“UBI VENENUM – IBI REMEDIUM”.
THE special thanks of the whole homoeopathic fraternity – physicians and patients alike – are the just need of the Editor of this Journal for which the admirable and discriminating method in which he has directed attention to the remedies severally known as “Pyrogen” and “Septicaemin”.
These therapeutic substances are of such sovereign value that it is matter of great regret that they do not as yet stand in the very front rank of homoeopathic use and wont in the choice of prescribers, acting on the principle of “the fine adjustment of remedy to malady”.
THE EARLY DAYS OF RECIPROCAL THERAPEUTICS.
A brilliant galaxy of names illuminates the early homoeopathic history of these remedial measures. Yet in comparison with Aconite, Baptisia, Gelsemium and other congeners “their name is seldom heard.” This anomaly is due to the diverse angles of vision of the earlier homoeopathic workers with these remedies, the different materials and sources chosen, the varied denominations adopted and the omission of the healthy human organism as the proper testing ground “more homoeopathico”.
Thus the primary worker, Professor Burdon Sanderson, stated that “no therapeutic agent, no synthetical product, is known hitherto which possesses the property of producing fever – the only fluids known which have this endowment either actually contain bacteria or are prone to their evolution.” Later research, however, has disqualified this dictum, for sea-water contains organic substance in solution – as undergoing spontaneous decomposition was chosen by homoeopathic research workers who saw in it the promise and the potency of a valuable remedial measure.
BURDON SANDERSON AND DRYSDALE PIONEERS.
As already mentioned Burdon Sanderson was one of the pioneers of the exploitation of organic fluids in a state of resolution. He regarded decomposing organic material as unique in its powers of inducing pyrexia in the physical frame. “Only that and nothing more” – and it was left to a well-known personality in pure biological science and Homoeopathy – Dr. Drysdale – to recognize and develop the value of the pyrexia – producing fluid on homoeopathic lines as a potent remedial measure.
THE HOMOEOPATHIC INSPIRATION.
Then commenced a demonstration of the many-sided therapeutic powers of this organic fluid undergoing spontaneous decomposition by a series of independent workers each with his own homoeopathic inspiration. Drysdale led the way in this original research, naming the crude substance used by him, Pyrogen, or alternatively Pyrexin, and prepared by macerating raw beef in cold water, thereafter exposing this infusion for weeks to the rays of the sun. Administered as a homoeopathic remedy in homoeopathic dilution it worked well – “very encouragingly”, says Clarke.
Next, further exploitation of this promising remedy was made by that therapeutic giant Burnett, who standardized its preparation, and use in Fevers and Blood poisoning, in a monograph published in 1888. Burnetts successes were more duo, and with him the catalogue of English investigators for the time ends. The crude substance from which potencies were prepared in the usual manner was decomposing animal fluid, the retrograde change in its composition occurring outside the body.
AMERICAN DISCOVERERS JOIN UP.
The scene now changes to America: and with this enter variations in nomenclature, in preparation and in its therapeutic range, as the new research workers independently envisaged the many-sided problem of Pyrogen. Thence issued a mass of new research, bewildering in its clinical experimentation: in its plural pharmacology: and in the amazing uniformity of its therapeutic successes.
To the homoeopathic body is due the credit of the original idea of taking the pyrogen-substance out of the laboratory of the physiologist and placing it in the pharmacy of the physician. To the American homoeopaths came the vision of utilizing a septic substance out of one or other of the morbid fluids of the human body and possessing a close parallelism between the symptoms induced by this morbid agent and those of human clinical pathology.
THE AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT.
Dr. Swan, the captain and chief of the high dilution school, raised the morbid pyrogen-containing material from the content of a human septic abscess to the highest level of transcendental potencies, and inaugurated that series of wellnigh miraculous cures whose only parallel is in the clinical experience of Hahnemann himself in the post-Napoleonic wars.
