I call very special attention to this case, because it fully illustrates my contention that lying mentally fallow is not the proper treatment for juvenile cephalic invalids. This young man, being the son of gentle-folks of means, position, and intelligence, was allowed to lie mentally fallow all his life on medical advice, and he certainly grew up all right except for his dunderheadedness. Not only so, but he had an outdoor life, and when a full-grown man he was, on advice, sent out to a colony with a very bracing, invigorating climate to rough it, and he carried out the thing so completely that he worked for long at heavy, rough outdoor work, quite getting his own living at felling timber and heavy farm work; it considerably strengthened his body, but he, at the same time of which I am writing, had just returned from his long absence “roughing it,” as dunderheaded as he ever was. Now, note the effect of treatment.
The first remedy was Luet. CC., which was followed by “an irritation of hands and face that keeps him awake by night; it burns; does not trouble him by day”
His head is better!
Thuja 30 followed, and seemed to try him a good deal. He had been twice vaccinated.
He then had Nux vomica, and after that Bacill. C., and here he began to learn arithmetic, his head being so much better; and in September the first prescription was repeated.
October 23.-Getting quite strong; pigeon-breastedness much less pronounced. He is getting on well with his learning “the three R’s.”
Rx Morbillin. 30.
November 27.-Is now enjoying his learning, principally writing and arithmetic.
Rx Bacill C., Zincum aceticum 3x, Thuja 30, Calcarea phos. 3x, etc., carried us on to the year 1891, when patient had so far progressed in his learning that he obtained a berth in a city financier’s office, where he still continues earning his living at head work entirely!
The foregoing case very aptly illustrates the thesis which I am here trying to maintain, viz., that it does not suffice to leave the delicate and backward in a fallow condition, trusting to their “growing out ” of their maladive conditions, for they are nearly as likely to grow into them as to grow out of them. This young man remained mentally fallow so far as learning was concerned, and he made no mental progress. His muscles were used, for these were all exercised; his brain did not improve, for it lay fallow. It was allowed to lie fallow because it was unfit to work, and no doubt it was wise not to work it in its unfit state; but that did not suffice.
You cannot grow a good biceps by carrying your arm in a sling, neither can you cultivate brain-power by leaving the brain idle. Muscle-power is gained by muscular exercise; brain-power is gained by brain exercise. And if the brain is in a morbid state, the malady from which it is suffering must be cured, whereafter the brain may be safely exercised and thereby strengthened. Muscle-exercise does not directly strengthen the brain, neither does brain-exercise strengthen the muscles: due exercise of each duly develops each; over-exercise of either is at the cost of the other. A given organism can produce only so much and no more. Great brain-workers are not muscular; great muscle-workers are not at the same time capable of great brain work; it is impossible, all cackle to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is of prime importance to keep the foregoing lesson well in mind. I say great brain-workers cannot at the same time be great muscle-workers. It is not maintained that an individual of great muscular power may not at the same time be a big-brained, highly-intellectual person. What I maintain is, that I never yet met a person who excelled in both. Gladstone is a great brain- worker, and can fell a tree; but I do not believe that Gladstone would ever have taken a high position in a competition with wood- choppers or woodmen of eminence on their own lines; and half a glance at his structure shows that he was never particularly muscular.
A given organism can only produce a given amount of energy and no more. Dr Grace, the great cricketer, will not go down to posterity as a great physician, just as light-weights do not make good coal-heavers, nor do the best coal-heavers excel in light and elegant movement of body or swiftness of foot. To each his own excellence.
GIRLS AND BOYS.
