Womb cancer



6

While I write (May, 1900), there comes to hand a most unexpectedly gratifying account, to the effect that on the thirteenth day after the last powder (Helleb. faet) a clot, of which an admirable drawing was sent, and which represented the moulding of the cavity of the womb, came away, the patient describing it as “a most curious clot; it was in some parts over an inch thick, and it was lined with white veins, and measured about six inches.”

Evidently great relief has followed, as she writes only of slight pricking and shooting. This certainly is satisfactory.

The relief given to this patient was so great that a lady aged 62, living close at hand, and who suffered from a similar malady, came up to consult me. Briefly her case ran; Six years ago had a complication of ailments, diarrhoea, asthma, &c., and had to lie up five or six months. Then a fibroid tumour of the womb was diagnosed, but year after, though suffering from haemorrhage, the tumour could not be felt. A year ago she passed long fungoid- looking masses and clots of blood, a nd was declared to have cancer of the womb, and to be incurable. Operation was tried by one of the first operators in London, and proved unsuccessful, and it was found impossible to remove all the growth. At the time of consulting me on May 6, 1899, she was having antikamnia tablets, as the injections of morphia had disagreed so frightfully with her. Her symptoms were great back-ache, and bearing down from a feeling of weight, chiefly on the right side, and much pain round the navel, with sinking in the pit of the chest, slight constipation, but no dysuria.

This patient has, of course, required a good deal of treatment; this has not been essentially different from that adopted in other cases, Crocus Sativus and Vernalis, Helleborus Niger, Laurocerasus, and other remedies have been given as the symptoms indicated, and now I am pleased to say the lady is in the enjoyment of really good health; digestion and strength are good, and there has been no loss of flesh. With one exception, last September, when she had a good deal of suffering for a week; she has been almost free from pain. Surely a treatment like this is better than operation or morphia drugging. It is not to be supposed that cases which have gone so far as this had can be cured.

If, in the last case, there is little to be learned, in the next there is, on the contrary, a very great deal of valuable instruction.

A. C., aged 54, married 30 years, nullipara, miscarriage two years after marriage, subject up to two years ago to bilious attacks from the age of 17, has been under treatment for four years for uterine haemorrhage, but nor till two years ago was a growth from the wall of the uterus detected. Operation was discountenanced, the tumour being evidently thought malignant, and this by a foremost consultant in women’s diseases. The consulting surgeon, of, I believe, the Samaritan Hospital, was then consulted, but declined operation on consultation with others. The symptoms are simply haemorrhage, going on every day, generally bright in colour, has only a few hours’ interval in the twenty-four, and last week was practically excessive. Much back- ache, and pain with the clots, and feels the tumour pressing upon the bowel. Much constipation, for which she has to take medicine, and restless sleep from the back-ache. Lately pain in left shoulder and behind left breast. On local examination a very weighty mass was found pressing down into the passage. That the case was considered one of great urgency is evident from the fact that her medical attendant declared that colotomy would soon have to be performed.

On January 5, 1900, I prescribed Laurocerasus O A, and a pill every night of 3 grs. of simple ox gall.

On January 19, came the very cheery intelligence that though she had had much pain night and day for the first week, for the second had less pain then for two years; and that, whereas formerly she felt ill and uncomfortable when the pain lessened, this was not now at all the case. Still has back-ache, but pains in the left shoulder and breast are gone Nil.

On February 2, reports: From January 22 to 26 had much pain, and on the night of 23rd much acid vomit came up, with fainting feeling across abdomen and left side up to the head; haemorrhages for two three days, but no clots as she used to have in quantities. Is much stronger, though bowels are more confined. The dose of January 5 again.

