real symptoms of the moment.  In this case HAHNEMANN indicates Opium, if there is a lack of reactions.  You know that Opium paralyzes, stops all reactions, whether nervous, muscular, or sphincteroid.  That is why, according to Dr. FLURY, when a doctor is called to a case of hepatic or renal colic at night and makes an injection of morphine, he always goes home disgusted, annoyed, and dissatisfied with himself; but, if he has been able to find the right remedy and relieve the patient - and this is perfectly possible - then it is quite a different story and he has a clear conscience.

  In KENT’s Repertory on page 1397 there is the rubric; ‘Lack of Reaction”, you will look back to page 1369:  “Lack of Irritability’, and you will add to the rubric on page 1397:  Bryonia, Calc-iod., Cypripedium, Tub., X-ray, Zinc.

  And when too many drugs have produced a state of hypersensitivity and the remedy fails, you have to think of Ph-ac., and above all Teucr. (page 1369 ).

  On   page 1288, in intermittent fever that has been spoiled by a whole lot of drugs, you have a rubric which indicates several drugs, among which you find Sepia, and you find it listed equally on page 1282.

  Now we come to a whole series of precisions, very useful in practice, which allow us to choose the reactive remedy properly.  These reactive remedies will either open up the case, bring about an initial improvement that can be followed up later on, or else, more often, they will not seem to produce any immediate result; but afterwards the patient will feel an indefinable improvement in himself, and a repetition of the drug, which started the improvement in the beginning, and then seemed to stop acting will bring about a new improvement and sustain that improvement.  Thus the flame will be rekindled, and the favorable reaction, which was interrupted, will be revived and strengthened once again.

  Therefore we shouldn’t believe, or expect, that the reactive remedy will bring about an immediate result.  Sometimes there will not be any apparent result, but the real remedy of the patient will once again be able to act.  A general rule is not to repeat the reactive remedy.  We give it only once and see what happens, or, as the English say: Watch and wait.

  After the reactive remedy how long should one wait?  Usually three to five days, or even longer, if there is a good result (and in that case continue as usual allowing the improvement to run its course).  But, if you have no result, wait three to five days without repeating the original drug.

REACTIVE REMEDIES OF THE AGED

  In KENT’s Repertory look under ‘Old People’ or ‘Aged People’ or ‘Old Age’.

  An   elderly person is someone who is at least over 65,  although certain patients are old long before that, and, on the other hand, others who have reached 75, are still very young.  Therefore this is a question of discrimination which you will have to make for yourself.

  There are two excellent reactive remedies for elderly persons: Ambra grisea and Teucrium marum verum, which you will give if you have some symptoms indicating them, and I shall speak about that now.

  Ambra grisea:  Is suitable especially for elderly people and patients who are weakened by age, or as a result of over-work.

  These people are hypersensitive, exhausted, nearly always have insomnia because of worry, and have to get up at night .

  Usually there is aggravation from music, which they do not like and which makes them weep.

  Crotchety and fussy, they hate anything which is out of the ordinary routine of their lives and disturbs their habits.  Like Cann-i. and Glon., for them time passes too slowly (if it passes too quickly, Cocc.). They are nervous, intensely shy, and cannot do anything in the presence of someone else.  They desire to be alone.

  Nervous and excitable infants; loquacious subjects; a great remedy for elderly people disgusted with life; people hating strangers and everything new.

  These patients usually suffer on one side only, usually the right side, but also the right side on top and the left side at the bottom.  When certain subjects have symptoms only on one side, and you cannot find those symptoms listed on page 1400 of the Repertory, under the right or the left side, whichever the case may be, then you should look at the first rubric, ‘Symptoms on One Side only’, without worrying about whether it is the right or the left side.

  Ambra symptoms further include:

  Vertigo of the aged and loss of hair.

  Epistaxis, aggravated in the morning; much bleeding of the gums.

  Frequent feeling of coldness on the abdomen.

  Spasmodic cough with eructation; aggravated in the presence of others;

  A loose, deep hacking cough with palpitations;

  Nymphomania;

  Pruritis of the sexual organs;

  Tendency to metrorrhagia;

  Cramps in the hands and in the fingers.

  Teucrium marum verum:  When the great number of drugs administered has produced a state of hypersensitivity, with the result that no remedy, even if it is indicated, acts.  Specific action on the nose and the rectum.  Generally speaking patients who need Teucrium usually have:

Dry, chapped skin and have suffered in their infancy (or still suffer) from mucous  polyps somewhere in the nose or the nasopharynx, or the womb, or the bladder, or the rectum.

  Childhood complaints.

  A nose that is always stuffy.

  Ozæna.

  Anosmia.

  Coryza with blocked nose.

  One of the remedies that have the sensation of ‘internal trembling’

These patients are prone to hiccups and nearly always have the post-nasal passage blocked.

  Constant hiccough while eating or after lactation.

  Musty taste in the mouth.

REACTIVE REMEDIES OF CARDIOPULMONARY PATIENTS

  In this section there are five remedies which are especially important . 

  First of all: Carbo vegetabilis:

  This remedy is a classic for subjects who have never recovered their health after a serious illness (pneumonia, typhoid, grippe, etc.).  This is one of those cleansing remedies, a great ‘drainer’!  In that case give 10M potency, which works particularly well.  A reactive remedy for defective reactions. It is also indicated after strong allopathic ‘drugging’. 

  Remember that in the Carbo veg. patient everything is cold: the end of the nose; the extremities, hands and feet, face, teeth, mouth, breath, integuments - not only cold, even icy, except for the head, which is often hot.  In spite of this typical cold, with venostasis, cyanosis, these patients quite paradoxically often have:

  Feelings of local and regional burning.

  Carbo veg. is anxious, especially in the evenings, in bed, on closing the eyes.  He presents three very different, but very characteristic states: discouragement; indifference to everything, without reaction; irritability.

  Generally speaking, collapse and all kinds of fainting following the loss of vital fluids.

  Stagnation of blood in the capillaries, causing simple ecchymoses, cyanosis, haemorrhage of all the mucous membranes.

  Septicaemia. 

  Asthenia, exhaustion, debility; easy fainting, for instance, in the morning upon getting up.

  Aggravated by fatty food, butter, pork, rich food. 

  Heavy head, as if squeezed; hat feels too heavy.

  Hot head, breath cold.

  Hair falls out easily.

  Black  “muscae volante” before the eyes.

  Dry ears, or ears with too much wax.

  Epistaxis every day; black blood.

  Cyanosis of the face; chlorotic; pale, pasty; unhealthy look.

  Hippocratic facies.

  Cold sweat of the face, mottled cheeks, and the tip of the nose red.

  Cracked lips; gums that bleed easily, especially when they are sucked.

  Amelioration from eructation of wind, especially after butter and acids.

  Stomach cramps which fold the patient in half, half an hour after eating, aggravated in summer.

  Stomach burning and morning nausea.

  Desire for salty things.

  Aggravation from all fatty food.

  Frequent indigestion; very sensitive epigastrium.

  Painful diarrhoea of elderly people.

  Glutinous secretions at the anus which burn, aggravated by scratching.

  Green leucorrhea; early menses; prolonged menses.

  Excellent remedy at the beginning of whooping cough.

  Wheezing respiration.

  Carbo veg. nearly always feels weight on the chest; constantly oppressed; frequent need to fan himself; needs the windows wide open; he needs air so badly that he asks for something with which to fan himself.

  Sighing and irregular breathing.

  Faint, feeble, imperceptible pulse.

  Hoarse voice, no pain, aggravated in the evening.

  Weak voice, especially singing high notes, aphonia.

  Coryza with cough.

  Cold hands, knees, legs, worse at night.

  Prunus laurocerasus:  For cardiovascular complaints with cyanosis and dyspnoea.  Cyanosis and rales in the newborn.

  The cold is not ameliorated by heat, he always has his hand on his heart.

  This is the typical snorer, with very deep sleep (catapnoea).  As far as the snoring is concerned, and the stertorous respiration, this remedy rivals Opium and Lac caninum, which are the two remedies which have the most snoring (or the best).

  This reminds me of a story of my dear mother, who was still very  active at 82 when she returned here in March from a trip to Cannes.  Eight days later I went to see her one morning and rang her doorbell.  No reply.  Fortunately, I had a key.  I went in, saw the kitchen, the sitting room, empty.  No mother!  Where could she be?  That was when I heard a dreadful snoring.  I went into her room and found her in bed, eyes closed, absolutely passed out, with the rale of the dying.  Alas, I know that rale very well.

  Speaking of this, I must tell you that this is something that always worries people around the sick.  I saw that in my Master, who was dying when I was in India.  Many nervous and agitated adepts were around me and begged me to do something to calm him down, give him a shot of morphine - which he would never have allowed.  I simply turned his head a little to one side, and the rale immediately stopped.  Therefore it was enough simply to modify a little the position of the head!  For people who snore when they sleep at night it is quite a different story.  Often they have an elongation of the uvula, and when they lie down, especially if they lie very low, the uvula vibrates in the back of the throat.  This disturbs many people, especially the wife, who is furious because she can’t sleep; whereas her husband sleeps with his fists closed, snoring!  There are special little structures which one can fix on the neck and the head, and which hold the chin and do not allow it to drop; but husbands do not readily accept this imposition, as you can imagine.

  Yet, I once knew a great lawyer at the International Court at the Hague, a director and president of many commissions and congresses; but he was like a little boy before his wife.  She made him wear this sort of mask, which stopped his chin from falling when he slept.  The poor man hated it but he had to take it!

  This method is usually not very popular.  Snorers can use an extra cushion behind their backs so that the whole thorax is higher and the airway functions without obstruction.  One can also wear a belt with a big knot in the back which will force one to sleep on one’s side, and this lessens the condition.

  Well, I found my poor mother in this state. I lifted the blankets and looked for reflexes, there were none in any part of the body.  I lifted her arm, it fell back heavily. I took a pin and tested her sensitivity by pricking her more or less deeply, evoking no movement at all.  The pupils were very small and hardly reacted to light.  What was I to do?  I thought that at 80 one had the right to die in peace; so I called a nurse to look after her; and there was nothing for the nurse to do.

  Three days later my 19 year old niece, who studies biology and works in a laboratory, said to me:  “Really, you homœopaths make me sick!  Half of your  remedies are only make-believe!  That is why you leave your patients to die with their arms crossed on their chests.  Do something, an injection of strychnine or camphor or anything at all, but do something!”  We had a dreadful argument, but I thought that perhaps there was something in Homœopathy that one could give.  When you see someone who doesn’t move and has no reflexes, with a very small pupil, and who snores, and is completely unconscious, what picture does that bring to mind?  Well, you must be an infant in arms not to think of Opium.

  So I gave my mother a 200^th potency of Opium,  just a few tiny globules on the tongue.  Ten minutes later I saw her left eye open and close and her right eye do the same thing.  Half an hour later her eyelids started fluttering, then movements appeared in the upper limbs.  The first night she urinated, and the intestines rendered unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s. In a word, in the evening she had reflexes and her pupils had become larger.  I gave her three doses in all and the result was extraordinary and spectacular.  Eight days later she was sitting up, spoke a little, although with difficulty.  And a month later, would you believe it, she was gathering flowers on the Petit Salève Mountain!  She lived three years after that.  I wonder what our dear colleagues would have done?  No doubt, injections of Camphor, or Coramine, or God knows what else; and certainly they wouldn’t have any result except to send her off from Charybdis to Scylla.

  Hydrocyanic acid:  A great cardiovascular drug, which is often forgotten; and yet it has always given me remarkable results.  It is one of the most toxic and most mortal poisons!

  For the mental symptoms, it is an interesting drug.  It is a great frightener, fear of everything.

  It  also has cyanosis, with collapse, but more pulmonary than cardiac; while Carbo veg. and Laurocerasus have more effect on the heart.

  Suffocation and constriction of the chest.

  Palpitations.

  Angina pectoris

  The pulse is slow and flabby.

  Sensation of emptiness, epigastric region.

  Foaming at the mouth. 

  You always have to look at the pupil;  the pupil  of Hydrocyanic acid is dilated and without reaction.

  Ammonium carbonicum: These patients don’t like cleanliness at all.  You may be sure that they use neither brush nor soap.  They hate water and hate using it.  This doesn’t mean that you will give this remedy only to patients who are dirty.

  This remedy presents an absolute incompatibility with Lachesis, and you have to know this incompatibility.  You can have serious accidents if you give Lachesis after Ammonium carb.,  in the hope of getting a reaction... just try it!

  This patient is usually sedentary.

  Big people, always tired, exhausted for no reason at all, with heaviness of all the organs.

  Hates cold air.

  Doesn’t even like to touch water, let alone cold water !  Sulphur doesn’t like to be washed.  Ammonium carb. doesn’t like it either but he actually fears the contact with water, which he hates.

  Always has to carry a bottle of smelling salts to avoid fainting, or swooning!

  Epistaxis after washing the face or the hands, and after eating; especially at night.

  Marked tendency to catch cold.

  Nose always blocked.  The nose is especially blocked at night. 

  Lips cracked; cracks in the corners of the mouth; a crack in the middle of the lower lip.

  Wakes up every morning sneezing.  I have a patient who said:  “My husband is unbelievable!  I always know what time it is because at exactly seven o’clock in the morning suddenly I hear him sneeze.  He wakes me up!”  One dose of Ammonium carb. (and you will find that it is in the third degree in the Repertory) succeeds in most instances.

  Creaking of the jawbone in chewing.

  Bleeding haemorrhoids, aggravated during menses.

  Anal pruritis.

  Protruding haemorrhoids during stool.

  Very frequent menses, profuse, with great tiredness.

  Pungent, abundant, burning leucorrhoea, milky and smelling of ammonia.

  Aversion to the opposite sex.

  Involuntary urination at night.

  A feeling of fullness in the head.

  Patients who are rather obese, with a large appetite.

  Audible palpitations; they say that they can hear their heart beating!  Angina pectoris.

  This subject is rather chesty, asthmatic, always out of breath, with noisy breathing that is more or less audible.

  Great remedy of emphysema.  The oppression is noticed particularly in climbing, but also on entering a hot room.

  All chest symptoms are always aggravated at three o’clock in the morning.

  All the pains are ameliorated by external pressure. 

  Whitlow.

  Heaviness of all the internal organs.

  It is a remedy for uremia, don’t forget this.  It antidotes adrenalin.

  Tarentula hispanica:  This drug is very much neglected, and it is a pity:  First of all, it is one of the most agitated of the drugs.  He can’t sit still, he can’t stay in one place, must move about, especially at night.

  Syndrome of the legs that will not rest, constantly fidgeting.  You must remember also that this fidgeting is both physical and mental.

  The agitation is often anxious.

  Aversion to company, but patients who respond to Tarentula always want someone near to them, ready to help them.

  Always dissatisfied.

  Capricious.

  Very changeable moods.  These people are difficult to live with, whether children or adults.

  Precordial anguish with constriction.

  Palpitations with the feeling that the heart is being squeezed.

  Immediate amelioration from music!  That is why in my consulting rooms I have a button I can press to switch on a recording of music.  When I have restless children, who run all over the room, I press the button, and as if by a miracle they stop, calm down, and listen!  This is a very good indication for Tarentula.

  Yearly periodicity.

REACTIVE REMEDIES FOR NERVOUS SUBJECTS

  Gelsemium sempervirens:  You know that in English you can sum up this remedy with three ‘D’s’:

  Dizzy,

  Drowsy,

  Dull.

  When you see somebody, especially after flu, who is dizzy, and always drowsy, no thirst, apathetic, dull, think of this remedy.

  Gelsemium has always light-colored urine, never dark, even when there is fever.  And if you prescribe Gelsemium for a patient who has dark urine, that will prove that you are extremely defective and have a great need to take a refresher course!

  Frequent urination, abundant urination which relieves headache.

  A great remedy for trembling, but I draw your attention to this:  external trembling.  One can say that many Gelsemium  patients, especially feverish patients, complain that everything is trembling.

  The pulse is abnormal, slow but full, intermittent, irregular.  It can also be rapid and tachycardic, feeble, soft, almost imperceptible, aggravated by movement.  It is these apparent contradictions that make the charm and the value of our Materia Medica.

  You know that this is the remedy for bad news, and you remember the story [3] of the patient I spoke about before who was overtaken with a dreadful buzzing of the ears when he received a bad news, the sudden death of one of his friends, whom he had recently seen.  And he was brilliantly cured with this remedy, while our allopathic colleagues had energetically treated him without the slightest little result... quite the contrary!  Every time a patient tells you that he has had a sudden sorrow, ask him how it started.  Often it comes from the shock of some bad news.  In such  cases always prescribe a high potency:  Gelsemium 10M.  If, on the other hand, this is a case of real sorrow, rather give Ignatia; and speaking of that, I have had cases which came back and reproached me  afterwards:  “Doctor, it is quite dreadful, you gave me a homœopathic remedy so that I would be sustained under the emotion of a great bereavement;  I went to the funeral and, although I am so sensitive, I couldn’t even cry!”

  Aggravated by all emotions.  A great fearful remedy.  Always a terrible fear before examinations.  This is very successful when it is prescribed as a specific for fear of examinations.  I give a dose of the 200^th the morning of the examination, and if this fear of the examination is very pronounced, a dose even  the day before in the evening.  More often than not that is admirably successful;  I don’t even have to repeat it afterwards.  What an advantage and what a blessing, especially in pipe organ examinations, when one’s foot trembles on the great bass pedals... to make even the examiner tremble;  and as for singing... when you can’t get a sound out, Gelsemium maintains the voice of a nightingale!

  So Gelsemium is very apprehensive.

  Very frightened especially frightened of death.  Remarkable after fear and emotions.

  Wants to be left in peace.

  Agoraphobia, fear of walking across large open spaces.

  Fear of being alone, wants someone near, even someone who doesn’t speak.

  Fear of going in mountain cableways and elevators, even going down!  Terrified of everything unexpected.  Fear of falling.

  Fear of losing his self-control and his calmness.

  Fear of lightning; what a dreadful coward!

  A real living barometer.  Gelsemium very quickly feels all the fluctuations of the weather, especially when the barometer falls.

  Constantly aggravated by thinking of his troubles.

  But be careful, he unfortunately always feels better when he has had alcohol to drink!  I had a patient once who had this unfortunate peculiarity with, in addition, all the other symptoms of Gelsemium.  She used to say to me:  “Doctor, you wouldn’t believe it, a friend of mine told me about this:  I take the tiniest possible glass of ‘kirsch’ every morning, and afterwards it is absolutely marvelous,  I feel that I have wings all day long to do the house work”.  That is really dangerous.  She started with a tiny little glass, and a year later it was a litre of ‘kirsch’ that she drank every morning.  Her liver, especially, suffered from this, as you can well imagine.  She developed dropsy with a whole lot of complications and she died of anasarca in the greatest moral and material misery!  The constant repetition of her vice immediately antidoted the action of Gelsemium! 

  Fear of death. Feeble, slow pulse, even imperceptible.

  Capsicum annuum:  This drug is not chilly, as you will see it stated in many Materia Medicas, but on the other hand is aggravated by the cold and the slightest draft, which is an important nuance you have to remember.

  Capsicum patients are flabby, obese, lazy;  they want to be left in peace; these patients are apathetic and are always down.  I promise you that you will never find them breaking speed limits.  Lack of reaction in obese patients.

  These people love routine and they hate anything unexpected.  Write it in your repertory under the heading ‘Unexpected, Aversion to Anything’.  If you tell them that you will  take them on a drive tomorrow, they won’t like that at all.  You will have to tell them long in advance.

  Great difficulty getting going to go out or to go on a drive or a walk.  They  hate all exercise and all effort.

  And yet, amelioration once they start to walk.

  Capsicum is an overworked intellectual who doesn’t eat enough and is always in need of stimulants and tonics. Dyspepsia of elderly people.

  It is a funny thing that this patient is always thirsty after stool!!  And his scrotum is cold in the morning on waking up!

  Like Ammonium carbonicum this remedy isn’t very fond of cleanliness; you will see that their clothes are dirty, their ties have spots on them, and they are always improperly washed or shaven! ugh!

  Constantly dissatisfied and complaining.

  This drug is indicated for a special illness, for which Allopathy is absolutely useless  unless you go through two years of psycho-analysis...  It is homesickness.  This drug is especially recommended for young maidservants who have bright cheeks and who suddenly tell you after two weeks of their new job that they cannot stay and want to go home...  A little dose of Capsicum 10M on the tongue of the young girl will bring back a smile and the pleasure of serving you!  The Germans make fun of these symptoms and say: “These homœopaths are quacks... they prescribe Capsicum for red cheeks and homesickness... It seems quite ridiculous...”  But since it works I am very happy to use this remedy when it is indicated in this way, and I would very much like to know what an orthodox physician would do in such a case.  You can’t get anywhere, and the young maidservant goes home.  Everything is overthrown for her and for everybody else!  So this is a great remedy in cases of homesickness.

  Hates drafts.

  Explosive cough, as if everything were going to explode: head, ears, bladder, chest.  Sciatica aggravated from coughing.  Hoarse, raucous voice of public speakers, ministers, and singers.

  There is a localization for which this remedy is very successful: the mastoid.  One or two doses of the 200^th potency, and the threatening mastoiditis disappears rapidly.  This remedy acts very quickly and very well.  Smokers and drinkers who suffer from sore throat and pains that go to the ears, with fetid breath.

  Valeriana officinalis:  When it is dynamised, this plant has an affinity with subjects who have an extremely variable temperament.  The height of instability.  I don’t mean alternating moods;  I mean variable and irritable moods.

  Impressionable, hypersensitive, very nervous.

  Asthenic. Hysterical complaints.

  Pulse generally accelerated. 

  Nervous system always rather excited.

  This remedy has the sensation as if there were a thread hanging in the throat!

  Excellent drug for babies who vomit great pieces of curdled milk after feeding.

  Calcarea ostrearum:  We must not use Calcarea carbonica which is indicated in all the books and is a chemical carbonate of lime, but, if we are serious homœopaths, the living calcium, which is called Calcarea ostrearum, and is made by the oyster in the middle layer of his shell.  If we want to go one step further in subtlety, we always use only those remedies which have been prepared from sources which were used for the provings.

  But Providence is so generous that even if we practice Homœopathy ‘badly’, even if we haven’t got ‘perfect’ remedies we can still achieve extraordinary results.  Really, our needs have been abundantly filled, and we should be grateful.

  Calcarea ostrearum is the great homœopsoric of HAHNEMANN.  It covers all three miasms, and Calcarea is a remedy which we cannot do without. It is a part of the cycle Sulphur-Calcarea-Lycopodium, and therefore should never be given after Lycopodiumnor before Sulphur.  That would mix up the case to such a degree that it would be very difficult later on to clear it up.  KENT said that there were certain patients who could never be restored because this rule had not been observed in their case.  In the same way one should never go directly from Sulphur to Lycopodium one must find an intermediary drug to give between the two.  These little points of advice of old, seasoned homœopaths must really be respected!

  The leukophlegmatic type, who, to speak from a hormonal point of view, has a thyroid-pituitary dysfunction.

  Produces goiters... and cures them!

  Great remedy for very shy people.

  Has many fears, like Phosphorous.  And  my teachers taught me that when any case has more than three fears, one can almost always say that either Calcarea or Phosphorous is indicated.  On condition, of course, that we are not speaking about a mental case, because it is very difficult in those cases to eliminate everything which can be pathognomonic.

  He is very much afraid of: illness and contagion, epidemics, falling ill, suffering, tuberculosis, heart disease, being observed.

  He is afraid of spirits, of losing his reason, disaster, losing his position, he is sure that a disaster will happen.

  He is afraid of: poverty, dying of hunger, obscurity, night, evenings, and above all, twilight.

  He is afraid of: being in bed, dogs, being in a crowd, animals, being alone, lightning and above all, death.

  He is horrified on hearing stories of cruelty.

  I have already told you the story of Dr. MATTOLI  who was a man just as small as he was intelligent, a brilliant mind who spoke with great facility, and what volubility! - all this, of course, in magnificent Italian.  One would have thought it was DANTE speaking: and when he was speaking, even if you didn’t understand Italian, it was a pleasure to listen to him.  Well, Dr.MATTOLI  was once president of a congress in Rome when Mussolini was in power.  The first day we were all assembled in an extraordinary hall with flags of different colours, old paintings, sculptures, beautiful armchairs, and we heard the President of the Ligue, Dr. GAGLIARDI, presenting to us a case of mental illness which had been cured by Calcarea.  His description was perfect: he made of this expose something so marvellous from a scientific and literary point of view, that from the sixth row, where there were some allopaths who had been invited to the congress, one suddenly heard someone exclaim, ‘Miracolo’!  That’s how marvellous his description was!  Then, suddenly like a devil jumping out of a basin of holy water, Dr MATTOLI got up and said:  “Who says it was a miracle?”  Then these colleagues of ours got up and nodded - I mean the allopaths we had invited!  MATTOLI continued: “Well, gentlemen, I must say, you are the only ones who make miracles, not us”. And these gentlemen were very pleased, even  more puffed up with pride, delighted with this compliment!  MATTOLI  continued: “Because, what is a miracle?  A miracle is something exceptionally rare, which doesn’t happen often.  But for us homœopaths, successes like this happen every day! And that is why we don’t call them miracles!!”  Sustained applause throughout the hall !  You can imagine the effect of this interruption!

  Calcarea is full of many fears, there are 26 different ones in KENT’s Repertory!  In addition, Calcarea is very forgetful.  He also despairs of recovery (like some other drugs).  Anxiety at dusk.

  Very much indicated in convalescence that are not getting on and for patients who continually relapse.

  Very willful infants with a tendency to obesity.

  There is a special sweating which is always regional, localized! - especially in the front of the body; and he perspires at night.  He also sweats when he is anxious or after eating, or at the slightest exertion, or even from mental activity.

  Look at the pupils.  Calcarea is often mydriastic like Belladona, its acute.  Eyelids glued together in the morning.

  Tumultuous palpitations at night; after eating; with the slightest exertion, especially on climbing the stairs; also during fever.

  Aversion to movement and exercise—a very lazy schoolboy who will ask to be let off gym practice!

  He can’t stand fasting or skipping a meal.  And  yet, he always feels worse after eating!  Isn’t it hard to reconcile these paradoxes!  Diarrhoea and vomiting at teething.

  Desire for eggs, and particularly hard-boiled eggs.

  As a child he prefers and enjoys things that are rather strange and indigestible: chalk, carbon, pencil leads, etc.  He loves sour fruit and, above all, ice cream.

  He hates fat and two more things: coffee and meat.  That doesn’t mean that you must never give Calcarea to someone who likes coffee.  There are other symptoms which will indicate it, and you can’t possibly expect to find all the symptoms that Calcarea will cause and cure!

  You know that classic symptom of  Calcarea - horrible visions at the moment of falling asleep.  He sees scowling faces!  This symptom is very useful for prescription.

  Amelioration from constipation, which is a rare symptom but a precious one, and unless I am mistaken, a symptom which is to be found in only two other  remedies besides  Calcarea.  Look  for them in the  Repertory and don’t forget them!

  Calcarea infants sometimes have enormous stool, and one wonders how it is possible for infants to expel such  stools!

  When a patient who smokes suddenly loses his taste for cigars or cigarettes, think of  Calcarea. 

  This remedy  loves good wine, liqueurs,  cold  drinks, but on  the other hand prefers milk when it is very hot!  He loves everything which is salty or sour.  It is a very good remedy if, in addition to these general characteristics, the patient suffers from polyps or exostoses.

REACTIVE REMEDIES OF ORGANIC COMPLAINTS

  For the sequelae of paralysis, apoplexy, exhaustion, all cerebrospinal affection, depressions, asthenia, there are three remedies we have to think of above all;  Zincum, Conium, and Helleborus.

  Zincum metallicum:  One word sums it up:  exhausted (overworked, broken down).  As the English put it, ‘fag’.  This patient has no more vitality: he is completely prostrated, can’t go on: he is exhausted: he has capitulated!

  As soon as he becomes ill he is immediately depressed, immediately thinks of the worst.  Zincum straight-away thinks of everything in the blackest terms!  Spinal affections.

  There is an etiological symptom that you must know because it always succeeds very well and is very precious for us homœopaths, who usually have to treat the leftovers of Allopathy.  We nearly always see cases which have been treated, manhandled, spoiled, complicated... and when we cure them we are told that this is imagination!  When you have an eruption which has been suppressed, a discharge which has been stopped by nitrate of silver, by suppositories, or by ointment, etc., Zincum is the king of all such situations.  In those cases we see the discharge reappearing, the eruption flowering anew, and the patient feeling better.  In a case of measles, scarlet fever, any eruptive fever, any eruptive illness which doesn’t end properly, give a dose of Zincum and immediately you see the eruption coming back.  Remember that Zincum ameliorates every dischargewherever it is:  excretions, urine, diarrhoea, suppurations, menses, etc...

  Every patient with trembling, tics, myoclonus, spasms.  Syndrome of legs that cannot stop fidgeting.  Agitation when seated; pupils who constantly move their legs during class!

  Hypersensitive to noise and above all the sound of voices, which put him beyond himself!  The child repeats questions that are put to him and everything one says to him.

  Like Sulphur, he has a sudden ravenous hunger at 11 o’clock in the morning.  If he goes home at about 11 o’clock he immediately looks for something to eat because he can’t wait for lunch...

  Zincum cannot stand wine.  Cephalalgia from alcohol.

  The pulse is rapid, especially in the evening, and it is intermittent.  This is an objective symptom which can be useful in defective illnesses.

  Very good action on pterygia; itching of the internal canthus, which is often irritated; rolls his eyes; looks cross-eyed. 

  Pale complexion; angular cheilitis at the corners of the mouth; tendency to hawk.

  Children who constantly move their legs for fear of urinating, who lose their urine while walking or coughing or sneezing.

  The loss of pubic hair in both sexes. 

  Pains of the left ovary; sensitive breasts, especially during menses; menses more abundant at night; complaints that are noticeably ameliorated during the menses.

  For those whose legs fidget during sleep;

  Itching of the thighs and especially of the popliteal spaces.

  It is a great remedy for varicose veins of the lower extremities which are aggravated during pregnancy; chilblains of the extremities; somnambulism.

  All the results of eruptions having been suppressed by ointments, lotions, radiations, all other external means.

  Conium maculatum:  This is an old remedy which has become a classic, thanks to PLATO, because it was used to put SOCRATES to death.

  It is the remedy of bachelors and of old maidservants... the type that likes to be alone and hates visitors. He hates people he doesn’t know because he is shy.

  Hypochondriac, indifferent, not interested in anything; averse to all intellectual work and also to all physical effort.  Weakness, decline, laziness.  It is very difficult for him to come to the point of starting to do anything.  He cannot walk quickly; he cannot hurry; and if you want to go with him you will have to proceed at his pace, which is always slow.

  He always feels better when he can let his arms or his legs hang!  Here we have another one of those things that may seem useless and unimportant, and yet for an informed homœopath it will allow him to select the right remedy!

  Heavy, stiff legs; difficult walking.

  Neoplastic and arteriosclerotic diatheses.

  The head spins, often with headache, and always aggravated from lying down.  A great characteristic of the dizziness of Conium  is the amelioration from closing the eyes.

Pronounced photophobia to all light, but without inflammation of the conjunctiva.  Aversion to light without any affection of the eyes.

  The cough is aggravated on lying down; and when he starts to cough at night in his bed, Conium must sit up.  Coughing from irritation from a little dry point in the larynx, aggravated lying down; must sit up.

  The pulse of Conium is accelerated after stool; it can also be small, intermittent, and irregular.

  Interrupted urination.  The urinary stream stops, then starts again!

  Palpitation after every defecation.

  The results of sexual repression in both sexes.

  Sexual desire without erection.

  Swelling of the breasts, with bruising pains, from touch, especially in front, but also during menses.

  Perspiration as soon as he falls asleep, and even as soon as he closes his eyes.  Excess of wax in the ears.

  These patients feel better with the arms and the legs hanging.

  Helleborus niger:  This drug brings about sensorial depression with a bitter insipid taste.  Fetor oris.  Movements of chewing; food always tastes insipid, or else bitter.  In all illnesses, absence of thirst.

