A medical man practising in the Fen District came to see me a year or so ago, to consult in regard to his own health, and before departing he desired to thank me for my little book about Diseases of the Spleen. Said he, I have increased my practice very considerably since using Ceanothus, as I find it readily cures the spleen cases, which abound in my neighbourhood. I cannot, he continued, make use of your little doses, for many of my patients would simply laugh me in the face. So I use an infusion in ordinary doses and cure splendidly.
In order to ascertain whether larger doses than those I had been in the habit of using would cure without causing any inconvenience, I have given latterly in spleen affections five or ten drops, doses of the mother tincture of Ceanothus several times a day, with a very few exceptions, I find it acts curatively, just as well as the smaller doses, and causes no inconvenience. However, in a few cases, I had to go back to my former smaller doses, as the larger ones caused pain in the left side and sometimes palpitation. This is entirely in accordance with all my experience in the use of organ remedy, viz., wherever the degree of homoeopathicity is at all pronounced, the dose must be small. In ordinary cases where there is only specificity of seat, i.e., homoeopathicity of the lowest degree, small material doses are the best and most rapidly curative. The medical man just referred to, promised to give me his experience of Ceanothus. Here is what he kindly sent me:-
“Anything fresh to-day?” I asked, as I sauntered into No. 12 Warwick Lane.
“Yes!” said the genial secretary, handing me Diseases of the Spleen, by Compton Burnett. “I promptly bought the volume, as I knew absolutely nothing about the therapeutics of this terra incognita to the ordinary and extraordinary, orthodox, allopathic, semi-allopathic, and semi-homoeopathic practitioner. It was the best investment I ever made as, all unknown to myself, the Fen District of Cambridgeshire, in which I resided, was full of spleens (abnormal). After pursuing the work I realized my appalling ignorance.
“Let me give one or two cases:-
“Visiting a resident patient one day twelve months ago, I got into conversation with a lady visitor living in Newmarket who informed me that the previous ten years of her life had been spent mostly in bed or on a couch. Heart disease, her family physician had diagnosed, as well as several professors.I informed her after having made a rapid physiognomical diagnosis that she had a very good heart, and that she could be cured, in probably a few months-Tableau!
“After four months’ treatment she was nearly well and stopped treatment for three months. An attack of Influenza brought on the old spleen trouble again, but six weeks’ treatment brought her round again. There was slight ovarian complication in this case.
“I used Ceanothus Americanus with a small dose of Chel, and she liked it flavored with Am. carb and Tinct. capsici.
“I have usually two spleen cases every week-sometimes more. Sometimes the spleen is very much enlarged and always painful- sometimes complicated with tender left lobe of liver, and also the latter enlarged, and Ceanothus has in every instance hitherto removed the spleen trouble, and I have only failed in one case of enlarged and tender left lobe of liver associated with enlarged and painful spleen. Ceanothus has cured the latter, but as yet, this liver baffles me. I put it down to my own ignorance.”
Turning over the leaves of the Homoeopathic Recorder of May 15, 1990, I saw something about my old friend Ceanothus, and which I forthwith proceed to commander.
CEANOTHUS
“I wish to call the attention of the readers of the Medical Century to a very valuable remedy; a remedy very little used by most physicians and possibly never by many-Ceanothus.
“This oversight is not strange, as it has only been used empirically, and no proving has ever been made of it so far as I know. Its principal and almost sole use has been in splenitis, where it has accomplished much good.
“During last summer and this winter I made several provings of Ceanothus. To my surprise the first symptom noticed was a sticking pain in the spleen, and after the continued use of the remedy there was quite an enlargement of that organ, worse by motion, but at the same time unable to lie on the left side; following this, there was pain in the liver, a congestion and enlargement, with sticking pains worse by motion or touch.
“Pain in lumbar region, with a desire to urinate.
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.