It did not matter whether the remedies chosen were high, low, or medium, or whether the prescriptions were routine ones, “snap-shot” ones or laboriously repertorial — they all failed more or less; and although amelioration frequently set in here and there, and patient would begin to get better and to carry a little healthier colour, still none of the spells of improvement was lasting– mine was a veritable work of Sisyphus. So passed three years, till one day she exclaimed to me – “I have the whites, and I am now not able to check them like I have been.”
Further conversations elicited the fact that the beginning of patient’s ill – health coincided with the cure (?) of her severe leucorrhoea with injections! And during all these three years of my generally pretty close prescribing, as soon as she began to mend a bit the whites appeared, whereupon these were attacked and quelled with injections, and patient went worse again! It was a very different affair as soon as the injections were given up, and in a few months patient was vastly improved, and got into fair health, but never really well, and died of vomiting and debility after a very long railway journey, followed by a long carriage drive in the cold in July, 1896, no doubt of Addison’s disease.
I quote the case here merely to show the part in it played by leucorrhoea, otherwise it does not touch our subject very closely. But it brings home to my mind the fact that in this case, at any rate, the leucorrhoea was an outlet from the economy, and beneficial to it in the same sense as a leaky boat may be kept afloat by adequate bailing-out of the water, no matter how laborious the bailing-out might be. It is most probable that if this lady’s leucorrhoea had been let alone, she would have fared better; and had the causal tuberculosis been first cured, early in life Addison’s disease would never have developed.
Leucorrhoea is often a manifestation of a tubercular constitution, and when suppressed leads to graver developments of the same diathesis. And surely if leucorrhoea is sometimes manifestation of a tubercular diathesis, it is not the leucorrhoea which is primary, but the tuberculosis, which is the real disease, and the leucorrhoea is secondary to it, and its existence constitutes in the main an outlet for morbid matter or disease-stuff of some kind. These are not fanciful pictures, but based on facts from my own experience, and they may be seen in my (and anyone else’s) clinical work any day and almost any hour.
Change of Life, Fibroid Tumour of the Uterus Haemorrhoids with very Severe Recurrent Haemorrhage from the Bowels.
A childless widow, fifty years of age, was brought to me on July 9, 1891, suffering from the above very formidable ailments. She changed a year previously, and ever since gets attacks of bleeding piles every five or six weeks. The fibroid tumor was about the size of a man’s fist. Patient was very pale and ill, worse towards evening.
Patient was discharged cured at the end of 1893, she having attended very regularly all the time. The tumour slowly disappeared, the attacks of piles ceased, as also the rectal haemorrhages. I only name the case here because of patient’s old, old habit of using vaginal injections, which, in my opinion, led up to the formation of the tumour. Leucorrhoea is a catarrh differing very much in pathological quality in different cases; there is not one substantive disease called leucorrhoea, but the thing is commonly of a depurative nature, and stopping it by local measures is a wrong proceeding. Leucorrhoea may in many ways be compared to eczema of the skin, for eczema is also a catarrh, often of a depurative nature, nd treating eczema by local remedies, unguents, and lotions is equally a wrong proceeding.
Note on Lyssinum
I do not know where to fling in an odd note on this important remedial agent that I have used for a good many years in here and there a case, and in its own little sphere of influence it is even in erotomania, with me, a tried remedy. And I have extended its use to some of those many cases of spasms and the like, so often met within clinical life, whose cause is really primarily from unsatisfied sexual longings, often called hysteria.
The sufferings of the celibate state, notably in women, are at times amenable to its benign influence, and to this I was partly led by a consideration of the prime cause of rabies, viz., pent-up sexual longings. We will not dwell too much on the subject, but I feel bound to name this, my valuable clinical friend. I use 30 and C. and higher only. And when we reflect on the truly awful sufferings of this lyssic state in the human subject, we must gratefully accept the help which Lyssinum can give. Of course, like all homoeopathically used remedies, it fits only certain cases, not by any means all, for Medorrhinum and Luet,(both high) also play a great part in such loveless states.
“I am roused in the night with such fearfully horrible, sinful feelings” calls for Medorrhinum
“No sooner does night come on than I am a prey to such dreadfully sinful desires that drive me mad” calls for Luet. Now are all these sin? I cannot think so; to my mind they are no more sinful than colic or neuralgia; they are just the sufferings of our common humanity, and what sufferings too! Much worse than mere pain.
Is Leucorrhoea a Disease?
Yes, Certainly, just the same as pain- only forcibly drying it up is no more a cure than lulling pain with opium.
Although I hold and advocate the view that leucorrhoea is a beneficent function, I do not consider the leucorrhoea a sign of health, and so I do not let it alone.
Leucorrhoea is the servant of the organism riding it of something; leucorrhoea in itself is disease, but only vicariously for the organism. I always treat leucorrhoea as a disease, though not locally at all, but constitutionally, and by preference by high potencies, so as to be quite sure the cure is radically organismic. The leucorrhoea that leaves off at the change is often of rheumatic or rheumatoid nature, and very soon thereafter we see the ends of the fingers begin to get knobby. the change of life is a perfectly harmless thing in the absolutely healthy, for in itself the Change of Life is absolutely free from morbid sequels in those who are really and truly healthy.
Perfectly healthy- really normal- women have no pain and no whites, and when the menopause arrives the function ceases almost without the woman’s knowledge – she merely knows that the thing has left off, and there is an end of it. That is normality. There are many degrees of ill-health, but the absolutely normal woman is not, by reason of her sex, a suffering creature at all, either at puberty, or at the menopause, or at any time between; and not only so, but her health is better than that of the corresponding man, by the very fact that her sex provides her with an automatic depurative overflow for superfluities and impurities; so much is this the case, that many women in a blooming state would, if they were males, be on a much lower scale of health, or not even alive at all. But these, when the menopause comes, lose the manifold advantages of their sex, and descend to the common (male) level. Wherefore a truly normal woman when she passes the menopause upon a period of vigorous life in which she manages good deal more than half creation. A perfectly healthy child has no trouble with his teeth, they are simply found, nobody knows when they come; even so is the menopause in perfectly healthy women.
Tumour of Left Breast at the Menopause
It is very instructive to note the beginning of tumours principally in the breasts and womb as the change of life is looming, but has not yet arrived. I read it thus; The pre- existent constitutional taint that heretofore has overflowed and sailed off in the menstrual flux no longer does so completely, and hence the organism has to deposit what has remained behind somewhere, and this constitutes the beginning of many of the tumours. Of course the causation may not be merely a lack of elimination by way of the period, but it is seemingly so to a large extent.
Miss X., forty-five years age, came under my observation on 27th october, 1891, for a tumour in her left breast, that had been growing for about a year. We observed an induration of the tissues, about the size of a child’s hand, in the outer aspect of the left breast; it was tender to touch and somewhat painful; worse at night. Period painful, regular; whites formerly pretty bad, but they had disappeared for some time, and were now returning slightly. Tongue very frothy, in two rows.
R Viburnum 0. The drops at bedtime.
November 19th.- The tumid, indurated mass is nearly gone; much painful indigestion.
R Tc. Bellis p. 0 Ten drops in water at bedtime.
January 21st, 1892.- No pain last period. Less haemorrhoids.
R Hydrastis Can. 0. Ten drops in water night and morning.
March 17th.- Breast well; whites gone.
December. 1892, – No return of tumour, and patient quite well in herself.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.