  Encephalic cry, especially at night while sleeping.

  Convulsions of nursing infants.

  Melancholic subjects who are always slow to answer when spoken to. Involuntary sighing.  Dull, apathetic, indifferent.

  Loss of hair and of the nails.

  Mydriasis. Fixed stare without any reason.

  Cold sweat on the face.

  Always rubbing his nose.

  These patients always have diminished vitality.  And they have two things that you will notice: anasarca and dropsy.  Like Belladonna and Tuberculinum, Helleborous always bores the head into the pillow.  And he rolls his head on the pillow day and night.  They eyeballs always gaze upward.  Hemeralopia.

  Carphological movements during pain.

  A very good remedy for patients who get goose flesh.

  Frequent and ineffective urging to urinate.

  The pulse is generally rapid, faint, and trembling, it can also sometimes be slow.

REACTIVE REMEDIES OF CUTANEOUS AFFECTIONS

  Zincum metallicum:  The remedy of choice for the results of all eruptions that have been suppressed by any means whether external or internal.

  Varicose veins of the legs and the thighs.

  Varicose veins of pregnancy which have the characteristic of being  painful.

  Burning pain of wounds.

  The back of the neck, or waist, tired from writing or typing.  The child can only see objects by looking at them from the side.  He hates anybody to touch his back.

  Agitation of the legs and the feet: the syndrome of legs that are restless, like Tarentula, Rhus tox., and Causticum.

  Sweating of the feet with excoriation between the toes.

  Aggravation especially at night, in the evening, and during menses.  Haemoptysis before and during menses.

  This remedy has a very special kind of pruritus.  It is pruritus of the popliteal spaces, with or without lesion.  Eczema, especially behind the ears.

  Very sensitive to noise, even the sound of voices.

  The child repeats everything said to him before replying.

  Forehead cold, occiput hot.

  Cross-eyed, rolls the eyes.

  Pruritus, especially of the inner canthus.

  Pain of the face in general and during headache.

  Can’t stand even the slightest bit of wine without headache.

  A curious, but precious symptom:  cannot urinate except sitting down or leaning backwards.

  Involuntary urination on walking, coughing, or sneezing.

  Pupils who constantly move their legs to stop themselves from urinating and get scolded by the teacher.

  Sudden hunger at 11 o’clock in the morning.

  Pain in the left ovary.

  The child holds the genitals while coughing.

  Lienteric stools.

  Gas during stool.

  Delicate skin, hypersensitive to the least friction and even to the rubbing of garments, must wear silk underwear to avoid irritation.

  Nerium oleander:  As you know, this is often used as decoration and we find it growing in large pots in outdoor cafés, with its pretty pink or white flowers.

  It acts on the nervous system and brings about, first of all, painless paralysis.  It acts on the heart bringing about anxious and violent palpitations. It acts on the skin bringing about pruritus of the scalp day and night, better from scratching.

  It also has an eruption with gnawing pain after scratching.

  Like Paris quadrifolia, it has the feeling that the eyes are pulled back into the head.

  It is a vesicular remedy; eczematous and herpetic lesions.  All the eruptions of Oleander are prurient and bleed and suppurate on scratching.

  It has a  very particular pulse, which I have already spoken about: an arrhythmic and myurous pulse (like a rat’s tail!)

  Extreme weakness of the digestive tract.

REACTIVE REMEDIES OF DIGESTIVE STATES

  Phosphoric acid:  Is a remedy of weakness, lack of vitality.

  Growing children who are always tired. Those lanky fellows like stringbeans who are always exhausted and don’t do any work at school.

  Rings around the eyes.

  Mydriasis.

  Exhaustion.

  Nervous sometimes from physical or mental overwork.

  Onanists, who continually feel guilty.

  Indicated after many acute illnesses which have followed each other in rapid succession; loss of vital fluid or after breast-feeding.

  Health affected by breast-feeding which exhausts.

  After excesses, sorrows, disappointed love, homesickness.

  Apathy, and indifference.

  Fermentative dyspepsia.

  Bites his tongue, especially at night, during sleep.

  Frequent diarrhoea, which does  not exhaust.  He is tired from everything, but not from having diarrhoea!

  Always picking his nose.

  Occipital headache.

  Nicturia; phosphaturia.

  Stumbles when walking.

  Great desire for fruits, juicy things, and cold drinks.

  Thirst for cold milk, like Phosphorus and Tuberculinum.

  Neuritic pains in ghost limbs, after amputation

  Relieves the pains of Cancer.

  Hair prematurely gray.

NOSODES

  I already mentioned the principal indication of the Nosodes: when a case does not make any more progress after a first improvement you can give the patient a Nosode to bring about a reaction.  And if the Nosode benefits the patient you may continue it:  this is in contrast to the other so-called reactive remedies, which one will not continue in these circumstances.

  Just to remind you, a Nosode is “a medicine derived from pathological tissues or secretions containing the specific virus of the sickness”

  Psorinum:  You know that Psorinum is the chronic of Sulphur.  This is a very chilly remedy, even in summer.  This is also the patient who is dirty and smells bad:  even if he washes himself he always smells bad.  All the secretions and discharges are very malodorous.

  These patients are  always hungry and, curiously, especially at night.  They will even get up at night to go out and eat.  This is very bad for them, because we know that stomach cancer tends to develop in people who can’t stop eating.

  Psorinum has a particular pruritus which is an indication and a precious one:  pruritus of the external auditory duct.

  It is also a very good remedy for constipation in children.

  Keynote: feels particularly good the day before falling ill.

  Tuberculinum bovinum:  As I have often said, this is the only tuberculin, with Avicular tuberculin and Bacillinum, which has been proven on healthy men.  As for the other tuberculins, the indications we have are theoretical, arbitrary, conventional, and empirical.  The indications of Tuberculinum so readily given, copied, and published by VANNIER are nearly all from NEBEL, and should have been reconsidered, verified, and weighed a long time ago by further provings,  I mean by experimentation on healthy man, as in fact any remedy which has the honor of being called homœopathic should be, and one will never stress this point sufficiently.

  I have always given Tuberculinum bovinum, when indicated, according to ALLEN and HERING, with excellent results.  I cured eruptions, rheumatism, all kinds of cases with this remedy.  At the moment I am treating the wife of a homœopathic doctor from Lyon, and she had been treated by many without any results except a constant and immediate aggravation after all the remedies and nosodes she took.  To start the case I gave her one dose of Tuberculinum, which  ‘opened the case’ as we say, and which benefited  her considerably and immediately.... this reminds me of another patient who came from Patagonia by plane with her husband.  She had suffered for years from a sort of mixed eruptions on the face, it was acneiform and eczematous, and nobody had been able to do anything for her, and this depressed her morally quite terribly, for she was a pretty woman.  I gave her Tuberculinum bovinum 10M because she had a little thread in the right eye, indicating a hereditary tuberculinic condition, which was later confirmed by her family history: a paternal uncle (right eye) had been tubercular.  And the result was extraordinary: total and permanent cure, after a painful aggravation which lasted two weeks and which she bore with courage.

  So this is a remedy which I like particularly, and have no need for any Spengler, Marmorecs, or Denys, etc. ... with their purely theoretical and conventional indications.

  It’s a wonderful remedy when there is a tubercular  heredity, and you can discover this in the eye easily!

  Strongly indicated when the symptoms constantly change and the patient catches cold easily.

  Emaciation.

  This patient loves to travel, journeys and cruises.

  He doesn’t like standing, like Sulphur.

  Fear of dogs: very good symptom.  I have often told you, when I am consulted for infants who take cold frequently and when I find in the eyes of the mother or the father little indications of tuberculosis,  I ask three questions: “What are the animals that your child likes or doesn’t  like ?  “What are his palms like?  “When you scold him what does he do?”

  Children who need Tuberculinum fear  dogs;  the palms of the hands are damp;  when you scold them,  even if they are very little,  they lift their fists and threaten you back . . . the naughty things!

  Here we have some good symptoms:

  Likes refined cuisine.

  Likes sweets.

  Likes cold milk. 

  Likes meat, delicatessen products, ham, lard, smoked meat, but certain subjects have an aversion for meat , for wine, and even for all food.

  In contrast to Tarentula  he has aggravation from music. 

  And an excellent clinical indication: chronic cystitis (NEBEL).

  The pulse is irregular.

  Medorrhinum:  I am lucky enough to have an excellent source  of Medorrhinum.  A few years ago I was visiting Seville and there I  met a charming homœopathic physician who gave me a quite special gift.  You know that Seville is a very pleasant town, full of castanets and pretty women.  . . . and also blennorrhagia reigns there as queen!  And this doctor had a source taken from  a young officer  who had  had goodness knows how many blennorrhagias!  He gave me not one drop of  pus but a potentisation which he had prepared himself, a fresh preparation which gave me excellent results.  First of all  and  before everything else, it is in no way necessary to have caught blennorrhagia to benefit from this precious Nosode...  fortunately!

  Patients who need this remedy find that time passes too slowly. 

  Many of these patients can’t speak without weeping; they  fear the dark and imagine that there’s  always someone behind them,  and that’s why they keep looking back when they walk!

  As you may know, there’s aggravation  especially in the daytime.

  It has this very special sleeping position;  the genupectoral  position.  Thanks to this  symptom  I  cured a case of epiphora, that is, constant watering of the eyes.  My patient was a  little girl of five or six who  had of course been  treated  without any result by allopathic  pediatricians and  ophthalmologists who were nevertheless quite reputed... but of course they were allopaths!  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a specialist introducing a catheter into the lachrymal duct of a child; it’s quite dreadful.  First of all one has to find the orifice and in order to do that you have to put a drop of fluoresceine into the eye, and since that burns the child starts kicking, and the fun is on.  One really has to have fairy fingers to avoid wounding the eye and causing a retractile scar!

  This is where Homœopathy is marvellous: a well-chosen little remedy and everything proceeds smoothly without any dangerous probing.  I had given this child several remedies which I had repertorised, but without any result.  So I took the father aside and asked him about the illnesses he had had before.  That was when he confessed to having had a blennorrhagia in his youth which had been suppressed by the usual injections!  After this I learned that the child always slept in this special position: on her knees with her little  behind in the air and her head in the pillow, the position which we call the knee-chest position!

  Therefore I immediately gave her Medorrhinum 10M and since then it was all over... good-bye epiphora!  And yet,  you know, Medorrhinum isn’t indicated in the Repertory for epiphora.  This is one of the wonderful things about Homoeopathy: the remedy that comes up when you repertorise the pathological symptoms isn’t always the right one.  You sometimes have to work back to the chronic miasm to remove the obstacle.  It may be rather difficult to see the relationship between a watering eye and the position in which a patient sleeps.

  Women sometimes have a very strange symptom, cold breast and, stranger still, especially the right!

  Medorrhinum always feels better at the seaside; better lying on the stomach.  Fidgety feet syndrome, especially at night; trembling arms and legs.

  There are two more disagreeable symptoms (or agreeable ones, depending on the case):  sterility and impotence.  This is the great remedy for blennorrhagia suppressed by irrigation or some drug that has stopped the infectious discharge.

  In women, intense pruritus of the genitals; very malodorous periods; excoriating leucorrhoea smelling of fish; ovaritis, especially left; sterility; intense dysmenorrhoea.

  Chronic catarrh which never ends, especially in children; end of nose always cold; constant desire to be fanned; aphthae.

  Monoarticular rheumatism: particularly affecting the knee.  Chronic rheumatism.  Syndrome of fidgety feet; burning hands and feet, but sometimes cold extremities; trembling arms and legs.

  Ferocious appetite, even after having eaten; Medorrhinum is always very thirsty; desires liqueurs; desires salt, sweets, warm food; vomiting of pregnancy.

  Intense anal pruritus, frequently redness of the anal region in babies.

  Nocturnal enuresis.

  Finally, intense itching of the skin.

  When we study the Nosodes together we shall have to write them into the repertory, because it has only a very small number of indications.

  Syphilinum: All symptoms aggravated at night.

  These patients are always washing their hands.

  A feeling as if the sternum were pulled backwards against the spinal column.

  Despair of recovery, like Calcarea, Arsenicum, and Alumina.  Like Nux vomica, these patients are completely exhausted in the morning.

  Desire for alcoholic beverages.

  Erratic rheumatism.

  Better in the mountains.

  Profuse salivation at night on sleeping, and like Mercurius it soils the pillowcase.

  When you study your cases you come up with one principal remedy and several satellites: look for the miasm which corresponds to these remedies.  If these remedies belong to the three kingdoms, mineral, animal, and vegetable this means that the case is profoundly deep rooted.  If there are only mineral remedies this means that it will be a long chronic case and will be difficult to cure.  If there are only animal remedies, you can expect complications and difficulties of every kind:  this case will be troublesome because of the patient’s reactions.  And if you have only vegetable remedies it means that the cure will be easy.  Find out also if these remedies are exclusively sycotic or psoric or syphilitic.  Contrary to what NEBEL believed, tuberculosis is not by any means psoro-syphilis, it is psoro-sycosis.  In the eyes one can also see syphilitic heredity, even several generations back. Night terrors in  infants.

  Falling  hair.

  Patchy alopecia.

  Recurrent keratitis.

  Although one of the principal indications for Nosodes is an improvement which stops and goes no further (when the therapeutic progression is arrested), one may give them right from the beginning, especially when there is a lack of reaction.  As you know these are remedies of an entirely different kind.

  Sulphur is a very great reactive remedy but it has the great inconvenience of awakening symptoms just about everywhere and sometimes gives us very disagreeable aggravations; and that is why I haven’t mentioned it in the reactive remedies.  Still, it is one of our best reactive remedies.  Of course one will think of giving it after some other remedies which already have brought some improvement; as a general rule avoid giving it at the beginning of a case.

  When you have a defective case, think also of going back to earlier symptoms from the beginning of the illness, old symptoms on which you will be able to prescribe the remedy which the patient should have had before; that remedy can still help him.

  After having studied the reactive remedies we should read what HAHNEMANN has to say in Paragraph 184 of his Organon.  “In like manner, after each new dose of medicine has exhausted its action, when it is no longer suitable and helpful, the state of the disease that still remains is to be noted anew with respect to its remaining symptoms, and another homœopathic remedy sought for, as suitable as possible for the group of symptoms now observed, and so on until the recovery is complete”.

  Of course, this means questioning your patient again.  If you don’t know which remedy to give, don’t hesitate to give Saccharum lactis.  Do not give a remedy if you have no clear indication.  You will never regret having given Sac lac., but you will always regret having given something which will have upset your case.

  I have already told you how Dr. MATTOLI used to manage his practice at the beginning of the vacation period.  You  know that he was a very short man. He used to dress all in white and in July received his patients not in Florence where he lived, but in Viareggio, in an enormous and magnificent property.  That is where he invited my wife and me one summer.  For ten days he served us chicken every day!  The chicken was exquisite because each time it was differently cooked.  One day he prepared polenta on an enormous marble table; it was very amusing.  Well, on one occasion the chicken wasn’t cooked exactly as he wanted it,  and he went to the kitchen.  We heard dreadful screams. He slapped  the servant in the kitchen a couple of times (and even rather more than a couple of times) - as that was the way he did things - and then he came back to us, much calmed down and quite happy; and we were able to eat our chicken ... in peace!

  “When it is time to go on vacation”, he used to say, “one is overworked, a great many people keep telephoning, one is harassed and makes wrong prescriptions.”

  And so, to avoid prescribing wrongly, he used to sit out in the country under a wonderful oak tree, with his secretary at his right hand, and all his case histories.  People used to come on horseback, on foot, on bicycles, in motor cars, in carriages... it looked like a camp that had been set up.  There must have been at least 200 people!  And so Dr. MATTOLI received them under his tree one after the other, and each one of them asked for a remedy for an uncle or an aunt or the cook or the dog or the cat as well - it was dreadful!  I can tell you that he didn’t waste any time and didn’t ask anybody to do a complete strip-tease to auscultate them!  But everything  worked out very well with the heat of summer and the volubility of the beautiful Italian language!  Next to him there was cupboard of remedies, and our colleague prescribed for everybody Sac lac... And he had noticed that with the help of the holidays there were hardly 10 percent of the patients who were not much improved when he returned in autumn.  Naturally, serious cases didn’t come to the country to see him!  Fortunately!

  Paragraph 185:  “Among the one-sided diseases an important place is occupied by the so-called local maladies, by which term is signified those changes and ailments that appear on the external parts of the body.  Till now the idea prevalent in the schools was that these parts were alone morbidly affected, and that the rest of the body did not participate in the disease - a theoretical, absurd doctrine - which has led to the most disastrous medical treatment”.

  Paragraph 186: “Those so-called local maladies which have been produced a short time previously, solely by an external lesion, still appear at first sight to deserve the name of local diseases.  But then the lesion must be very trivial, and in that case it would be of no great moment.  For in the case of injuries accruing to the body from without, if they be at all  severe, the whole living organism sympathizes; there occur fever, etc.

  “The treatment of such diseases is relegated to surgery; but this is right only in so far as the affected parts require mechanical aid, whereby the external obstacles to the cure, which can only be expected to take place by the agency of the Vital Force, may be removed by mechanical means e.g.:

  “By the reduction of dislocations:

  “By needles and bandages to bring together the lips of wounds;

  “By mechanical pressure to still the flow of blood from open arteries;

  “By the extraction of foreign bodies that have penetrated into the living parts;

  “By making an opening into a cavity of the body in order to remove an irritating substance or to procure the evacuation of effusions or collections of fluids;

  “By bringing into apposition the broken extremities of a fractured bone and retaining them in exact contact by an appropriate bandage, etc.

  “But when in such injuries the whole living organism requires, as it always does, active dynamic aid to put it in a position to accomplish the work of healing, e.g. when the violent fever resulting from extensive contusions, lacerated  muscles, tendons and blood vessels requires to be removed by  medicine given internally, or when the external pain of scalded or  burnt parts needs to be homœopathically  subdued, then the services of the dynamic physician  and his helpful  Homœopathy come into requisition”.

  Apropos of the Vital Force, KENT mentions these illnesses which are not local (as they are wrongly called), but, instead, localized illnesses: when it is an illness that is not surgical, when you have, for  instance,  an eruption or a small tumor somewhere.

  Paragraph  187 : “But those affections, alterations and ailments appearing on the external parts that do not arise from any external injury or that have only some slight external wound for their immediate exciting cause, are produced in quite another manner; their source lies in some internal malady.  To consider them as mere local affections, and at the same time to treat them only, or almost only, as it were surgically, with topical application or other similar remedies - as the old school have done from the remotest ages - is as absurd as it is pernicious in its results.”

  For instance, traumatisms often quite benign can be the cause of Osteosarcomas or Carcinomas, which appear years later.

  Paragraph 188: “These affections were considered to be merely topical, and were therefore called local diseases, as if they were maladies exclusively limited to those parts wherein the organism took little or no part, or affections of these particular visible parts of which the rest of the living organism, so to speak, knew nothing.” [4]

  Of course, HAHNEMANN was not very tender ... but people were even less tender toward him; and I find that he was even modest in his remarks!

  Paragraph 189: “And yet very little reflection will suffice to convince us that no external malady (not occasioned by some important injury from without) can arise, persist or even grow worse without some internal cause, without the cooperation of the whole organism, which must consequently be in a diseased state.  It could not make its appearance at all without the consent of the whole of the rest of the health, and without the participation of the rest of the living whole (of the Vital Force that pervades all the other sensitive and irritable parts of the organism); indeed, it is impossible to conceive its production without the instrumentality of the whole (deranged) life; so intimately are all parts of the organism connected together to form an individual whole in sensations and functions.  No eruption on the lips, no whitlow can occur without previous and simultaneous internal ill-health”.

  Except for these traumas, there are therefore no local illnesses.  There are only the localized illnesses of a general state of health that is deficient.

  There are things which we cannot understand.  How  can  one have, for  instance, an eczema of the foot and a wart  on the ear and strabismus all at the same time?  We cannot see at all the connection between these three things and yet they are connected  by some biological unity.  And that  is why we have to base our decisions on the totality of the symptoms in choosing a remedy.  And even if we don’t  know the relationship which unites these different morbific complaints, it exists nonetheless; and it is the fundamental unity that is reached by our constitutional  remedy.

  It is very important to meditate upon these paragraphs.

  These illnesses are defective; they are partial illnesses, localized  illnesses, which we call  apparently local.  To mention a few of these, we have:

  Surgical affections which can be treated  by Homœopathy: I mean, one should always treat the patient before an operation.  And we see, if we are good prescribers like Dr.WARD, of San Francisco, famous for his excellent work Unabridged Dictionary of the Sensations ‘As if’, that a certain number of operations can thus be avoided.  Dr. WARD was a Surgeon, a Gynecologist, who became interested in Homœopathy, and stated at the end of his life that 40 percent of the patients who came for an operation no longer needed to have that operation after they had been prepared for the operation homœopathically!  In addition, his colleagues were jealous of him and couldn’t  understand  why his operations were more successful.  When one can  prepare a patient who must undergo a surgical operation, there are two things to which I always call people’s attention.  First of all , I take the biological rhythms of  FLIESS into account to determine the most favourable date for the operation.  In this way I avoid a great many postoperative complications.

  Recently a patient whom I was treating for his general health and who lives in Ungerdien came to see me to ask about having a hernia  operation.  This was a perfectly straight forward inguinal hernia. I calculated his biological rhythms and advised him about a suitable date.  Naturally, surgeons have a thousand and one reasons for not doing what one asks them to do.  This patient’s surgeon couldn’t operate on him on the date he requested and started laughing at him when he spoke about biological rhythms!  He  operated outside of the good dates.  Of course, the operation was very successful, but on the seventh day after the operation the patient felt a pain half way up the inner surface of the thigh as if he were being poked by a red-hot iron every time he stood up.  And the surgeon whom he had consulted came and said to him: “Listen, here, sir, this is none of my business.  We operated on your hernia and everything went well.  Your testicles are not swollen, and you ought to be grateful because that often happens.  The trouble you have there is neuralgia and you had better see your doctor about it!”  So the patient telephoned to me and asked me what he should do ...  and I was very annoyed.  He wanted to come to Geneva, but it was quite impossible for him to get into a taxi because the pain was so intense!  Naturally, when one doesn’t see the patient one cannot always think of everything.  Nevertheless, I blame myself for not having been more thoughtful because, after all, after a hernia operation one can easily have reactions of the testicle, and other reactions, too, which are well known.

  Neither rest, nor the anticoagulants administered had the slightest effect on the distorting pain felt as soon as he sat down.

  We are surprised to discover that it is almost intolerable not to be able to sit down!  You can’t, after all, remain standing or walking all the time!  What a benediction it is to be able to sit down!  May be you have never thought about it ... Well, finally, the worried surgeon  told him to go to see a doctor because it was none of his business!  And this went on for three weeks!

  I encouraged the patient to try to come to Geneva, but this meant six hours in the train with no hope of sitting down... how happy that was!  When he arrived in Geneva, I administered a few points of Acupuncture, which relieved him a little.  I gave him first of all Hypericum 10M, and two days after discovering that this was in fact a neuralgia of the spermatic duct, a funiculalgia, Hamamelis200 (page 702 of the repertory) every 6 hours for two days. This cured him completely and permanently.

  I really think that if one takes into account the rhythms of FLIESS one can avoid a lot of trouble.  For instance in blood transfusions, I am thinking of a colleague from Zurich, a great specialist of transfusions, who one day had to give his wife a blood transfusion: well, although he was nearly always successful, this time his wife had an embolism .... and died!  He had operated on her on a day when her three rhythms changed simultaneously.

  CARLETON, an American, has published a book which I recommend to you, called Homœopathy and Surgery.  He was a pure homœopath and an excellent surgeon, and in this book he gives excellent advise on the homœopathic treatment of many surgical cases.

  In sprains, after manipulation, when this is necessary, Homœopathy offers a whole palette of very precious remedies which considerably shorten the convalescence and ease the pains.  Distensions of the muscles or the tendons of the hand or foot, with or without injury of the periosteum and the bones, can be relieved and often cured in record time after putting them back in position by rubbing with oil of Rhus or tincture of Arnica and bandaging tightly; after this, one should administer a so-called trauma remedy.

  In the Repertory on page 1371 you will find remedies for all kinds of distensions of the ligaments, sprains, luxations... etc... in the rubric “Lifting, straining of muscles and tendons.”  and you can very easily combine this rubric with “Pain, as if sprained” you can add the following remedies: arn., Bell-p., led., mill., ruta,  Agn-c., Am-c., Asaf., Carb-an.

  Under “sprained” you can add “chronic”, when the complaint becomes chronic: there is a remarkable remedy indicated by HERING which I have often verified, and that is Stront-carb.  The 10M potency works beautifully!

  On page 983 you have “Dislocation”: spontaneous, of the hip: of the kneecap; of the ankle.

  If there is weakness of the ligaments look at page 1232 “Weakness, ankle, while walking”. And you can add to that rubric Calc-p.  For children who are late in learning to walk”: Carb-an.

  On page 364 you will find spontaneous dislocation of the jawbone (“Dislocation of jaws easy”), and add to that rubric Caust, and Petr.

  On page 1019 under “Injuries, hand, sprain” you can add Bell-p.

  Where  we have fractures of course we have to assure the mechanical replacement of fractured bones.  But after this, homœopathic remedies considerably aid osteogenesis and shorten the time of knitting.  Usually I give all my patients with fractures Symphytum 30 liquid, six drops three times a day for a month, if there are no other personal symptoms. You will find fractures on page 1402 under “Slow repair of broken bones”.  On page 1008 you can add the rubric “Fractures” Just before “Freezing”, with the following remedies: Calc., calc-p., calen., ruta, sil., symph., and under the following rubric: “Consolidation retarded”: ferr.,

  On page 1402 “Slow repair” add Calen., ferr., iod., mang-ac., mez., Ruta., Symph. and thyr. (CLARKE)

  If we have retarded ossification in children think of Calc., calc-f., Calc-p., and sil.

Come back to page 1008 and add under “Fractures”: (HERING)

  “of cranium”: calen

  “infected, with suppuration”: arn.

  “open”: calen.

  “of tibia”: anthr.

  On page 1368 you will find the rubric “Injuries”, which includes blows, falls, ecchymoses ... etc.  Add Acet-ac., acon., ang., bufo, calen., camph., crot-t., glon., ham., mag-c., mill., phys., stront-c., verb., and on the following page under the rubric “with extravasations” add led.

  For  insomnia after fractures or after surgery think of stict.

  For contusions of the nerves, on page 1369, add bell-p.,

  For contusions of soft parts add ham., and symph.

  In contusions of the tendons add calen.

  BOERICKE indicates for contusions: acet-ac., arn., bell-p., con., echi., euphr., ham., hyper., led., rhus-t., ruta, sul-ac., symph., and verb.

  And for the chronic results of traumatisms: arn., carb-v., cic., con., glon., ham., hyper., led., nat-s., stront-carb.

  On the last page of the Repertory, page 1422, you  have the whole  question of  ‘wounds’;.  under this rubric you can add ‘lacerated’: arn., calen., carb-ac., ham., hyper., led., staph., sul-ac., symph.  (BOERICKE).

  Under the general rubric “wounds’’ add calen., carb-ac., helianathus,  (CLARKE).

  Under “bites” add: Lob-pur., and Seneg.

  “snakes”: thuj.;

  “bleeding freely”: am-c., dor., ham., lat-m.,  nit-ac., ph-ac., sanguisuga.

  “crushed”: carb-ac., ruta;

  “cuts”: calen, ham., hyper,;

  “decubitus, see sore”: all-c., tub,;

  “gangrene, tendency”: calen., sal-ac., sul-ac., (BOERICKE);

  “painful” all-c.;

  “penetrating”: phaseolus;

  “painful injections” : crot-h., led,; 

  “to remove thorns, splinters, fishbones”: lob., sil.;

  “proud flesh”: sil.;

  “if the injured part feels cold to the patient and to objective touch”: led.

  Under “Burns”, page 1346, add acet-ac,. acon., arn., calc-p., calen., camph., gaultheria., grin., ham., hep., jab., kali-bi., kreos., ter., urt-u.;

  “burns from X-rays”: calc-f., x-ray;

  “burns fail to heal, or ill effects”: carb-ac., caust.

  On page 1304 you will find something which may often help you, “cicatrices”.  For keloids you will combine the two rubrics “elevated” and “hard”. In the rubric “hard” you should put graph., into the third degree and add fl-ac.  CLARKE  recommends an ointment with Staphysagria in the mother tincture.

  For keloid scars there is whole series of remedies to be added.  I found them during my searches in the works of the great ALLEN, BOERICKE, CLARKE, JAHR, LILIENTHAL, STAUFFER, and DOUGLAS: ars., bell-p., calc., carb-v., caust., crot-h., fl-ac., graph., hyper., iod., junc., lach., merc., nit-ac., nux v., ophiotoxicon (JAHR), phos., phyt., psor., rhus-t., sabin., sil., sulph., sul-ac., thios., tub., vipera.

  I gave you some examples of so-called localised affections, and now we shall see how to find the remedy in defective illnesses.  You have a patient who comes to consult you complaining of only one symptom, or of very vague problems; what are you going to do in such a case, and how are you going to find a remedy which can help him?

  First of all, before looking for a remedy one should always start by eliminating any habits or extraneous circumstances which might be the cause of the patient’s disorder, as HAHNEMANN said at the beginning of his Organon.

  Here are some guidelines which we must bear in mind for every illness:

(1) One must correct the diet.  CARTON was right to insist on this point, for it can bring considerable improvement to patients.  It is dreadful to see the diet which some people follow.  This reminds me of a certain patient who always keeps a magnificent box of chocolates just inside of his front door: he offers some to anybody who comes to see him and this gives him an opportunity to have some also.  One of my women patients, whom I sent to see one day for an influenza, had one kilo of candy next to her bed, and from it she would serve herself generously during the night whenever she woke up.  She was surprised that she was overweight and that she always had liver trouble!

(2) One has to pay attention to the way patients live, their hygiene and their exercise.  Advise them to do fifteen minutes of exercise every morning: generally they never do it!  A good idea is to have them take lessons in physical exercise from some teacher whom they have to pay.  There are stationary cycling and rowing apparatuses which people buy to use at home, and never use for more than one month after buying them at considerable expense!  Tell them to take lessons in riding, or tennis, or gymnastics.  Then there are also those patients who never take holidays, and for whom the only thing that counts is their work.  If you can’t get them to take holidays like everybody else, tell them to go on a cruise, or propose some hydro-mineral cure which is as harmless as possible, and which will oblige them to some sort of regular schedule and rest for at least a month.  Then of course there are fasts, which can be prescribed for those who can stand them.

(3) Examine the spine, and if necessary send the patient to a chiropractor for any necessary adjustments.  This is very useful sometimes, and one shouldn’t neglect it.

(4) Don’t forget the dentist.  There are people who never go to the dentist.  Look at your patients’ teeth, carefully sound them, apply heat or cold with a moist wad of gauze.  You may find people with unbelievable things in their mouths.  I will never forget a certain society lady who had twenty seven of her thirty-two teeth absolutely bathed in pus!  And she didn’t feel a thing.  She had to have all her teeth out, and now she’s quite well.

(5) Examine the ears.  You would be surprised to know how many people go around with plugs of wax as hard as wood in their ears, and how grateful they are when you clean out the ears!

(6) Habits.  Some people have dreadful habits: some people wear the same clothes for at least twenty years - what a shame!  -- for instance, a dirty old jacket, all worn-out, or a venerable raincoat.  Disgusting!  Get them to buy new clothes, and something in their manner changes immediately.  In the apartment get them to change the position of the furniture  or to swap rooms, or to change pictures on the walls, and their whole condition might change!  Especially when there has been some mourning in the family, get them to change the position of the furniture:  in this way the ‘perpetual presence’  (and sometimes the very trying presence) of the dear departed is dissipated.

  Only after all these steps you can start asking yourself what remedy you are going to prescribe.  And this is difficult when there are almost no symptoms.  When we have what we call a deficient illness you have to have some imagination to see what can be done.

