R Del Mas D. The reader will kindly excuse the writer for answering a question which is apt to arise in the mind of the prescriber regarding the two torticollis cases reported here. Lyc. was called for in the first case, because of its rightsidedness and lithic diathesis. Cupr. was required in the second case, because of its rightsidedness and exanthemic suppression or metastasis.
Three physicians in succession and in as many weeks treated her, without helping her and without knowing what ailed her. The third one advised to take the child to St. Paul. In St. Paul a physician was called about midnight, soon after the child had arrived. But, like his three predecessors, he was stumped and asked to have a pediatrics specialist in consultation.
It not unfrequently occurs that we are called upon to prescribe for what seen rather results, of morbid actions, than active diseases. In such cases, it would seem that we may often successfully base a prescription upon the symptoms of a diseased condition which no longer exists but which form in reality a part of the case.
Empiricism alone ever prescribed by “guess and by God.” But, in order to becomes a sound therapeutist, one must know the full range of action of nearly one thousand drugs. Each patient needs only on drug at a time and the drug he needs is that which covers his own characteristics, plus the characteristic or diagnostic symptoms of his disease.