What the child now really requires is a few years residence at the seaside, by preference the first year or so at Worthing, the second at Brighton, and then a year or two at Eastbourne or Folkestone.
The grandest results in the treatment of backward children are obtainable when the constitutional bars to physical and mental completion are medicinally removed and THEN the full effects of food and air crown the edifice. I do not mean that food and fresh air are at any time unimportant, but what I do maintain is that disease taints in children are NOT curable by ANY AIR or ANY DIET whatever. The power of the organism to resist them may, however, be much increased. I will, later on, exemplify what I mean by narrating the case of a toothless boy at Eastbourne.
When I name certain places as suitable for delicate children, it is to be borne in mind that I am writing in London, whence said places are readily accessible.
TOOTHLESSNESS, RICKETS, RINGWORM. PUNY GROWTH, AND UGLINESS.
By toothlessness I mean that the patient, a little girl of 7 years of age, who was brought to me in the winter of 1893, had only very rudimentary bits of something imbedded in tartar where the teeth ought to have been. Her hair, too, was very, very weak, thin, dry, and she had patches of ringworm, with areas of “Diffuse Ringworm” (Alder Smith) here and there on her scalp, worse on the left side. Numerous superficial glands, indurated and enlarged. In general aspect the child was puny and very ugly. I put her on the treatment set forth in my little work on “Ringworm,” and a year later (she was on the remedy a full year, and on no other, but at longish intervals between the doses, and all of the thirtieth centesimal potency) her mouth was full of teeth, her hair had grown, and the little maid looked positively pretty, as one would expect from her young and good-looking parents. Her teeth are not yet white, and only poorly covered with dentine, but still she has a mouthful of teeth, and they will certainly go on improving in quality, No trace of ringworm or scrofula left, but the hair is still lacking in gloss.
Midsummer 1895.-Continues very thriving.
RUDIMENTARY TEETH IN A BOY OF ELEVEN YEARS OF AGE; DIURNAL AND NOCTURNAL ENURESIS, AND PIGEON-BREASTEDNESS.
A rather fine-grown boy of 11 years of age was brought to me on October 3, 1893, because of his teeth, and for life-long enuresis. “The dentist says he can do nothing, as his teeth have not properly grown, and what little of the teeth is above the gums is almost all covered with tartar.” So it was; moreover, the nose and naso-pharynx were crammed full of adenoids, and his tonsils were large, hence no one will be surprised to learn that he was also slightly pigeon-breasted.
This kind of rudimentary teeth one meets with pretty commonly in delicate children. The teeth have really not grown properly, and the little tips of teeth do not look like proper teeth at all, but like little spikes of tartar; they do not appear to have any enamel at all. I have already related cases of cure of this miserable state, so I need not unduly dwell upon this one. I last saw patient in April 1894, when he could breathe comfortably through his nose, the pigeon-breastedness was almost a thing of the past, the tonsils had gone down a good deal, and his mouth was full of teeth-perfectly good? No, not perfectly good, but still very passable. The young man had Thuja 30, Bacill. 30, Tuberculinum test. C., and then two others. I may see him again before this goes to press, and if I do I will add a note of any further progress he may have made since from the effects of the stock of medicines which I ordered for him when they went abroad in the summer. But probably I shall not see him further unless he goes back in his health in some way. I should have stated that the patient no longer wets his bed or his clothes,-which he had been in the habit of doing all his life to his own intense mortification. By the way, some parents chastise or scold their children for wetting their garments and bed… why not scold and chastise them for getting the measles? There was another point in this case that was very dreadful- viz., the boy’s motions stank horribly: this soon disappeared under the treatment which I have just detailed. I will now narrate another case similar in some respects to the foregoing, and yet quite different, and which clearly shows that fresh air and ample feeding are not of themselves capable of curing disease or diseases-taints which bar development : FRESH AIR CANNOT CURE DISEASE.
CASE OF TOTAL ABSENCE OF FRONT UPPER INCISOR TEETH.
On July 27, 1893, a small, thin, narrow-chested, drum- bellied, stunted boy of 8 1/2 years of age, son of a staff officer, was brought to me for his pining delicate state; he had no upper incisors at all, though one could see them shaped in the gums; his lips peeled very readily and constantly (so did the lips in the just narrated case!); his motions stank dreadfully; he wet his clothes by day and his bed by night, and he was a ravenous eater.