  (1) The first thing to look for is the etiological symptoms: “ailments from ...”: anger (p.2), anticipation (p.4), contradiction (pp.2/512), egotism (p.39), emotional excitement (p.40), fright (p.49), grief (p.51), homesickness (p.51), wounded honor (p.52),indignation (p.55), disappointed love (p.63), reproaches (p.71), rudeness (p.75), scorn (p.78), thinking of complaints (p.87), vexation (p.21), mental work (p.95)

  (2) You can also find very good information in the hereditary symptoms:  those that come from the mother to a boy, from the father to a girl.  Take into account also the particular symptoms manifested by the mother during her pregnancy, and during her labor.

  (3) All suppressions must be noted.  Cutaneous affections, discharges; leucorrhea, gonorrhea, sweat, coryza, etc.  For the result of polypharmaceutic practices; even before you think of any other remedy you can always give them Nux vomica.

  (4) Vaccinations which either didn’t take, or did take.  If there was a reaction and it was too strong, this is a good point to start from in prescribing remedies of Vaccinosis, p.1410.  If the vaccination didn’t take, it means that the individual was either too weak to react, or that the vaccination was no good.

  (5) Childhood diseases.  What interests us particularly are affections of childhood which left after-effects: the child didn’t recover quickly, the cure was not clear-cut.  Some of them cough for a year or two after whooping cough, and others have endless eye trouble after the measles.  We know that scarlatina and mumps can leave consequences and continue to act on the general condition in a dreadful way.  The same applies to chicken pox and diphtheria.  In these cases think of giving a Nosode which corresponds to the illness, either in the 30^th, 200^th, or, better, in the 10M potency.

  (6) There are rubrics which are absolutely objective:  the rubric “Old people” - consult it if your patient is more than 60; the rubric “infants” which is not in the present Repertory but was in the first edition, and which I have advised you to add to the present edition; the rubrics for nursing mothers and pregnant women.

  (7) Observe the periodicity.

  (8) Observe any obesity, thinness, or varicose veins.

  You can find these manifestations in the Repertory and they can help you a great deal.

  We can’t find very much under general symptoms in defective illnesses.  The patient will complain of weakness, general tiredness, without being precise.  If the symptoms are there, think especially of seeking out and noting chilliness or warm-bloodedness, and any reactions to extremes of temperature.

  As for mental symptoms, here again you won’t find much, unless this illness is defective only because the doctor is!  We are in the habit of asking a great many questions, but, in addition, there are a multitude of little things which we forget because we can’t keep everything in our minds—especially if we are defective doctors!  Which are the mental symptoms we haven’t thought about?  We can have a patient who has no fears or anxieties at present, but who may have had some in his youth.  Quite often we forget these; for example, fear of solitude, of darkness, of robbers, of storms, of water, of animals.  Remember that the individual is, after all, a biological unity.

  Often we forget to find out whether our patients were somnambulists during their youth.

  Now, concerning ideas of suicide, this is a touchy subject.  One should try first of all to bring up the subject indirectly:  “In certain difficult moments of life there are people who ....”, and from the corner of your eye you can look at your patient to see if he reacts.  And if they come to talk to you about wanting to commit suicide, they are reassured just from this little remark.  Don’t forget also that the flattening of the pupil at twelve o’clock is an indication of this.

  You can see so many things.  For instance, if the patient starts when the telephone rings, or when a door suddenly slams.

  Always find out about weeping: involuntary weeping, uncontrollable weeping, weeping during sleep, etc.  And ask them also whether they feel better or worse from it.

  Then there is the question of vertigo, which can give us very precise indications when we know how to ask the right questions.  For instance, if our patient has vertigo while walking we should find out in which direction he feels pulled: forward, backwards, sideways (and if so, to which side).  Always ask whether the vertigo disappears when he closes his eyes.  Then there are vertigos which rotate, or vertigos which give the feeling of being pressed under, or of swaying, vertigos with headaches, or with dimness of vision, vertigos from heights, vertigos looking upwards, lifting the head, vertigos looking at objects which move, for instance, cars in the street.

  Now, as for the head, you know that Dr.TYLER had a particular predilection for headaches.  She said that this was her favourite rubric in all the Repertory.  It is true that this is the chapter which is most carefully elaborated in its modalities and pains.  As a rule patients have great difficulty telling you the kind of pain they feel.  But don’t let us forget to ask how the pains appear:  do they appear and disappear quickly or gradually?  You will find this information on page 141, “increasing gradually”; page 149, “sudden pains”; page 151, “waves of pain”.

  Ask them also about spots before the eyes, which are a frequent and precious indication of Iris versicolor in headaches.

  There are also headaches with constipation (p.138) or with colds (p.138).  The feeling that the head is empty or full can sometimes help one.  Ask them also about the extension of the pains.

  One forgets sometimes perspiration of the head, its locality and modality.  Sometimes they perspire all over the body and not on the head.

  Some people have sensitivity of the scalp from brushing or combing the hair; others can’t stand the warmth of a hat (p.121, carb-an., iod., led., lyc.,), or on the contrary, can’t go without one (p.233, “uncovering”)

  On page 229  you will find the rubric “Sensitiveness of brain”, you should add: “even to hat”, bry., carb-v., chin., crot-t., hep., merc., mez., nit-ac.,  sil,  staph., sulph.  Some people cannot stand pressure,  for instance, the weight of a hat, and this corresponds to mez.  and nit-ac. according to GENTRY .  Under this rubric “Sensitiveness from brushing the hair” you may add Viburnum.

  There are patients who have constant headaches, they never stop:  and there are two rubrics: “chronic” headaches, (am-c., ars., caust., con., sil., sulph., ter., tub.) and constant continued” headaches, on pages 137 ad 138 respectively.  For this kind of headache there is a Nosode which you may think of and which may help  you very much:  Meningococcinum.  On page 139 you have headaches after haircuts (bell., glon., led., puls., sabad., sep.), and on  page 151 “pain from washing head”.  There are also dreadful headaches, badly described, which are often rheumatic headaches (p.146).  Then there are wandering headaches or headaches in spots. (p.148)

  People never have enough time to examine the eyes thoroughly.  But they reveal useful symptoms which the patient will not always tell you.

  Eyes which are glued, closed in the mornings.

  Accumulation of eye gum in the corners of the eyes.

  Cracks and fissures.  Look for them on the face.  You may find them in the outer canthi of the eyes, of the mouth, of the nose.  Sometimes they are uricemic.  Make your patients sweat, make them take exercise, change their diet, and quite often these little crevices will disappear.  There are little cracks on the corners of the nostrils (p. 329, “Cracks”), and at the insertion of the ear (p.288, “Eruptions behind the ears”).

  The pupils: see their degree of dilation or contraction; anisochorea.  Unequal pupils often indicate vago-sympathetic disturbance.

  Blepharo-spasms.  In the Repertory there are three terms which are rather alike.  Usually these patients are too tense.  They need holidays and rest.  In the Repertory look under “Quivering” on page 264, “Twitching”, and “Winking”.  A remedy which has often brought me success and which you can add under “Quivering of lids” is Aranea scinencia.  PATERSON’s Dys-co. often succeeds also.

  Convergent or divergent strabismus.

  Chalazions: look to see if they are on the upper or lower lid.  The location can help you.

  Swelling of the eyes: upper lid or lower lid, or beneath lower lid.  Sometimes there is a little swelling of the inner corner above the upper lid, and this can be a sign of hernia.  It is also often a typical symptom of Kali carb. (p.355, “Bloated, between lids and eye brows”).

  Cold tears, burning or salty tears.

  Hemeralopia.

  Disturbances of refraction; you know for instance that a typical remedy for astigmatism is Tuberculinum.

  Marginal blepharitis is often well taken care of by Bacillinum 30 once a week.

  Falling eyelashes and  eyebrows.

  Look at the conjunctiva, whether they are red, pale, or yellowish.  Sometimes they will indicate little attacks of jaundice: in that case look also at the palms and the palate to see if they are yellowish.

  Some patients constantly rub their eyes (p.265), and this must not be confused with those who wipe their eyes (p.270).

  Nystagmus: find out whether it is horizontal or rotary. 

  The ears: Sometimes when you look at your patients’ ears you see that there is cotton-wool in them and you ask why.  “Well it’s because I can’t stand cold air!”  And then  you have the remedies for this little symptom: Acon., clem., hep., lac-c., merc., sil., thuj.

  Some people don’t know that they had bad hearing in one ear.  Similarly some people don’t know that they see poorly in one eye; it is up to you to verify these matters.

  Always ask your patients if they can perceive the direction from which sounds come: you know that Carbo animalis is the great remedy for those who don’t know where the sound is coming from.

  Others don’t hear anything at all when many people are speaking at once: there are even people who hear better in a noise!

  The nose: The nose also can be very sensitive to the intake of air.  There are people who are always picking their nose, and it is often a symptom of worms.  Also it may be the sign of a frustrated libido.

  As for colds (which doctors fear, because they don’t know what to give!), Homœopathy often succeeds admirably.  One could say that eighty percent of the patients who have a cold are immediately improved with Aconite 200.  We are more interested in obstructions than in discharges, and, in that connection, there are some questions which one would do well to ask properly: On what side? Day or night?  In a cold or in a warm atmosphere?

  Sometimes it is obstructed and it runs at the same time.

  There is a special rubric for obstructed nose in children, and it has excellent remedies: Am-c., ars., asc-t., and for nursing babies: aur., kali-bi., lyc., nux-v., samb.  (see NOSE, obstruction p 341)

  Dry noses are generally hard to cure.

  As for epistaxis, CLARKE highly recommends Ferrum picricum:  he says this remedy succeeds better than all the others.  Vipera also often succeeds very well for nose bleeds, especially if the blood is dark.  There is also a rubric for epistaxis in infants, and the remedy which succeeds most often is Ferrum phos.  (Abrot., bell., chin-s., croc., ferr., ferr-p., ferr-pic., ham., merc., phos., ter.).  Think also of epistaxis at night, washing the face, and all the other possible modalities for which there are specific remedies.

  Ask your patient about his sense of smell.  Then again sneezing is very important in finding the remedy, and don’t forget the modalities.  You remember the morning sneezes which is a very good symptom of  Ammonium carbonicum.

  Face: We already spoke of chapped skin, cracked skin, excoriations.  Cracks in the upper lip will make you think especially of Kali carb. and Natrum mur.  If there are cracks in the corner of the mouth there are a whole series of remedies:  this is the famous angular cheilitis, or commissural exulceration, which is often a sign of a lack of vitamin B2.

  The tongue can also have fissures, especially on the sides, and in the middle, and on the tip.

  Always look at the complexion, the colour of the face; and look also at the expression.  In the Repertory there is a rubric which gives very detailed attention to the expressions of the face: surprised, anxious, worried, aged, tired, sickly expression, etc.  Sometimes these signs will help you to find the remedy.  Look also at the wrinkles and the frowns.  They may be important.

  The perspiration of the face may be hot or cold, or may appear only on one side, or on the upper or lower lip etc.  Some people only perspire on the  nose (and of course the classic remedy is Tuberculinum bov.)

  Mouth: Sometimes the aphthae in the mouth are very troublesome: sometimes also the fault lies with the dentist with his little wads of cotton powdered with Borax. Look at the location of these aphthae: they may be on the gums, on the tongue, or on the lips.  You might try a little mouth-wash with lemon juice: it hurts at first, but sometimes it feels much better afterwards.  My professor of ophthalmodiagnosis had another method: he used to use a little wad of gauze saturated with an infusion of Chamomilla, with which he scraped the aphthae until they bled... and that was that.  On page 397 you will find aphthae of the mouth, and in the general rubric you might add: Sempervivum tectorum (Houseleek).  Add also, cinch-b., ill., ip,., while phos., sars., and semp..., should be in italics.

  Lower down, under “in children”. add bapt., asim., kali-br., plant., viol-t.  Add  “in infancy”: bry., and “in influenza”: ant-t.

  Think of Kali mur when the aphthae progress towards ulceration.

  And for aphthae of the lips: cadm, cinch-b., cub., ip., jug-r., kali-c., mur-ac., hep., merc-c.

  For aphthae of the palate add: Sempervivum, sul-ac, and underline phos.

  Look at the tongue, whether it is dry or wet, whether it oscillates or trembles.

  Among the different smells of the breath there is one so disagreeable that we call it ‘sickening’: it makes you sick if you have to be subjected to it! In such cases, before thinking of a remedy, you might  advise the patient to buy a tongue rake, and to use a mouth-wash of calendula lotion after it.

  Some patients sleep with the mouth open (p.409).

  On page 417 you have the rubric ‘Salivation”.  In the main rubric delete calad., and add: aur., calc-ars., eucal., hipp., merc., nit-s-d., phys., squil., ter., ust., verat-v., vinc., xanth.

  Under “salivation” add the following rubrics and remedies:

  “night”: culex, merc-c.

  “acrid”: lact., merc.,

  “angina, in”: bar-m.

  “aphthae, with”: hell., merc., merc-c., nat-m.

  “apoplexia, in”: anac., nux-v.

  “asthma, in “: carb v.

  “cardialgia, in”: puls.

  “children”: camph.

  “chill and fever, with”: stram.

  “coryza , with”: calc-p., cupr-ac,

  “dentition, in”: hell, merc., nat-m., sil.

  “dribbling”: stram.

  Under “dryness, with sense of”: add kali-m.,

  “esquinancia”: anthr.

  “fetid breath, with”: kali-br.

  “fever, during”:  sulph.

  Under “headache, during”: add cinnb.

  “measles, in”: nat-m.

  Under “mercury, from”: add hydr.

  “mumps, in”: nat-m.

  “nausea, with”: Ip., camph,., carb-s., chin., lach., sulph., verat.,

  Under “pregnancy, during”: add Ip., goss.

  “prosopalgia, in”: mez., plat.

  “scarlatina, in”: Arum-t., caps., Lach., merc., sulph.,

  “malignant”: Am-c.

  Under sleep, during”: add a note to “(see night)”, and add cinch-b., dios., ip., and put kali-c into italics.

  “sleep, preventing”: ign.

  “speaking, constant while”: graph., lach.

  “spit, with constant desire to “: cocc-c., cadm-s., graph., grat., lac-c., lyss., puls.

  “swallow, constantly obliged to”: ip., seneg.

  “toothache, with”: Cham., daph., kali-m., nat-m., and add a note to “(See Teeth, pain, saliva, with involuntary flow of, p.438)”.

  “tonsillitis cough, in”: Bar-c.

  “whooping cough, in”: bry., iris-v., spong.

  Then there is “Speech, stammering”, page 419, and “speech, lisping”, page 419.

  Ask about the sense of taste: the loss of taste or different perversions of taste.

  Teeth:  You have to examine the teeth of  your patients: any caries, the color of the teeth, and any deformation; then you have the untidy tooth of Topinard, which of course is none other than the wisdom tooth!  From my personal experience, one should always extract a wisdom tooth if it causes trouble or grows wrongly.

  Throat: Always look at the condition of the uvula: it hangs like a little sack of water; perhaps there are aphthae on it, or small whitish deposits.  One should examine the tonsils also.

  Neck: Notice whether your women patients wear a scarf; some of them can’t stand having anything round the neck.

  Then there is the whole question of goitres: I confess that I have never managed to make a goitre disappear.  Sometimes my patients have said that they felt much better, but on measuring the neck I noticed that there was no change - it was purely subjective.  But after having treated patients with a goitre for a certain time for their general condition, you may find that they tolerate an operation on the goitre very well, without any after-effects.

  Food desires and aversions:  From page 480 on you will find all the aversions to food, and you may add the following:

  Under “cheese” put olnd. into italics and add: arg-n., nit-ac., staph.

and add the following subrubrics:

  “Roquefort”: hep.

  “strong”: hep., nit-ac.

  “Swiss(Gruyere)”: merc., sulph.

  “chicken”: bacillinum (ALLEN).

  Under  “fruit” add: ars., Chin., Puls.,  carc., and add the following sub-rubric:

  “green”: mag-c.

  Under “milk” add: carc., Staph.

  Under “onions” add: thuj.

  Under “salt food” add carc.

  “strawberries”: chin., sulph.

  Under “sweets” add nux-v., puls.

  Under “Desires”, from page 483 on, make the following additions:

  Under “alcoholic drinks” add the following subrubric:

  “habit , to remove”: stry-n. 3x

  Under “beer, evening”: add med., and put zinc. into italics.

  Under “beer” add another sub-rubric: “thirst, without”: calad.

  Under “chocolate” add: carc., sep.

  “fat food, which aggravates”: ars., hep., Nit-ac., nux-v., sulph., tub., carc.

  Under “fat ham” add carc.

  Under “indigestible things” add: nit-ac., nux-v.

  Under “lemons” add bell., nabal.

  Under “meat” add the following sub-rubric:

  “children, in”: mag-c.

  Under “milk” add carc.

  Under “onions, raw” add thuja

  Under “salt things” add carc.

Under “sweets” put merc. into italics, and add under “sugar” the following sub-rubrics: “only digests if he eats large amounts of sugar”: nux-v., Staph.

  Under “tea” add puls.

  Under “tobacco” add: med., nicotine, plant., and add the following sub-rubrics:

“to remove desire for”: calad., calc., Caust., ign., lach., nux-v., petr., plan., Staph., sulph. (GALLAVARDIN)

  “tomatoes, raw”: ferr.

Desires sweet and sour foods at the same time:  bry., calc., carb-v., kali-c., med., sabad., sec., sep., Sulph.,

Desires sour and salty food: arg-n., calc., calc-s., Carb-v., con., Cor-r., med., merc-i-f., Nat-m., Phos., plb., sulph., thuj., Verat.

Desires sweets and salt: Arg-n., Calc., carb-v., med., plb.,

Desires sweets, which aggravate: am-c., Arg-n., calc., nat-c., Sulph.

  Stomach: Eructations can help us a great deal: so can yawning and sneezing.  Some eructations ameliorate, others aggravate.  Ask your patient about the taste of these eructations.  You will find from page 489 onwards.  There are noisy eructations, others that are controlled. 

  Ask your patient about hiccoughs, and if he has hiccoughs modalities can be very important.  If you make a medical certificate, never mention the word “hiccough”, but speak instead of “phrenoglottic myoclonias”, which makes a very good impression and forces people to look in the dictionary:  You will find hiccoughs on page 501, and under the general rubric add: ambr., amyl-n., ars-h., calad., cupr-s., hydr., hydr-ac., med., lyss., sin-n., staph., stront., tarax., and make the following additions:

Under “night” add the following sub-rubric:

  “urination, with involuntary”: hyos

  “apoplexy, in”: Ol-caj.

  “asthma, begins attack of”: cupr.

  “back, with pain in”: teucr.

  “carried, when, in cholera infantum”: kreos.

  “children, in”: bor., ign., ip.,

    “nursing, while”: hyos.

    after”: teucr.

    “restlessness at night, with”: stram.

  “cholera, in”: aeth., arg-n., cic., cupr., mag-p., ph-ac., verat.

  “concussion of brain, in”: hyos.

  Under “convulsions, with” put cupr., into italics and add stram.

  Under “cough, after”: add ang.

    “diarrhoea, with”: cinnam., verat.

  Under “dinner, before”: put mur-ac.  into italics.

  Under “dinner, after” put phos., into italics.

  Under “drinking, after” put puls. into italics.

  Under “eating, after” add: fil-m., ham., and put par. into italics.

  “emotions, after”: ign.

  Under “eructations, after” add: ars-h., ox-ac.

  Under “fever during” add the following sub-rubric:

  “yellow, in”: ars-h.

  “fruits, after cold”: ars., puls.

  “gastralgia, with”: sil.

  “gastric affections, in”: kali-bi.

  “hepatic colic, in”: chin.

  “hepatitis, in”: bell

  “intestinal intussusception, in”: plb.

  “migraine, in”: aeth.

  “meningitis, in”: arn.

  Under “painful” add mag-p., and add the following sub-rubric:

    “causes crying”: bell.

  “peritonitis, in”: hyos., lyc.

  “salivation, with profuse”: lob-i.

  “sitting up straight”: kreos.

  Under smoking, while”: add calen., scut., and put ign. and sang. into italics.

  “spine, in affections of”: stram.

  “stomach, in cancer of”: carb-an.

  Under “supper, after” add coca.

  “surgery, after”: hyos.

  Under “typhoid, in”: add mag-p.

`  Under” vomiting, while” add: bry., jab., jatr., Verat., and add the following sub-rubrics:

  “before”: cupr.

  “terminates in”: jab.

  “winter, in “: nit-ac.

  For slow digestion add the rubric “slow” on page 526 (and make cross references to “Inactivity” on page 503, and “Disordered” on page 486):aur-m., berb., Chin., corn., corn-f., cycl., eucal., lyc., nuph., nux-v., op., par., sabin., sep., Sil., Tarent.

Cardio-pyloric stenosis: see pages 483, 504, 511.

THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH AND LAW IN MEDICINE

  “There is something harder and stronger than bronze or marble; it is prejudice” - HORACE.

  The search for truth is the supreme goal towards which science struggles; we pursue truth and yet, when almost perceived, it frightens us.  Deceiving us time and again, this phantom  appears  for an instant, and is gone; we must pursue it further and even further without hope of overtaking it...  and he who would join in this pursuit of truth must be absolutely independent, he must completely free his soul of prejudice and passions; he must resolve himself to an absolute sincerity. [5]

  “It would seem almost impossible to find at the present time an unprejudiced observer.  All men are prejudiced.  Man is fixed in  his politics, fixed in his religion, fixed in his ideas of medicine; because of his prejudice he cannot reason.  You need only talk to him a moment these subjects and he will begin to tell you what he thinks, he will give his opinion, as if that had anything to do with it” [6]. An unprejudiced student is the only truly scientific observer.  And it is only to the extent to which we can really free ourselves from preconceived ideas, that scientific truth  united  with moral truth, can procure joy [7] for us.  These verities entice us and elude us; even in the moment when the pursuing mortal believes himself to have attained to her feet, truth is gone, and he is gone, and he is condemned ever to follow after, nor may he know repose.

SCIENCE

  According to BOUTROUX, science is: “The hypothesis of a constant relation between phenomena and an indefinitely perfectible induction”.  Science no longer dreams of giving the intellect an image of externalities which perhaps do not exist, it exposes relationships that may be obviously verified by experience.  And this is sufficient to justify our applying to science the adjective true. Scientific investigation consists in questioning nature in accordance with the hypothesis of this constant interphenomenal relationship.  The object of the scientific intellect is always the same; to create for the human intelligence as faithful and serviceable a representation of the conditions under which phenomena appear, as may be possible.

  Formerly science pretended to be the absolute knowledge of the nature of things, knowledge which is certain and definitive, as opposed to belief which is variable and individual, but this concept of science as absolute and illimitable has not been maintained.  At the moment, science holds that it is based on experience and on experience only.  Thus, by giving to man the means whereby he may induce nature to repeat herself, it lays hold on reality.  It escapes from the everlasting and infinite variety of opinion, in this sense, it is not only compelling on all intelligences, but all its acquisitions are definitive.  But, on the other hand, these very assets form a limitation of its extent and its philosophic value.

  BOUTROUX defined the scientific spirit as essentially “The fact considered as the source, the rule, the measure and the control of all knowledge”.

THE FACT

  But a fact from the standpoint of science, is not merely a reality which may be ascertained or verified.  The investigator who proposes to establish a fact, sets himself before this fact and observes it, as could any other individual, equally motivated solely by a desire for knowledge.  In this sense, he applies himself to discern, to watch, to reckon, to express by means of symbols, and if possible to measure this phenomenon.  But the reflecting mind wonders whether experience can furnish nothing more than mere fact, and whether it would not be possible, solely under the guidance of this same experience, to pass beyond the fact, as here defined, and attain to that which we call law.

  The real object of science is essentially to explain the fact through the discovery of the laws which govern it.

  In beginning this study, in order to avoid the sophisms, the false ideas and ambiguities which cling to words, it is necessary to rigorously define the terms employed.

LAW

  Law (Latin: lex) is defined as the necessary linkage by which phenomena succeed one another, or more simply:

  “A constant relationship, invariable and necessary, uniting two phenomena.” [8]

  REGNAULT [9] defines it: “The regular sequel (or the idea therein) indefinitely identical, of effects of the same cause”.  According to BOUTROUX [10] it is the coupling of phenomena, related among themselves, but isolated from other phenomena.  To MONTESQIEU, it is the necessary relationship existing in the nature of things.

  In order to be of a scientific character, law must be based on observation and on experience, moreover, it must analyze the circumstances producing phenomena and resynthesize them with respect to their normal relationships of similarity and succession. [11]

  This idea of law is the directing concept of modern science.  Unquestionably it is very old; even in the days of Greek science, investigators such as ARCHIMEDES, found laws analogous to those which our physicists formulate.  But it is only in our day that it has become the fundamental idea of science.

  Thus, the law of falling bodies is a constant relationship, invariable and necessary; during a given time, a falling body always traverses the same distance.

  Of course, such accuracy in the determination of law cannot be the object of all sciences.  When biology for instance, investigates the behaviour of an organism under variations of its environment, it does not pretend to measure these variations.  It is however no less true that all sciences work toward the establishment of a definite law.

  Science, thus, by general recognition, is characterised by its endeavour to discover the constant, invariable and necessary relationships existing between the facts of observation.

MEDICINE

  Despite the present tendency to consider applied medicine as a science, it possesses neither principle nor law in anything resembling therapeutic medication.

  In general definition, medicine is at one time both an art and a science; a science in its scientific perception, and art in its application.  But there are times when all recognition of the scientific character is denied.  In the last edition of the dictionary of medicine, LITTRÉ defines it as follows:

  “An art and not a science, for it seeks a  practical result and not a scientific truth.  It rests on individual procedures and not on principles of constant formulations.”

  This definition, however, cannot be considered as adequate today.  In reality, while surgery, anatomy and physiology are rapidly becoming medical sciences, therapy remains, as ever an art, pure and simple, in as much as no law has been formulated in accordance with which the physician decrees his prescription.

  Any one is capable of understanding the science of medicine, and most succeed in brilliantly passing their examinations.  In spite of this, however, many are incapable of applying and practising that which one may still call the medical art, the art of healing.  To apprehend the mere science, application and perseverance coupled with intelligence are necessary, the art requires more.

  If the physician has not the love of his art and his profession, united with a sincere desire to heal, he cannot succeed.  But though he may combine all these qualities lacking a law and principle of therapy, he lacks a compass, he wanders aimlessly, dependent on authority, obliged to follow hidden paths, to pay homage to the goddess called “Fashion” who exists unfortunately even in medicine.

  Therapeutic treatises of past centuries hold for us today nothing more than historic interest and amusement, for the interpretations and hypotheses built on the experiences of that period have been modified by a succeeding age.  And to the extent to which theories change, therapeutic agents change also.

  At first it seemed as though theories lasted only a few moments, and that ruins were piled upon ruins.  On one day they are born, on the following they are the mode, the third day they are classic, and the fourth day they are obsolete.  But, if one searches more profoundly, one sees that those which die in thi s fashion are theories, properly so-called, theories which pretend to teach us the nature of things.  However, they frequently hold within themselves a something which survives; if one of them has shown us a true relationship, the knowledge of that relationship is definitely acquired and one finds it again, disguised anew in the other theories which successively reigned in its place.  This certainly should give us a little courage!

  Today, the traveller is struck by the realization of the extent to which the great medical center of different countries lack unity of opinion concerning the administration of remedies, as well as the choice and the dosage of the latter.  Here is it opotherapy, there vaccinotherapy, somewhere else serotherapy which is being developed and tested.  Still elsewhere a scepticism born of past experiences and an examination of statistics brings a return to the hypocratien method of expectation, or reinstates physiotherapy as the only method of treatment, “Primum non nocere” becoming the order of the day.  Thus, according to Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, one of the best American Universities, statistics show a lower mortality wherever medication has been supplanted by rigid hygienic and dietetic measures.  Meanwhile the laboratories multiply; researches, of which numerous publications are the fruit, grow, but all aim rather at producing new remedies, than demonstrating the danger of such medication habitually employed.  No one seeks through research to synthesize a guiding law  in the art of healing.  Has such a definite law, such a compass on our uncharted sea, never existed in our therapy?

  Apriori, one may wonder or conjecture - but that is not the attitude of the man of science.  To seek it, that is his duty!

  But this unhoped for law, the homœopathic physicians think they possess - the homœopathic doctrine pretends to disclose.  Should the fact that this doctrine is considered by the best European scientists as empirical, prevent our testing it by the criterion of experience and reason?  A paucity of  partisans of any given doctrine does not apriori, weaken its conclusions; among its supporters there may be such as give proof of their ignorance, their lack, not merely of scientific spirit, but of professional probity itself.  Even this is not a valid argument against the theory which is an entity in itself, independent of individuals.  Any doctrine, be it what it may, is always worthy of attention and criticism, though this may be given merely from the view-point of the history of the sciences.  Finally, if there be reality here, it is urgently necessary to study this system with the most profound care, for it would indicate the dawn of a new era in medicine. 

  The art of therapy would  be transformed into a science!

  It is the resolution of precisely this problem, which has forced us to undertake a voyage of discovery and study to this new world.  Seven years of investigation of the facts yielding these conclusions have led to the work presented in this thesis, written to fulfill the requirement for the doctorate of medicine, and refused by the faculty of medicine of Geneva. 

(From Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Session of the International Hahnemannian Association, Philadelphia, July 1-3, 1926)

  Homoeotherapy, June, Aug. & Oct. 1976.

REMEDIES FOR THE EMERGENCY KIT

Bacillinum

  Very useful remedy for all convalescents, for patients with frequent relapses.  You are called again to the bedside of your patient, your last remedy helped, but again a relapse.  It’s no use repeating the remedy if it has been prescribed two or three times for a bad cold, you have to administer Bacillinum.  Bacillinum is the trituration of the material of a tuberculous cavity.  As a rule the 30^th C.H. is the most successful dose.  Add it, in KENT’s Repertory, p. 1349, to the rubric “tendency to take colds”.  It is a good remedy for light coughs with easy expectoration (not for the sticky, hard to detach sputum) -- so add it to p.815 to the rubric “expectoration easy”.

  It is also good for pityriasis or lice (p.129).  Think of it for these very deep headaches, worse from motion. Bacillinum does work in conditions where allopathic drugs are totally ineffective, such as eczematous marginal blepharitis: for these patients with crusty, itchy eyelids (p. 239, eruptions, lids on, eczema, margins on ).  Give the 30^th C.H. every 8 days for 1-2 months.

Baptisia tinctoria

  This is the remedy for infant’s stomatitis.  Infantile diarrhoea, especially if putrid.  Baptisia is usually indicated for severe grippe or flu, with profound prostration and sensation of body soreness.  Patients complain mainly of being tired, especially in the neck, unable to find a comfortable place on the pillow.  Remember that they generally complain, in all febrile diseases, of excess heat in the neck, they don’t know what to do to get cooled; there is a simple way, put a cotton towel back of the head and pull it right or left when hot.

  The typical Baptisia patient looks besotted, stupefied and lachrymose.  Headaches with sore throat with deep putrid ulcerations.  Strange to say, Baptisia sore throats are hardly painful inspite of these deep ulcerations.  Same thing with Lachesis.  On the contrary, if the patient complains of atrocious pains in the throat, and, on examination, there isn’t much to see, that is Belladonna.  Baptisia characteristic: can swallow only liquids, the opposite of Lachesis and Merc-cor. where swallowing fluids is almost impossible for the pains.

  In whatever position lain on, the parts feel very sore, the same with Pyrogenium and Arnica which have the same characteristic of being unable to find a comfortable position in bed.  Baptisia has a stuporous state with the typical characteristic that the patient answers correctly when talked to, then falls back suddenly in his stupor; he listens, he understands, he answers.  Two other remedies have this same symptoms:  Arnica and Hyoscyamus.

  Certain patients have the sensation of the body being double. Three remedies present the same symptom; Anacardium, Nux moschata and Stramonium, together with Baptisia and Petroleum, and there are a few remedies in the first degree.