February 16. Has been much better up to 13th, and then passed clots, but much less than before treatment; these are sometimes dark, but sometimes bright, and are accompanied by back-ache; the act of walking causes pain over left thigh and groin, but still can walk much better, and it does not bring on haemorrhage. Crocus Sativ. O A was then given, and her report there upon is very significant. On the same evening had a great deal of pain across the lower back, and slept but little that night and the next, and on third night had cramp in the stomach as well as back-ache and diarrhoea, and since this has been much better. No medicine was given on this occasion, and when seen a month afterwards she declared herself better than she had been for four years. It is unnecessary to follow the treatment further. When seen on May 4 she was feeling in every way improved, was walking about in perfect comfort, and except that she still felt weak with dyspnoea on going up heights, and that there was still some oozing discharge, she was without the slightest suffering.

I have stated that this case was instructive; it is a very good example of how easy it is to discard the truly curative remedy. Instead of relieving the pain, the Laurocerasus caused her to have much more suffering for the first week, and had I proposed to see her in three or four days instead of in a fortnight, the changes are the right remedy would probably have been discontinued and another selected in its stead. This is why one practitioner gets good results where another, more anxious and more apprehensive, fails, even though he may use the same remedy.

This is a favourable opportunity for giving the leading indications for Laurocerasus. A sense of fatigue pervades the whole system, with a very painful condition of the hard and indurated tissue of the parts affected, this pain being in general much ameliorated by sleep; there is a tendency to an oozing of blood that is most generally bright and mixed with gelatinous clots. This applied to chest as well as to uterine and rectal symptoms, only that the blood comes painlessly into the mouth but with great pain per vaginum.

In most cases it will be found that the pains it relieves are ones that start from the lower part of the spine and extend either round the pelvis or up to the head, and are accompanied by a sense of suffocation, and a sick feeling, with drowsiness, and a great desire for sleep that generally brings relief; in cases that are sleepless the desire for sleep is very great. The digestion is weak, the bowels are confined, the patient is low- spirited, with flatulence and burning in the chest after food, and a constant tired, sick feeling, the entire frame being enfeebled, and inclined to loss of flesh and haemorrhages that are small in quantity and bright in colour. Its flatus is audible and gurgling, and rolls about the upper abdomen.

These instances of benefit from treatment are quite sufficient to establish a claim for arborivital remedies, when prescribed according to the symptoms, as being remedial in the severest possible cases, even in the most painful cancers.

That the fibrous tumours of the womb should also fall under their sway is natural to except. These tumours are less malignant in their tendency than the true cancers. As old age advances, they often develop malignant characters, according to Dr. Herbert Snow, ” Cancerous and other Tumours,” p. 25. London: Bailliere, 1898. who thus writes: ” The same holds good (i.e., tendency to malignancy) to a more limited extent with uterine myomata, the familiar fibroids. Some eventually pass into sarcomata. And though many assuredly do not, even in extreme old age, it is yet likely that with more careful observation at women’s hospitals (where pathology as a rule is not a strong point), the sequence will prove far less rare than is now held.”

The statement that pathology, as a rule, is not a strong point at women’s hospitals is very amusing. I except next to learn that theology is not a strong point among Bishops!

That some of the worst of these cases do not become malignant is evident from this case, taken from my work on “Serious Disease Saved from Operation,” p. 13-17, now out of print.

IMMENSE FIBROID TUMOUR (OF THE WOMB) GIVING RISE TO GREAT PAIN. Close by where this child (referred to before) lived was a very interesting case, about which the same lady wrote, asking me to recommend an institution in town in which this woman could be operated upon.

As this woman, Mrs. A., was then suffering intense pain, I advised her taking some remedies for the pain before thinking of an operation. Her case, in reply to a letter from me, ran thus:

Robert Thomas Cooper
Dr. Robert Thomas Cooper (1844-1903) was an Irish homeopath. In 1866, he "settled in private practice at Southampton," [Obit, 459], moving to London in 1874. He had two busy London medical practices, one at Notting Hill and the other in Hanover Square. He was a key member of the Cooper Club named after him [Blackie, 1976, p.158]. He published Cancer & Cancer Symptoms 1900; and Lectures on Diseases of the Ears, 2nd Edition 1880. Apart from numerous articles in the Homeopathic World, mostly about materia medica, he also published a series of articles in the Dublin Medical Review.