Swan prepared the way for Sherbino Yingling and H.C. Allen whose conjoint contributions constitute a notable example of the “Fairy tales of science”. Nothing since in mass or value has been published equalling the early work of the American pioneers. And this was done with the septic pus preparation. On this polemic Kent speaks with no uncertain sound: “Swans potencies of Pyrogen were made from septic pus. Sherbinos proving was made with Swans potencies, and therefore with septic pus.” The earlier British work was done with decomposing beef as a crude primary.
THE RECIPROCAL THERAPY OF TO-DAY.
A post-American era of exploitation, not of research carried on the history of Pyrogen on Septicaemia, as it was indifferently termed. The therapeutic successes were astounding, whether in America with septic pus, or in England with septic beef. As time went on and experience accumulated the tendency was to change the potency from 6c, administered night and morning, to 10m or cm, administered as a single dose. It became obvious that a high temperature was not essential in the symptoms of a cured case: but that a high temperature usually called for a single dose of a transcendental potency of the remedy given by the mouth.
CLINICAL EXPERIENCE.
BURNETT used chiefly the 6th centesimal dilution every two hours in acute cases.
SHULDAM employed the same potency in two cases of diphtheritic sore throat.
SHERBINO cured a case of puerperal fever led to its selection by the high pulse rate.
HUNT cured with Pyrogenium 200 an elderly woman suffering for years with an ulcerated leg, riddled with deep burrowing ulcers.
SWAN gives as a special indication for Pyrogen, pulse abnormally rapid out of all proportion to the temperature.
CASES AND CHART.
1.KENTS CASE.
A young man of good heredity suffered from blood poison and made a poor recovery, and for several years was affected with abscesses in various parts. He was pale and sickly, rheumatic and stiff, at this time there was an abscess of the calf slowly forming.
He took Pyrogen and made a rapid and complete recovery. This time the abscess did not open. He has remained in good health now for ten years.
II. SKINNERS CASE.
Skinner gave a supply of Septicaeminum 10m (F.C.) to a volunteer going to South Africa with instruction to take a globule ever four hours if attacked with anything like camp fever. The young man wrote home that “Septicaemin is like magic in diarrhoea and dysentery in camp life” and asked for more, as his supply was further drawn on by his friends.
III. AUTHORS CASE
A lady, having undergone three separate abdominal operations for a primary appendicitis found herself at length condemned to a fourth surgical interference for a large septic abdominal growth. Two eminent surgeons had occurred in this procedure.
The patients consent was obtained for homoeopathy to be chosen for a last therapeutic resort. The after-course of events was almost miraculous: no operation was necessary: the collection of pus was gradually absorbed, the temperature gradually declined: the patient, entirely recovered and remained well up to date – three years afterwards.
Puerpeural Pyrexia: Fall of Temperature under Pyrogen.
IV. PUERPERAL CASE UNDER THE CARE OF AN ENGLISH PHYSICIAN.
The chart of temperatures is that given above. Pyrogenium 200 was first given on the eight day of the affection and Pyrogenium 10m on the ninth day. The chart speaks for itself.
V. Clarke summarizes the leading symptoms in a marked Pyrogenium case as follows:.
1. Symptoms benefited by heat and movement
II. Marked disproportion between pulse and temperature: pulse continually rises.
III. Restlessness owing to soreness of parts.
IV. Better sitting up on bed and in the act of rising.
V. Relieved by stretching out limbs.
VI. Hands and arms numb.
PYROGEN IN DANGEROUS CASES.
DURING the serious influenza epidemic in 1918-19 ones clinical acumen was greatly tried, but again and again one was thankful for the very efficient aid that homoeopathic medicines provided, and over and over again an apparently serious case quickly turned the corner.
Patients used to say, “I only had a very mild case of flu”. They never gave the credit of the rapid cure to the almost tasteless watery medicines they used to imbibe. There were no complications, no heart trouble, no broncho-pneumonia, no septic pneumonias and therefore no fatal incidents in several hundred cases. A triumph for homoeopathy indeed. Very few cases gave one much anxiety.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.