  These patients suffer from insomnia and their limbs, mostly the legs, seem to be separated from the trunk, or their limbs don’t belong to them.  These things are very odd; he says: “my leg is talking with my left hand,” and he feels that his limbs are scattered in the bed.  In these acute cases, give and repeat the 200^th.

  The limbs are not only scattered on the bed, but he tries to put them together though unsuccessfully.  Besides Baptisia, this symptom is found also in Phosphorus and Petroleum:

  great sleepiness with very heavy eyelids,

  the head feels enlarged.

  These patients have, like Cuprum, frontal headaches at the root of the nose.  These little symptoms are really good to know in acute cases.  Parosmia: the patient perceives an odor of burned feathers; this odor is very characteristic of this remedy.  They also have an awful sensation of a hole, of emptiness in the stomach; they suffer of mericysm, i.e. regurgitations of food.  As in Dulcamara, it has an autumnal dysentry, or in warm weather.  It is a very useful remedy, almost specific, for threatening abortion following a moral depression, or a shock from bad news.  The remedy closest to Baptisia is Echinacea.  It is a psoric of short action but indicated mostly by septic condition of fast pace.

Baryta carbonica

  It fits patients catching cold at the least pretext, and mostly sore throats; for childrean with sore throat due to cold, and able to swallow  liquids only, like Baptisia.  When one feels, deep in the pharynx, a little bar with a dry painful feeling, worse swallowing especially food, one single dose of Baryta carbonica 200.... one hour later it is all over, gone.  Sore throats due to cold.  Coryza with swelling of the upper lip; Dr. NEBEL—I don’t know why—used to call it: the pig’s lip.... mostly in children with big tummies.

  It is an excellent remedy for tonsil hypertrophy and all acute inflammations of the throat, especially if there is a tendency to quinsy.  All acute tonsillitis due to cold or following the suppression of foot sweats.  Dysphagia, difficult deglutition especially when swallowing empty.  These patients can only swallow liquids, and the external throat is painful to touch or palpation.  The Baryta carbonica pains are mostly burning.  When somebody tells you: “Doctor, I think I am going to have an angina, because, last night, I woke up several times, with burning pains in my throat”, you can be sure it is Baryta carb.:  Burning pains in the throat at night points to Baryta carb.: in the 3^rd degree in the Repertory.

  In women a very useful symptom:  Epistaxis before menstruation.

  It is a remedy for adenitis, of all sorts, particularly for occipadenitis.  Also indicated in parotiditis, inflammation of the sub-maxillary glands, painful and swollen.  This remedy has a strange parosmia: the odor of pine smoke.  Children refuse to play, like Rheum.  Children hate strangers, they are shy and hide when an unknown person enters the house.  They are timid, fearful, cowards, they hide behind the furniture; they cover their face with their hands and look between their fingers: this is a typical attitude of Baryta carb.

  These children have unfortunately a very poor memory, they learn with great difficulty, and are always the last ones at school.

  Salivation during sleep, like Mercurius.

  Loss of voice or hoarseness due to cough.

  Sensation of smoke in the chest, as if the lungs were full of smoke.  Excellent remedy for choking catarrh with pulmonary paralysis in old people, especially if obese, hypertensive, with suffocating cough, with chest full of mucus and rales; they cannnot expectorate; in such cases it is not Antimonium but Baryta carb.

  Spasmodic cough by tickling in the throat or in the pit of the stomach.  Many believe that only Sepia or Bryonia are indicated for this symptom and so forget that Baryta carb., fits very well.  Coughs aggravated evening until midnight, often in patients with cold feet or after suppression of perspiration.  Well indicated also in intertrigo, between the thighs and scrotum like Hepar, Sulphur, and sometimes Thuja.

Belladonna

  It is the remedy of hypersensitivity, turgescence and violence, all three major indications of Belladonna.  Hypersensitivity to light.  The Belladonna patient is always sensitive to light; photophobia—to the least noise; he hates any noise, any motion or jar.  As you enter the room and come to the crib or bed give a little jar to it and see how the child reacts: if he startles, it is already an indication for Belladonna, especially if light bothers.  These same symptoms apply to grownups as well.

  Turgescence - when there is heat, redness and tumefaction, with a burning skin, a burning head with cold extremities.

  Belladonna eyes are generally red, the face scarlet.  In case of breast  inflammation, for  example, you will see red streaks radiating from the inflammatory focus along the lymphatics.  The throat is red, with dysphagia.  EVERYTHING IS RED IN BELLADONNA:  The eyes, the skin . . . everything . . . even the mood.  It is for that reason that it is the remedy of Scarlatina, the smooth kind not the granular one, and HAHNEMANN insists much about the difference of these 2 forms.  It is also a prophylactic of the smooth type of Scarlatina;  if there is a case in the family, give Belladonna 200 to the whole  family, morning and evening for 2 days, you’ll find it an excellent prophylactic. A definite characteristic is the throbbing of the carotid arteries, also the temporal. Everything pulses and throbs. The pains are throbbing, pulsating like the heart, also burning, stabbing pains.

  Violence - These patients are perfectly normal in their life, but when sick become very disagreeable and violent.  Everything comes and goes suddenly: a nephrotic colic, for example.  It starts suddenly, might last for a while, but disappears quickly.  The same with Chamomila, the  remedy of  children where everything appears and disappears suddenly.  The child cries before the whooping cough attack.  You often hear say that when there are tears with cough that Natrum mur., is the remedy, in reality, that means lachrymation, which is involuntary and not crying which is voluntary.

  Perspiration on covered parts only.  Convulsions with fever during dentition, to be differentiated with Magnesia phos which has convulsions without fever.  Rage fits, disposition to bite, to tear, to hit and to spit on surrounding objects or even persons.  When the face is pale and suddenly reddens, but there are many remedies having this symptom such as Aconite, Ferrum, Lac caninum.  The patient with very noisy fits of laughter, also the sardonic type which is awful to see.  When delirious, the patient wants to escape and go back home, like Bryonia.

  The mouth is dry with thirst, like Bryonia and Natrum mur.  In children, the tongue hangs out, swollen, thick, scarlet, completely dry.  It is also one of the main remedies for children who grind teeth particularly if affected with obstinate constipation.  Pain at the appendix region, at the least touch; cannot stand the weight of the covers.  We have some remarkable remedies for this right lower quadrant region.  For the appendix, a good local and reliable remedy: Iris tenax.  If you get very definite symptoms, you of course prescribe the corresponding remedy which often is Bryonia.  But don’t forget Iris tenax.  If the patient has had already several remedies, complains of fatigue and constant pains, don’t forget Arnica which can be very helpful.  Even yesterday, I saw a patient with abdominal pains and a high temperature, who immediately improved with Arnica 200K.  But if the patient cannot stand the weight of the covers and is worse from the least contact or touch, think of Belladonna.

  It is the remedy of the head, par excellence.  The routinists invariably give Belladonna for a headache, Nux vomica for the stomach and Arsenicum for the intestines ...

  If the odor of tobacco is intolerable and produces headaches, think of Belladonna.  The eyes are always burning and the pupils dilated.  It is very rare indeed to see serious cases of Belladonna with contracted pupils.  Boring of the head into the pillow; in whooping cough, the child cries before the fit.  It is one of the remedies for airsickness, with Coca.  Calcarea is the great remedy for mountain sickness, but not for air sickness.

  In Belladonna, the laterality is right, typical for most of its ailments.  Aggravated at 3 p.m.  Hours of aggravations are important.  For Bryonia, it is 9 p.m.  A neuralgia, a whooping cough, a diarrhoea, a convulsion worse at 3 p.m. require Belladonna.

  Worse from cold applications and cold in general;  the opposite of Ledum.  Worse from sleep: the opposite of Phosphorus.  Particularly cannot take a siesta in the afternoon, because he always feels worse for it.  Cannot stand drafts.  Each time he has his hair cut or washed, he gets a cold.  Give him a dose of Belladonna before going to the barber and there will be no cold.

  Worse lying, especially lying on the affected side, however there is no improvement lying on the other side.  Worse drinking, when touched, from the sun and light.  They want to keep in the dark.  Worse walking in the wind, especially the north cold wind.  Worse from eating sausages, hot dogs.  Belladonna is sleepy yet cannot sleep.  Indicated in children especially those with a large head.  When touching a Belladonna child, you’ll feel not only the heat of the skin, but after taking away your hand the impression of heat persists.  Where does animal heat come from?  The Hindus claim that it comes from the 3^rd chakra.  The first chakra is anal, the anus meaning elimination, it is Shiva, the destructor (Muladhara chakra).  The 2^nd chakra is genital, the 3^rd umbilical: when meditating on that chakra one meditates on animal heat.  Indeed our heat is elaborated in the intestines due to the activity of all the saprophytes germs.

  In febrile conditions, the child bores his head backward on the pillow, or rolls it from side to side.  The child has a fixed, piercing, fiery look, the face is red, pupils dilated.  Any motion aggravates.  The child refuses to be brushed or combed, the girls leave their hair hanging, and refuse to be touched, or brushed, as it is painful.  You find a temporary strabismus in severe conditions; strabismus during fever.  If the patient asks for a lemon during fever, think of Belladonna.  Constrictions everywhere: in the throat, uterus, liver and anus.  As you can see, Belladonna is a remarkable polychrest which will achieve splendid cures if you know and remember all the characteristics.

Bellis perennis

  That’s the little daisy; a most remarkable drug, almost forgotten, a vulnerary.  That’s the remedy for traumas, bruises, ecchymoses as Arnica.  Whereas Arnica is aggravated by touch or pressure, Bellis is rather ameliorated.  This is the typical remedy for a woman who hits her breasts by pulling a drawer, and later on a nodule or tumor develops.  Breast nodule following a trauma, it is a specific, more effective than Conium.

  This is the remedy to prescribe following any important surgical procedure: laparotomy, a thoracic or brain operation; it can be administered even before the intervention, as a prophylactic.  It is also the remedy following falls on the coccyx, as Hypericum and Silica, which are also well indicated.  In such cases, the X-ray will show a light luxation of the coccyx which, sometimes, can be relieved by a simple manual reduction.  I take this opportunity to give you a psychological advice.  Whenever you do a digital examination, please take it easy; I am appalled to see how inhuman and cruel the physicians can be... he should be submitted to the same rough handling and find out for himself how really painful this is.  Always lubricate the finger, then approach the finger gradually without penetrating, then press gently, and, if there is any resistance wait a few seconds.  Do get in only when the finger is accepted without resistance, this way you will never hurt.  You can dilate somewhat the sphincter before going deeper.  Easy, gently... you’ll find the patient grateful.  Bellis perennis is also the remedy for sprains, muscular and tendinous.  It is the rival of Ruta. 

  If during the summer, you have a patient who got overheated and drank cold or iced drinks, Bellis is very good to avoid complications of 3 different kinds: headaches, vomitting, diarrhoea, Bellis doesn’t like cold, nor water, shower, cold baths, like Sulphur and Belladonna.  As the latter, it has mydriasis.  During pregnancy, it is useful for varices.  Also good for painful furuncles and acne.

  Whereas Belladonna has the right laterality, Bellis has the left one, however if it is the right breast that was traumatized, you can very well prescribe Bellis just the same.  It is better to take it in the morning as it is apt to produce insomnia with a 3 a.m. awakening, or later with no chance to fall asleep anymore.  In the repertory, p.1134 to the rubric “pain as if sprained” you should add Bellis perennis.  And I advise you to add too, for chronic sprains, chronic pains following ankle sprains, or the tendency to turn your ankles any time: Strontium carbonicum.  For chronic sprains give one dose of the 200^th once a week.  In acute cases, give it daily.  I usually prescribe the 10M the first day, also the next day, then a 50M, the third day, one dose.  When complicated with inflammation, I prefer one dose of the 200^th every two hours.  Remember to keep the patient busy in acute cases and give them their remedy in one glass, and placebo in another and alternate every hour or every 2 hours. An acute patient needs something hourly.  I remember a 45 year old clerk who sawed wood all afternoon, and his right arm became paralysed completely.  Bellis 10M, one dose, cured him in 24 hours.

Berberis

  There are two Berberis:  Berberis vulgaris and Berberis aquifolia. We use Berberis vulgaris.  It is the drug for the back, the kidney and the liver.  It is a superb remedy for lumbago, especially lumbosacral lumbago with intense fatigue in that area, worse sitting or lying.  Usually these pains are caused by jars and worse by motion, walking, better when standing. Characteristic for this remedy are radiating pains, waist radiating or down the legs.  For the kidney it is indicated for renal colic with stabbing, stitching, lancinating pains, always radiating from the back in all directions, but mostly down, most often accompanied by the urge to urinate.  Books mention either the right or the left laterality; I have told you before that for renal calculi the question of laterality is unimportant, you can forget it.  Berberis works well on either side.  It has a peculiar boiling pain, like a boiling in the lumbar region.

  While urinating, there are pains in the groins and thighs.  The urine is always dark and putrid, the opposite of Gelsemium the urine of which is aqueous, like clear water.

  Berberis is also a remedy for the liver and gallbladder.  Hepatic colics radiating to the left shoulder, added indication: jaundice with clayey stools.  Gnawing pains in the epigastrium, on the right side with shooting pains in the left shoulder blade.  Also radiation from the 10^th rib to the umbilicus.

  Great remedy for dysmenorrhea, when the pains radiate in every direction and mostly in the thighs.  The body is cold with a warm face; chills and fever at 11 a.m. Patient is apathetic with dark circles around the eyes.  (Dr.CANTEGRIT):  Usually in nephrotic colic, the pains radiate rather up than down.  Furthermore, when the urine shows red deposits adherent to the bottom, Berberis’ urine has a dissolving power which cleans the vessel.

Bismuthum subnitricum

  That’s the remedy for gastralgia and cardialgia of a cramp-like character.  Bismuth has all imaginable stomach pains: burning, pulling, twitching, cramping, etc., worse when gagging.  These pains are sometimes accompained by tremblings, even fainting.  Headaches alternating with gastralgia.  These patients have awful pains with convulsive efforts to vomit after laparotomy; of course one thinks of Bellis perennis, but when the patient is beset with gagging, the allopath administers morphine, but you’ll give Bismuth 200 and you’ll be surprised that the patient won’t need morphine.

  These patients, like Dioscorea, are better when leaning backward in opisthotonos, never forward like Colocynthis.  They are intensely thirsty with vomiting immediately after drinking, like Phosphorus.  They vomit not only the water but solid food as well; but the water comes up immediately, solid food a little later, unlike Phosphorus.

  It is the remedy for children who are terrified of being alone, who grab their mother’s skirts and never let go.  It is also the remedy for toothache better from cold drinks which they keep in their mouth, but as soon as the water warms up, the pains return.

Bufo rana

  This is a remedy less frequently used, yet you must know it and keep it in the kit.  This remedy is sometimes found under the name of “Bufones” as it applies to different kinds of frogs and toads.  We usually use Bufo rana, and there is also Bufo cinereus but rarely used.

  It is one of the main remedies for epileptic fits, mostly nocturnal, during sleep.  In the course of treatment of an epileptic patient suffering of diurnal epilepsy, you might observe, under the influence of our remedies, that the fits become nocturnal, it is a good sign meaning a possible cure.  Also if the fits change into absences.  It is the remedy for epilepsy worse during menses; when the lunation changes; after a dental extraction; after a suppuration; in patients suffering from violent headaches on waking.

  I had once a patient who had fits during intercourse.  No doubt it is a rare situation, nevertheless very embarrassing ...  But think of Bufo in such cases  as it has a specific action on the genital sphere.

  In cases of convulsions, it is very useful to know what happens before, during and after the fit.  The premonitory symptoms are for us really precious.

  Before convulsions, Bufo has markedly dilated pupils, and if you have the luck to be there at that time, you will find that the pupillary reflex is abolished.  The right eye is usually wide open while the left one is closed.  The eyes look up and the mouth opens, while the patient jabbers indistinctly.  The convulsions start often in the face which is contorted.

  During the convulsions, you can see a bloody saliva oozing from the mouth; the patient bites his tongue, has involuntary urination; the thumb is drawn into the palm; the patient is drenched in perspiration; the limbs are cold and the head and face warm.  When you have a patient with cold feet, cold extremities, always look if the head is hot or cold.  Arnica is also a remedy with a warm head and face and cold extremities.  Bufo often has convulsions without consciousness, either tonic or clonic.

  Bufo is also a good remedy for haematuria during parturition.

  It is a great remedy for Sciatica

  Finally it is a remedy that has given me wonderful results in septic lymphangitis, with red streaks and swelling from the wound to the adenopathy.  I have seen the spectacular cure of a patient who had a lacerated finger followed by an increasing fever and lymphatics beautifully outlined on her arm.  One dose of Bufo 200, and everything settled back in order within a few hours.  This remedy acts with great rapidity.

  It is a remedy to be considered in cancer of the lips, mostly ulcerated, and also in cancer of the breast.

  In case of anthrax, it is a very precious remedy when the usual red areola is lacking, but a blue one is there instead.  Think of this remedy also in the beginning of a panaritium.

Cactus grandiflorus.

  One can synthetize this remedy  in one word; Constriction.  It is rare to prescribe Cactus unless there is constriction somewhere.  These patients are easily affected with violent congestions, which in plethorics often lead to haemorrhages.  These patients have a red face.  Sanguine apoplexy (Aconite) with localized pulsations, on the epigastrium, for example.

  Fear of death, even more pronounced than in Aconite.  The patient thinks that he is incurable, as Arsenicum.  It is a brillant remedy for haemorrhages: of the nose, the lung, the stomach, the rectum, the bladder.  Yet don’t forget Crotalus cascavella, Millefolium and Phosphorus.

  With Cactus you have a remedy for patients who cry and yell from the pain.

  Headaches like a  heavy load on the vertex, better by pressing over it (Menyanthes or buck bean, Alumen, Cina and Veratrum).  Menopausal cephalalgia, as with Glonoine and Lachesis.  Congestive periodical neuralgias and cephalalgia, mostly of the right laterality, throbbing and always intense.

  Sensation of the body being locked up in a tightening iron cage, as if being crushed by this constriction.  This symptom is absolutely typical of Cactus which is the remedy of all constrictions; these patients have to loosen up their clothing as soon as they get home.  Constriction of the throat, of the chest, the ribs, the heart, the bladder, the rectum, the uterus, the vagina, and often provoked by the slightest contact.  These patients complain of oppression, as from a great weight on the chest (what the Germans call Alpendruck).  Sensation in the inferior  thorax as if a rope tightening the diaphragm, impeding its expansion.  Sensation as if an iron hand clutches the heart with alternating release, this becomes unbearable to the patient.  As if the heart had not enough room to beat.  At the same time there is numbness in the left arm with tingling in the fingers; this symptom is also found in Latrodectus.

  Cactus patients have day and night palpitations, worse walking, worse  lying  on the left side as in Lachesis.  Pain in the heart at the beginning of menses.  It is the remedy for endocarditis with mitral insufficiency, accompanied by violent palpitations.  Pains wherever they might occur, are fulgurating, like stabbing, coming and going.

  The menstrual flow, in Cactus, stops as soon the patient reclines as in Bovista  and Causticum.  It is an interesting symptom for the homœopathic physician even if it cannot be explained. 

  Generally the Cactus menses are dark, thick clots.

  The Cactus fever is intermittent.  It might have a regular periodicity  everyday at the same hour; the characteristic hour is 11 p.m. and 11 a.m.  Fever at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. with anguish and  dyspnoea.

  The Cactus patient is pulseless, breathless, without strength and often without temperature.  Hypothermia - A warm head with cold extremities, mostly the feet.  During mental exertion, like preparing for a test, the head is too warm.

  -Journal of the American Institute of  Homœopathy, March 1971.

(Translated from the Proceedings of the Groupement Hahnemannien De Lyon;  7^th Series, 1, p.18 by Roger SCHMIDT.MD.  San Francisco,  California.)

HOMŒOPATHIC REMEDIES FOR ASTHMA

  Dr. SCHMIDT calls attention to the fact that KENT omits the pathognomonic symptoms of asthma from his repertory study as they are not helpful in differentiating the homœopathic remedy.  To individualize and evaluate is made easier by the different types used in the repertories.  In the following abstract we are omitting over five pages of direct quotation from KENT’s Repertory, 3^rd edition.

LIST OF ASTHMA REMEDIES

  List of asthma remedies according to T.F.ALLEN, ANSHUTZ, BOERICKE, CHARGE, CLARKE, DEWEY, V.GRAUVOGL, HARTMANN, HIRSHEL, HUGHES, JAHR, KNERR, LEE, LIPPE, MALCOLM, MULLER, MURE, NASH, SHEDD, STAUFFER, TESTE:

  ADRENAL., Ail., ALCOH., Aldehynum., Alumn., Ambr., Ambrosia., Amm.gum., Amyg., Amyl.nit., Anthoxanthyum, Anti-febrinm., Ant.ars., Ant.iod., Ant.sul.aur., ARG.CY., ARMORACEA SATIVA, Arum drac., Arum mac., Ascl.cor., (Syr.), Ascl. tub., ASPAR., Aspirin, Atrop.sul., Aur.met., BAC., Bapt., BLATTA AM., Bor., Calc.acet., Calc.hypohos., Camphorosma, Cann.ind., Caps., Cast., Caul., Chen., Chin.sulph., Chlorof., CHLOR., Coca., Cocainum, Coch., Corrub., Cupr acet., CUR., Cycl., Der., Digitalinum., Dol., Egg.vac., Elect., Eriod., Euc., Euph.pil., FEL TAURI., FLUR.AC., FORM.AC., GAD. MORRH., GAL.AC., GALVAN, Gaul., Gins., Gland.sup.sic., GRIND SQUAR., Guai., Hydr., Ibr., Ill., Junc., Kali cy., Kali mur., Kreos., Lac can., Lacat.sat., Lact.vir., Lam., Lem., Lin.uxig., LOB., Magn.arct., Mag.austr., Mag.carb., Mag.phos., Magn glau., MEL CUM., ALL CEP., Merc.bin., Merc. cor., Merc.dulc., Merc praec.rubr., Mill., MORPH., Morph.acet., Mur.ac., Naph., Nat. sulph., Nicc., Ol.jec.as., Osm., Onis.asel. (Ol.ric.) OVARIN., Pall., Pass., Pect., Phos.mur., Piloc., Pimp., Plb.aceat., Pop., Prun., Ptel., PULM VUL., QUEER., (Aspidosperma) Ran.bulb., Rheum., Sabal., Samb.can., Sang.nit., Sanic., Scroph., Sep., Silph.l., SILPHIUM., Solidago., Spong., Staph., Sterc., Strych., Succ., Sulph.hyd., Tab., TELA ARACH., Tereb., Terp., Hydr., Teucr., THYMUS, THYROID, Trachinus., TRIOSTEUM PERF., Tub., Variol., Verb., Visc., Wyeth., Xanth., Zincum val., Ziz.

ASTHMA REMEDIES ACCORDING TO SCHUSSLER

  CALC. FLOUR., CALC. PHOS., KALI MUR., cardiac asthma KALI PHOS., nervous asthma, NAT MUR., NAT.PHOS., Nat. sulph., Silicea.

OTHER ASTHMA REMEDIES NOT FOUND IN THE PRINCIPAL BUT FOUND IN THE FOLLOWING MODALITIES.

  AETH. during coitus  ALL.ACT. periodic asthma,  AMMON. MUR only during the night.  ANG. only alternating with headaches, ARAL.  evening after lying down, BAD. hay asthma only.  BENZ AC. alternating with gout.  CALC. ARS. only after midnight.  CEDR. after coitus.  EUPH. hay asthma, GLON. only alternating with headache.  Hyper.  only ameliorated by expectoration, ICTOD. only spasmodic.  KALM. only alternating with eruption.  KALI BICH. only at 2 a.m. PALL. only after emotion. PHOS. AC. only spasmodic.  POTH. only from dust ameliorated by stool.  RHUS TOX. only alternating with eruption.  SABAD hay asthma.  STICT. hay fever, SUMB. only spasmodic.  SYPH. during storm. VALER. only spasmodic. ZINC. only in the morning.

  L’Homœopathic Franchise, May 1929.

THE LIFE OF  DR. JAMES TYLER KENT

  On March 31^st 1849, at Woodhull, New York State, in the United States of America, a son, James Tyler, was born to Stephen KENT and his wife CAROLINE.

  This son was to attend the Franklin School in Prattsburgh for his primary schooling and to go on to the Woodhull Academy in the town of his birth to complete his secondary education.  At the age of nineteen, James Tyler KENT graduated from Madison University at Hamilton, New York State, with Ph.B. degree; this was followed two years later by that of A.M. from the same university.  He then went on to study medicine at the Faculty of Bellevue Medical College where he passed his final examination brilliantly and qualified as a doctor of medicine.  He subsequently attended two courses of lectures at the Eclectic Medical Institute at Cincinnati in the State of Ohio.

  This eclectic school taught the same branches of medicine as in Europe: anatomy, histology, physiology, pathological anatomy, etc., and also offered the same clinical teaching.

  The therapeutic teaching of this Eclectic Medical Institute was much more comprehensive than that of the official Allopathic school.  Allopathy, Homœopathy, Naturopathy, Chiropraxy, as well as various other methods (hence the term “Eclectic”)  little known or quite unknown in Europe at that time, were taught. But all subjects, and especially Homœopathy, were taught very superficially  and as a result  KENT  was neither impressed nor convinced by this latter therapeutic  method.

  We must remember that such Eclectic teaching, which imparted to its students a genuine tolerance of the various therapeutic methods, although of advantage to some, caused quite serious difficulties to others, since it did not extol one method and claim its superiority over the others.  Thus the student was left to make his own free choice of method according to his personal inclination or based on influences to which he had been exposed or the force of circumstances.

  At the age of 26 KENT married an American girl who was, like himself, a Baptist.  He began his professional career in St. Louis (State of Missouri) as a practitioner of the Eclectic School of medicine.  An austere man, of great integrity, he was a very conscientious physician who worked exceedingly hard.  In addition to his practice he was active as a writer, making contributions, and being connected with several eclectic journals of the time.  In addition he participated in the councils of Eclectic National Medical Association of which he was regarded as a most valued member.

  Although an undemonstrative man KENT adored his wife and he was deeply troubled about the worsening state of her health; a state of debility, langour, anaemia and persistent insomnia had kept her bedridden for months.  It was at this time that KENT underwent a period of considerable dissatisfaction with the therapeutic methods being practiced by himself and his colleagues.  Neither his own eclectic practitioners nor those of the allopathic school could bring about an improvement in his wife’s condition.  When it became visibly worse, Mrs.KENT begged him, as a last resort, to call in a certain homœopathic doctor, well on in years, who had been recommended to her as being highly competent.  KENT looked a little askance at this suggestion as he had already consulted every physician of repute in St. Louis.  Being faced with a condition which was growing every day more serious he considered it ridiculous to resort to Homœopathy (of the kind he had been taught during the course taken at the Eclectic Medical School), about which he was by no means convinced and whose minute doses appeared to him to be absurd for a case as serious as that of his wife’s.  However, he bowed to her insistence, at the same time expressing a wish to be present at the consultation.

  The homœopath, Dr.PHELAN, goatee-ed and dressed in a frock coat, arrived one afternoon in his barouche.  He questioned the patient for over an hour, asking her about her antecedents, her past illnesses, accidents, her mental state, and her fears and her cravings. He elicited from her many  details regarding her likes and dislikes about food although she had complained of no digestive troubles.  He asked her minute details about her indispositions, her reaction to cold and heat and to climatic and seasonal factors.  KENT found the questions so odd and seemingly inappropriate that, as he leaned on the side of the bed,  he could not refrain from smiling.

  Having auscultated and examined the patient, Dr.PHELAN asked for a glass of water and KENT brought it.  He then saw Dr. PHELAN drop a few minute globules into the glass and give Mrs.KENT a spoonful of the mixture.  Mrs.KENT was then asked to take a small spoonful every two hours until - “the homœopath had the effrontery to say” - she went to sleep. Since for several weeks his wife had barely closed her eyes, KENT felt that the homœopath was either an impostor or a quack and he brusquely showed him out.

  KENT then went to his study, which adjoined the sickroom, to continue work on a lecture he was preparing.  Two hours later, not wanting to distress his wife, he administered a spoonful of the medicine but without the least conviction as to its efficacy.  He returned to his study and then became so engrossed in his work and he forgot to return to his wife two hours later to give her the third dose of the medicine.

  It was some four hours later that he suddenly remembered his oversight.  Going to his wife’s room he found her in a deep and sound sleep, something long unknown to her despite her frequent and conscientious taking of drugs.  Thereafter the old homœopath paid daily calls and gradually the condition of the patient improved until she was able to get up.  Within a few weeks she had recovered her health completely.

  This humble homœopathic physician had been able to achieve that which none of the eminent physicians or professors of the allopathic and eclectic schools whom KENT had consulted had been able to do.  Dr.PHELAN had restored the health of Mrs. KENT gently, rapidly and permanently. 

  KENT was deeply impressed by what he had witnessed and his naturally frank and straight-forward character compelled him to apologize to his colleague; he had to confess that the scepticism he had felt at the time of the first visit had been dispelled by the improvement in his wife’s condition.  After her cure his views on the practice of medicine underwent a complete change.  He felt sure that the improvement which he had observed taking place in his wife from day to day could not be the result of chance or coincidence and he obliged to ask himself whether perhaps there was not some real merit in Homœopathy.  The cure of his wife moved him so deeply that he determined to make a thorough investigation into this type of therapy.

  KENT’s intense desire to alleviate suffering led him to concentrate all the power of his vast intellect and his indomitable will to the arduous task of acquiring a deep knowledge of Homœopathy and to this end gave himself unstintingly.  Under the guidance of Dr. PHELAN he studied HAHNEMANN’s  Organon - the basic treatise of Homœopathy - and worked night and day perusing everything he could lay hands on which dealt with this paradoxical method.  It is also said that for weeks at a time he would sit up for the greater part of the night, enveloped in an overcoat against the cold, to devour all available literature published in America on the subject of Homœopathy.

  In whatever he undertook he mastered each step from the beginning to the end and this proved to be the case with Homœopathy also.  He was so overwhelmed by what he discovered that he decided to resign his chair of Anatomy and to give up his membership of the Eclectic National Medical Association. This was the turning point in his medical career and from this time dates his whole-hearted conversion to Homœopathy. 

  Deep sincerity and an impartiality born of absolute integrity were very marked in KENT and he devoted himself body and soul, to this new doctrine, the deep value and truth of which he was able to perceive.  In particular he realized, when comparing this with the other methods he had learned, that it was the only one to offer a Law and principles to follow as a guide in therapeutics.  All other systems appeared to him to be aleatory and inconstant.  While the allopathic and eclectic  schools deal with consequences, KENT recognized the primary concern of Homœopathy to be, as far as possible, that of fundamental causes.  He had also observed that to take action based on consequences, even though these might be highly placed on the ladder of effects, could not bring about effective amelioration, much less a cure.  He had observed that every form of therapy operating on results would bring failure and for this reason he had become dissatisfied with his practice.

  Now, suddenly, the case of his wife came to point out a new direction.  It was during this period that he had occasion to observe the real difference between all other therapeutic methods and  that  of Homœopathy when practiced according to the precise  instructions of the founder.  His study of Homœopathy brought him such certainty and conviction that he knew no peace until he was able himself to apply this doctrine with all conscientiousness and strictness it demanded. So he then devoted again his full time to his patients, enlightened by all he had learnt thanks to Dr.PHELAN, and in a very short time his homœopathic practice flourished.

  Through exceedingly hardwork he confirmed the absolute veracity of the Law of Similars and established the need for individualization.  He confirmed also the unbelievable efficacy of minute doses thanks to the process of dynamization discovered by the founder, Samuel HAHNEMANN.

  In 1882 KENT was appointed to the Chair of Surgery at the Missouri Homœopathic Medical College, St Louis, until the retirement in 1883 of Dr.UHLEMEYER, the Professor of Materia Medica.  At that time Dr. UHLEMEYER had urged that KENT take charge of his department since his special suitability for it was generally recognized.  KENT  accepted the post which he held until 1888; he left it to conduct the work of Philadelphia Postgraduate School of Homœopathics to which he devoted himself until the year 1899.  This College had then the reputation of being the best homœopathic school in the world.  In addition to being the Dean of that institution he also taught Homœopathic Philosophy, Repertorization and Materia Medica and he conducted an out-patient clinic.  As an illustration of the activity of this clinic it may be mentioned that during the years 1896 and 1897 a total of over 34,800 consultations took place here.

