When a patient comes to you, and you find the lenses opaque, the skin dry, the quantity of urine excreted large, the thirst great, and the specific gravity of the urine much increased-say 1040 or 1045-then you test the urine, and find it is full of sugar, you say your patient has diabetic cataract.
Ophthalmologists were well acquainted with this clinically, long before science showed that saccharine cataract could be synthetically produced. I believe the honor of this discovery belongs to America. But science knows no territorial frontiers and no nation, and her fruits belong to mankind.
Although it has been so long known that the diabetics are apt to get cataract, and although it is more than twenty years since Mitchell showed that cataract can be induced in the lower animals by putting sugar into their bodies, yet I have not heard or read of any carrying out the thought to its natural conclusion, and inquiring whether the dietetic use of much sugar could be charged with the power of inducing cataract in those partaking of it. Latterly I have directed some attention to this point, and from what I have observed, and guided by analogy, I affirm that a certain number of cases of cataract, which we meet with in daily life, are indeed due to the prolonged use of much sugar.
The diabetic cataract is not due to a primary disease of the lens; it is not due to the hepatic or neural lesion underlying the disease, known to us as diabetes; it is due to the presence of sugar in the blood of the diabetic patient.
When sugar is put into the circulation of animals. it produces cataract in just the same way as does the saccharine blood of the diabetic.
In like manner, when a person habitually partakes of sugar in considerable quantities, cataract may ensue as a direct physical effect thereof.
If you doubt this proposition, just question your cataract patients closely, and I believe you will soon come over to my view.
Of course, it is not maintained that every large sugar consumer must necessarily develop a cataract; no, but let a person with some morbid proclivity, partake of a great deal of sugar as a general thing and let a surplus of this ingested sugar course about in his blood for a lengthened period, then it must be obvious that such a person must suffer from sugar poisoning; the sugar in his blood must develop its physiological effects, one of which is the formation of cataract.
For my part I see no escape from this conclusion.
Hard Drinking-Water as a Cause of Cataract.
Not only do salt and sugar cause the lens to lose its transparency and to become opaque, but many other substances produce the same result. Thus, Richardson enumerates the chloride of ammonium, the chloride of potassium, the lactate of soda, the carbonate of soda, the carbonate of potash, the sulphate of potash, the chloride of calcium, and the chloride of barium, as being likewise capable of causing lenticular opacities.
Thus, it is evident, that the power of common salt and of sugar to produce cataract is not by any means to be regarded as their peculiarly specific effects. In the words of Dr. Richardson, “it must be remembered as the primitive fact, not only that the increase of the specific gravity of the fluids of the eye by sugar will destroy the refracting power of the lens, but that whatever soluble substances will increase the specific gravity of the fluids will induce the same condition.” This gives us the key to a right comprehension of the causation of cataract, at least in many instances, and certainly in a majority of them. The ergot cataract has probably a very different explanation and so of others.
The specific gravity of hard drinking water is higher than that of soft drinking water. Hard-drinking-water contains in solution various mineral substances, depending upon the nature of the ground through which it flows, lime in some form being the most common; and half-a-dozen different substances may be found in solution in most of our drinking-waters.
When we inquire of persons suffering from cataract what kind of water is in use in their houses, we usually find that it is hard; such is, at least, my experience.
If a person is in the habit of drinking hard water, he is constantly imbibing that which is capable of raising the specific gravity of his fluids; and, according to Richardson’s experiments, it must follow that hard drinking-water must be capable of producing cataract. Of course, this must have a general bearing, but we are here concerned only with the lens.
How often do we find that a cataract patient partakes freely of salt and salted provisions, of sugar and sweetened foods and caps it all by drinking hard water!
Salt and sugar are both great producers of thirst, so that if a given individual takes salt and sugar freely, he must drink freely to allay his thirst; and if his drinking-water is hard, he is certainly taking the very shortest road to early physical degeneration and to the production of cataract, provided there be the least determining influence directing the fluid of increased specific gravity to his eye. And what shall we say if he be suffering from the modern mania of drinking mineral water!
The Prevention of Cataract.
The above has doubtless already wearied you, and hence it is fortunate that what I have further to say may be epitomized in a few words. In view of these facts. I am in the habit of suggesting to persons-suffering from cataract that they would do well to reduce their consumption of salt and salted provisions, as well as that of sugar, to a minimum, because both in excess can produce cataract. Also that hard water is to be equally avoided; and if soft water cannot be got, the expressed juices of succulent fruits in a fresh state can more than take its place.
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.