In all varieties of chronic disease the same force may be thrown into the system, and may begin working from the first, yet the evidence of its activity is t once apparent in the cancers, and it may be demonstrable in the others for weeks, or even months. And is this unreasonable? In such a condition as cancerous tumours we get myriads of germs accumulated in one part of the body, the inference being that Nature, always conservative, protects and prolongs the life of the individual by causing these germs to collect in one region, rather than allow the poisonous dissemination throughout the various structures of the human body.
If this be the case, the effect of the indicated remedy will be proportionate to the size of the accumulated mass and the ease with which it can be acted on.
If, then, the ignorant and superstitious idea obtains that there must be some proportion between the amount of disease material and the size and virulence of the dispersing agent, any attempt at curing the disease is simply hopeless. For is it not evident that if a large quantity of such a substance is necessarily associated with a proportionate amount of force, such force, if in relationship with the disease, will be so great as to cause a rapid giving way of diseased tissue and will thus tend to poison the patient?
While if, in such a case as the above, the doses, though small are too frequently repeated, the effect will be the same, and the too rapid dispersal of the diseased material will act as a poison not alone to the life of the adjoining tissues but to that of the patient thus rapidly infected?
That medicines simple plant-remedies can thus influence these forms of disease is not a matter of mere theory; my knowledge of it is evolved from deliberate clinical observation extending over more than thirty years. The matter is simply one of relationship, it is not a matter of quantity of material.
The seed of a globe turnip (Brassica Rapa) is said to multiply its bulk in the ground seventeen million of times, the resulting effect being in no way due to the size of the original seed but to relationship that exists between the soil and the germ or seed placed there.
In the case of cancer referred to, the evidence is almost as strong in favour of an action resulting from the dose, as it is that the turnip resulted from the originating seed. The power is manifest, it is strong, and science having obtained such a power ought to find means to make it efficient efficient, that is, for curative purposes.
Were there no evidence forthcoming but that furnished the above case, it alone would prove the preliminary statement that the cancers, and especially the internal ones, can easily be acted on.
But can this Force, so powerful in disturbing a disease mass, be utilised for curative purposes? In the case referred to, an immense carcinomatous mass extended from close below the liver down to the pelvis of the right side, and at the site of operation this pointed and threatened to ulcerate. A patient whose body is so full of cancerous material, and with but a single kidney left after the operator has done his work, is not under any circumstances likely to recover; but that she is being acted upon, and acted upon beneficially, is evident from the pains having changed in character and severity from stabbing, shooting pains to dull and dragging ones and from the fact that the patient no longer requires morphia for her pains, and is having sufficient sleep. Though, as I write, a fortnight has elapsed since this patient took a dose of a very simple remedy, Juniper comm., given in consequences of the Polyuria that existed before the cancer was detected, her entreaty is not to be given another yet awhile; and she is perfectly right. The action started is a beneficial one, but it is attended with greater changed than the poor patient can comfortably endure. Its violence must be allowed to tone down before a repetition of such effects can be safely endured.
The subsequent course of the disease was characteristic. The patient went on very well and free from pain until on 3rd September I gave her a dose of silphium perfoliatum. At the time of taking it she had been getting on very fairly, the swelling, which had threatened to press up dangerously against the chest, had lessened; and the condition might have been regarded as one of remarkable quiescence, no change taking place either way.
Immediately after the dose a gnawing pain in the swelling set in and the bowels became confined, and the scar left by the eviscerated kidney began irritating and in four or five days discharge was noticed. This discharge continued to increase till a large opening formed, from which a profuse clear fluid went on pouring away night and day, from the end of September to 11th December following. on the night of 10th December she was so free from pain and suffering that her daughter, who had attended her assiduously all through, left with every expectoration that her mother’s rest would be undisturbed. However, in the early morning (about 2 a.m.) sinking set in, and in about an hour she passed away peaceably and happily and without a particle of pain.
What is the meaning of all this? The meaning of it is, that the vital powers had become exhausted by the draining away of the disease, an out-pouring having been effected by the unit dose of silphium given 3rd September. This out-pouring would have been curative had the amount of cancerous material been less in quantity; that it was undoubtedly natural, is proved by the absence of pain, the shrinkage of the cancerous mass, which was very obvious, and the general improvement in the patient’s condition during its continuance. In other words, the evidence in favour of there being in operation a form of activity other than the activity of the cancer force itself, subsequently to the exhibition of the indicated remedy, is as conclusive as anything can be in such matters.
That heaped up disease, in the form of cancerous mass, can be set free by the action of remedies, is placed, in my opinion, almost beyond dispute by the case of a lady, aged 54, the left side of whose neck was one great mass of cancerous glands a truly malignant form of Hodgkin’s disease. Three months before seeing me this patient had presented herself at Charing Cross Hospital, where he case was very properly declared hopeless, and an operation refused. In the meantime the disease had much extended, and when I saw her, masses of cancerous material existed on the right side of nape of neck, as well as those on the side and below the collar bone on the left. On january 5, I prescribed a unit dose and an ointment of scrophularia nodosa, and on the 19th following had in a report that a diffused rash, looking like that of measles, had spread over the body and face immediately after taking my medicine, and that otherwise she had improved; the phlegm coming up in the throat was less and the bowels were more regular. Ruta graveolens in unit dose and ointment was then given, and on February 2 following, she was reported as feeling much better and could swallow better. The swellings, though the same in size, had become tender to the touch.
Now, my inference from all this was that the patient had been strongly acted upon, as shown in the first interval by this “measles” eruption, and in the second interval by the tenderness of the swellings, and throughout both intervals by the general improvement in the patient’s feelings. My advice, therefore, was to absolutely discontinue all medicines, as I felt sure a force was acting upon the swellings, and that she ran the risk of having the disease set free too quickly. This was proved to my mind most unmistakably by the subsequent progress.
On February 14 report came in that for three days there had been great difficulty in breathing and in swallowing, and to this my reply was that I could not sanction the giving of ordinary remedies, and that the patient was simply to sip constantly of lemon juice and hot water.
In about three weeks afterwards I was forwarded, by two messengers well acquainted with the deceased, a flurried letter, written by her daughter, to the effect that they had left the patient only too long without medicine, and that by the time a doctor was called in mortification had set in, and that the poor patient had died that morning. It was obvious from the tone of the letter that a rival practitioner had been making disparaging remarks, as sometimes happens. But this did not prevent my putting some questions to the bearers of this unhappy intelligence.
Firstly I asked, “Did the patient die in pain?” Reply,”Oh no! not in the least.” ” And where, may I ask was the mortification?” Reply, ” Across the loins; the parts turned quite black she died.” ” And what became of the swellings?” Reply, ” Oh, they went entirely away; there was not a vestige to be seen of them before she died.” ” Well, then,” I said, ” can you not see what took place? The medicines acted on the disease and acted beneficially, but the diseased material being in such large quantity, and discharging itself as it did through the system, an undue amount of poison was thrown upon the chief emunctories, the kidneys, and these, unable to bear the strain, mortified, together with the adjoining structures, hence the blackened appearance of the loins. This only shows the extreme naturalness of the process in operation, the patient going out of the world in a condition perfectly painless and in her senses, not in terrific agony, only subduable by obliteration of sensation by morphia.”
