On December 7, there was much amelioration, even of both eyes; the opacity of the right one had sensibly diminished in appearance; he could distinguish the fingers of the hand interposed between him and the light; and with the left eye he could distinguish the difference between some coins. Nothing was given.
On December 25, amelioration continued in the left eye, the right remaining in the same state. He went about to his affairs, drove his own gig, and attended to all his business. A pustular eruption, accompanied with much itching, covered the whole body. He was given Cann. Sat. (3/15) and the sight continued to improve until he left off treatment, as he thought himself far enough recovered to need no further medical care. I met with the patient seven months afterwards; he was still enjoying his sight and health.
It is much to be regretted that Dr. Malan does not give a minute account of both eyes at this period; still, the evidence of curative drug action cannot be contested. Note well the sentence in italics.
CASE III.-December 21, 1844. A man of forty-two years of age, living in the country, of bilious temperament, thin, and who had suffered much from headaches, applied to me. He complained, for the previous six years, of a whitish hard cataract of lens of the left eye, and had for some years past completely lost the sight of that eye. He had the itch twenty years ago, and kept it three months.
Sulph. (3/30) removed chronic headaches and an inflamed state of the eyes.
January 23, Silicea (3/30) was given. Not much change occurred till Sulph. (3/30) was repeated. On the 24th of February, a violent itching came on, particularly when undressing at night; and all over his body an eruption of small pustules ensued. From that time the eye began to amend. He could distinguish the fingers of the hand, and gradually see objects more clearly; but having left the country I was unable to follow this interesting case.
” Dr. Malan thus concludes: “I know of other cases where the homoeopathic treatment proved most beneficial, but I object to mention those I have not myself witnessed.
“At this moment I have under my treatment a patient, who, for some years back, has had a cataract of the eye. He has lost the sight of that eye for more than two years, and when he came under homoeopathic treatment, the cataract of the right eye was fast progressing. Since that time, now fifteen months ago, the right eye has been very nearly stationary, though the bad state of the general health has been much in the way of its treatment. It is to be regretted that he did not apply to homoeopathy at an earlier period, for he was prevented from doing so by the advice of a homoeopathic practitioner. I mention this,-not to say that, contrary to this advice, homoeopathy will always cure the cataract, and that it will supersede surgery,-but only in order to draw the attention of my colleagues to this part of practice too neglected. I feel assured that regular homoeopathic treatment will, if not always cure the cataract, yet do so in many cases; in many more it will stop the progress of the disease in the constitution, and the development of the cataract in the other eye; and in all cases where the operation must be restored to, it will prepare the organism for the surgical operation, and prevent any danger attending it.
“The treatment of the cataract must, therefore, be first medical, and, en desespoir de cause only, surgical.”
This being Dr. Malan’s experience, it must be admitted that he has at least demonstrated the possibility of the medicinal cure of cataract.
That all cases are not amenable to medical treatment is not to be wondered at; indeed, it cannot be said of all the cases of any ailment that they are curable with medicines, since some cases of common cold end fatally, even with the most skilful treatment, and yet we do not usually consider a cold to be a deadly malady.
The fact is, the eye is considered the exclusive province of the surgeon; and so long as this idea remains there cannot be any great advance in the medicinal treatment of eye affections, and therefore not of cataract.
Everything is impossible until it is tried. At one time it was impossible to heal an inflammation without blood-letting.
One very great drawback to the medicinal treatment of so- called surgical complaints is its difficulty as compared with mere knife-work, and then any one can appreciate a clever operator, but very few can appreciate the best work of the real physician, of which the effects can only seen after many days.
The medical or surgical Hodge demands bulk, and obvious immediate effects; the sterile skeptic weens fertility impossible, since it is not in him; the weakling dreads any deviation from the trodden path lest he be thought a medical dissenter, and you know dissent is not comme il faut.
The original dissenter must be a man of grain and grit. To be in the van is to be in an exposed position, and in the van of medical dissent involves misapprehension, and imputations of wrong and unfair motives. The man who advocates the medicinal treatment of anything authoritatively considered to lie solely within the province of the surgeon, must expect to be either ignored or tabooed at first; medical men constitute a trades- union, and they ill brook any independent thought or action.
I now give another case: Mrs. McM., an intelligent lady of about sixty years, lost the sight of her right eye, and began to lose the sight of the left. She consulted several of the best physicians of both schools of Philadelphia, who all pronounced it a cataract, and agreed that nothing but an operation would restore her sight. An old woman told her to apply the oil from a rabbit to the eye, which she did twice a day, and in six months it completely restored her sight, and removed all traces of cataract, so that she can read without glasses, which she had not done for many years. She complained of constant dryness in the eyes, which the oil removed, and this was the only peculiar symptom.-(W. Lovell Dodge, M.D., Philadelphia; Hahnemannian Monthly, July, 1878, p. 648.)
What the oil from a rabbit may be I do not know This is a curious case, and perhaps of no great weight. Let some one with cataract try it.
Here is a further case:
An infant that was born with cataract. Sulph. effected considerable improvement; a cure was finally completed by means of Euphrasia and Lycopodium, which is recommended by Rummel.-(Jahr, Forty Years’ Practice, Hempel’s Translation, New York, 1869.)
Jahr says further: “In this disorganization (cataract)of whatever kind I have so far accomplished most with Sulph., allowing the dose to act a long time. If the action of Sulphur seems exhausted, I then commonly resort to Calcarea and next to Lycopodium with tolerable success. If these remedies do not help, I have given, with more or less success, Magnes., Cannab. Sat., and Silicea, and in the case of old people Conium 30, of which I cause a solution of six globules to be at the same time applied externally.”
There is not much individualizing here. Tout comme chez nous!
Dr. Angell, the eminent ophthalmologist of Boston, U.S., in his Treatise on the Diseases of the Eye for the Use of General Practitioners, Boston, 1870, thus expresses himself on the medicinal treatment of cataract: “It does not seen improbable to me that in the course of time we may find some reliable remedy, the administration of which, before the lens-fibre has become degenerated, may restore its transparency. Cataract is known to be a result of ergotism. It has also been produced in frogs by administering sugar in large quantities or by injecting it under the skin. Chloride of sodium and alcohol *( An old Vienna oculist used to recommend his cataract patients to drink brandy so as to hasten the maturation of the cataract.) have produced similar results. In our school, cures, or beneficial results, are reported to have followed the use of Cannab. Sat., Conium, Phosph., Silicea, Sulphur, and a few other of our remedies.” Then why not try medicinal treatment during the ripening, and in cases in which operation is impossible or undesirable? But cause of scientific therapeutics cannot be advanced on the line of “some reliable remedy;” we must rather individualize and treat the patient, not the cataract. A specific for cataract, in the very nature of things, cannot be found, because there are no two cases of cataract exactly alike.
Thus, I have noticed in my own experience one case due to repeated attacks of inflammation; another arose from arsenical poisoning; another from a liver affection; another was congenital, and another hereditary. Then there are those due to trauma, to retrocedent gout and suppressed menses, and, again, the many arising from a repercussion of an affection of the skin, as also those in the diabetic. Not being a specialist, my experience is necessarily limited, yet I have seen enough to know that there is cataract and cataract; and I do not mean merely nosological forms.
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.