CEANOTHUS AMERICANUS



I resolved to begin my next case with a physical examinations. My next case was this-

Chronic Hypertrophy of the spleen.-A middle aged lady consulted me, shortly after the above case, for a severe pain in the left side and a large swelling in the same position. Remembering the last case, I said I must examine the side. She objected, so I declined to treat her; then she said she would think about it consult with her husband on the subject. In a fortnight or so she returned (driven by the severe pain in the side), and I examined the side and found an enormous spleen occupying the entire left hypochondrium and reaching inferiorly to about an inch above the crest of the ilium; it bulged towards the median line and ran off to an angle laterally. It was of long standing.

Gave Ceanothus Americanus in a low dilution.

The lady being very intelligent I begged she would allow me to examine the side again after I had finished the treatment. She promised to comply.

Fourteen days after this she came full of gratitude, and reported that the swelling was smaller and the pain considerably less.

To continue the medicine, she never consulted me again, but as she was a near neighbour of mine I often saw her, and somewhat six months afterwards she called to pay my fee, and then informed me that she has soon got rid of the pain entirely and the swelling was much smaller, so she had discontinued the medicine altogether, and did not deem it needful to trouble me again.

This is the usual thing. People will not be at the trouble of seeing the doctor as soon as they are better, they seem not to understand any interest one feels in the case. We can only make periodical reliable examinations of patients in a hospital; in private practice it is extremely difficult, as all practitioners know to their chagrin. Still, faute de mieux, we must put up with these fragments. This patient has had no children, and had a very fresh complexion.

My next case is also one of Chronic Hypertrophy of the Spleen, though only about half the size of the one just narrated. Subject: a poor woman of about 30 or 32 years of age, whom I was requested to see by a very kind-hearted benevolent lay minister. She is the mother of several children, very poor, ill-fed, and over-worked, but with all a good, respectable woman, very clean. She had a considerable and very painful swelling in the left side under the ribs, that had been there for some time, latterly she could not get up on account of the severe pain. I carefully examined the tumor and satisfied myself that it was a very much swelled spleen, and the pain seemed to me to be due to its pressing against the ribs. I marked its size on the skin with ink, made her engage not to wash off the ink mark, and promised her I would call in a week, having first prescribed Ceanothus as in the other cases. But the fates were against my laudable plan, for I received a message, the lady before my next visit was due, to the effect that Mrs.-felt herself so much better that she was up at her housework, and begged me not to call again, as she thought it unnecessary.

Since then I have at times had cases of deep-seated pain in the left side to treat, and have mostly found it yield to Ceanothus, though not always. In one case in which it failed the pain was cured with Berberis vulgaris.

In one case of jaundice, characterized by very severe pain in the left side, I gave Ceanothus, with very prompt relief of the pain only; Myrica cerifera that finished the icterus. Before giving the Ceanothus I had given Chelidonium majus.

In one case of severe metrorrhagia characterized by pain in the left hypochondrium, Ceanothus gave instant relief to the pain, and checked the haemorrhage. It failed me in a subsequent similar attack in the same person, when Conium was effective.

Chronic Splenitis, Chills, and Leucorrhoea.-Some four years since, perhaps a little more, I treated a lady of about 55. She complained of rigors ar frequent intervals, and pain in the left side, both of long standing.

The leucorrhoea had lasted some twenty years, and was profuse, thick, and yellow. She had been for years under the best Allopathic physicians of her native city, and finally given up as beyond the reach of medical art, evidently on Moliere`s principle that “Nul n’ aura del’esprit que nous et nos amis.” Nevertheless, the patient bethought her of Homoeopathy, and came under my care. Her last physician had finally suspected cerebro-spinal mischief, and hinted at incipient paralysis.

The pain in the side was the most prominent and distressing symptom, and for this I prescribed Ceanothus. In a month the pain was entirely cured, and also the leucorrhoea, while the cold feeling was very much diminished, but not quite cured. I have also never succeeded in quite curing it with any subsequent treatment. I watched the case for nearly four years, and am thus enabled to state that the pain in the side and the leucorrhoea never returned, and the chilliness never again became very bad, but still she had it a little when I saw her last.

CASE OF ENLARGED SPLEEN MISTAKEN FOR HEART DISEASE.

A few years ago I was attending some of the members of a family of position in London, and at my various visits I occasionally heard of an invalid daughter of the family suffering from a hopelessly incurable disease of the heart, for which she was said to be under a West-End physician, who was thought to devote himself especially to diseases of the heart. The heart was said to be enormously enlarged, and the patient had to give up first dancing and then hurrying, and finally she was only allowed to walk very slowly and carefully, lest the hugely enlarged heart should rupture. Several physicians had examined the case, and all were agreed as to its cardiac nature. I had never seen the young lady, and took no particular interest in the frequent narrations of her heart troubles; they are common enough. Time went by, and the mother used to speak of her “poor invalid daughter” with increasing despondency, finishing up one day with remark that the unfortunate girl was no longer allowed even to walk, as doctor considered even that now fraught with danger. “Is it not sad?” said she. “Would you like to see her?” I declined, saying, I never cared about seeing other physicians’ patients.

More time lapsed, and finally I was requested to take the case in hand. I demurred at first, because such hopeless cases are as unsatisfactory as they are painful.

At last I consented to take over the case, and I appointed a time to call and examine the patient.

During all my professional life, I have rarely been more taken aback than I was after I had made my examination of the patient, for I found the heart not only enlarged, but of the two rather abnormally small, although apparently the cardiac dulness extended a foot down the left side. But this dulness on percussion was due to an enlarged spleen which pushed up the diaphragm and left lung by its bulk, till the heart and the spleen gave one continuous dull percussion note. Patient had many genuine symptoms of real heart diseases-dyspnoea, palpitation, inability to lie on the left side, faintness-but these were due to the mechanical hindrance to the heart`s action produced by the spleen bulking upward so much.

That young lady I meet three weeks ago looking blooming, and as agile as possible, and she has done her share of dancing, tennis, etc., for some years. Ceanothus Americanus cured the enlargement of the spleen for the most part, though it swelled again two or three times at some months’ intervals, and Ferrum phosph., Conium, Thuja, Berberis, and other splenics, came into play before patient was really well. Looking at the case now with the advantage of wider experience and more matured views of biopathology, and with the patient fully six years under my observations, I regard the affection as a primary disease of the leucocytes due to vaccinial infection, the spleen being disturbed secondarily, and then the heart mechanically. I am confirmed in this view by the fact that the spleen would not leave off swelling up at certain times till I had cured the vaccinosis. That prince of splenics, Ceanothus Americanus, readily cured the splenic engorgment, but did not touch the blood disease which caused it. This is the inherent defect of organopathy, that it is not sufficiently radical in its inceptive action, but the like remark applies to every other pathy more or less, because the primordial cause is more or less elusive, and generally quite beyond positive science, which only admits of what it knows, and will not seek to encompass the unknown by the processes of thinking and reasoning. Because in former times philosophy made science impossible, the votaries of science now round upon philosophy, and sneer it out of view. To trace back proximate effects to remote causes is now ridiculed in medicine because mere science is productive of gross mindedness, incapable of following the fine threads of the higher perception.

James Compton Burnett
James Compton Burnett was born on July 10, 1840 and died April 2, 1901. Dr. Burnett attended medical school in Vienna, Austria in 1865. Alfred Hawkes converted him to homeopathy in 1872 (in Glasgow). In 1876 he took his MD degree.
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.