At the moment at which I am writing he has been just eighteen months under my care, and he is now the happy possessor of good teeth; and he is in all respects about normal, except that he still wets himself, and the glands in his groins are still feelably indurated and enlarged. The treatment was the same as the last, except that he was also two months under Mal. 30 and C.
His teeth are now very good, and of an excellent colour. The foul-smelling motions of delicate children are so distressing for those in charge of them that this alone urgently needs curing; but the cure must be vital and constitutional : using deodorants and disinfectants to the dejecta does not cure the unfortunate patients.
This boy had been sent to Eastbourne to reside, but his teeth did not grew till the disease-taint had been cured by medicines.
IMPERFECT SENSE OF SMELL, DANGEROUS PERIODICAL NOSE-BLEED IN AND UNDERSIZED GIRL OF ELEVEN YEARS OF AGE.
A stumpy, undersized girl of 11 years of age, of good parentage, was brought to me on June 19, 1889, for periodical epistaxis of three years duration, that had latterly become alarming in extent, necessitating nose-plugging “She loses a great deal of blood, and the doctor says that her life is in danger, and that an operation on the nose is the only hope of a cure.” The child had diarrhoea, varicella, measles, whooping- cough, and sore throats, and had been once vaccinated. She resides with her parents in a notedly healthy country place.
Patient was naturally anaemic from the haemorrhages; her nose ached; incisors slightly notched; there is pretty severe nasal catarrh, and she gets rid of a good deal of “thick yellow stuff” from the nostrils.
Rx Thuja occid. 30.
July 15.-Less bleeding; bad croupy cough. A slight “shew”
Rx Bacill. C.
August.-No bleeding at all, and patient is very well. Rx Rep. September 16.-No bleeding, out has a taste of blood in her mouth, particularly when she sneezes. No cough. Her teeth are of a bad colour.
Rx Luet. CC.
October 25.-Epistaxis twice, but much less profuse than formerly; her tongue is very long and very pippy.
Rx Bacill. CC.
November 22.-No epistaxis, but a prickling in the nose, as if it were going to come on. A bad cough.
Rx Calcarea phos. 3x.
February 12, 1890.-She has grown and spread out in size; no cough; no nose bleed. Practically well, but still rather stunted.
Rx Pulsatilla 2.
October 29.-Has greatly grown; one or two attacks of bleeding; right nostril very sore.
December 17.-Well.
February 29, 1892.-Well. The medical men who treated this case before I did, and who very loudly proclaimed the impossibility of its cure by any means whatsoever except an operation on the nose of a rather severe nature, and who, moreover, ridiculed any attempt to cure the same with medicines- these medical men have not been converted to homoeopathy by my success, but many of their neighbours have. Allopathy is in an advanced stage of senile decay, from which there is no recovery, and the sooner the general break-up comes the better for mankind. Thus, here is a young girl with dangerous nose- bleed of long standing slowly getting worse till her, very life is threatened; allopathy plugs the nares, and afterwards administers tonics, and finally, in the despair of the debility of senile decay, gives the case over to the surgeons, who propose waging war upon the poor nose according to the principles of rhinology (one of the occult sciences of modern medicine), while all the time it is a constitutional disease that causes the haemorrhage, and it is not a nasal disease at all!
THREE YEARS LATER.
Patient continues quite well.
MISSHAPEN HEAD; ADULT MENTAL INFANCY OF A MAN TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF AGE.
A big-grown man, 27 years of age, was put under my treatment in May 1889 by his relatives on the strength of my opinion that he might be rendered more or less normal by medicinal treatment, notwithstanding the fact that he was 27 years of age and still mentally infantile. Looking at him full in the face, one noticed his forehead was very bulging; no eyelashes; a dull expression; general headform abnormal. The history is that of “water in the head as a child,” and that he has never been “like others”; his sisters say “he is soft,” and call him “daft.” Being unable to do any head-work, he has had none to do, but has remained mentally fallow, and hence, though the son of gentle folks, is quite illiterate. The skin of his head seems to him to be very tight(Most probably a physical fact primarily due to the watery state of the encephalon), whereof he complains a good deal; also of pain both in his forehead and at the back; his skin is very dusky; a number of his symptoms are aggravated at night. I examined him very closely, and roused his interest in his own case. He was in no sense insane, but clearly had plenty of mind; but it was hidden behind a cloud. He would seize his scalp in his hands and tell me impressively that it was too tight, and he complained of being such a heavy sleeper, and of not being able to do anything at figures or any “head-work”
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.