Elizabeth Wright Hubbard Of course only a few examples from among those listed in the suggested study books have been given here. The student will notice that for the most part the nosodes have been omitted, also the tissue salts; moreover, certain notable remedies, like Kali carb., for which many complements have been suggested but none seems wholly satisfactory.
Now we come to actual methods for acquiring and retaining the general picture and detailed knowledge of this bevy of remedies, This is no simple task as anyone reading the proving of a polychrest, such as Calcarea, will realize. No mind can retain such a mass of symptoms which often seem unrelated and contradictory. One must learn how to study a remedy.
In the Boger method fewer symptoms are used and special stress is put on pathological generals, for instance, if the case presents several excoriating discharges the rubric ACRIDITY,in Bogers General Analysis, would be taken; if the patient complains of marked dryness of mouth, rectum, skin, etc., the general DRYNESS would be used. In this method the mentals are prominent and take first place, as in the Kent method.
The title of this is just two words, “Inside Out.” You remember from embryology that the skin and the nervous system develop from the same layer, therefore m case are going to be those of the skin and those of the mind–five skin and one mind.
HYPOTENSION HOMOEOPATHIC TREATMENT. Study the blood chemistry of your low tension patients. Often their chlorides will be out, their cholesterols low, their nitrogen metabolism may be disturbed, country to what one might have supposed. At all events, in a field where little is known or done, the homoeopathic remedy can vitalize the patient to a remarkable degree and fit him to lose, more or less joyously, another button in lifes wringer!
TIMING IN PRESCRIBING. To philosophers, as well as to athletes, rhythm, which is really timing, is paramount. A beginner in homoeopathic prescribing may take his case magnificently hut may have no sense for chronology, for the sequence of cause and event. Always put dates opposite the illnesses, operations or catastrophes in the patients history.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC PATIENT. The most difficult cases to manage are the new patients who dont yet understand what they must not do: that they must not suppress again an eruption or discharge that the homoeopath has been trying to bring out again. Always warn your patients with suppression in their histories, if a rash or discharge reoccurs, to do nothing and let you know.
NERVOUS MOMENTS OF A “G P “. No more blood spitting after second day for three months. Gain of over two pounds. Cough and sputum stopped. No longer feels tired. Carried for over three years on Stann. and Alumen at two to three months intervals (with one dose of Iodum for a cold), never stopping work except for two weeks vacation yearly. No blood spitting in over a year. Holds his increased weight. Chest negative for acute findings.
Human nature is an odd mixture of credulity and incredulity. If you tell a man that there are two hundred and seventy billion stars he will accept your word for it, but if you put up a sign “Fresh Pain” he is never satisfied until he proves it is fresh. I am hoping that all of you here gathered, interested in homoeopathy, will both believe what is to follow and put it to the test.
The remedy, Thuja, is made from the arbor vitae, the tree of life. Its common name is the white cedar and it belongs to the Coniferae closely related to the Euphorbiaceae. The other members of its tribe which are used, up to date, in Homoeopathy, are Sabina Juniperus, Abies of two varieties, Pinus Sylvestris and Pix Liquida and Terebinthina. Taxus Baccata, the yew, is a close ally.
The child was thin and pasty-looking, his mouth open, drooling slightly, with a sort of snorting snuffle every few breaths; his dead shape was within the limits of normal and his ears normal. He had no teeth. He could neither stand nor sit without support, nor creep, and his head would wobble if he got off balance. The fingers of his hands were spread widely apart and back and had spatulate tips.
The best preventive for chronicity recurrent attacks in adult or child is the constitutional homoeopathic remedy, chosen by individualization based on the totality of the symptoms, which is Natures own request and guide. The same can be said for frequent attacks of so-called surgical troubles: tonsillitis, appendicitis, piles, duodenal ulcers, bleeding fibroids and many others.
Then there were a couple of cases which really are mental, and yet they come in under the sphere of the sex organs. They were both cases of onanism, one in girl of 27 who had done it from the time she was a child, and I had had her as a patient for aphthae of the mouth, which she had horribly. I put her on Kali mur. which helped her very much. She confessed this other thing to me one day and apparently it was very serious.
This is just a humorous sketch of what the cough remedies can do but it may give you some ideas and I hope you will give me some ideas on ones I have omitted. I should like to know whether anybody uses Arabia racemosa. One of our old members, Dr. John Hutchinson, used to tell me that was his favorite cough remedy. I never see it indicated and never have any luck with it. Perhaps some of you have and can enlighten me.
Finally she said, “In these attacks I feel as though my stomach hit my backbone.” I asked her to try stretching during the pain and she found it agreeable. Wassermann and blood count negative. Stools tended to be in little black balls. Plumbum 1m, one dose, produced rapid improvement and the colics, which had been coming every day or two for four months, have now been absent for five weeks.
Most patients require medicine often, not only so that they feel that something is being done but so that they may have powders for emergencies and it is not only honorable but necessary to give plentiful Placebo. It is wise to train the patients to take powders or pellets as Placebo which are similar in appearance to the actual remedies, and not to give them the tempting brown, pink and green blank tablets.
One other point may be valuable in knowing the patient and that is to get the version of the immediate family and close friends. This is sometimes dangerous, as nervous patients hate to know that they are being talked over, but the wise physician can take much contradictory evidence and arrive at a more just and sympathetic evaluation of the case.
Among particular symptoms, also, you give preference to the “strange, rare and peculiar” ones. Angina pectoris with pain extending up into the occiput would take preference over heart pain extending down the arm, because the former is more strange and unusual. The strange mental symptoms may often be of less value than the peculiar generals and particulars.
