The case is absolutely unique, as far as I know, in the history of medicine, and stands in every way unparalleled.
I claim upon the evidence of this case and that of the woman in whom cancer had returned after evisceration of the kidney, as well as the evidence of many other cases, that scirrhous cancer can be acted upon very easily indeed by remedies, and that the effect of the plant remedy, if given in single dose and accurately selected, is to cause an outflow of cancer juice from the malignant mass.
The difficulty in the accomplishment of this rests not so much in the nature of the disease, not so much even in the selection of the indicated remedy, as in the prejudices of the patient as well as of the doctor himself.
Until Hahnemann insisted, as I reiterate that he did, upon a dose of medicine being allowed to expend itself in the system until it had exhausted it energies, no one ever advocated the administration of remedies in single doses, and so far have some of his followers diverged from his teaching, that at the present time we find our principal Journal vying with the Lancet in its denunciation of any such practice. When we add to the prejudices of the patient those of the doctor, it is perfectly evident that it is human nature, more than disease, that stands in the way of progress. Vested interests are, to use a provincialism, “teetotally” opposed to this simple treatment of disease. It is far easier to get the right kind of disease to be treated, and the right remedy for this disease, than it is to obtain a willing and submissive patient.
I have under me a case, in Kilburn, of a poor woman, who, when aged 62, came to me in August, 1896, with a large scirrhus of the right breast, that had come on apparently from a blow four or five years before, and who had been, two months before my seeing her, to the Samaritan Hospital, where removal of the breast was urged upon her. The woman determined not to allow the operation, and for these two months went on getting weaker and thinner every day, and suffering great pain, principally a shooting, stabbing pain from the upper surface of the swelling, where it was attached to the skin, with pain shooting up to the side of the neck and throat.
Under the influences of unit doses of various remedies, given at long intervals, improvement has gone on in every way. She has continued doing her work and earning her livelihood in happiness and comfort, and though the breast becomes at times hard and swollen with large vessels coursing over it, it has never burst, and is now smaller in size than when I first took up the treatment of it, nearly four years ago.
As to the remedies used, the point of interest in the case centres more, a great deal more, in the method of administration than in the selection of particular remedies, and in the superiority of the treatment overt that of operation. But of course during this period of now nearly four years, a great many different remedies were given as the symptoms called for, many of them well known ones, such as Atropa Bellad, Ranunculus Bulbosus, Ruta Graveolens, Colchicum autumnale, Laurocerasus, Nerium Oleander and others.
This poor woman (May, 1900) is still alive, and living a happy and useful life, being actively engaged every day in pursuance of her domestic and other duties. The breast certainly has from time to time threatened to get large, and at times has looked very angry, but on every occasion the arborivital dose has taken away the unfavourable symptoms. On one occasion, particularly, she came with, for her, most unusual depression of spirits, and with the hard and heavy breast rapidly swelling, with shooting pains in it. Three days after taking a dose of Conium Maculatum O A, the breast began going down, the pain had lessened, and when seen about a fortnight afterwards the breast had lessened in size by one-third.
Previously to this I had often admired the power of Conium over inflamed nodules in the breast, but this was the first time I had seen it reduce the size of a decided cancerous mass.
Anyway, in large scirrhus swellings the action of Conium mac. stops short at decided lessening in size, and it will not, on the same case, exert a second time an equally gratifying effect.
In these cases of cancer in the breast, the doses can be repeated at shorter intervals than when the disease settles upon the abdominal viscera; in both of these breast cases I have been in the habit of prescribing every fortnight, and I defy any patient suffering from a large carcinomatous mass attached to any abdominal organ, to live through the exhibition of the indicated plant-remedy given at intervals as short as that of a fortnight.
The breast cases require an entirely different system of handling from the abdominal cases; the one requires a prolonged treatment by remedies given in comparatively short intervals, the other, generally speaking, responds to the remedy at once. Exceptions must of course occur in a disease like cancer, the nature of which may so greatly vary, and where necessarily unlooked-for complications may exist. The fact therefore is that the life history of a cancer of the breast subsequently to the imbibition of the indicated dose is quite different from that of a cancer of the internal viscera. I must in this connection refer to the action of a remedy for warty growths that I myself introduced, the Ferrum Picricum. The position will be best understood by a perusal of my article from the Homoeopathic Recorder, published in the United States, for November, 1898, and which ran thus:
FERRUM PICRICUM IN WARTY GROWTHS.
In our Homoeopathic Recorder for August you give an article by A. W. Holcombe, from the Medical Advance which begins thus:” Some years ago I saw in one of our journals (name forgotten now) an article in which Ferrum Picricum was recommended for warts.”
As, however, I have the honour to have been the first to point out this very valuable and interesting feature of the action of Ferrum Picricum, and as I have written several more or less lengthy paragraphs on the subject during the last fourteen years, I hope you will allow me to add a word or two.
In 1884 I read a paper before the Homoeopathic Congress on the Flitwick Natural Mineral Water and some of the newer artificial preparations of iron, in which reference is made to the Ferrum Picricum; in a paper read at the 1881 Congress I refer to the action of picric acid, and in a paper read at the Congress of 1896 I specially refer to the action on warts of Ferrum Picricum.
In the Homoeopathic World, June 1, 1887, and in the January number, 1888, I also referred to its applicability to epithelial growths, and besides, if memory serves aright, when permitted to write for the Monthly Homoeopathic Review an honour of which I am now deprived I made more than one reference to the same subject.
So that I really begin to look upon Ferrum Picricum and its action upon warts as a child of my own. And not an illegitimate one either, seeing that it was revealed to me by the holy ceremony of a proving, the pathogenesis consisting of the feeling as though a wart were going upon the thumb of a patient.
When there are many warts on the hands it seems never to fail, but on one occasion I thought it bad.
During the spring of 1897 I treated our housemaid, a girl of some 25 summers, for a crowd of warts on both hands; Ferrum picr. 3rd dec. was given in repeated doses, then Calcarea Carb. 200 and 30, then Thuja Occid. locally and internally, but to no purpose. I then, after about three months’ treatment, gave Ferrum Picr. 2x, instead of the 3rd, but still no change. The girl then went away for her holiday, and on her return she showed me triumphantly her hands the warts has all gone! ” Yes,” said I, ” and the corns on your feet, if you had any, are gone, and you are feeling stronger,” to both of which she gleefully replied in the affirmative. The fact was that for some unaccountable reason the influence of the Ferrum Picricum did not tell until she left it off, which she had done during the holiday, having neglected to take the bottle with her. I mention this, as with less confidence in this remedy one might be inclined not to give it a full trial. But it is in lupoid warts, pure and simple, that I anticipate a great future for it.
In my “Serious Diseases Saved from Operation” London: John Bale & Sons. 1897, is a grand case of lupoid growth taking the form of a large wart on the face that turned black and finally disappeared altogether under Ferrum Picricum.
This case is worth reproducing here, seeing that the lady has remained perfectly well since and without the least scar on her cheek.
LUPOID GROWTH ON THE CHEEK.
Mrs., aged 64, has had for four years a lobulated growth on the left cheek, below the eye, of the circumference of a shilling, and which began as a seedy wart; this wart still remains projecting from the lower part of the growth. She has been strongly advised to have it cut out.
On December 28, 1896, I was first consulted, and then gave Ferrum Picricum, 3rd dec., which was well indicated (vide author’s paper at Congress of Homoeopathic Practitioners, 1896), and in the middle of January she reported a great improvement in every respect. The growth, which used to cause much pain, especially on bending her head forward, was then painless and about half its original size, and her general health had greatly improved.