  While Dean of the Philadelphia Postgraduate School of Homœopathy, KENT lost his wife.  In the months of sorrow which followed he plunged ever more ardently into this pioneering work about Homœopathy, performing experiments on himself and striving without respite to perfect the science and the art of this form of therapy.  It was during this time that he studied and rallied to the philosophy of SWEDENBORG which provided him with a transcendental vision of the problem of sickness and healing.  But his feet remained firmly planted on the ground and he was able to create a method which could be taught and applied for the study of symptoms and the search for the similimum.

  In 1896, some years after the death of his wife, KENT was called upon to attend a patient whom he was to treat a long time and finally marry.  His second wife, CLARA LOUISE TOBEY of Philadelphia, had completed her study of Medicine, first of Allopathy and then of Homœopathy, and had become a homœopathic practitioner.  This patient had consulted the most eminent allopathic and homœopathic physicians in the U.S.A., without benefit.  All of the great homœopathic physicians had prescribed Lachesis, since she had the symptoms of this remedy.  KENT studied her case with the utmost care and after prolonged reflection came to the conclusion that for some years she had been engaged in a real proving of Lachesis which had given her in homœopathic terms, “its medicamental miasma”.  If a substance whose symptoms one experiences, is taken repeatedly, it may give rise to a medicamental malady which may sometimes become very serious and even incurable.  KENT predicted - also with complete accuracy - that the patient would exhibit lifelong symptoms of Lachesis.  He declared she must never again touch this remedy and must henceforth take antidotes against its toxic effects.

  KENT found this able and intelligent woman an inspiring helpmate and it was with her help that he was able to give the world his masterly work: The Philosophy, The Materia Medicaand The Repertory, about which we shall speak later.  The presence and sustained help of this co-worker were infinitely precious to the Master but she was unable to reduce his overwork and to restrain his indefatigable zeal in the great cause that he had undertaken, by obliging him to  rest.

  His renown was such that he was in demand everywhere.  In 1900, on his appointment as the Dean of Dunham Homœopathic Medical College in Chicago, he became at the same time Professor of Homœopathic Philosophy, Repertory and  Materia Medica.  At a later period he taught Materia Medica with presentation and discussion of clinical cases to the students of all the classes, from the first year to the final year, at the Hahnemann Homœopathic Medical College, Chicago, and was appointed Dean of that college in 1905.  Here he wrote to a physician on one occasion: “I am glad you are helped by my works.  It is a dull time for pure Homœopathy and most of the colleges sneer at it.  I am glad I have a free chance at teaching.  They are all very nice to me in our Hahnemann College of Chicago.  I lecture twice each week to all the four classes in the amphitheatre.  This gives the freshers a chance to hear my entire course as it takes four years to cover the Materia Medica.  Ours is the only college in which a student is taught pure Homœopathy.  It is true that much that is not true is taught by some of our teachers but I try to keep our students from absorbing the mongrelism.”

  Nevertheless the bitter competition at Chicago between the Hering and Dunham Medical College was a painful subject among the homœopaths and all others who were supporting those institutions.  The purpose and principles of those schools were in fact the same but having two establishments with twice the personnel did nothing but double the expenses and at the same time diminish the financial support and the teaching possibilities.  Negotiations were initiated between those two rival schools in 1903 and ended in a favourable agreement which permitted the incorporation of the Dunham Medical College with the Hering College which was then called the HERING Medical college, of which KENT  had the honour to become the President.

  I must stress that the Hering College proved ultimately to be by far the best college of its kind ever established and only the purest form of Homœopathy was taught there.  The student received homœopathic instruction through all the years of his study, i.e. from the day of joining until his graduation with an M.D. degree.  The student was required to study in this college for the same number of years as the allopathic student in the allopathic college.  Homœopathic Philosophy, Repertorization, Chronic Miasmata of HAHNEMANN and Homœopathic Materia Medica formed the basis of the teaching in addition to the following subjects: anatomy, physiology, histology, pathology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmacy, hygiene, dietetics, medical jurisprudence, practice of medicine, diagnosis—clinical and physical, neurology, pediatrics, dermatology, diseases of the chest, genito-urinary diseases, gynaecology, obstetrics, ophthalmology, oto-rhino-laryngology, and surgery.

  Three outstanding professors at the Hering Homœopathic Medical College were KENT, H.C. ALLEN and J.H.ALLEN.  The latter was Professor of “Chronic Miasmata of HAHNEMANN”  and is the author of that most valuable work Psora, Pseudo-psora and Sycosis.  The physicians who studied at this college have done much to spread the teaching of Hahnemannian Homœopathy.  One student of KENT,  Sir John WEIR, lectures at Royal London Homœopathic Hospital in London.  Another, Professor Dr. B.K. BOSE, a student of Hering Homœopathic Medical College, still teaches in the oldest homœopathic medical college now in existence - the Calcutta Homœopathic Medical College Hospital in India.

  It was at this period of his life that KENT was giving the best of his knowledge in his lectures.  In addition to his teaching, which took a great part of his time, he directed a polyclinic which was always very crowded, where he taught homœopathic physicians, already well advanced in their knowledge, to detect and make a correct choice of essential symptoms in a few minutes. Because of KENT’s far-reaching understanding of the characteristics he was able to find the remedy at once.  KENT’s lectures were thronged and those in his audience who could not answer or who answered badly were not asked to do so a second time - indeed a redoubtable test for all those aspiring to become good homœopathic physicians.

  At his lectures on homœopathic philosophy KENT would lay HAHNEMANN’s Organon  on the lectern and thrusting his hands under his coat tail he would expound all that his keen intellect and perspicacity had extracted when meditating upon the various sections of its 294 paragraphs.  On the first section alone, the shortest of all, KENT performed over an hour’s exegesis!

  HAHNEMANN had bequeathed an Organon expressed in a condensed and rather difficult form, but KENT  was able to interpret its contents and in his philosophy to present them to his students (and to the physicians of our era) in a form easy to understand.  On one occasion a very scholarly and deep thinking acquaintance had remarked to KENT:  “I have read your Philosophy five times and am still reading it, and I am just now beginning to understand HAHNEMANN’s Organon”

  KENT had followed in the footsteps of HAHNEMANN, but he had done more, he had outstripped him; he had discovered the doctrine of the Language of Reaction, had shown the direction of the course of treatment immediately following the first dose and how the multiple reactions following the first dose and how the multiple reactions following this step should be interpreted and the patient led scientifically towards complete recovery.

  KENT’s exposition on “Simple Substance” is marvellous.  This “Substance” is that which is real, to distinguish it from that which is apparent.  It is really the basis of all external manifestations - the permanent object of the cause of phenomena, either material or spiritual.  It is not only the essence of something living, extant, but it is the essence plus the existence.  It is the essential of everything - the most important element of all existence.  Although immaterial we must not consider it as non-spatial but really as an “energetic spatial”.

  During his lifetime HAHNEMANN’s ideas in connection with the repetition of the dose underwent several changes; then, at the close of his life, he experimented with a new method which is described in the sixth edition of the Organon.  This method is in fact very complicated and is not suited for practical use today, moreover, it is not able to deal with full satisfaction with the drug miasma which HAHNEMANN had declared, in section 76 of the sixth edition of the Organon, he could not tackle. “A human healing art, for the restoration to the normal state of those innumerable abnormal conditions so often produced by the allopathic non-healing art, there is not and cannot be”.  Nor can it combat the extremely complicated and involved chronic miasmatic diseases of our era which have developed with the senseless and extravagant drugging applied by modern medicine with all its chemical sulphonamides and antibiotics.

  Dr. Fredericka E.GLADWIN had the following comment to make in connection with this method of HAHNEMANN: “We must remember that HAHNEMANN  was still in the experimental stage of Homœopathy.  He made tremendous progress from where he began in 1796 to where he left off in 1843, but since HAHNEMANN has left us, there have been so many good homœopaths experimenting that we should profit by their experience.  I think that if HAHNEMANN could have lived until now, with the same experience that all these homœopaths who have gone between have had, and applied his remedies in very high potency, that he too would hold the application of one single potency until it gave out and then go higher, just as KENT and his followers have done with so much success”.

  KENT was the discoverer of the doctrine “Series in Degrees” which he foretold would become one of the most important subjects in the treatment of chronic disease, and would lead to the development of a distinct class of prescribers in the school of Homœopathy.  To maintain the continuous curative action of the indicated remedy the doctrine of “Series in Degrees” must be understood and used.  It is important to note that HAHNEMANN had no practical knowledge and experience of the action of those potencies which KENT used in accordance with his discovery.  Fortunately both of the foregoing problems, namely the tackling of the drug miasma and overcoming of the extremely complicated and involved chronic diseases of our era, are being, in certain fortunate cases, solved by physicians who faithfully follow KENT’s method.

  In the January 1886 edition of The Homœopathic Physician published by LEE, KENT called attention to the fact that HAHNEMANN’s followers had been making progress since the death of the founder, citing the fact that although in Section 41 and 76 of the Organon HAHNEMANN had declared: “that certain diseases could not be eradicated as they had been complicated with drugs, whose indications were only arbitrary and hypothetic”, such diseases could in fact be wiped out and the drug symptoms subdued by very high attenuations.  It must be pointed out that HAHNEMANN did not make any change in those two sections as regards the curability of drug miasma when he prepared the sixth edition of the Organon just before his death; it means that even after experimenting with “his last and most perfect method” he could not deal with this problem.

  KENT’s discovery has been verified consistently and his method found to be both efficacious and practicable.  Like all of his good disciples I follow his procedure and have been doing so for some forty-seven years.  It is also used by a number of our foremost physicians who are playing leading roles in the practice of the science and the art of Homœopathy and they, like myself, are carrying it out with the greatest satisfaction and praise it unreservedly.  In the words of Dr.GLADWIN: “Thanks to his untiring efforts and remarkable abilities, this past-master of the Art and Science of homœopathic medicine has left us immortal works.  More than that, he has shown us the example of infinite patience and unfailing kindness: he has guided our healing steps along the paths of homœopathic truth, sparing neither time nor trouble to explain to us every stage of the journey ahead, constantly admonishing us and leading us back to the right road when, through ignorance, clumsiness or negligence we have strayed from the way of truth.”

  KENT was not pleased to learn that his students wanted to publish the stenographic notes which had been made of his lectures as he considered them insufficiently complete for the purpose he had in mind, but thanks to their insistence this work was revised by him and appeared in print, in 1900, under the title Lectures on Homœopathic Philosophy.

  This work exposes in a masterly form the theory and practice of the Hahnemannian doctrine.  There have been several reprints of the Philosophy since 1900, including a memorial edition published in 1919.  In the year 1958 I made a French translation of it, with many commentaries, and this edition was sold out within a month of publication; I am now preparing a second edition with an extensive and detailed index.

  With reference to  KENT’s Philosophy,  Dr.A.GRIMMER, a student of KENT, says “that a full knowledge of it clarifies many of the obscure points in the Organon and enables the physician to have a deep perception of homœopathic truths; to use KENT’s Repertory expertly it is necessary to have a complete knowledge of the contents of this book.  This work has no equal in showing how to study the Materia Medica, grasp it fully and apply it successfully.  For the homœopath it is indispensable for it is the key which unlocks the storehouse of knowledge of homœopathic healing.  We must bear in mind that a single reading of the philosophy will not suffice.  It requires many careful perusals and much study to obtain a deep understanding of the truth of Homœopathy which it contains.”

  In the course of his lectures on Materia Medica KENT opened as a reference one of the ten volumes of HERING’s Guiding Symptoms and from this dry and analytical survey he created a lively synthesis and gave each remedy a distinct personality.  He knew how to make the various elements of the picture, each with its lights and shades, stand out in all their originality.

  I must mention that HAHNEMANN himself had written that there were many obscure and unreliable symptoms in our symptomatology.  T. F.ALLEN (the author of the famous Encyclopaedia) had also stressed the need of sifting our symptomatology because he said that the mistakes therein have been perpetuated from year to year.  HERING had started collecting the reliable symptoms and KENT continued this work in the course of which he discovered that certain mistakes had been made by HERING.  In addition to raising the grades of certain remedies in the Guiding Symptoms KENT has verified certain symptoms and has added a number of new ones; the very corrected copy of this book wherein KENT recorded his notes is now in my possession. 

  I would like to mention here some remarks made by KENT regarding BOENNINGHAUSEN’s famous Repertory.  They were made in July 1912 issue of the  Homœopathician.  “There are books in existence that seem to foster the idea of pure Homœopathy which have done much harm along with much good.  BOENNINGHAUSEN’s Therapeutic Pocket Book has rendered all our old men a grand service, yet is most defective and has caused many good men to shun repertories”.

  As he was unable to obtain a dictionary of symptoms sufficiently reliable for reference as to the remedies corresponding to a given symptom, he himself set about compiling a repertory of symptoms.  In the course of this gigantic work he imposed a great strain on his health but the result was the best repertory ever made.  At the outset he used as a guide the small work of C. LIPPE, entitled Repertory of the More Characteristic Symptoms of our Materia Medica(published in New York in 1879) which was repertory of some 318 pages, the ones of JAHR, BOENNINGHAUSEN, GENTRY, BIEGLER’s  diary and some pages of MINTON’s Diseases of Women.  KENT’s work was based on the principles of the Organon and when completed, it consisted of no less than 1,349 pages.

  When the Repertory was at last ready some two hundred physicians placed an order for it, the price being $30 per copy.  The cost for the mere setting of the print of this first edition amounted to $9,000 and KENT was  somewhat discouraged to find that over half of those who had placed orders for it withdrew them at the last minute.  Nevertheless, out of gratitude for what Homœopathy had given to him and in the hope that it would be of use to the homœopathic profession, he decided to pay the required balance of $6,000 from his own pocket.

  It was in 1897, after very many difficulties and at the cost of a great deal of eye-strain for both KENT and his wife, that the Repertory was at last born.  KENT still continued to collect notes and compile data, however, and in 1908 the second edition of the Repertory was published.  But KENT was still not satisfied.  With some four hundred copies of the second edition still unsold, he started preparing the third edition and to this work he devoted the latter part of his life, unable, alas, to publish it while living.  In 1914, two years before his death, he expressed concern about the completion of this third edition and remarked that neither he nor his wife would physically be able to read the proofs and he did not know who could.  He had at that time become very frail but in spite of his failing health he was determined to continue.  He would write for a short time and then rest, write again, then again take rest, until at last the work was finished.  When he died in 1916 he left behind the completed third edition in manuscript form.

  I would like to mention two pieces of advice which KENT would always give to his pupils, as they were transmitted to me by his most intimate disciples, Dr. AUSTIN and Dr. GLADWIN.  They are:

  1.  “If you have prescribed a first remedy conscientiously and according to the homœopathic doctrine, especially in an acute condition but also in chronic cases, and you get no result or unsatisfactory results, and if you go on to give a second and then a third, still with no effect, then I beg you, stop, go no further.  It is time to give placebo, which you might as well have done in the first place, and probably you would have gained considerable advantage by so doing.  But it would certainly have been harder to apply this rule than, without sufficient accuracy but just in order to do something, to give one or two remedies of which you were uncertain or which did not correspond to the essential symptoms of the case, either because you mistook the remedy or because you had not detected the symptoms of highest value.  Never, therefore, prescribe anything without having reconsidered the case.  Like the stalker, waiting until the game is in his sights, wait patiently for the symptoms to develop before firing the bullet that will bring it down.  Learn to watch and wait, and never lose your head”.

  2.  “Whenever you examine a case with a view to determine the constitutional remedy, do not confine yourself to the similimum alone, i.e. the remedy which bears especially the maximum qualitative similarity to the symptoms”.

  This calls to mind the saga of the Swiss hero, Wilhelm TELL.  When TELL was ordered by the landgrave to shoot an arrow at an apple placed on the head of his son, TELL laid an arrow to his cross-bow.  He then took a second one from his quiver and hid it under his jerkin, so that, should his first arrow hit his son and not the apple, he might slay the man who had given the order with the reserve arrow.  In the same way you should always have in reserve at least one alternative remedy - a similie, or what we today would call a satellite - as like as possible to the first, so that you will never be defenceless or at a loss for your second prescription.

  Overworked with his teaching, his enormous practice requiring him to call on and receive many patients, his activities as a writer, an extensive correspondence as well as telegrams both by night and by day, asking without pause for his valued advice, he decided, at the insistence of his pupils, to have a rest and to take advantage of this respite at last to write a real book on Homœopathy, as his two works, the Philosophy and Materia Medica were regarded by him only as works of reference.  Leaving his practice and his teaching he went, now without difficulty, to his home in the country at Sunnyside Orchard in the Stevensville in the State of Montana.  But alas, on his arrival the bronchial catarrh from which he had been suffering for some months was complicated by Bright’s disease and after two weeks he succumbed, on June 6^th 1916.  This was also due to the overwork which had completely worn him out over the years.

  It was a terrible shock for the profession, for his friends, his innumerable patients and especially his many pupils to whom he had given so abundantly without concern for himself.

CHILDREN’S REMEDIES

  In the first edition of KENT’s Repertory were very useful rubrics that have been suppressed in the subsequent editions.  Let’s talk today about the rubric on Children.  Of course, if you have a clearly indicated remedy, you simply prescribe the drug corresponding to the symptoms of the little patient.  However, if you cannot decide in the choice of two or three remedies, it helps to know that certain drugs are particularly adapted to children rather than adults or elderly people.

KENT REPERTORY 1^st Edition:

Children, Especially

Acon., Aeth., agar.,, All-c., Ambr., Ant-c., Ant-t., arn., ars., asaf., Aur., Bar-c., Bell., Bor., Bry., Calc., Calc-p., camph., canth., Caps., Cham., china., Cic., Cina., clem., Cocc., coff., Croc., cupr., dig., dros., euph., ferr., Gels., graph., hell., Hyos., Ign., Iod., Ipec., kali-c., Kreos., Lach., laur., Lyc., mag-c., Merc-sol., mur-ac., nat-c., Nux-m., Nux-v., Op., plb., Podo., Psor., Puls., Rheum., rhus-t., ruta., sabad., sabin., sec., seneg., sep., Sil., spig., Spong., Squill., stann., staph., Sulph., sul-ac., Teucr., thuj., verat-a., viol-o., viol-t., zinc.

  Aconite is, evidently, the first remedy that comes to mind regarding children.  All sudden fevers; all colds or onsets of inflammation.  Anxious agitation, constant change of position. Startles at the least noise.

  Infants: opthalmia—anuria—head and ears red and hot - ailments following sunstrokes and mostly after sleeping in the sun.  Angry children, prone to rage.  Cannot tolerate music.  Convulsions during dentition.

  Ambra grisea is frequently indicated for elderly people; it is also a good remedy for children.  Nervous, impressionable children, worse from music and in crowded places.  Asthma - Paroxysmal cough - Spasms - Hot milk and drinks aggravate.  Acrid smelling urine.

  Antimonium crudum with its typical milky-white tongue.  Children yell or cry when bathed or washed in cold water; they holler when you look at them or touch them.  Peevish and disagreeable disposition, worse from the heat of the sun. Blepharophthalmia.  Infants regurgitating from the start a little acid milk.  Diarrhoea after breast feeding with vomiting in summer.  Whooping cough after measles.

  Antimonium tartaricum  is heard as you enter the room of the sick child: bronchial rales so noisy that you think of a small locomotive.  That makes you think of Ant-t and more so if the tongue is coated.

  Borax is an extraordinary remedy.  You know that it has the fear of downward motion.  When you see a child hollering when the mother puts it in its little crib, just think about Borax.  It is the remedy that cannot stand going down an elevator; yet children are much more courageous than adults. Some time ago, two children, 7 and 9, had to stay for four hours in an elevator stalled between stories; they simply layed down and slept.  Very few adults would have behaved that way...

  Calcarea carbonica  is the big remedy for children.  Man starts his life needing calcium... and ends it with too much calcium.  Getting older, man gets sclerosis, he shrinks, becomes calcified; but in the growing years he needs calcium, he is too soft rubber-like...  That’s the reason why I can’t understand why so many people are getting so many Calcium injections after 50, which most of the time aggravates.  Of course one thinks that when calcium is lacking in certain places, everything will be fine by taking calcium... It is as if you could produce milk in a nursing mother by giving her half a gallon of milk to drink.  ... things don’t work this way and the calcium unfortunately does not go where you want it to go.

  Capsicum is a splendid remedy for mastoiditis.  I have obtained many cures with it.

  Chamomilla  a major remedy for teething children.  (Ed.- Irascible spoiled brats).

  Cina : nocturnal terrors - impossible children, never satisfied with anything, asking for all kinds of things which they refuse when given to them.  Helminthiasis.

  Gelsemium when you find the triad: exhaustion, sleepiness, thirstlessness.

  Hyoscyamus great remedy for children : fears, hallucinations, small boys constantly fondling their genitals.

  Ipecacuanha: effective remedy for light bronchitis and colds; after Aconite has done its work and the cold goes down in the bronchiae (bronchiolitis) with a clean tongue, Ipecac becomes indispensable.

  Lycopodium: for those with difficult disposition.  Unruly, recalcitrant, disobedient, irritable children.  Little devils when sick.  Puny, sickly children.  Babies crying all day, but sleeping at night.  Constantly rubbing his nose when awakening.  Sleeps with eyes half closed, throwing his head from right to left while moaning.  The infant sucks so hard that it makes the nipple bleed.  Protruding belly, flatulent, with umbilical hernia.

  According to the old homœopathic masters when considering the three Mercurys, Mercurius solubilis is preferably prescribed for women;  Mercurius corrosivus for men, and Mercurius vivus for children.  Opthalmia neonatorum - Ranula - Apthae - Green diarrhoea, like scrambled eggs - Sweats easily; drools on the pillow. Hot urine.  Fondles his genitals.  Erysipelas neonatorum.

  Muriatic acid has a great reputation for haemorrhoids in children.  Epistaxis during whooping cough.  Myosis. Scarlet fever.

  Natrum carbonicum  indicated for those who cannot tolerate honey.

  Nux vomica for thin, emaciated children, constantly sniffling with phlegmy noses; Runny nose during the day, but obstructed nightly.  Obstructed nose in breast fed babies.  Fever and cough persisting after too much medication.

  Podophyllum: children who, at night: grind their teeth, moan, roll their head on the pillow, have their eyes half-open.  Rattling cough during dentition.  Infantile diarrhoea. Cholera morbus.

  Psorinum: Summer cholera infantum—putrid stools.  Nervous, agitated nightly crying children.

  Pulsatilla:  Capricious, peevish, pale, chilly children, rubbing their eyes constantly.  Otitis media with sweetish discharge, usually yellow-greenish.  Colds of infants.  Parotiditis with testicular or breast metastasis.  Asthma, chronic cough, never ending after measles.  Enuresis after measles.  Nodules in breasts before puberty.  Indigestion from pastry. (Ed. Fats in general.).

  Silica: Stubborn, obstinate children, always thirsty, whimpering when talked to gently.  Vaccinations sequelae.  Baby refuses to nurse from aversion to maternal milk.  Vomits as soon as nursing.  Late closing fontanels. Profuse sweating on the head and occiput, otherwise dry skin elsewhere.  (Ed.- Sweaty smelling feet).  Acrid perspiration, face pale; thin with protruding abdomen, weak ankles. Rickets.  Scrofulous children with helminthiasis.  Marked salivation during dentition, which is always difficult.  Painful, swollen joints during growth.  Crusta lactea. The stool emerges then recedes.

Journal of the American Institute of Homœopathy. March 1972.

(Translated from the Cahiers du Groupement Hahnemannien de Lyon 8^th series, pp. 331 - 334 by ROGER A.SCHMIDT, M.D.)

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 him Tuberculinum 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 200^th 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 30^th 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

REMEDIES AGAINST THE THREE CHRONIC MIASMS OF HAHNEMANN

(PSORA, SYCOSIS, SYPHILIS)

  A list of Antipsorics, Antisyphilitics and Antisycotics is appended.  The better and correct designations would be “Homœopsorics”, “Homœosyphilitics” and “Homœosycotics” because the Homœology requires differentiation of the following three designations:

  The word Antidote should be banished from our vocabulary.  The root “anti” comes either from the Latin “ante” or the Greek “anti”.  The Latin word “ante” indicates an occurence, temporal and spatial, for example; antedating, antechamber, anticipation, etc.  Often it is presented radically in the latin form “ante” as for example by the expressions: antediluvian, antecedents, etc.

  The Greek root “anti”, on the other hand, indicates “against”, opposition: antidote, antisyphilitic, antipsoric, etc.  GRANIER (Homœolexique) opines that, if we mean the Greek root then the word does not fit into our (homœopathic) vocabulary because, it should be “Homœo” in our case, and in no case “anti”.  Dr.ROUX, a Frenchman, has already pointed out to us that it was absurd for us to speak of “antipsorics” etc.  He is the first who suggested the expressions “Homœopsoric”, “Homœosyphilitic”, “Homœosycotic”.

  GALEN considered all internally administered medicines as “antidotes”.  The old school (Allopathy) employed the term Antidote as Synonym for the opposing toxin.  When we speak of antidote we imagine an opposite toxin.  So in the old school.  The medicine used for example in a case of poisoning is not basically a “contra” but a “pro” and instead of antidote we would better say ‘Prodote’.

  When we want to remove with our medicine the effects of a wrong medicine or a too energetic medicine or would like to diminish its effects then the proper designation for that medicine would be Diadot; whereas the term Homoeodot is closer to the dynamic action of our medicines because we are neutralising a disease cause or a dynamised medicine with another similarly dynamised substance according to the law of similars.

  I have taken the trouble of collecting from our literature an exact List of the Homœopsorics, Homœosyphilitics and Homœosycotics. Among the authors consulted HAHNEMANN, the founder of this concept comes first.  Then BOENNINGHAUSEN’s great work on what he called as Antipsorics and further HARTLAUB and TRINKS, KENT, GIBSON-MILLER, PETROZ  etc.  Evidently I have taken all the remedies from HAHNEMANN’s Chronic Diseases which are all found in KENT’s Repertory.  Only in CLARKE’s I found Thyroidinum mentioned as homœosyphilitic.

HOMŒOPSORICA

Aconitum napellus  A. T.

Aesculus hippocastanum  A.

Agaricus muscarius  H. B. A. G.

Alumina (argile)  H. B. A. G.

Ambra grisea  A. T. B. Gr.

Ammonium carbonicum  H. T. B. A. G.

Ammonium muriaticum  H. B. A. G. 

Amygdalus amara  T. B.

Anacardium orientale  H. T. B. A. G.

Angustura vera  T.

Antimonium crudum  H. T. B. A.

Antimonium tartaricum  T. B. A.

Apis mellifica  H. G.

Argentum metallicum  H. A. G.

Argentum nitricum  T. B. Gr.

Arnica montana  T.B.

Arsenicum album  H.T.B.A.G.

Arsenicum jodatum  A.

Asafoetida  T.B.S.

Asarum europaeum  T.B.

Aurum foliatum  H.T.B.G.

Aurum muriaticum  B.

Baryta acetica  T.B.

Baryta carbonica  H.T.B.G.

Belladonna atropa  H.T.B.A.Gr.Ae

Berberis vulgaris  A.

Bismuthum nitricum  T.B.

Boracis acidum  H.

Bovista lycoperdon  B.A.

Bryonia alba  T.B.Ae

Bufo rana  A.

Calcarea acetica  B.

Calcarea ostrearum  H.T.B.G.

Calcarea phosphorica  H.A.G.

Calcarea sulfurica  T.B.

Camphora officinalis  T.B.

Cannabis sativa  T.B.

Cantharis vesicatoria  T.B.

Capsicum annum  T.B

Carbo animalis  H.T.B.G..

Carbo vegetabilis  H.T.B.G..

Causticum  H.T.B.G.Cl.

Chamomilla matricaria  T.B.

Chelidonium majus  T.B.

China officinalis  T.A.

Cicuta virosa  T.B.A.

Cina semen contra  T.B.

Cinnabaris   A. 

Clematis erecta  H.T.B.G.S.Gr.

Coca erythroxylon  A.

Cocculus indicus  T.B.A.

Coffea cruda  T.A.

Colchicum autumnale  T.B.

Colocynthis cucumis  H.T.B.A.

Conium maculatum  H.T.B.G

Crocus sativus  T.B.A.

Cuprum metallicum  H.T.B.A.G.S.Gr.

Cyclamen europaeum  T.B.Gr.

Daphne indica 

Digitalis purpurea  H.T.B.

Drosera rotundifolia  T.Ae.

Dulcamara solanum  H.T.B.G.

Electricitas positiva  T.

Euphorbium cyparissias  T

Euphorbium dulcis  T.

Euphorbium dulcis  T.

Euphorbium lathyris  T.

Euphorbium officinarum  H.B.G.Gr.

Euphrasia officinalis  Gr.

Ferrum magneticum  T.

Ferrum metallicum  B.A.G.S.Gr.

Ferrum phosphoricum  K.

Flouris acidum  A.G.

Galvanismus  T.

Graphites mineralis  H.T.B.A.G.

Guajacum officinale  H.T.B.G.

Hamameliss virginica  A.

Helleborus niger  T.

Helonias diocia  A.

Hepar sulfuris calcareum  H.B.G.S.Gr.

Hydrasris canadensis  G.

Hydrocyanic acidum  T.

Hyoscyamus niger  T.A.

Ignatia amara  T.A.

Iodum  H.T.B.A.G.

Ipecacuanha cephaëlis  T.A.

Kalium bichromicum  G.

Kalium carbonicum  H.B.A.G.

Kalium iodatum    B.A.G.Gr.K

Kalium nitricum  H.B.G.

Kalium phosphoricum  K.

Lac caninum  A.

Lac defloratum  A.

Lachesis trigonocephalus  G.

Laurocerasus prunus  T.

Ledum palustre  T.

Lilium tigrinum  A.

Lobelia inflata  A.

Lycopodium clavatum  H.T.B.G.

Magnesia carbonica  H.T.B.A.G.

Magnesia muriatica  H.T.B.G.

Magnetis polus arcticus  T.

Magnetis polus australis    T.

Manganum aceticum  H.T.B.G.

Mercurius corrosivus  T.

Mercurius solubilis  T.A.K.

Mezereum daphne  H.T.B.G.

Millefolium achillea  A.

Morphinum 

Moschus moschiferus  T.

Murex purpurea  A.

Muriatis acidum  H.T.B.A.G.

Natrium carbonicum  H.T.B.A.G.

Natrium muriaticum  H.B.A.G.

Niccolum metallicum  B.S.Gr.

Nitri acidum  H.T.B.G.

Nux vomica   T.A.

Oleander nerium  T.

Oleum hecoris aselli  A.

Opium somniferum  T.

Origanum majorana  A.

Paris quadrifolia  T.

Petroleum  H.T.B.A.G

Phosphori acidum  H.T.B.G.

Phosphorus  H.T.B.A.G.

Platina  H.T.B.A.G.S.Gr.

Plumbum aceticum  T.Gr.

Plumbum  metallicum  B.G.S.

Plumbum muriaticum  T.

Podophylum peltatum    K.

Psorinum  A.G.

Pulsatilla nigricans  T.A.

Rananculus bulbosus  A.S.Gr.Ae.

Rheum officinale  T.

Rhododendron chrysanthum  H.B.Gr.

Rhus toxicodendron  T.B.S.Gr.Ae.

Rumex crispus  G.

Ruta graveolens  T.G.

Sabadilla officinarum  T.B.

Sabina juniperus  T.K.

Sambucus nigra  T.

Sarracenia purpurea   A.

Sarsaparilla smilax  H.T.B.G.K.

Scilla maritima  T.

Secale cornutum  A.K.

Selenium  B.S.

Senega polygala  H.B.

Silicea  H.T.B.A.G.

Spigelia anthelmia  T.B.S.Gr.

