Enlarged Tonsils Cured by Medicines



There are certain cases of enlarged tonsils historically readily diagnosed that will mend rapidly, and by rapidly I mean in a few months. Thus a gentleman brought his little girl of eight years of age to me in the fall of last year. The tonsils were moderately enlarged and also many of the lymphatics, but the most distressing thing was the girl’s sleep. Here the amelioration was very great-in fact she was practically cured in six months. There was a period of two months under Luet. C. to start with, then Thuja 30 for a month, and the former prescription then repeated, when patient was discharged cured.

ENLARGED TONSILS AFTER REMOVAL OF ADENOID GROWTHS.

A very delicate backward child was brought by her mother to me at the beginning of 1899, suffering from enlarged tonsils. Although the adenoid growths from which she had suffered had been removed by operations, still her eminently silly expression had not improved. She did not breathe nicely, a little phlegm in her throat see-sawed backwards and forwards without seemingly ever being got rid of. Though ten years of age, her eye-teeth are still absent. After three months of Bacill. 30, her intelligence very greatly improved; she breathed better, and without the phlegmy nasal state.

She was then a few weeks under Thuja 30, and then again another Bacillinum 30. Whereupon her eye-teeth at last appeared, and that quite sound.

There afterwards followed the same remedies repeatedly, and also Sabina 30.

Now, after thirteen month’s persistent treatment by medicines, her tonsils are about the right size, the breathing is good, and patient is somewhat nearing the normal; she articulates now, and answers a question promptly, and her parents and their friends are struck by the very great change that has come over her. It is to be borne in mind that where the tonsils are enlarged that is not, as a rule, the only abnormality, for very commonly the enlargement is only one of the ailings of the individual. The tonsils are glands, and where one gland is swelled there are often many, and after all is said and done you cannot cut away disease with the surgeon’s knife.

ENLARGED TONSILS.

In the medicinal treatment of enlarged tonsils there are two main lines of procedure, and the first is to cure the cause of the enlargement, which is commonly not only not attempted, but it is not even thought of. For it must be manifest that to get rid of the cause of the enlargement is the prime consideration. If this be done the enlargements usually disappear-this is the best way. When you cut off a tonsil you certainly get rid of it, so you do if you shrivel it with gland tissue destroyers, but the perfect cure is where the enlargement disappears under the influence of dynamic remedies: here the normal tonsils remain to do the work allotted to them within nature’s cycle.

That this is really so may be seen in cases where the tonsils are not bilaterally enlarged, but only on one side, and in such other cases where the tonsils are enlarged at the beginning of the cure, but where only one tonsil will yield to a given remedy. Thus Miss Marjorie X. was put under me on June 26, 1899 for her huge tonsils; they literally held the uvula tightly between them, and breathing was distressing, and swallowing miserable. After the patient had been two months under Thuja 30, and then a month under Bacill. C., I find the following note in my record of her case.

Nov. 20. 1899.-“The left tonsil is no longer enlarged, but the right one is very large.”

So we have here a rather curious find: under Thuja and Bacillinum one tonsil becomes normal in size while the other is still enlarged.

If we want to be quite successful in the treatment of enlarged tonsils by medicines, we must look away from the mere tonsils, and remember that although the tonsils are the thing complained of, the constitutional cause of their enlargement is the real disease, and this it is that can not be removed by operation. Those who see the mere enlargement, and give remedies for such enlargement merely-those practitioners will mostly fail to cure enlarged tonsils by medicines, and will have much to say of the advantages of their mechanical removal.

It is not at all a bad plan to begin the course of treatment with Sulphur 30; after a while follow with Calcarea carb. 30., and in the third place give Thuja occidentalis 30. Each remedy should have a month or two to develop its action, to do its work.

As a rule before these have done all their work there is evidence of amelioration in the child’s health, and the enlargement has somewhat lessened.

Calcarea phosphorica-say 3x-two or three doses a day follows well; indeed I have often been almost startled at the sudden improvement that will set in under its use: the whole child brightens up, coughs disappear, the intelligence awakens, the ribs stiffen, and the surroundings are well aware that something is being done for the enlarged tonsils.

The third trituration of the Iodide of Mercury will often rapidly and radically change the aspect of the enlarged tonsils.

Calcarea iod. 3x is often useful in the abjectly strumous.

In puny boys whose testicular development is very backward- in fact can scarcely be said to exist at all-Aurum met. 3 trit is, with me, an old and well-tried remedy; it may often be noticed that, as the testicles take on life and increase in size, the tonsils diminish in bulk.

Where tonsils are very hard and there is evidently much sclerosed connective tissue in them, the Iodide of Barium will help.

In stubborn cases, it will often be necessary to recur again and again to the same remedies, notably to such remedies as Sulphur 30, Calcarea carb. C., Thuja 30, Sabina 30, Bacillinum 30 and C., before all the bars to cure are organically removed.

Sometimes Baryta carb.30 alone will rapidly reduce enlarged tonsils, but alone it does not often suffice.

Hepar sulphuris is a classic remedy in enlarged tonsils, and in some cases Silicea is the remedy.

RHEUMATIC TONSILS.

Guaiacum, Phytolacca, Salix, and such anti-rheumatics come into play in the treatment of tonsils whose enlargements are of a rheumatic quality. There seems a disposition to regard the tonsils as the entrance door of the rheumatism into the organism. I am satisfied that this is entirely erroneous, and that, on the contrary, the organism endeavours to eliminate rheumatism from the organism by way of the tonsils, and it seems to me probable that it is when the tonsillary outlet is insufficient that rheumatic fever may result, not from without into the tonsils towards the centre, but from the organism out into the tonsils, to be cast away by the defecatory work of the tonsils.

The more I watch the behaviour of the tonsils, the more I am convinced that they are charged with an excretory, a defecatory function, and that they excrete things out from the organism, casting them out both at the time of swallowing food and also as a kind of lubricating trickle; such excretions pass with or without the food, down the oesophagus like corn down a shut.

Moreover, I think the bulk of the private troubles of the tonsils, i.e. their diseases, are vicarious for the mucous lining of the body.

I am satisfied from my observations that the tonsils are capable of sacrificing themselves on the altar of the economy by ulceration, till nearly or quite all the tonsillary tissues is gone.

The extension of phthisis to the organism from the tonsils from the exterior is practically a myth. I am quite prepared to grant that, given a strong disposition to the tubercular disease, a wounded tonsil might admit the phthisic virus, and the organism so become infected, but only through an actual lesion of continuity, just as it might be the case on any other person of the mucous sur-face of the body. I have frequently watched phthisis of the tonsils, as I believe, save the organism from death, by gathering and discharging over and over again-much the same as one may observe the organism operate in like manner through suppurating cervical or other glands. The cases I have in my mind appear at first as hyperaemia, and then there is a seemingly encapsuled mass, the containing membrane looking like fascia on the surface of the tonsil; it will take first one side and then another, and will repeat itself at intervals over a period of several years, and in the end terminate in the good health of the individual. Whether unaided nature would end by curing the organism with the aid of a series of tonsillary gatherings and dischargings I am unable to say, because I have treated all the cases I have observed with remedies, notably with Bacillinum in high dilution.

There is always some blood from these tonsillary gatherings when they burst, and they usually cause a certain amount of alarm. I have known experienced lung specialists greatly puzzled by these cases.

In conclusion, I will state as my opinion, based upon clinical facts as I see them in my daily work, that enlarged tonsils can be more or less readily cured by medicines withal the task is often tedious; and moreover, that the tonsils are important organs of the body, that have as one of their functions the preservation of the life and integrity of the individual.

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.