The relationships of remedies according to their chemical constituents is a highly interesting and all too undeveloped subject. It illuminates relationships, as for instance, Pulsatilla contains Kali Sulph., and Bell. has much Mag. phos., Allium cepa and Lyc. contain Sulph. Quantitative chemical analyses should be done on all our vegetable remedies.
Theoretically any substance or force may become a homoeopathic remedy. In a large number of instances of so called physiologically inert substances in the crude state varying degrees of potentization are necessary to bring our the remedial powers. At present no complete list of all homoeopathic remedies exists. At a rough guess some two or three thousand remedies are in use and new ones are continually being developed.
Boericke divides symptoms into basic and determinative classes, the basic being the common, diagnostic and pathologic, and the determinative the subjective, modalities and generals. Boericke, like Dr. Margaret Tyler, in England, advocates the use of certain large general rubrics, such as lack of vital heat, as eliminative symptoms, which some Kentians consider dangerous.
Throughout his practice the physician must tell the idea of homoeopathy with brief but helpful explanations to the patients in order to insure their cooperation. He must himself have the character to sit tight when he knows what he is doing and not spoil his cases by unnecessary and harmful prescribing. Above all, he must consider each patient as an opportunity for service not only to the individual and the community but to Homoeopathy and to the race.
Homoeopathy regards acute disease as an eliminative explosion, which, if handled in the proper homoeopathic manner, leaves the body in healthier condition. This does not mean that the acute disease should be allowed to run its course, for if the symptoms are met at its inception by the simillimum the disease be aborted and yet the economy will be purified.
The Kent Repertory is a compilation of materia medica, certain prior repertories, such as Lippes and clinical symptoms verified. In order to successfully search in the Kent Repertory for the symptoms of your case as evaluated in accordance with our last lecture you must be thoroughly familiar with the plan of the book, its rationale, and also its inconsistencies.
Mothers have a few instincts left, even in these times, and one is a distinct aversion to having their children shot full of this and that preventive serum or vaccine. Blessed and sane instinct! When they realize that the same good end can be accomplished by mild internal protection by high potency, without introducing foreign blood rhythms and with no fear of bad reaction, they are delighted.
In cases where no drug stands out, after patient questioning and repertorizing, some give the nosode of the main miasm in order to stir up the depths and throw out indications for a curative prescription. We hear much of the role of the nosode when seemingly well chosen drugs fail to act or hold; and in the clearing up of recalcitant relapses. The strict homoeopath uses the exanthem nosodes for immunization often, although Merc. cy., Bell. and Dros. prevail, too.
In the ancient wisdom the elements, and particularly the metals, have a special place, being connected with the planets. Many of the metals we use and stress – Aur., Arg., Hg., Ferr., Cupr. – but some which theoretically should be as important do not come into their own in our knowledge and prescribing. For instance, the subject of this paper, Stannum, or tin.
How can those gentleman boast that they can attend thirty to forty patients a day! What a time it takes to find the useful remedy for one patient, when searching and consulting our manuals! They cannot possibly devote the necessary time to examine thirty to forty patients. How would they be able to find something exactly suited to each one?
Physical examination showed mitral and aortic heart, double pleural effusion, huge liver, tender and pulsating, fluid in the abdomen, probable hypostatic pneumonia, irregularity and at times flutter of the heart, pulse soft and weak. Practically no urine was being passed.
The patient should be gone over again with these remedies in the foreground and plb. Caust. and op. in the background. Each of the five is a searching miasmatic remedy and careful observation should enable a fairly certain choice between the five. Without further data it is impossible to prescribed accurately.
In connection with being made ill by specific articles of food several interesting points arise : Try at first to see whether it is a combination of foods which disagree, or the one given element of diet. A wise professor once told me that almost anyone could eat almost anything if they ate it by itself. Next in the case of certain acids, try giving cream cheese or cottage cheese with them.
The description of the type of the patient is clearly Calcarea. Lycopodium is not blond, stout, lymphatic, and is dark, thin, irritable, haughty. Sepia is also the swarthy personality and not lymphatic and would probably have much more marked mentals. Phosphorus is a different personality.
The relationships of remedies according to their chemical constituents is a highly interesting and all too undeveloped subject. It illuminates relationships, as for instance, Pulsatilla contains Kali sulph., and Bell. has much Mag. phos., Allium cepa and Lyc. contains Sulph. Quantitative chemical analyses should be done on all our vegetable remedies.
They were selected, not with an eye to numbers, but from two viewpoints, first the practical clinical one, on the basis of patients showing unusual mental ability whose symptomatology had called for these remedies, and secondly from a theoretical standpoint by running through the mental pathogenesis of our frequently used remedies
There are several kinds of pathology. Disease diagnoses appear here and there in the Repertory as, scarlet fever, septicaemia chorea, apoplexy, etc. Other conditions which are pathological and yet are symptoms rather than diseases are found, such as, convulsions, dropsy, cyanosis, haemorrhage, etc. There is a third class of pathology, the importance of which consists in the bodily tendency to produce such changes, such as, warts, polypi, fibroid tumors, etc.
At the back of the first volume would be a list of synonyms, not only in English but also in French and German and possibly in Spanish. This would make the work available internationally. A list of correct remedy names with pronunciation marks and carefully standardized abbreviations should be added, and a brief section on remedy relationships appended.
The Kent Repertory is a compilation of materia medica, certain prior repertories, such as Lippes and clinical symptoms verified. In order to successfully search in the Kent Repertory for the symptoms of your case as evaluated in accordance with our last lecture you must be thoroughly familiar with the plan of the book, it rationale, and also its inconsistencies.
An unnecessarily severe aggravation is used by too high or too low potency. A well chosen potency will given as above, either by aggravation in a quick short one. Too prolonged an aggravations after high potencies,such as CM in curable cases,the patient feels distinct better even during the aggravation, as it is the characteristic symptoms and not the disease or the patient which are aggravated.