Spongia tosta  T.G.Gr.

Stannum metallicum  H.T.B.A.G

Staphysagria delphinum  B.A.S.Gr.K.

Stramonium datura  T.

Strontiana carbonica  B.

Sulfur iotum  H.T.B.A.G

Sulfuris acidum  H.B.G.

Taraxacum dens leonis  T.

Teucrium marum verum  T.

Thuja occidentalis  T.Ae.

Trifolium pratense  T.

Tuberculinum bovinum  K.

Veratrum album  T.

Zincum metallicum  H.T.B.A.G.K.

HOMÖSYCOTICA

Aesculus hippocastanum  A.

Agaricus muscarius  A.K.

Alumen  K.

Alumina  A.K.

Ammonium carbonicum  A.K.

Ammonium muriaticum  A.

Anacardium orientale  H.A.G.K.

Anatherum muricatum  A.

Angustura vera  A.

Antimonium crudum  H.A.G.K.

Antimonium tartaricum  H.G.K.

Apis mellifica  H.A.G.K.

Aranea diadema   H.G.K.

ARGENTUM METALLICUM  H.A.G.K.

ARGENTUM NITRICUM  A.K.

Armoracia  A.

Arsenicum album  B.A.

Asa foetida  A.

Asarum europaeum   A.

Asparagus   A.

Asterias rubens  G.K.

Aurum foliatum  G.K.

Aurum muriaticum    G.K.

Baryta carbonica  A.G.K.

Benzoicum acidum  A.

Berberis vulgaris  A.

Borax veneta  A.K.

Bovista lycoperdon  A.

Bryonia alba  A.G.K.

Bufo rana  A.

Caladium seguinum  A.

Calcarea ostrearum  A.K.

Cannabis indica  A.

Cannabis sativa  A.

Cantharis vesicatoria  A.

Capsicum annuum  A.

Carbo animalis  G.K.

Carbo vegetabilis  A.G.K.

Carbolic acidum  A.

Carboneum sulfuratum  K.

Caulophylum thalictroides  A.

Causticum  A.G.Cl.K.

Cedron simaruba  A.

Chamomilla matricaria  A.L.G.K.

Chimaphila umbellata  A.

China officinalis 

Cicuta virosa  A.

Cimicifuga  A.

Cinnabaris  L.G.

Clematis erecta  A.K.

Coccus cacti  A.

Colchicum autumnale  A.

Colocynthis cucumis  A.

Conium maculatum  A.G.K.

Copaiva officinalis  A.

Crocus sativus  A.

Crotalus horridus  A.

Croton tiglium  A.

Cubeba officinalis  A.

Cuprum aceticum 

Cyclamen europaeum  A.

Digitalis purpurea  A.

Doryphora decemlineata  A.

Dulcamara solanum  A.G.K.

Epigaea repens  A.

Erechthites hieracifolia  A.

Erigeron canadense  A.

Eupatorim purpureum  A.

Euphorbium purpureum  A.

Euphorbia pilulifera  A.

Euphorbium officinarum  L.

Euphrasia officinalis  A.G.K.

Fagopyrum esculentum  A.

Ferrum metallicum  G.K.

Fluoris acidum  A.G.K.

Gambogia ( Gummi gutti )  A.

Gelsemium sempervirens  A.

Gnaphalium polycephalum  A.

Graphites   G.K.

Helonias diocia  A.

Hepar sulfuris calcarea  G.K.

Hydrastis canadensis  A.

Influenzinum  A

Iodum  G.K.

Kalium bichromicum  A.

Kalium carbonicum  A.G.K.

Kalium iodatum  A.

Kalium muriaticum  A.

Kalium nitricum  A.

KALIUM SULFURICUM  A.K. 

Kalmia latifolia  G.

Lac caninum  A.

Lachesis trigonocephalus  A.G.K.

Lilium tigrinum  A.

Lithium carbonicum  A.

Lycopodium clavatum  A.L.G.K.

Magnesia carbonica    A.

Manganum aceticum  A.K.

MEDORRHINUM  A.K.

Mercurius dulcis  A.

Mercurius solubilis  A.G.K.

Mezereum daphne    A.G.K.

Moschus moschiferus  A.

Murex purpurea  A.

Natrium carbonicum  A.

Natrium muriaticum  A.

NATRIUM SULFURICUM  A.K.

NITRIC ACIDUM  L.A.K.

Nux vomica  L.(A).

Oleum jecoris aselli  A.

Origanum vulgare

Palladium  A.

Papaya vulgaris  A.

Pareira brava  A.

Petroleum  G.K.

Petroselinum sativum  A.

Phosphoric acidum  L.

Phosphorus  L.

Phytolacca decandra  A.G.K.

Piper nigrum  A.

Platina

Plumbum 

Prunus spinosa  A.

Psorinum  L.

Pulsatilla nigricans  A.K.

Ratanhiaaa peruviana  A.

Rhus toxicodendron  A.

Sabadilla officinarum 

Sabina juniperus  L.A.K.

Saccharum lactis  A.

Sanicula aqua  A.

Sarracenia purpurea  A.

Sarsaparilla smilax  A.G.K.

Secale cornutum  A.G.K.

Selenium  G.K.

Senecio aureus  A.

Senega polygala  A.

SEPIA SUCCUS  A.K.

Silicea  A..G.K.

Spigelia anthelmica  B.

STAPHYSAGRIA DELPHINUM  L.A.K.

Stillingia silvatica  A.

Stramonium datura  A.

Sulphur iotum  A.G.K.

Tabacum nicotiana  A.

Terebinthinae oleum  A.

THUJA OCCIDENTALIS  B.L.A.K.

Uranium nitricum  A.

Viburnum opulus  A.

HOMÖOSYPHILITICA

Argentum metallicum  K.

Arsenicum album  A.G.K.

ARSENICUM IODATUM  A.K.

Arsenicum sulfuratum flavum  K.

Asa foetida  L.A.G.K.

AURUM FOLIATUM  L.K.

AURUM MURIATICUM    G.K.

AURUM MURIATICUM NATRONATUM  K.

Badiaga fluviatilis  G.K.

Belladonna atropa  A.

Benzoic acidum  G.K.

Calcarea iodata  K.

Calcarea sulfurica  K.

Carbo animalis  G.K.

Carbo vegetabilis  G.K.

Causticum  Cl.

Cinnabaris  A.G.K.

Clematis erecta  K.

Conium maculatum  K.

Corallium rubrum  G.K.

Crotallus horridus  G.K.

Ferrrum metallicum  A.

Flouris acidum  L.A.G.K.

Guaicum officinale  K.

Hepar sulphuris calcareum  L.G.K.

Iacaranda caroba  A.K.

Iodum  L.

Kalium arsenicosum  K.

Kalium bichromicum  L.G.K.

Kalium carbonicum  A.

Kalium chloratum  K.

KALIUM IODATUM  A.K.

KALIUM SULFURICUM  G.K.

Kalmia latifolia

Lac caninum  L.G.

Lac defloratum  A.

Lachesis trigonocephalus  G.K.

Ledum palustre    K.

Lycopodium clavatum  G.K.

MERCURIUS  B.L.A.K.

MERCURIUS CORROSIVUS  K.

Mercurius dulcis  A.

MERCURIUS IODATUS FLAVUS  G.K.

MERCURIUS IODATUS RUBER  G.K.

Mercurius vivus  B.

Mezereum daphne  L.A.G.K.

Millefolium achillea  A.

NITRIC ACIDUM  L.A.K.

Petroleum  G.K.

Phosphoric acidum  G.K.

Phosphorus  G.K.

PHYTOLACCA DECANDRA  L.K.

Sarsaparilla smilax  L.A.G.K.

Secale cornutum  A.K.

SILICEA     A.G.K.

Staphysagria delphinum  A.G.K.

STILLINGIA SILVATICA  G.K.

Sulphur iodatum    K.

Sulphur iotum   G.K.

SYPHILINUM  A.K.

Thuja occidentalis  G.K.

Thyroidinum  Cl.

Literature:

(H.) - HAHNEMANN S: Die Chronischen Krankheitan, 4 Bände. Dresden und 

  Leipzig 1835.

(T)  - HARTLAUB & TRINKS: Systematische Darstellung der antipsorischen

  Arzneimittel in ihren reinen Wirkungen. 3. Bd., S.203. Dresden 1830

(B.) - von BOENNINGHAUSEN C.: Repertorium  der  homoopathischen Arzneien, 2 

  Bände, Munster 1832,1833,1835.

(L.) - LIPPE C.: Repertory to the more charasteric symptoms of the Materica medica,

  lere ed. 1879-2e ed. 1881

(A.) - ALLEN J .H.: The Chronic Miasms,2 vol.1990

(G.) - MILLER Gibson: Journal of Homoeopathics-supplt.-oct.1990

(Cl.) - CLARKE: Dictionary of practical Materia Medica.London 1990

(S.)  - STAPF}

(Gr.) - GROSS}---zit. Nach v. BOENNINGHAUSEN.

(Ae.) - AEGIDI}

(P.)  - PETROZ

(K.)  - KENT J. T.: Repertory of the Materia Medica,6e ed. 1957-Materia Medica, 2e 

  ed. 1911

  - HAEHL R.: Samuel Hahnemann-Sein Leben und Schaffen, Bd. II, S.163.LEIPZIG

    1922

  

THORNY TALE OF SPLINTERS, SLIVERS, AND NAILS.

  My 30-year-old neighbour just got a 2 cm. splinter deep into the tip of her index finger.  Of course, she tried to pull it out, but it broke off and all she got out was 4 millimeters of it.  Naturally, although it would have been easy to pull it out with an appropriate forceps, now that the little protruding end was gone this little simple operation became difficult and more complicated.

  Patients who get stuck with a fishbone in their throat, or a splinter under the nail, or a sliver in some other place, please don’t touch it but go at once to those who know how to do these extractions easily without danger; otherwise you will make it uselessly much harder for them as well as for yourself.

  A little incision from within out with a very small scalpel or a sickle type lancet will open the wound, and a special forceps for foreign bodies will extract safely this wooden splinter.

  A single application of Calendula ointment and some gauze bandage will finish this extraction job.  However, the wound and pain will persist!

  What remedy fits such a case?

  A good homœopath should know his Materia Medica and its modalities.  Even before that he doubtlessly remembers Paragraph 7 of the Organon regarding the occasioning cause as follows:

  “It is not necessary to say that every intelligent physician would first remove the ‘causa  occasionalis’ where it exists; the indisposition thereupon generally ceases spontaneously.  He will remove from the room strong smelling flowers, which have a tendency to cause syncope and hysterical snifflings; extract from the cornea the foreign body that excites inflammation of the eye; loosen the over-tight bandage on a wounded limb that threatens to cause mortification and apply a more suitable one; lay bare and put a ligature on the wounded artery that produces fainting; endeavour the expulsion by vomiting of Belladonna berries, etc., that may have been swallowed; extract foreign substances that may have got into the orifices of the body (the nose, the gullet, the ears, the urethra, the rectum, the vagina); crush the vesical calculus; open the imperforated anus of the newborn infant, etc”.

  He therefore will try his best to extract this foreign body.  If he feels unequal to the task he will send the patient to an appropriate surgeon or specialist.  However, the homœopath should be able to perform this little operation.

  Two eventualities might occur:

1.  Either the foreign body can be extracted; or

2.  It is not possible: The sliver is too small, the iron fragment or wooden splinter breaks as the patient tries to take it out.

  We have remedies to push out, so to say, these foreign bodies producing:

  i.  either suppuration or expulsion without suppuration, or,

  ii.  enhancement of hyperluekocytosis to reabsorb the little fragments of the foreign

  body, if  phagocytable. 

  The  main remedy which works well here is Silica 200 and at the 30^th, 200^th and M the same day.  Then wait [12].

  Lobelia inflata also comes to mind as an evacuating  remedy of foreign bodies, and for wounds from slivers.  Such drugs give excellent results in foreign bodies of the esophagus, either after, before, or during extraction, according to Dr. COOPER, who  prescribes them in tincture: 3 to 5 drops.

  But we must consider several factors:

1.  Hypersensitivity to pain.  The patient howls, cries saying the pain is unbearable. He cannot be touched or even examined.  The least contact or slight touch is declared unbearable.  We are dealing here with pains out of proportion to the trauma. So here comes Hepar sulfurata calcarea 200 to be administered at once, best one XM only.

2.  A good indication for Hepar is also when the foreign  body or splinter, of which a small fraction remains in the wound and is not possible to extract, ceases to provoke pain but in a few days the patient starts with a shivering, then a throbbing  pain at the site of the lesion.  This throbbing means the onset of suppuration.  Then Hepar is definitely indicated at the 200^th or preferably at the XM.

  If the pain is equally intense to the least touch, but in a patient who also cannot stand his clothes or sheets or anything touching the lesion, think of Apis mellifica XM, a precious remedy for penetrating wounds.

  If the traumatic lesion produces spontaneous intense pain and the part is lacerated or crushed, whether a penetrating wound by puncture, by a sharp instrument, scalpel, or splinter, give then Hypericum perforatum  at the 200^th  or even better the XM.  This marvellous remedy is particularly indicated for puncture at the end of the fingers followed by Wallerian degeneration, often with dreadful neuritis, ascending from finger to arm, from foot to thigh.  This is a condition which is difficult to control allopathically, but one dose of Hypericum XM  will restore order in a few days spectacularly.

  Remember that this remedy is a fine preventive of tetanus.

  Finally, the hypersensitivity to touch in cases of splinters less acute than described above, brings to mind a lesser known remedy, yet a remarkable one, Cicuta virosa, the famous hemlock taken so courageously by SOCRATES and used by the Athenians to put to death certain criminals.

  We use medically four types of hemlock, all belonging to the Umbelliferae:

1.  Cicuta virosa, remedy for opisthotonos and cerebral meningitis. 

2.  The mottled, big hemlock: Conium maculatum, so precious in homœotherapy.

3.  The garden hemlock: Aethusa  cynapium, so useful in milk regurgitation of the newborn at the breast or the bottle; the milk comes back liquid, or if in clots, then Valeriana is indicated.

4.  The aquatic hemlock is Phellandrium acquaticum, well known in tuberculosis when the cough is constant and suffocating and the expectoration horribly  fetid.  It offers to the homœopath a precious peculiarity: intolerable pains in lactiferous ducts and at the nipple while nursing and for pains in the breasts during menstruation.

  Cicuta has another important symptom not to be forgotten.  If, while you are tending an unconscious patient he reacts with a facial spasm or one in the limbs, you have there a good indication for Cicuta.

  Of course for a splinter, if there is a contusion and eventually an ecchymosis without laceration, give Arnica XM, one dose.  It works beautifully and relieves rapidly the pain, avoiding suppuration; so don’t forget it.

  Think also of Plantago major, cited by E.CARLETON:  Homœopathy in Medicine and Surgery, page 231, 1913.  This is remarkable for a wound made by stepping barefoot on a rusty nail, which is so easily done when camping.  Plantago relieves the pain very fast.

  If  you now ask me what remedy cured this patient in 48 hours without the least suppuration and with good results, it is Ledum palustre in one single dose of the XM.  This is the remedy for penetrating wounds par excellence, for splinters producing pus; remarkable for punctures made by stepping on nails or tacks; just as good for bites from insects.

  It works on anybody, but even better on those, like Silica, who are especially chilly or shivering.

  However, you have to remember a precious modality and never forget it:  The traumatized  part, the  end of the finger, is cold to the touch, or may be the patient feels it cold even while warm to the touch!

  So you see that homœotherapeutics is rich in resources and we should be grateful to HAHNEMANN for his great discovery.

   -  The LAYMAN Speaks, March 1974. 

LITTLE DOSES - BIG RESULTS! 

HOMŒOPATHY FOR ANIMALS

FIRST CASE:

  One of my old schoolmates, Dr. FERREOL, a veterinary, having heard of mysterious Homœopathy, met me one day by chance.  “What is Homœopathy at bottom?” he asked me.  “Is it a serious method?” “Serious!”  I replied, “that’s not the question: it is a method which cures affections that are curable according to a law, and by means which do not poison the patient.”  “But”, said he to me, “that’s all very well for human beings whom one can make believe all that one wishes, but can these infinitesimal doses really have any action at all on animals?” “It is perfectly simple,” I responded, “not theories but facts; results, first, and then afterwards we will discuss it!”

  Just at that time he had a series of cases which were bothering him a great deal.  It was a matter of an epidemic of swine-fever in a piggery of more than one hundred and twenty animals.  Many had already died, and called urgently on the 30^th of January 1928, he autopsied a pig which had just died in convulsions.  He found a haemorrhagic gastroenteritis with inflammation of Peyer’s patches and the mesenteric glands, a haemorrhagic nephritis and, above all, endocarditic and myocarditic lesions which permitted him to diagnose the chronic form of swine-fever (rouget du porc.)

  The absence of erythema allowed one to think of “white swine-fever”. Bacteriological analysis confirmed the diagnosis by the presence of Bacillus rhusiopathiae suis.

  When a piggery is infected one gives serotherapy, not only to the small number infected but to all pigs, as a preventive measure.  That is why he proceeded, on the 4^th of February, to immunize to the full by the appropriate serum, which he had sent for expressly from Bern from the Federal Institute of Hygiene.  8-50 cc. of serum were injected into each animal according to its weight.  Result: two days later they found eight pigs newly infected and showing clonic convulsions.  A bleeding at the ear was ordered, to reduce congestion of the nervous centres.  FERREOL noticed that the blood of the animals in convulsions did not flow until after several seconds, which confirmed his diagnosis of a chronic form of swine-fever of which endocarditis is the principal manifestation.  The symptoms abated after bleeding and he waited for the effects of his immunization.  Two days later he was sent for urgently and found the swine-keeper distracted, his cutlass in his hands, ready to kill the eight animals of whom we have been speaking, all of whom were again going into convulsions.  Another pig, fifty kilos in weight, a new case, struggled into the passage way, laid down on its back and remained in opisthotonos for two hours.

  Having lost confidence, the proprietor summoned another veterinary secretly, who confirmed the diagnosis and declared peremptorily that the cases were lost, all treatment hopeless, and the only thing to do was to cut the throats of all the sick animal as soon as possible.  That was the situation.

  It was, then, a question of an infectious condition due to a specific bacillus; the diagnosis was perfectly clear.  The treatment had been conducted according to modern knowledge of this condition, and the results were completely negative.  The verdict was formal:  To sacrifice these animals since science declared them incurable.

  Ah!  We may well repeat the classic phrase of HAHNEMANN: “When it is a question of the sacred art of curing, to neglect to learn is a crime!”

  Here it was not a question of human lives but of animals which must be saved because the financial loss was great.  All these young animals had cost a great deal to raise and now, although they were still too young for the butcher, it was necessary to kill them.  The infection had spread to these nine new cases and others would follow.  You can judge the state of mind of the proprietor and the caretaker.  It was these cases which Dr. FERREOL put up to me, on which to prove to him the value of Homœopathy.  I accepted the challenge.

  The symptoms then were:

  1.The rapidity of invasion, when all the animals had seemingly good health.

  2.Convulsions in young subjects.

  3.Active congestion as observed by autopsy.

  4.The disease showing grave symptoms of the nervous and arterial systems.

  5.The absence of rash (possibly the cause of the convulsive symptoms).

  All these can be found literally in the same words on pages 32, 34, 36 and 41 of the first volume of Guiding symptoms published in 1879 by Dr.HERING, an allopath converted to Homœopathy, these symptoms having been produced by Aconitum napellus.

  As Belladonna possesses a great analogy in its toxicology to the symptoms above indicated, I proposed to make the following experiment:

1.To give ten drops of a solution of Aconite in the 200^th, centesimal dilution in a glass of water, one coffeespoonful (one single dose) to four pigs which were to be marked with a red cross on the back.

2.To give ten drops of a solution of Belladonna in the 200^th, centesimal dilution in a glass of water, one coffeespoonful (one single dose) to three pigs to be marked with a black cross.

3.To leave one pig without a mark and without medicine, as a control.

4.To give ten drops of Aconite in the 200^th to the 50 kilogram pig which was lying in opisthotonos in the middle of the stable.

  All this was carried out exactly.  It was very interesting that exactly twenty seconds after the single dose of Aconite the convulsions of the pig stretched out on her back ceased, leaving the caretaker open-mouthed before this incredible spectacle: the beast remained stretched out for five hours perfectly calm.  After this length of time she got up unaided, went to the trough and ate her food as if nothing had ever happened.  The attacks were not renewed and the animal has been in perfect health ever since.  (This 200^th dilution, gentlemen, was prepared by me and was not one of those high dilutions concerning which one is ignorant of its origin and especially of its mode of preparation.  It was not a tincture of Aconite succussed two hundred times, but a preparation made according to the Hahnemannian rules, diluted two hundred times and vigorously shaken at each dilution.  The tincture used as a base had been made from plants gathered in the high Jura Mountains in a moist, cold place, a little before the time of complete flowering).

  A fortuitous case, a case due to chance, you say, but listen to the next:  All the pigs which had received either Aconite or Belladonna ceased their convulsions almost instantaneously, but the next day two of the pigs with a black cross had convulsions again, tonic but not clonic this time, and much less violent than heretofore.  As these did not seem to be decreasing we gave to the two relapsing pigs, on the 21^st of Feb. 1928, a coffeespoonful of the solution of Aconite 200^th ten drops in a glass of water.  (The recurrence of the convulsions proved that the Belladonna was not sufficiently similar to the case to hold.)  The reception of the veterinary this time was very different. Confidence, was restored, the battle was won.

  Forty-eight hours after the administration of the Aconite the most perfect calm reigned in the piggery.  However, on the morrow, there was a hurry call to autopsy one pig which had suddenly died.  It proved to be none other than the unmarked pig who was the control.  All the others were in good health.

  One month after this interesting experiment (for it well deserves the name) there was a very slight relapse among the eight pigs which had been treated.  A new dose of Aconite. 200 was accordingly administered.  The little piglets, born of the last animals who contracted the swine-fever (rouget) but previously cured by the Aconite perished one after another at their birth, which meant a severe loss for the proprietor.  The autopsy done on most of the cadavers and the bacteriological analysis showed the same disease which the mothers had, so we gave at birth to all subsequent piglets a dose of Aconite 200.  One week afterwards out of eleven treated one died; the other ten, thanks to the Aconite, began to grow fat and had no attacks.  Fifteen days later they told us that one pig among the last group treated had a violent tonic convulsion lasting a quarter of an hour.  Another of the same litter had to be killed in the midst of a convulsion, in extremis.  At the autopsy the essential organs were found normal but an enormous haematoma was discovered accompanied by deviation of the spinal column at the level of the eighth dorsal vertebra.  Several piglets perished despite Aconite.  On examining each case, one after another, we found that after eight days they were having fever crises and one could not deny the helpful action of Aconite, as, before its intervention, more than thirty pigs had died in a week.  But homœopathy was not at the end of its resources and we know that when Aconite has exhausted its action, in order to get a deeper action, one must employ what it called its “chronic”, which, in this instance, was Sulphur in the 200^th centesimal dilution, which we gave to all the pigs who were ill, or who had been so.  It is now three months and the result is marvellous. There has been neither death nor infection since the chronic dose.

  These grave cases, incurable by ordinary methods, were, then, cured by homœopathic dilutions chosen simply in accordance with the law of similars.  The multiplicity of the cases treated, although it did not run into thousands, nevertheless obliges one to think, because it illustrates and confirms the law of similars.

  A case declared incurable by classical medicine does not deserve this definite label if homœopathy or other unofficial therapies have not been tried.  Homœopathy does not pretend to cure all so-called “incurable cases”, it also has its limits, but it offers different possibilities of such a  value that an honest and conscientious doctor cannot afford to neglect them.  Doses in such dilutions could not have any action if they were not administered according to a scientific law.

SECOND CASE

  Satyriasis and impotence:  Prize bull 2 years old.  This bull which had always served well, and whose matings had been followed by gestations had been subject recently to perverse sexual excitations.  When he was led out to the drinking fountain, for example, he would rush to the entrance from which the cows were ordinarily let out for mating, and then, when he saw that it was not for this reason that he was led out of the stable, he would rush back again and masturbate by friction of his hind legs until ejaculation occurred.  His keeper said that he did this two or three times a day.  In addition, whenever, a cow was brought to him, although the erection took place it was impossible for him to perform intromission and the ejaculation did not occur despite his marked excitation.  This state of affairs meant a considerable financial loss to his owner, for a prize bull, though very expensive and used only for reproduction, will bring from the butcher a comparatively negligible price.  Allopathically these cases are considered incurable, the only way out being castration, which would mean the negation of his main value.

  This condition of genital excitation associated with impotence and onanism, responds admirably, however, to a homœopathic remedy which has brought out similar symptoms in healthy men:  Delphinium staphisagria.  Accordingly Staph. 200, a single dose, in globules, was given him in the morning by Dr.FERREOL.  Four days afterwards he was in excellent condition and able to mate normally to the great relief of his owner and veterinary.  You can judge what this cure was worth when I tell you that this bull had been bought for $600.00 and that his butcher’s worth would have been only $160.00 to $180.00.  This loss was avoided thanks to a single dose of Staph.  in the 200^th centesimal dilution.

THIRD CASE:

  Motor paralysis following distemper in a German dog seven months old, sick for two months with distemper which was manifested by the usual symptoms:

  Temperature.

  Catarrhal symptoms of the urinary tract.

  Dyspnoea.

  Purulent discharge from the eyes and nose.

  Loss of appetite.

  Diarrhoea alternating with constipation.

  The owner had given various allopathic pills with Ipecac as the base, purges and syrups, without any result except the suppression of certain symptoms and the progressive development of a spasmodic paraplegia of the hind quarters.

  The striking features on examination of the dog were:

  Spasmodic muscular symptoms.

  Trembling of the limbs.

  Marked paresis of the hind quarters.

  Increased reflexes.

  Symptoms only during the day.

  The animal drinks little.

  Aggravation from cold air.

  Aggravation after motion.

  Swaying, very uncertain gait.

  Repertory study, taking into account the non-pathognomonic symptoms, done with Dr. FERREOL, showed Agaricus muscarius as being the remedy corresponding best to the case and alone possessing all the indicated  symptoms.  In fact, all these spasmodic and paretic symptoms, associated with this curious aggravation from cold, are found in the pathogenesy of this poisonous mushroom.

  June 15, 1928, we gave Agaricus muscarius 200 dilution ten drops in one single dose.

  Five days later, this dog, who previously could not go upstairs, could mount them although with difficulty.  He swayed less but he still frequently fell to the right in walking.

  Eleven days after the first dose its eyes suppurated abundantly and the owner, of course, ran to the pharmacy to buy a collyrium which Dr. FERREOL hastened to empty down the sink!  The dog no longer fell, although he still tottered a little; he could mount the stairs without difficulty, run, jump and play with other dogs; his general condition was much improved.

  Agaricus being supposed to act forty days, and the amelioration having been progressive from the time of the first medication, we allowed the remedy to act and simply advised bathing the eyes with boiled water.  Fifteen days after the first dose the animal was cured.

  On July 13, 1928, four weeks after the first dose, we again saw the animal who was marvelously well: he walked, ran and behaved like normal dog.  His eyes still discharged a  little but we ordered no local treatment as that is a natural vent for distemper which we knew ought to be respected.

  All veterinaries know the progressive evolution and the gravity of the nervous sequelae of distemper.  This cure was complete, patient and permanent.

  Was the 200th centesimal dilution of Agaricus too weak to act in this case?  Is this not the confirmation of the law of similars?  A verification of the symptoms of this dangerous mushroom?  A proof of the undeniable action of high dilutions when they are administered according to Hahnemannian rules? And a plain demonstration that a single dose is entirely sufficient to cure even a severe case, if one knows enough to give the organism time to react to the action of the remedy administered?

  Although insufficient from the point of view of numbers, the two cases cited in the previous issue together with this case, which were experiments rigorously conducted,  admirably illustrate this great general law, the law of similars.  This therapeutic law has an inconceivable bearing on cure; and the imperious necessity of plumbing it and giving it the place of honor which it merits in therapeutics, is none other than the crown and object of medical work.  It is this law, together with the cases which have permitted its establishment and confirmed it, which gives to Homœopathy the right to be a science and a therapeutic method.  Medicaments applied according to this law and studied along Hahnemannian lines become positive substances whose action on healthy men and whose application to the sick are no longer variables as they are in allopathic therapeutics.  No sooner have the remedies of the so-called official school had their burst into prominence and been proclaimed so marvellous at their debut, than they rapidly arrive at their period of decline and disappear without leaving behind them, most of the time, any trace except their inconveniences, one could even say, with the French pharmacologist POUCHET,  “... their bad results”.

  On the contrary homœopathic remedies are not subject to the influence of style or an extravagant modernism; once firmly established by experimentation they become medicaments and the homœopathic physicians who know them and use them remain constant to them.

  HAHNEMANN said, in his Prolegomenon to his treatise on Materia Medica Pura, written in French in 1834: ( Nota Bene for my reviewers, Vol II Materia Medica Pura, 1880.  R.E.DUDGEON., Ed.)

  “Homœopathy rests entirely on experience. Imitate me,” he says out loud, “but imitate me well, and you will see at each step the confirmation of my claim.  That which no Materia Medica, no system of medicine, no therapeutics has done or has been able to do heretofore, she loudly demands:  to be judged according to results.”

  “Homœopathy has never pretended to cure diseases by the same power as that which produced them, she wishes to do it by a power which is not identical but simply analogous, by a medicament which can only produce a morbid condition analogous to the disease.”

  “Take cases of illness one after the other, describe them in the order outlined in the Organon; paint them so well according to all their perceptible symptoms that the author of Homœopathy, himself, could have no criticism of the exactitude of your picture; and supposing that these cases are  among those for which one can find a remedy in the medicines already proved today, select the medicinal substance which is the most appropriate, homœopathically speaking; give it alone and unmixed, in doses as weak as the doctrine prescribes, while removing all other medicinal influences; and if the patient is not cured, if he is not cured promptly, if he is not cured gently, if he is not cured in a durable way, cover Homœopathy publicly with shame, while proclaiming the failure of a treatment rigorously followed according to its own principles.  But abstain, I beg you, from all mistakes.

  “If, after you have acted in good faith, others no less conscientious than yourself arrive at the same results in repeating your experiments, if all that Homœopathy promises to him who follows it faithfully is not made good, then, this doctrine can be considered as of no account.

  “Do you know any better method of disproving this doctrine which only needs to appeal to good sense and to minds free from prejudice in order to find access everywhere.  Do you wish to obtain the same successes?  Imitate me freely and loyally.”

   GENEVA, SWITZERLAND.

  (Courtesy:  The Homœopathic Recorder, May 15, 1929)

THERAPEUTIC AND PATHOLOGIC DIAGNOSIS THE PHYSICIAN’S RESPONSIBILITY

  “Homœopathic physician”—what meaning should this title convey?

  The physician who, to the complete equipment of his university studies in medicine and surgery, adds also a thorough acquaintance with Homœopathy and puts its principles into practice, only has the right to the title “homœopathic physician”.  He will have made himself especially familiar with the work of Dr. Samuel HAHNEMANN, founder of Homœopathy, with the Materia Medica, with the repertories and the laws related to the administration of remedies to the sick.

  The study of Homœopathy exacts of the neophyte a definite effort; for he must lay aside prejudices acquired during his university studies.  But the method of considering any given case proves to be so different from that which he has hitherto known, that soon he sees the importance of this new method.  Now he sees in the “cases” who come to consult him, not merely diseases which he must diagnose, but sick individuals, for whom he must find the similar remedy in his homœopathic Materia Medica; a particular remedy for each, individually.

  Also he must avoid routine; he may not remember other cases resembling this one, which he has already treated; he must isolate the distinctive difference in the sick person whom he now considers, must find out his peculiarities, his individual characteristics.  This is a theory essentially and indispensably homœopathic.  Among the tangle of symptoms resulting from his examination, he must distinguish with care those which pertain to the sick one himself, as a thinking and suffering human being, because of which he is burdened with illness, from those others which concern only a portion of his physical organism - a single organ, or group of organs.