The same thing applies to the question of the relative powers of girls and boys, and most of what is commonly said on this point is nothing but weak twaddle. Only the Almighty can make a New Woman. Put broadly, up to the age of puberty, the girl, all other things being equal, beats the boy; with puberty the damsel throws away every month a vast amount of fluid power in the order of Nature. Let us call this pelvic power. Assuming the girl to be the superior of the boy up to the pelvic power stage,-which, indeed, any one can observe for himself, in his own sphere,-but once arrived at the stage of pelvic power, and the damsel is left behind in her lessons by her brother in the natural order of things, or else the girl’s brain saps the pelvis of its power, when she will also lose in the race with the boy, because he will be physically well, while she, with disordered pelvic life, must necessarily be in ill-health more or less. The whole thing is a mere question of quantity of energy. If it were otherwise, the girl would be able to buy lollypops with her penny and yet keep her penny; while the boy, having spent his penny, would be penniless. You cannot spend your penny and have
it.
The New Woman is only possible in a novel, not in Nature. The intellectual Sandow is also impossible, and for the same reason: too much on one side of the scales conditions too little on the other. I have very many times watched the careers of exceedingly studious girls who spent the great mass of their power in mental work, and in every case the pelvic power decreased in even pace with the expenditure of mental power. Not one exception to this have I ever seen, and all the lady students of the higher grades whom it has been my duty to professionally advise were suffering in regard to their pelvic lives and powers. I have sat at the foot of Nature a good many years, and I give as my opinion that to be a mother in its best sense is the biggest thing on earth, and comes nearer the Creator’s work than anything else under heaven; to be a learned girl or woman graduate is a very good and respectable thing enough, and twelve of them make a dozen.
At the same time, genius has no gender: it can be in a female or in a male, as the case may be.
HUNCHBACK.
A lady brought her 11-year old, greatly-deformed son to me on January 29, 1886. I noted that patient was frightfully deformed: at his birth both his collar-bones were broken, and had united without ever having been set. His mother had taken this, her only son, to many doctors-surgeons and physicians-of the highest repute. She says 200! He was strapped up in a very formidable and efficient iron jacket, and he has had all the advantages of our best orthopaedic hospitals.
His belly is like a bulging pot. His spine is bent from side to side, the left scapular region forming the hunch.
Patient is very thin; liver much enlarged; macrocephalic head; skin, notably at certain points, very dusky; many indurated glands in the usual places; teeth literally rotten.
Rx Luet. CC.
March 12.-Has been very much relaxed in his bowels from the powders; complexion already much cleaner, and the skin of his body less dusky. Belly has gone down.
Rx Rep. April 16.-Better; skin less dusky; suffers very much from hiccup, lasting at times half an hour,
Rx Medorrhinum 30.
July 12.-Hiccup cured; the lad stronger and less crooked. Anorexia. Nux vomica, 3x.
October 20.-Has grown very much; the skin of his body is still very “browny,” though less so than formerly. No hiccup.
Rx Luet. CC.
December 3.-No return of the hiccup; skin very much less dusky; is growing much straighter; but his glands are still visible, and like chains of kernels.
Rx Psorinum 30.
January 12, 1887.-Has a cold strawberry tongue; but generally he is thriving.
Rx Pulsatilla 3x.
February 16.-Tongue is better; has hiccup twice a day, but has had a better appetite.
Rx Medorrhinum CC.
April 4.-Still has hiccup; he is pale.
Rx Luet. CC.
May 20.-No hiccup; has had toothache. Strawberry tongue.
Rx Tc. Fragaria vesca 0, 3ij, five drops in water night and morning.
August 5.-A little hiccup; anorexia; tongue normal in aspect; still very swarthy.
Rx Luet. CC October 21.-His skin is getting quite a clear English colour; still has hiccup a little; he is straighter, fatter, and slightly ruddy.
Rx Cyclamen Europ. 1, five drops in water night and morning.
December 6.-Has had an accident.
Rx Trit. 3 Aurum metallicum, four grains every morning.
January 27, 1888.-During the time he has taking the Aurum he was poorly; since then he is better, and he is now clean and white-skinned.
Very bad teeth.
Rx Bacill. C June 29.-He has been so much better that he has neglected to report himself. The number of feelably himself. The number of feelably indurated glands in the sides of his neck is smaller, but still there are goodish many of them.
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.