  The practical result is fully inherent in this great secret of nature, discovered by Samuel HAHNEMANN:  To determine the symptoms representative of the individual himself who is ill; and not make the blunder of noting alarming symptoms to any organ which is the point of least resistance where the illness finds for itself an exit, through which it utters its cry of pain.

  A true homœopath finds his task to consist first, in establishing a therapeutic diagnosis according to the fundamental laws of Homœopathy discovered by HAHNEMANN and developed by LIPPE, HERING, ALLEN, KENT, NASH and so many others.

  This is which makes Homœopathy a method not to be surpassed, this “therapeutic diagnosis”, or I may call it “homœopathic diagnosis”, which leads to the remedy immediately without waiting for a “morbid diagnosis”; which treats a patient without having to determine his exact sickness!  Observe that I say “exact sickness”, for such general terms as hysteria, nervousness, rheumatism, dyscrasias or cryptogenic state, idiopathic, and what not - these do not deserve the noble term, “diagnosis”.  This fine and learned terminology readily covers the ignorance of the doctor giving treatment, an ignorance not as to his science but as to the case he deals with in a very different matter.

  The word “diagnosis” alone connotes a pathological diagnosis, with verdict of morbidity.  It is time to show to those who have not yet learned the fact, that there is a far more practical diagnosis:  that is, one indicating from the very outset the necessary remedy.  This is what Adolph LIPPE meant when he said: “Here is a person of the Phosphorus type: here, one of the Arsenic type; here, of Pulsatilla”.  And he uses the terms consecrated to these meanings by HAHNEMANN in the Organon, 1810.  KENT also tells in his Lectures on Homœopathic Philosophy, of a patient who asked him: “Doctor, what is the matter with me?” and he replied: “Why, you have Nux vomica,”  that being his remedy.  Whereupon the old man said: “well, I did think I had some wonderful disease or other”!  That is a therapeutic, a homœopathic diagnosis.

  I do not enlarge further upon the point; such diagnosis is clearly the first duty of the homœopathic physician.  Frequently it leads to a prompt, mild and permanent improvement, to a cure of the patient.

  But we are not at the end of our task; we face two other heavy responsibilities: one of these concerns the patient, and the other, the future of medical science.  Upon us rest both of these responsibilities.

  As to the patient - our task is not only to relieve but to Cure.  Now, a true cure rests not solely on a disappearance of existing symptoms, but equally on advice given the patient, that he need not again fall into such a state.  Such counsels, of hygiene, of directing work and time, of morale, of reading, of the whole attitude and control of life - these also presuppose a diagnosis.  And here, at this point, the nosological diagnosis becomes not only serviceable but indispensable to the doctor.  (KENT’s Lectures on Homœopathic Philosophy, 1919, p. 143).

  The whole idea of diagnosis, in relation to the task of the physician, is it not just the discovery of that famous causa occasionalis of which HAHNEMANN discussed in such detail? (See Organon, paragraphs 7, 73, 77, 150).  The homœopathic doctor must not simply prescribe pills or drops, but he must be a minister of nature, a “naturist”, in addition to a homœopathist, whose first purpose is, after securing the symptoms, to give them a diligent, interpretative analysis covering their last detail, a complete semeiologic examination.

  There are homœopaths, alas! who do not sufficiently examine even their patients, and who thus bring discredit upon the name and value of that medicine called homœopathic.  That certain clever men may omit such a procedure in examination as we  have described, and still by a judicious interpretation of symptoms, cure their patient, is of course possible; but certainly such is not a method which could be generalized.  Perhaps a few instances may clarify this thought yet further.

  A young man of 18 years of age sought consultation regarding frequent attacks of angina, which settled as often on the right side as on the left, and followed almost regularly exposure to cold.  Painting with various collutoria and frequent cauterizations and pulverisations in no way affected his condition and he asked my advice.  The symptoms, as he gave them to me, pointed explicitly to Tuberculinum or Sulphur. Yet I gave neither of these remedies, because after further questioning I found that he wore low slippers and silk stockings, and that he took cold especially after dancing, or when his feet were cold.  Accepting some simple hygienic advice, he wore thicker socks, shoes with rubber soles, gaiters in winter - and he had no more angina.

  I acknowledge that possibly the remedy, had I given it, would have removed his tendency to the symptoms, in the bad conditions to which he exposed himself so often; but it seemed to me wiser to show him the mistake he was making, and to correct his state by simple hygienic measures.  The therapeutic diagnosis was Tuberculinum; the morbid diagnosis was angina from exposure to cold; the prescription was hygienic advice.  Result: a cure.

  A young woman in domestic service, aged 20, came to consult me regarding rheumatism in the legs.  She had been treated allopathically for three months, but the salicylate was making her deaf and producing vertigo.  She found herself increasingly weak, walking with difficulty, vague pains and great weakness in the calves of her legs.  Questioning led to a clear indication of Lycopodium, but I did not give that until completing the full examination.  On reaching the throat, I found a curious condition of the pharynx; it looked as if painted with a yellow orange varnish.  Taking a culture, I found a large number of  Klebs-Loeffler bacilli, of the short type.

  Evidently here there was paretic trouble sequelae of diphtheria, of which the angina had not been observed apart from a faint dryness of the throat, the sick girl had no other local symptoms.  This diagnosis enabled me to isolate her and to take the measures necessary in this disease.  Naturally, I made no serum, but for symptoms which I need not detail here, I gave one dose of Lycopodium  200,  without observing any result in the following 15 days.  The throat remained the same; weakness was still there; no improvement was perceptible.  Such total failure of reaction to the indicated remedy led me to give her a dose Diphtherinum 200, to which the condition responded very well.

  In ALLEN’s Nosodes (1918, p.40) there is the following comment upon this remedy:

Painless diphtheria,

Symptoms almost entirely objective,

Patient too weak to complain, and apathetic

Prostration,

Highly susceptible to diphtheritic virus,

Post-diphtheritic paralysis

Remedy suitable when the most carefully selected remedy fails to relieve or permanently improve.

  The girl’s throat cleared up and resumed its normal aspect and at the end of a fortnight, another examination (made by the Inst. Off. d’Hyg.) showed not a single bacillus.  Since the weakness remained, I gave then one dose of Lycopodium, of which the effect was surprising - the patient got up, began to walk, and in ten days was able to return to her position.

  Would Psorinum or Tuberculinum have had an equally good effect?  How could one determine the suitable nosode in a case which does not react save only by determining most carefully the exact nosological diagnosis?

  A young man was treated by a homœopath for submaxillary swelling.  The homœopathic treatment was changed frequently during several months, but without result.  The doctor examined his neck each time, believing that here was a ganglionic condition.  The patient consulted another physician who found in his face, head, and chest no remarkable signs; but on examining the spinal column, the physician found evidence of Pott’s disease.  The swelling was only a cold abscess arising from the third cervical vertebra.  It was a tuberculosis of the bones of the spine, causing a suppuration which descending, went between the inter-aponeurotic spaces and settled in the submaxillary  region.

  The patient followed hygienic advice and suitable treatment until completely cured.  Rest, mountain air, diet in accordance with the morbid diagnosis, a remedy based on the therapeutic diagnosis, made possible this desired result.

  A patient, 55 years of age, was subject to colds in the head, was neurasthenic, and had suffered for six months from sudden attacks of suffocation.  He had been treated by various allopathic physicians with all known anti-spasmodic and vagotonic medicines with no improvement whatever, but rather an increasing decrepitude.  The patient walked with head bowed, had frequent loud eructations, spat continually, was afraid to swallow even his saliva.  Eating was a veritable tragedy for him, for he remembered that his first attack had occurred while eating and he refused to take any liquid food, since this affected him more than solids.  Finally, he gave up his doctors, for they but told him he was nervous, that he must make an effort to recover his health for himself, and that his attacks should be treated with contempt.  A first examination revealed nothing obviously abnormal.  For a time psychotherapy seemed to alleviate his fears.  But neither Mephitis, Ignatia nor Lachesis could stop the attacks which though less frequent still did recur too often.  But after taking  cold, one time, laryngitis set in, causing a husky voice. However, remedies indicated had no effect.  According to all homœopathic principles the case was incurable.  Examination of the larynx showed a paralysis of the right vocal cord; external examination revealed a thyroid tumor, very hard, and as large as a tangerine on the right side.  This was the cause of the constriction of the recurrent nerve.  His loss of weight, age, and complexion, and the development of symptoms, authorized the belief that here was a case of thyroid cancer, primary or metastatic it could not be determined.  The prognosis was clearly not that of mere laryngitis.  But the diagnosis indicated a very serious prognosis. Unfortunately the patient found Homœopathy too slow, and returned to an allopathic physician, who applied radium needles to the tumor which reduced but ulcerated and within eight days, the poor patient died under terrible sufferings.

  And again it is clear that the physician must know what he is treating quite as well as whom he is treating.  What can be said of those who, not comprehending the case, called it “nerves”, and ordered the sufferer to cure himself?

  A young man of 20 had been treated for two years by a homœopath with Aurum, Calcarea, Ignatia, Pulsatilla.  He was in a neurasthenic state caused by frequent sudden attacks of vertigo which came upon him while working.  He became so distressed, and depressed as actually to weep hot tears.  He worked in a bank, but his condition forbade his remaining there any longer.

  The remedies hitherto prescribed had been given for mental symptoms, symptoms chosen somewhat at random, without regard to their due significance—for mental symptoms have also their hierarchy, and must be known in their relationships.  A complete examination showed that Natrum sulphuricum, was the indicated simillimum, thorough physical examination revealed an advanced myelogenic leukaemia with probable tuberculosis of the bone marrow.  A homœopathic prescription, an immediate sojourn in the mountains, with suitable diet, transformed this young man in a few months. Blood tests enabled me to follow the course of his steady gain and to control scientifically and objectively the course of subjective improvement as this followed.

  But it was the two-fold diagnosis, therapeutic and nosologic, which enabled the physician to direct this unhappy youth toward the health from which he had so widely strayed.

  A Boston physician told me of being called by a homœopathic colleague in whose care was a young man injured by being impaled.  He had fallen sitting upon a wooden paled fence and suffered excruciating pains in the rectum.  The pain had been somewhat relieved by doses of homœopathic Arnica administered by a homœopathic doctor called in the emergency.  The sensation as though there was a splinter in the rectum, suggested to the doctor Nitric acid., Hepar., then Silicea.  But the young man still suffered.  After a few days of continued pain, the family insisted upon a consultation.  The second homœopathic doctor, summoned, recalling section 7 of the Organon, made an examination of the “site of pain”, and found indeed a splinter deeply imbedded in the rectum.  The simple extraction of this splinter, and a diet for a few days, completely restored the patient.  The wound closed without treatment.

  Here evidently was an accident, not a sickness.  Hence the physician should in such cases establish immediately the pathological diagnosis and not prescribe before he is sure whether there is a “local cause” or not.  Had the mistake been made by a young practitioner, by a beginner, I should not comment upon it.  But it was an occurrence in the experience of a man of long practice, over several years in general practice.  And this seems to me to call for attention.

  I beg that the ideas presented in this brief paper may be understood exactly as I intend them.  Far be it from me to sermonize, or to give undue emphasis to nosological diagnosis.  But it is indispensable that the conscientious physician be familiar with the interpretation of symptoms, with all that goes to insure a complete pathologic diagnosis, so that he shall not be in danger of making such blunders and oversights as those just cited.

  Our responsibility demands that we establish a therapeutic diagnosis, but not less, a pathological one, as well.  For the definition of a homœopathic physician is, a physician who had added something special to his/her education. So that we must not, once entered upon practice, curtail this new special information, and neglect physical examinations.  And it must be added that very often minute study of symptoms reported by the patient, will lead the doctor to conclude that there is a local cause which at first did not seem apparent.  And the doctor must never forget to develop the essential quality:  Good sense.

  Nevertheless, whether in case of accident, or in case of illness, the distinction must be observed from the outset.  As a homœopathic physician he must make his therapeutic diagnosis; for if he prescribes for names of things, and not according to Hahnemannian rules he must be responsible for the failures that will result.  Pathological diagnosis will claim his first attention in cases of accidents or indispositions.

  We trust that in this study we have given each method its due place, insisting that we cannot omit either one or the other kind of diagnosis.

  We always must have those two paragraphs of the Organon in mind (paragraphs 3 and 4):

  The physician is likewise the guardian of health when he knows what are the objects that disturb it which produce and keep up disease and how to remove them from persons who are in health.

  If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in disease, that is to say, in every individual case of disease (knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly  perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual  medicine (knowledge of medicinal  powers), and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient so that the recovery must ensue - to adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him (choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated) as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it  required (proper dose) and the proper period for repeating the dose; if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent, then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, then only can he merit the title genuine and true physician or a master in the art of healing.

  (Courtesy: The Homœopathic  Recorder, March 15, 1929)

ON POTENCY CHOICE AND HOMŒOPATHIC POTENTISATION

  First, a brief review regarding diagnosis which in Homœopathy is two-fold:

  I.  The diagnosis of the disease according to the pathognomonic symptoms, with the help of general clinical status, through a specialist where necessary, through laboratory findings, X-rays, to clinch (a) what belongs to the exact disease, (b) what are conditioned by dietic and basic errors of hygiene, how defective are the home, clothing, care of the body, social life, regulation of life style, nutritional in-take etc.; also what could be set right without aid of medicament.  Further to be considered are intoxications by alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping drugs, drugs to calm down or excite etc.  Such objective disease factors must be eliminated just as the physician of the old school does.

  II. The diagnosis of the sick person to ascertain the non-pathognomonic symptoms which do not belong to the disease in question, the rare, strange, seldom, singular and which seem bizarre.  These are symptoms which are contrary to common sense, make us reflect, and which are characteristic for a particular patient.  Allopathy does not take into consideration such symptoms and considers the patient only as a hysteric or at the most handles such cases with suppressive remedies symptomatically which further add to the patient’s sickness. 

  When the remedy to be given is chosen: which potency is to be prescribed?

  This question can be settled only from practical experience.  We must know that the HAHNEMANN-oriented physician employs basically every potency, from mother tincture to the highest potencies, M, 10M, CM, MM!

  HAHNEMANN has, during his life time, fairly frequently varied the potency scale, just as the number of succussion strokes to be given in preparation of the potencies.  He experimented, twice, ten  times, hundred times, and more frequently to finally settle for ten strokes.  He invented the centesimal potencies of C1 to C30 which he wrote as:  0/VI that is 0 = globule and VI = sextillionth potency (= C18).

  Regarding the preparation of this small dose HAHNEMANN has, in the Organon, paragraph 269, clarified the basic and essential difference between dilution, attenuation and potentisation.  He wrote:

  “It is heard every day that homœopathic medicine potency is considered as mere attenuation, while it is the opposite of it, real development of the natural substance and bringing out the power lying concealed internally through friction and shaking, wherein a non-medicinal dilutant medium used is merely of secondary importance.  Diluting alone, for example, dissolving a grain of salt it becomes mere water; the grain of salt disappears in the  attenuation with plenty of water and will never by that become ‘salt medicine’ like our well prepared dynamisations raised to astonishingly high strength”.

  And as early as in 1886 the Geneva physician GRANIER wrote: “Production of a curative remedy from a substance is not reducing its powers but to develop the latent powers in it, potentising it, that is, to strip it of its material condition”

  As I have already said, the potency choice is a question of practical experience.  Indeed all homœopaths have once begun with low potencies and have only tarried and without much conviction gone from the mother tincture up to C12.  Others went up to C30 which for long remained the limit for HAHNEMANN and which he did not pass over.

  What then is contained in a C30 which by the method of using of individual glass vials in which drops of the remedy in question are put and 99 drops of 90 percent alcohol is added and 10 strokes given repeatedly has acquired?  And what are the high and highest potencies, the so-called Korsakoff potencies?  The latter are prepared up to thousandth potency by the one glass method from the manually prepared C30, with 10 strokes by machine for every potency.  Beyond the thousandth potency the fluxion method is used.

  Everything regarding preparation of a homœopathic medicine can be found in detail in the Organon.  I recommend to you paragraph 123 as also paragraphs 264 to 272.  With remarkable precision and conscientiousness HAHNEMANN has described there how the homœopathic medicines must be prepared.  Please study it thoroughly and attentively again.

  Contrary to the general opinion KENT and his pupils were not in anyway exclusively high potentists but they required all potencies from the mother tincture to the highest potencies.  But their extensive experience and particularly their results made them give superior values to the high potencies because of their innumerable advantages.

  Please bear in mind that the basis of the homœopathic prescription is not the dose but it is the similie principle.  This principle is of such a wonderful value that infact there is no limitation to the diminution of the concentration of the homœopathic remedy if the actual symptoms of the patient harmonizes with the symptoms produced in the provings on the healthy.

  Indeed the low potentists repeat the same objections as the allopaths do against the homœopaths: how is it supposed to work when in the every day diet and drinking water so much substances in weak doses are consumed?

  I answer:  It is not a question of academical dispute but is a matter of practical experience.  What should one say about a case as follows?  A splendid German shepherd-dog has been under the medical treatment of an eminent French veterinary physician for more than two months.  The entire range of the most modern anti-infectious arsenals, Sulfonamide, the most effective antibiotics, for a sepsis with suppurative Metritis and Peritonitis have been used.  On pressing the udder of the poor animal pus squirted out up to a litre in a day and that since weeks.  This rotten pus stank disgustingly like rotten cheese.  The dog was well looked after, cleaned every two hours and lied only in its owner’s room.  The mouth was completely dry, the weak animal could not move at all, refused food and was lying in a miserable state in the bed room.  After 30 days of intensive treatment the veterinarian advised to give it an injection to put the animal to end since he had used the maximal doses of Sulfonomides etc., and felt that all that could be done had been done but failed and it was cruel to allow the animal to suffer further.

  The owner of this dog who was my patient visited me one day for her monthly consultation and was in tears that she had to put an end to the life of the dog by agreeing to the injection.

  I asked her: “but then why don’t you allow it to be treated homœopathically?”  “But doctor, this is not the time for you to be witty.  It is all right for me, since I have faith in it.  But what would you do with your tiny pills to an animal which as the veterinarian says, is suffering from a Septicopyaemia?”

  “Now madam, give the dog the medicine I will give you now and we will see later”.  I gave first Staphylococcinum 10M thrice a day.  After two days Pyrogenium 10M.  Two days later, because of the pus which was stinking like rotten cheese, Hepar 10M.  Lastly after two more days because of the abundance of pus I gave Medorrhinum 10M.  Now, from the very first dose the quantity of pus came down by 80%, the stink began to fade away slowly and after 8 days the dog was cured; it ran about, ate and slept just as when it was healthy.

  In this of course all the potencies were prescribed in the ten thousandth!  One can make fun of ten thousandth potencies and laugh.  But how could a fatally ill condition  like serious Septicaemia be got over and become normal and health restored?  Materialistic homœopaths will  be easily confused in this.  Behind this is nothing other than the grand law of similars discovered by HAHNEMANN.  In paragraph 160 he says:

“As the homœopathic medicine can never be made so small as to not be able to overcome its analogous, non-long-standing, yet-unspoiled natural disease, could even thoroughly eradicate and cure, it can be understood as to why a dose which is not very smallest possible suitable homœopathic medicine aroused always during the first hours after taking it, a perceptible homœopathic aggravation”.

  And in paragraph 249a : “Since according to all experiences, almost no dose of a highly potentised specifically suitable homœopathic medicine can be prepared which would be so small as not to bring about clear improvement in the disease for which it is suitable, so will it be injudicious and harmful to treat, if one were to repeat or increase the dose in the mistaken belief that its small aggravation or non-improvement, was because of its negligible quantity (its far too small dose and it cannot therefore be of use).”

  And in paragraph 279:

  “These pure experiences point that ... the dose of the homœopathically chosen highly potentised curative medicine for commencing treatment of a serious diseases (particularly chronic) can never as a rule be prepared so small as not be stronger than the natural disease, that it cannot, at least overcome a portion, eradicate atleast a part of the sensations of the vital principle and thus cause commencement of the cure”

  Ladies and Gentlemen, read these again and again and meditate on these observations of HAHNEMANN, strikingly corroborated here.

  It is six months since that the dog became cured of a sepsis, a sepsis which materialistic allopathy with its “heroic” medicines could not treat, but on the contrary the condition became worse day by day and the veterinarian had given  up all hopes.

  How could it be argued against the allopath, the veterinarian and the low potentists?

  I doubt much whether the C3 or C6 would have succeeded in a situation as this.  Such a healing reveals four unquestionable facts:

  1.  Homœopathy brings about cures when allopathy despite its modern toxic arsenals is powerless.

  2.  Homœopathy, on the basis of the law of similars discovered by HAHNEMANN is able to make microbes and viruses, harmless.

  3. The homœopathic medicine in infinitesimal doses works qualitatively and not through  its quantity.

  4. Also that in an extremely serious, evidently fatal disease, the cure can be effected totally – “cito, tuto, et jecunde” as HAHNEMANN has impressed in the note to the first paragraph of his Organon. 

  I had a similar case of septicaemia  from perforation of appendix and generalized peritonitis in a 10 year old child who had become parched and was lying in the Geneva Medical College Hospital awaiting his end after surgery.  Neither the child nor the parents nor the Professor knew, who had cured him.  Only a single, really a single dose of Arnica 10M and then Pyrogenium 10M.  I respect 10M.

  To exclude every influence of direct or indirect suggestion, I have purposely chosen the case of an animal, so that the sceptics are convinced.

  I will point out to you, that high potencies are of invaluable worth, that these small doses do not ever lose their therapeutic powers if they are protected from odours and had been prepared with due care.  I own high potencies from HAHNEMANN’s time, JENICHEN’s for example.  I have further such from the previous century as from FINCKE, SWAN, ALLEN, KENT which are still effective and dependable.

  Innumerable physicians like NASH, KENT, CARLETON, Erastus CASE, GLADWIN, SHERWOOD, CUNNINGHAM, FINCKE, MAJUMDAR, Gibson MILLER, Mrs.TYLER, Sir John WEIR and others have published cures by high potencies.

  HAHNEMANN, the founder of the homœopathic principles had begun naturally from the mother tinctures, substantial medicines, materially and chemically analyzable.  Later he began to make the concentrations lesser by attenuations or triturations and observed that despite progressive division these substances remained more effective.

  During his long life, ultimately he was 88 years old - HAHNEMANN was, in the opinion of his epoch, an exception, a revolutionary and in opposition to all practice and traditions.  He went up to C30 wherein he used 30 separate 10 grams glass vials with 100 drops of alcohol in each.  In the first vial he put one drop of the plant tincture or 5 grains of a chemical substance or the 3rd centesimal potency of an insoluble substance with which every passage was further attenuated in ratio of 1 to 100.

  At the last stages of his life differences of opinion arose amongst his pupils.  Some thought that under  no circumstances should one go above the C30.  Others among them his best pupil HERING and GROSS and others experimented with potencies upto 1000, 1500, 2000 and higher, saw with happy astonishment further successes.  To avoid misunderstandings and hostilities from his pupils HAHNEMANN remained in the range of C30 although he had appreciated the efficiency of such high potencies.

  Nevertheless, as researcher and experimentor he had recognized two interesting facts:

  1. Some medicines possess, in specific potencies, an optimum efficiency in each case, whereof in the Materia Medica Pura HAHNEMANN indicated the third, sixth, twelfth and 30th as the most efficacious.

  2. At the same time he observed that in general, the second, fourth and seventh potencies so to say, have a “shallow”, decreased, reduced, curtailed efficacy - in short: a not excessively strong action is displayed, and that positive intervals between the individual potencies must be given.  For this reason his family medicine chest contained  only the following potencies; 1- 3 - 6 - 9 - 12 - 24 and 30. 

  There was a time when FINCKE, ALLEN, SWAN and others were successful by employing highest potencies.

  At a particular time there were high potentists, as they were called, who after the choice of the medicine according to symptom picture gave it in the highest available potency immediately at the beginning of the treatment.  Dr. A. NEBEL who practised here for quite long prescribed, for example, a CM or DM right at the first go, frequently with the best results, since the medicine chosen had been accurately specific. 

  KENT, a systematically experimenting mind endeavoured to find by innumerable experiments a rule or at least a scale method.  After many trials over many years he set his scale method  which I call the KENT scale.  As KENT’s pupils have since then corroborated, adherence to the following spacing gave the best results: 30, 200, 1M, 10M, 50M, CM, DM, MM.

  KENT held, on the basis of  his experience, the C30 as an excellent preparation to begin the treatment of a case  since it brought no, or hardly any, initial aggravation and with the 200th potency he considered them as low potencies with which, as already stated, treatment can be best commenced. He kept them particularly for the acute cases or chronic cases with objective and progressive organ changes.  Otherwise he recommended in chronic cases the 1000th potency from which with appropriate time intervals which he could define after many years of experience, to go up to higher potencies.

  After many years KENT could define the average duration of action of his high potencies.  We have to respect these before repeating the dose.  These are:

  For  200:  3 to 4 weeks

    M:  at least 4 weeks   

    10M  5 weeks

    50M   50 days

  CM  3 months 

    DM  6 months 

    MM  1 year

  Naturally these figures are to be considered as approximation, but all pupils of KENT have found these to be of superior practical value.  Not in every case will it be suitable to repeat doses before expiry of this interval but only in combination with the other golden  rule, that no repetition before progressive amelioration ends.

  The question of repetition of the dose, pharmacopollaxy as I would call it, was again modified by HAHNEMANN at the end of his life, in that he recommended continuous repetition of the dose daily despite favourable reaction.  This method also I and many others have practised for a long time in the hope that it will render better and particularly speedier cures in chronic diseases.  But soon because of the difficulties encountered by the patients regarding the taking too much or insufficiently, they attenuate it poorly and at will, repeat in irregular intervals, etc. - this method which is remarkable, is possible only in exceptional special cases which as I can vouch for, in actual practice is rarely seen.  This reservation is so much more valid as through the KENT method also thoroughly  remarkable successes can be obtained.  Had HAHNEMANN known KENT who represented HAHNEMANN’s continuance, he would have, without doubt, agreed with KENT’s view, because it confirms absolutely to the essential principle of his teaching, “watch and wait”, the careful observer’s. 

  Today the knowledge that low potencies work better in acute, high in chronic cases, is more or less accepted by most of the homœopaths.  It all depends upon what one understands by low and high potencies.

  The advantages of low potencies, including the C30 and 200 according to KENT is that it can be repeated without risk of severe aggravation.  Why?  Because a whooping cough, a diarrhoea with a frequent evacuation, tooth-aches, acute pains in general, the acute states so to say exhaust, consume, weaken the remedy so that in all cases where there is no reaction or where recurrence occurs such repetition is justified; for example in repeated vomiting repetition of  the remedy once every two hours.  It should be given after every vomiting.  It can then be seen that the attacks become rarer until it passes off completely.

  In chronic cases, the intervals suggested by KENT, which has been verified, is to be followed.

  The relapse of earlier symptoms, amelioration coming to a stand-still, status quo or the disease progressing further, are all indications for repetition of the dose.

  Indeed it can be said that a master homœopath is capable of results which the beginner is not able to.  For example in some acute cases in which symptoms are painfully aggravated, like Sciatica, Otitis, Gastroenteritis, Acute Joint Rheumatism, a 10M produces a result which impresses by its rapid cure.  It is like what WILLIAM TELL who with a single arrow directly pierced the apple on the head of his son.

  I recommend to you, to first try C 30 and later go to the C 200.  Now and again you can venture with a 10M if the indications for the medicine are clear and precise.

  In coryza and minor colds Aconitum napellus 200 has at least 90%  success.  In certain chronic constipations immediate and sustained success from a single dose of Nux vomica 10M or Bryonia 10M is perceived.

  I have cured the owner of a big restaurant who had been suffering for 14 years with a chronic constipation and who had been thoroughly stuffed with innumerable laxatives.  There was nothing more which he had not tried.  He had, however, further symptoms of Nux vomica, in his character, in his desires and aversions.  A single dose of Nux vomica 10M has definitely cured him.  Since then he has daily stool, “soft and gentile” as MOLIERE says, and he can have stools regularly with satisfaction.

  A lady complained of headaches which localized in the occipital protuberance accompanied by constipation and eye pains which compelled her every 3 - 4 months to lie in a dark room since she could not bear the least light, and could not at all bear the sun.  Every jolt, even walking aggravated.  She also couldn’t bend forward  without the pain radiating to the neck.  A single doe of Bryonia alba 10M at the close of an episode has put an end once for all her migraines which had been troubling her since 5 years for which she had taken a good quantity of  various medicaments.

  These cases are not rare which you do not experience almost every day.  When it happens: what happiness to the patients in the first place and also to the physician when he sees such conspicuous  undeniable efficacy of the small doses which prove the value of the similie rule, the true basis of Homœopathy.

  Those who merely disparage and shake their heads have no idea about it and cannot gain the experience and observation.  Of course, naturally the indications for the remedy  prescribed  must be exactly specific and symptomatology as defined by HAHNEMANN, KENT and their pupils, and not based otherwise on some one or the other.  Because if the foundation is not based upon these propositions only failures will occur.  If therefore Homœopathy and high potencies are condemned it is not these but the prescriber himself who is at fault.  Why is it that while others obtain successes it should be otherwise with him?

  Study the Materia Medica thoroughly and diligently, study the Organon again and again and the philosophy of KENT.  One of these days you will be compensated richly for that.  Because Homœopathy makes great demand of course but it compensates with high rewards. It is certain: Homœopathy, practiced by earnest, persevering physicians with pleasure in their work, procures full satisfaction in material, intellectual and spiritual respects.

  (Translated by Dr.K.S.Srinivasan, Madras, for Private circulation only).

SOME OPTHALMOLOGICAL CASES TREATED WITH HIGH HOMŒOPATHIC POTENCIES

First Case  Ocular trauma  Arnica 10M

  A student of twenty one had been struck full in the left eye with a tennis ball.  He came to me an hour after the accident.  I found ecchymosis extending to the peri-orbital region, which was tumid and painful.  One drop of 2% cocaine made it possible to examine the eye, which was photophobic and lachrymating abundantly.  The upper and lower lids were swollen and painful.  The lower palpebral conjunctiva had been torn and there was wide-spread ecchymosis.  There was much circumcorneal injection and the superficial layer of the cornea had been torn.  The corneal wound involved the whole of the pupillary area, forming flakes which could easily be detached.  The patient felt smarting pain and a very unpleasant sensation of scratching under the eyelids.  The anterior chamber was normal, tension good, pupil reacting well; examination of the fundus showed nothing in particular.  Sight normal.

  Treatment -- Bathing with sterilized water and a few drops of Calendula (mother tincture); then a damp, aseptic, occlusive bandage with a few drops of mother tincture of Arnica; and to be taken internally, Arnica 10M (Skinner), one dose.

  Twenty-four hours later the cornea was glossy and the epithelium had already healed.  The patient had slept perfectly well, and after four days of occlusive, sterilized, daily bandages soaked in a little Arnica all the symptoms disappeared and the patient was completely cured.

  It is needless to insist on the reasons for the prescription.  The etiology, haemorrhage, lesions, all called loudly for Arnica.

  Second case  Hordeolum (Stye, Compere-Loriot, Gestern-Korn)

  A little girl of six, obstinate and bad-tempered, with hypertrophy of the tonsils, slight goitre, snoring at night, constipated, came to me because of repeated styes on the upper eyelids, which for three years had been almost continual.  When one was cured another began.  Treatment with grape yeast, frequent purging, and other remedies had no result, and her parents wished to know whether Homœopathy could act in such a case.

  The symptoms pointed essentially to Sulphur, Pulsatilla, Silicea, Hepar, Mercurius, and after consideration of these various remedies, I decided to give:  on April 19th, 1925, Sulphur 10M, (Skinner), one dose, the subject being eminently psoric.

  June 2nd, 1925.  The patient returned.  There was no change.  She was a difficult child; nothing pleased her, she complained and cried for nothing, teased and annoyed the other children; and she was sullen in the evening.

  Sulphur having given no result, my prescription probably being incorrect, I administered, being guided by the mental symptoms, Pulsatilla 10M (Skinner), one dose, in spite of the fact that she was a brunette with dark eyes. 

  August 2nd, 1925, she came back with a slight improvement, having had only eight styes since the last visit, which she considered wonderful, but styes were forming again.

  August 4th, 1925, I repeated the Pulsatilla 10M(Skinner), one dose.

  October 8th, 1925.  The patient came back discouraged.  The styes had started again in full force, though the constipation much better.

  The child was still very obstinate, and had become very cowardly. Pulsatilla did not seem to have gone deep enough, and that suggested the chronic of Pulsatilla, Silicea 10M (Skinner), which I then gave.

  In November she was taken with a hard, dry cough; then developed double otitis, which was rapidly cut short with the help of Belladonna 200, one dose.

  In December the constipation reappeared and the styes as well.  This time they definitely developed from right to left.  The child now became very dictatorial. When playing with the other children she must always be the most important.  These valuable indications enabled me to prescribe, on the 13th December, 1925, Lycopodium 10M Skinner, (which is both the chronic of Pulsatilla and the complementary of Silicea).

  In February the mother returned, very glad to say that a wonderful change had taken place.  The styes did not develop as formerly. After a slight inflammatory redness, instead of suppurating, in three or four days absorption took place and the stye dried up.  I have seen the patient since and this good result has been maintained.  It seems more that probable that Lycopodium was “the simillimum of the case”  and that it should have been found at the first visit.  But it is also possible that the previously administered remedies had prepared for the rapid curative action of Lycopodium.

  Third Case  Stye  Pulsatilla 200

  A lady, thirty-nine years of age, came with a stye in the left lower eyelid.  Her eyes watered when she was out of doors.  The lids were stuck together in the morning and she felt a violent irritation.  She was a hepato-renal arthritic, with blue eyes and red hair.  She had previously been treated with Sulphur in increasing doses.  I should have been able to give her Sulphur because this was her basic remedy, but here there was question of an acute condition, the symptoms being new and not an exacerbation of her chronic state.  This was why I gave her Pulsatilla 200 (KENT), one dose.

  In twenty-four hours the stye came to a head, broke and discharged a small quantity of muco-purulent matter, relieving the patient, who had no recurrence of the trouble.

  Fourth Case   Chalazion  Thuja

  Madame N., 38 years of age, living on the Swiss frontier, came to me on the 20th of February, 1922, very discouraged because she had had two operations for chalazions, which were very troublesome, and which she believed to be the cause of persistent migraine.

  The two chalazions which had been operated upon were in the left upper eyelid, and the operations had been performed in a private nursing home with the following result:

  Ten days in the nursing home each time.

  Operation each time $50

  Persistent headaches

  Appearance of fresh chalazions.

  A very discouraging balance sheet, which made her ask for homœopathic treatment.

  When I questioned her, she told me that she could remember that these chalazions dated from 1916, and that a few months before their appearance she had been obliged, because of the arrival of Swiss troops in the village where she lived, to be vaccinated against small pox, this being compulsory for all the inhabitants.

  The development had been slow, but the eyelid had become so heavy and the difficulty in opening it so marked that she had consented to a first operation.

  Two months later a new chalazion developed in the same place, and she had a second operation six weeks before coming to me.  Now a third chalazion appeared, this time in the right lid.

  The swelling was bluish, fairly prominent, on the middle of the free margin of the upper eyelid.  She felt a pricking sensation, nervous palpitation in the morning when waking, and sudden waves of heat without apparent cause.  The patient suffered a great deal from headache etc. in wet weather, on account of her general rheumatic condition.

  She was hasty tempered, impatient and restless, suffering from constrictive migraine.  All her symptoms, and above all this etiology of vaccination, pointed so clearly to Thuja that no hesitation was possible.

  On February 26th, 1922, I gave Thuja 1M (Jenichen), one dose.

  March 26th, 1922.  No change, but the chalazion, which previously had developed steadily, seemed to have remained stationary. There were less frequent waves of heat, but otherwise all the symptoms were the same.  I then gave Thuja 10M (skinner), one dose, to act more deeply.

  A fortnight later the chalazion opened spontaneously, contrary to experience of the habitual development of these tumours, and emptied itself of a greenish-yellow substance.  The palpitation had disappeared and the patient was delighted.

  April 28th, 1922.  The patient returned wholly discouraged, for she had thought herself cured, and now there was a fresh chalazion forming just beside the one cured.

  The eyelid was again heavy, but apart from that the general condition was excellent.  I then gave Thuja 50M (Skinner), one dose.

  June 10th, 1922.  She came back delighted, for she had no more headaches and the chalazion had grown smaller and absorbed spontaneously.  Locally there was no thickening of the tarsus and the patient was perfectly well.

  In the last five years no fresh chalazion has appeared.

  This case shows that, even when the remedy is well chosen, it is sometimes necessary to get to the bottom of the trouble by following the series of degrees according to KENT, for it was only after taking this last dilution that she was freed from the affection.

  Fifth case  Chalazion  Alumina 10M

  Madam P., 30 years of age, had been complaining for some little time of a small tarsal cyst on the free margin of the right upper eyelid.  Her lashes were falling out and she had a painful feeling of drying of the eyeball in the evening.  There was slight granulation of the lower palpebral conjunctiva.  Nothing noticeable in the general condition.

  In accordance with the indications several remedies were given.  Thuja 200, Thuja 1M, Thuja 10M, and then Psorinum 200, then Staph. 10M, one dose only, of each of these remedies, at intervals of several weeks, in order to give each an opportunity to develop its action.  But, alas! no result crowned my efforts.  Each time she came, my patient mischievously and silently pointed to that disconcerting chalazion.

  July 5th, 1926.  After having weighed her symptoms, compared them with those in the works of BERRIDGE and of NORTON the eye, I administered Alumina 10M (Skinner), one dose.

  September 10th.  When I arrived the same half sceptical, half mocking look greeted me as usual.  But the patient confessed that she felt as if something was going on inside of her, though she could not define it.  I repeated Alumina 10M, one dose, and the 1st of October the patient suddenly felt a violent irritation in the tumor which disappeared in twenty-four hours.

  This cure has been maintained.

  Sixth Case  Chalazion  Staphysagria 10M

  Mr.S., 61 years of age, suffered from tense pain of the tarsal edge of the right upper eyelid.  Formerly he was subject to styes, which had not recurred, but which had given place now to painful indurations which formed little irritating and annoying nodules.  There was no characteristic general system.

  I gave Staph. 10M, one dose, and three weeks later the two nodules had entirely disappeared.

  These different cases of chalazion express in a very interesting way one of the main principles of homœopathic therapeutics, “the individualization of each case”.  As you can see here, each case was labelled with the same nosological name, viz., chalazion, but each case was treated and cured with a different remedy!  This is why we repeat and repeat that we do not have remedies for chalazion but that we have many remedies for patients suffering from chalazion.  This simple sentence contains one of the greatest truths of Homœopathy.

  Seventh case   Vernal Conjunctivitis  Aconitum 10M

  Miss M., 22 years of age, suffered each year from spring conjunctivitis.

  The inflammation was essentially in the limbus and conjunctival fornix.  The conjunctiva was a little thickened here and there, the surface a little uneven, slightly spotty, pinkish yellow, of gelatinous appearance, slight pink conjunctival injection. The upper tarsal conjunctiva presented flattened papillae and there was acute irritation and photophobia.

  The patient had suffered from the affection for five years and was very discouraged, for she had various lotions prescribed without any effect on the conjunctivitis, which developed from April to July and then disappeared of itself.

  She remembered that it had appeared for the first time after a mountain walk in spring; on reaching the summit she was uncomfortably conscious of the cold air, while still very hot, but neglected to put on extra wraps.  Suddenly her eyes began pricking.  It was since then that the inflammation had recurred each year.  In view of such an etiology I at once gave Aconite 10M (Skinner), one dose.

  The patient came back a fortnight later very much better and by the twenty-first day the conjunctivitis was cured.

  This result was interesting because we were then at the beginning of May, and usually the trouble continued well into July.

  Unfortunately, I was not able to follow the patient’s history and do not know how she has been in later years.

  Eighth case   Arthritic conjunctivitis  Sulphur 10M

  One very disagreeable form of conjunctivitis, from which many patients suffer who are treated for their general condition, is arthritic conjunctivitis with its subjective sensation of dryness of the eyeball, so hard to bear.

  The patients rub their eyes and continually  wipe and blink them without any relief. Many arthritics suffer from it, and the typical  nocturnal exacerbation of this affection may even prevent sleep.

  I have seen among others, three cases in which several remedies were given in accordance with the general symptoms and have the strong impression that in these cases it was not the last remedy which wrought the cure, but the series of several remedies given successively.  It is like some complicated locks which need several keys!

  There were three patients of the phosphorous type; two of 77 and 72 years and one younger, of 37. They took  successively, and in accordance with general  indications, Sulph., Calc-p., Zinc., Nat-m., in doses varying from 10M to CM, which improved the condition, but only gave a cure when Sulphur 10 M was given at the end of the series.

  I was curious that the same remedy, given at the outset, and with good indications, seemed not to bring about any improvement, while its action was extraordinary at the end of this series of medicaments.

  Ninth Case    Epiphora    Medorrhimum 10M

  Usually one considers tearing as the inseparable sign of an obstruction or some serious narrowing  of the lachrymal passages.  I have, however, found several cases where the lachrymal  canals were entirely open and the lachrymal puncta  normal, and yet this symptom was present and very disagreeable.

  Should the cause be sought in a hypersecretion from the lachrymal glands, or perhaps, in a lack of fluidity which prevents easy flow?

  I have now, among others, two typical arthritic patients, who have chronic epiphora which no remedy has yet been able to modify.

  The following case is of doctrinal interest.  It concerns a little girl of 14 months, fair, with blue eyes, and fairly strong.

  Ever since her birth the left eye watered as soon as she went out of doors.  The eye was sometimes very red.  The child continually rubbed the inner canthus.  She cried very easily.  She also suffered from offensive perspiration of the feet. It was difficult to get her to sleep in the evening.

  In the repertory the remedies which seemed to be indicated were:

  Bell., Calc., Nat-m., Puls., Sanic., Sil., Sulph., Tub. 

  Taking account first of all of the mental symptoms I gave on December 31st, 1923, Puls 200 one dose.

  January 20th, 1924.  The eye still watered and the other symptoms were the same.  I gave Sulphur 200,  (KENT), one dose, as a reactional remedy according to HAHNEMANN.

  February 18th, 1924.  No change.  The eyelids were stuck together on waking.  The lower lid was red in the morning, with a little yellowish “eye-gum” at the interior canthus.

  The mother said that the child wets her bed at night and that for sometime she had an exaggerated fear of motors and dogs, whereas formerly she had not been at all afraid.I then gave Bell. 200 (KENT), one dose.

  On June 7th, 1924, the patient was brought back, and now the tears, were flowing abundantly from both eyes and burning the skin of the cheeks.  The lids were stuck together in the morning.  The fear of dogs  and motors was less and the child no longer wet her bed.

  The mother wished to consult an oculist and he examined the child.  He violently compressed the lachrymal sac and made her cry, with the intention of getting out any lump of mucopus which might be present.  No result, except that the child was afraid of doctors afterwards!

  Fortunately the specialist considered it useless to catheterize the lachrymal passages, and sent the child back to me, telling me that he could not explain the cause of the epiphora.

  July 21st, 1924.  It was the child’s father who brought her this time.  The eyes had not stopped watering and he was obviously discouraged.  He asked me whether it was worth the trouble of continuing any treatment.

  Remembering the importance, especially in children, of the symptoms of sleep and the position during sleep, upon which Dr. SCHLEGEL, Sr., of Tubingen. much insists, I questioned  the father, who said that for a long time the  child had been sleeping on her knees, her head buried in the pillow, and that she was very nervous and impatient. The sexual parts were very red and inflamed.

  At once I questioned the father further, and he confessed that three years before his marriage he had contracted gonorrhoea, which had been so admirably treated with injections of argyrol that he had been cured of his discharge in a few weeks!!!

  The diagnosis was now clear.  The child was suffering from hereditary sycosis.  The indicated remedies not having acted I gave on July 24th, 1924, Medorrhimum 10M (Skinner), one dose.

  The very next day the eyes stopped watering and the child slept on her back.  The other symptoms gradually disappeared, and during the last two and a half years the child has enjoyed good health, none of the old symptoms having reappeared.

  The case illustrates the necessity, when the remedy  which seems to be indicated does not act, for the doctor to question the patient, or, to obtain with tact and circumspection from those around him, precise information as to his own and his parents’ former condition of health, in order to know what venereal diseases, cutaneous or otherwise; may have been suppressed by untimely treatment, always referring to paragraphs 84 and 93 of the Organon.

  Tenth Case    Keratitis Ulcerosa    Pulsatilla 200

  On February 25th, 1927, Madame L., 55 years of age, came to me with an ulceration of the cornea of the right eye, situated towards the edge of the cornea, at four o’clock.  She was sent to me by her oculist, who had diagnosed gouty keratitis ulcerosa, and who, being careful about the general treatment of his patients, sent her  to me, not wishing to interfere with the general homeopathic treatment by local measures.  He hoped that the localized affection in the eye might be cured by treating her general condition, seeing that it arose from arthritism.

  As a precaution he instilled one drop of 1% homatropine .

  There was in fact a superficial corneal ulcer of rectangular  shape, presenting the classic signs of peri-corneal injection, epiphora and photophobia.  The patient also complained of pricking pain, which was always worse at night.

  Pressure on the eyeball relieved the pain.  She suffered from headache with a disagreeable sensation of weight above the eyes towards the right.

  She felt much better out of doors.

  Cold water relieved her for the moment.

  She woke in the morning with a very dry, nasty taste in her mouth.

  The repertory indicated:

  Asaf., Cinnb., Merc-nitros., Puls.

  I gave Puls.200, (KENT), one dose, which especially corresponded with the patient’s general symptoms, while the other remedies corresponded more exactly with the localized symptoms.

  I ordered a detoxifying diet free from acidity, fatty matter and sugar-vegetarian diet.

  Three days later the patient was much better; epithelialization was going on.  The area of the ulceration was still visible, a little opaque on the nasal side, while the temporal side, that nearest the pupil, was already transparent.

  The mouth was no longer dry in the morning.

  Eyelids much less heavy.

  No more pricking pain in the night.

  The injection was still perceptible, but was much less marked than at the onset.

  Three days later the patient no longer showed any sign of the lesion.  The eye was normal.

  This interesting case showed that, even in manifestly objective troubles, the minuteness of the homœopathic dynamization is not an empty formula, since the cure of a corneal ulcer was complete in six days.

Eleventh Case   Rheumatic Iritis  Aconite 200  Sulphur 200

  A lady, 54 years of age, whom I had treated two years before for rheumatism, and who, 20 years before had rheumatic iritis which  had been treated with mercurial ointment, resulting in two fine examples of synechia in the right eye, came to consult me on May 2nd, 1924, on account of acute pain in her right eye, pain that she already knew too well.  She at once gave me her diagnosis and hoped that the treatment would not be so lengthy as the allopathic treatment which was previously given, and which continued for weeks and weeks.

  One evening when  it was cold she  had lingered on her doorstep talking to a neighbour and the cold draught from the half open door had struck upon her eyes.

  The pulse was tense and full.  No fever.

  General malaise.

  Depression and fatigue.

All these symptoms had appeared suddenly when she had been feeling perfectly well.

  Objective examination showed:

  Normal eyelids.

  Circumcorneal  injection, violet tinted, delicate, well marked; no chemosis. 

  Iris a little dull and infiltrated, having lost its brilliancy.

  Contraction slow.

  Two posterior synechiae in the right eye.

  It was impossible to judge of the tension because of the acute pain, caused by the least touch, which pointed to slight ciliary participation.  Diagnosis of irido-cyclitis.

  Subjectively, there was intense pain in the right eye, acute and very trying, with a feeling as if the eye were being pushed out.  The whole eye ball felt extremely hot and the symptoms grew worse at night.  The pain involved the face and the head.  Very marked  photophobia and epiphora.  The fundus showed nothing in particular.  Vision disturbed.

  There seemed to me to be imminent danger of fresh synechiae, so I instilled two drops of atropine 1% to act  mechanically and provoke a prophylactic mydriasis.

  I administered Aconite 200 (KENT), one dose; then Sac lac every two hours, this corresponding exactly to the etiology and the symptoms.

  The next day the patient said she had slept very well.  She no longer had any pain.

  But she felt that the remedies were  “working” in her, for she was painfully conscious of all her joints, beginning with the shoulders, then the pains went down the arms and were now in the lower limbs.  Her headache, however, disappeared entirely - the third day of her illness.

  The peri-corneal injection was much reduced and one of the old synechiae was free, the other still remaining.

  The seventh day, no pain in the limbs, no ocular symptoms. Pressure on the eyeball no longer caused pain.  The iris had regained its brilliancy, one synechiae still persisted.  But a a moist eczema had appeared on both arms and on the back of the hands with a terrible itching.  This was an old symptom which the patient knew, alas, too well.  Having heard her account I could not help saying “Bravo! Thank Heaven, the symptoms are going exactly in the right direction”. And I went on giving her Sac lac.

  The seventeenth day the eczema was stationary.  The patient felt weary and lost courage.  It was then that I thought it the right moment to give her chronic remedy, Sulph.200 (KENT), one dose, (the chronic of Aconite).

  The 29th of June the patient came back satisfied.  There had been no reaction in the eye and it was completely cured.  Her rheumatism had disappeared and the eczema was much improved.

  A fresh dose of Sulph. 10M then later Mezereum 10M completed the cure and entirely got rid of her cutaneous affection.

  This last eminently instructive case illustrates the  truth of the wonderful “law of cure” formularized by HERING and KENT, viz.

  The evolution of symptoms;

  1. From above down, (eyes, upper limbs, then lower limbs).

  2. From within out, (iris, internal organs, joints, then cutaneous apparatus).

  3. In the reverse order of their coming, (eruptions, rheumatism, iritis).

  In order not to lengthen the history of all these cases I will add before closing that every one of the patients was told the corrective regime and appropriate rules of health.

  Homœopathy is not content to give remedies mechanically, but aims at repairing the errors made, and correcting dietary faults when they exist.

  The eye is not an organ apart requiring local therapeutics.  It pertains to one whole; the organism being irrigated by the same blood, bathed  by the same lymph, and innervated  by the same nervous current.

  Local diseases do not exist, but solely localized morbid affections are to be found.

  In these various cases chosen from among the ocular affections, beginning with the external traumatism, the affections of the lids, of the lachrymal ducts, of the conjunctiva, of  the cornea  and lastly, the iris, I demonstrate and prove by facts, the truth of the above assertions - and it is accumulated facts which little by little constitute positive science.

  My object has been to demonstrate that pure Homeoepathy, the unique remedy, and even very often the unique dose in the infinitesimal state (high dynamization or potency), are able to cure ocular affections, although they are wrongly believed to belong to the specialist only.  The eye, as all the other organs of the economy, can take benefice of this bountiful and liberating  therapeutic action.

    (Courtesy:  The Homœopathic Recorder, Jan., 1929).

  * Read at the Quinquennial Homœopathic Congress, London, July, 1927.

THE DOSAGE USED BY HAHNEMANN

  When from time to time at the Hahnemannian School the question of posology comes back for discussion, the Master’s way is frequently mentioned by someone, but whatever is stated by one person is often contradicted by someone else; so that utter confusion reigns on the subject.

  It occurred to me that this controversy could be finally settled if a chronological report was given based on the original documents of all of HAHNEMANN’s writings on the question from his first publication until the end of his life.

  I am well aware of the value of the material gathered by Dr. DUDGEON on the Hahnemannian posology in his Lectures on Homœopathy.  However, it is certain that, at that time, this esteemed authority lacked some very important information on the subject.

  I am referring to HAHNEMANN’s first edition of his Materia Medica Pura, of his “Chronic Diseases”, and to the second edition of the first and second volumes of this work, as well as to the valuable compilation made by Dr. Richard HUGHES  in 1878 which has been published in the British Journal of Homoeopathy. Through this source of information I was able to remedy certain lapses and make a complete expose of facts on the Hahnemannian posology from 1796 until HAHNEMANN’s death in 1843.  So here comes the sequence:

  1796-1798: In 1796 HAHNEMANN stated for the first time, in the second volume of “Hufeland’s Journal”, the homœopathic doctrine in a paper entitled: “Essay on a New Principle to Discover the Curative Virtues of Medicinal substances, Followed by Some Remarks on the Principles Accepted since Then.”

  In this work he mentions several times the word “small doses”, necessary when one prescribes drugs having similar action; but the context showed (and sometimes proved) that he thought the doses were so weak as to be unable to produce physiological effects with the substance used.

  During the next two years it is clear that for the majority of the drugs used in his practice “small doses” never meant their use in fractionated parts.  In 1797 he reported a case of colic for which he prescribed Veratrum album at a dose of 4 grains, i.e., 26 centigrams (1 grain = 0.065 centigrams) and a case of asthma treated with the same amount.  In 1798 he reported a series of cases of fever, steady and remittent, which occurred that year and for which he prescribed Arnica (a few grains of the root, i.e. 15-30 centigrams.); Ignatia: for children seven to 12 years of age (2 to 3 grains, i.e. 12 to 18 centigrams);  Opium (1/5 to 1/2 grain, i.e., 1 to 3 centigrams); Camphora ( 2 to 3 grains, i.e., 20 to 40 centigrams);  Ledum (6 to 7 grains, i.e., 39 to 40 centigrams).

  In another work published the same year, “On a Few Periodical disease of the Daily Type,” he mentions giving 8 grains, i.e., 52 centigrams, of Ignatia and doses of 1/2 to 1 drachm of Cinchona i.e., 2 to 4 grams of the raw substance.

  So in the beginning HAHNEMANN used substancial material doses, corresponding approximately to those used in minimal doses by traditional medicine.

  1799: This was the year of the sudden and unexplained introduction of what we now call “infinitesimal doses.”  In a publication “On the Care and Prevention of Scarlatina” (1801) HAHNEMANN mentions his treatment of an epidemic of this disease which occurred in the summer of 1799 and the use of our remedies: Ipecac, Opium, Belladonna, and Chamomilla, and speaks of each one prescribed in doses of a minuteness unknown in medical practice to that day.

  His tincture of Ipecacuanha, for example, was made of one part of the drug to 2,000 parts of alcohol.  Of this dilution only 1 to 10 drops were to be administered depending on the age of the patient.

  Opium was diluted to such an extent that 1 drop was equivalent to 5 millionths of a grain (of about 6 centigrams).  For children under four years of age this dose was to be further diluted to correspond to the 6X.

  Belladonna was administered at a dose equivalent to the 432,000 part of a grain (i.e. 6 centigrams) of the extract, therefore approximately the 7th decimal dilution.  As a prophylactic, a solution was prepared containing only 1/24 millionth part of a grain, of which 1 to 40 drops were prescribed depending on the age, and only every third day (i.e. about the 9th decimal dilution.)

  Chamomilla tincture contained the 800th part of a grain of the dry extract, and only 1, 2 or more, drops were to be administered.

  1801:  In the second part of “Hufeland’s Journal” for that year HAHNEMANN no longer needed to be defended on the question raised by his article:  “What could be the effects of such minute doses of Belladonna?”  But we should note that he mentions several times the effects of the millionth part of the ordinary dose, i.e. the 6th decimal or the 3rd centesimal:

  “Those who are satisfied with these general indications will believe me when I state that I have cured various paralytic conditions by the administration for several weeks of a highly diluted solution of Belladonna.  For the whole treatment I needed less than a 100 thousandth part of a grain of the extract, i.e. a 5th centesimal dilution or 10X.  I also succeeded in curing several periodical nervous syndromes, furunculosis and its prevention, etc...  with less than one millionth of a grain, i.e. a 6th CH for the whole treatment.”

  1806:  HAHNEMANN says nothing more regarding the homeo posology, not even in his Fragmenta de Viribus Medicamentorum Positivis published in 1805, until his publication of Medicine of Experience in 1806 in Hufeland’s Journal.  Anyway, he does not go beyond the position he took in 1799 and even until 1801.  He speaks of “the smallest possible sufficient dose,” the exact number being of little importance; when referring to particular cases he mentions only 100th, 1,000th, one millionth of an ordinary dose, i.e., the 1st, 2nd, 3rd centesimal dilutions with which we are already familiar.

  1809:  I haven’t been able to find anything regarding posology until 1809 aside from the general advice regarding the minuteness cited above.

  In a study of more than 40 pages entitled: “Reflections on the Three Methods Accredited for Treating Diseases,” published in Hufeland’s Journal for that year, we find a paragraph stipulating that in certain circumstances of so-called “bilious states” one single unique dose of the tincture of Arnica root will suppress often within a few hours all fever, the bilious taste, and all the “intestinal storms.”  The tongue clears up and all vigor is restored before night.

  However, in another communication published that year we note that regarding two violent poisons, HAHNEMANN dilutes much more and much further than in the preceding three years.

  For a fever that had lasted well over a year in Germany and described in the “Allgemeine Anzeiger der Deutschen” of 1809, he mentions Nux vomica and Arsenicum, according to the indicating symptoms, and recommends giving the first in the 3 millionth and the second in the 6 millionth of a grain, respectively in the 4th and 3rd centesimal dilutions.

  1810:  This is the historical year when the first edition of the Organon was published, and it is natural that we expect to find in the paragraphs devoted to posology a whole series of extra details regarding the homoeo dilutions.  However, there is very little else said aside from what was reported in his Medicine of Experience of 1805.

  In a note which I have been able to trace in the Organon paragraph 247 HAHNEMANN writes (according to R.HUGHES):  “When I speak of the dose prescribed in homeo practice as being the smallest possible, I do not intend - because of the difference in pharmacological power - to give a precise table of the volume and weights of each drug.”

  1814: in an article on the “Treatment of Typhus and the Nervous Hospital Fever spreading Now.” (it was the time of Germany’s insurrection against Napoleon following his retreat from Russia) in 1814 we have a new glimpse of HAHNEMANN’s Posology.

  The drugs he recommended, according to the symptomatology, were Bryonia, Rhus-tox, and Hyoscyamus.  He suggested the administration of the first two in the 12th dilution, the third in the 8th dilution, however on a different scale of the centesimal, which was his usual practice and in which 6 drachms, i.e., 1,000 drops instead of 100 drops of alcohol, had to be used in each progression of the dynamisation.

  This would correspond, according to Dr. DUDGEON, to the 12th dilution being equivalent to our 15th to 16th dilution; and the 8th, to our 10th approximately.

  Spiritus nitri dulcis was indicated in certain circumstances, and 1 drop had to be succussed in 30 cc. of water and the mixture consumed in 24 hours.

  1816:  This year is outstanding in the history of Hahnemannian posology, at least from my knowledge of books.

  In the first volume of Materia Medica Pura, published in 1811, HAHNEMANN fails to give any details in his preliminary remarks to the many pathogeneses regarding the dose of the drugs he found to be particularly indicated.

  We know nothing of his views at that time regarding the dosage of Belladonna, Dulcamara, Cina, Cannabis, Cocculus, Nux vomica, Opium, Moschus, Oleander, Mercurius, Aconite and Arnica.

  Now, however, in the second volume, published in 1816, and in the next two, the best dose of each drug is indicated.

  For Causticum, for example, 1 drop of the original preparation corresponds to one dose.

  Arsenicum is to be administered at the 12th, 18th, or at the 30th dilution, and preferably the 30th.

  For Ferrum the 100th, the 10,000th, and the 50,000th part of a grain is advised as the best dose.

  Ignatia is recommended at the 9th or at the 12th dynamisation, and Rheum, in acute cases, at the 9th.

  For Pulsatilla, Rhus-tox, and Bryonia the same doses are indicated:

  If the patient is robust and his disease is of some duration, 1 drop of the pure juice of the plant is the best dose.  But in delicate patients and for acute conditions the dose is to be smaller: for Pulsatilla, the 12th; for Rhus-tox, the 12th or the 15th dilution; and for Bryonia, the 18th dilution.

  These ideas are perfectly illustrated in two famous cases published at that time by HAHNEMANN as examples of homœtherapeutics, as cited in the preface of that volume.

  The first case involved a gastralgia with gastrosuccorrhoea of three weeks’ duration in a robust woman with otherwise good health.

  As predicted by HAHNEMANN, she was cured in less than 24 hours by a single drop of the root of Bryonia, as verified by one of his friends.

  The second case was an acute gastritis of five days’ duration in a pale and weak man of 42 years of age.  His remedy was 1/2 drop of the 12th dilution of Pulsatilla.  The next day good digestion was restored, and a week later, when HAHNEMANN checked him, the cure was well maintained.

  These two cases were treated at the end of 1815.

  Furthermore, HAHNEMANN was then 60 years of age.  In the same preface we learn that he had now adopted the centesimal scale, the greatest care to be taken so that each dynamization would be exactly what it was supposed to be; but, alas, the pharmacists failed to follow his instructions.

  The dried plants are to be treated with 20 parts of alcohol. Each drop of that mother tincture is estimated as containing 1/20th part of the medicinal power (Arzneikraft) of that preparation.  The tinctures prepared with fresh plants by mixing the expressed juice with equal parts of alcohol, are to be considered as titrated at 50 %.  Therefore 2 drops will be added to 98 drops of alcohol to obtain the 1st centesimal dilution.

(Translated by Roger A. SCHMIDT, M.D. from Groupement Hahnemannian de Lyon, 9th series, No.1, 1972, p.35-41).

SOURCE OF THE ARTICLES

1. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XLVI, JAN. 1979.

2. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XIVI, AUG. 1979.

3. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XLVII, APR. 1980.

4. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XXXIX, MARCH 1972.

5. THE HOMŒOPATHIC RECORDER, NOV. 1929, CURRENT HOMŒOPATHIC PERIODICALS

6. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS,  VOL. XL, APRIL 1973.

7. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XLI, MARCH 1974

8. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL.XLIV,  DEC. 1977.

9. ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR KLASSISCHE HOMÖOPATHIE, 2, 1964.

10. THE HAHNEMANNIAN GLEANINGS, VOL. XLIV, JAN, 1977.

11. THE HOMŒOPATHIC HERITAGE, VOL. III, APRIL AND MAY 1978.

12. THE HOMŒOPATHIC HERITAGE,  VOL. III, FEBRUARY 1978.

13. ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR KLASSISCHE HOMÖOPATHIE, BAND 29, 1985.

14. THE HOMŒOPATHIC HERITAGE, JAN. 1978.

15. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN INSTITUTE HOMŒOPATHY, JUNE 1974.

[1] When they were not caused by an important error in regimen, a violent emotion, or a tumultuous revolution in the organism, such as the occurrence or cessation of the menses, conception, childbirth and so forth.”

[2] “In cases where the patient (which, rarely happens in chronic, but not infrequently in acute diseases)  feels very ill, although his symptoms are very distinct, so that this state may be attributed more to the benumbed state of the nerve, which does not permit the patient’s pains and sufferings to be distinctly perceived, this torpor of the internal sensibility is removed by Opium, and in its secondary action the symptoms of the disease become distinctly apparent”.

[3] See page 84.

[4] “One of the many great and pernicious blunders of the old school.”

[5]  In the Introduction to the Organon I (1810) HAHNEMANN says, “….. In this investigation I found the 

  way to the truth, but I had to tread it alone.  …..  the farther I advanced from truth to truth  ……”  in a 

  Note dated 12^th March 1843 HAHNEMANN wrote “I sought truth earnestly and found it.” = KSS.

[6]  Kent: Lectures on Homœopathic Philosophy; Lecture V

[7]  Poincaré, H.: La Valeur de la Science.

[8]  Larousse: Encyclopaedia

[9]  Regnualt: Precis de logique evolutionniste. Bib.phil. p.118.

[10]  Boutroux: Loc.cit.

[11]  Littré. Dictionary of Medicine, Art: Law.

[12] It is also very useful in fractures when small bone chips remain in the wound.  The Silica patient is 

  always very chilly, mostly in the head, and shows frequent little white spots on the nails, called ‘flores 

  unguis’ or leukonychia striata.  (Repertory p.1191, Extremities, spotted nails.)