They only relapse I had was a lady dispenser who knew so much that she wished to almost treat herself, and she had several weeks in bed and was far more pulled down afterwards than any of the other cases: even though she had the same strict starvation diet, copious draughts of barley water, lemon juice, orange juice and grapes as the other patients I looked after. So I proved to myself that natural diet, a fruitarian diet alone, was not the greatest factor in promoting a rapid cure: It always wanted the indicator – that is the right homoeopathic remedy for each individual case.
There was another case that caused me some anxiety, as it would not respond to the usual remedies: He was a young man invalided out of thee army on account of shrapnel wounds in his ankle. The rest of his family, both parents, several brothers and sisters, responded quickly to the treatment given, temperatures came down within twelve to twenty-four hours. They were kept in bed for seven days, after the first day of normal temperature for two to three days only a faint diet which was gradually augmented.
His mother could not understand why her eldest son did not get well quickly as the rest and put it down to the effects of the war wounds. she was not so far wrong either, as it turned out in the end. After nearly a week of pyrexia I had visited him at all hours of the day and night to get all the symptoms collected together, nurses were at a premium just at that time; one depended on the relatives provided there was anybody left to do the nursing, and one carried several doorkeys in ones pockets to let oneself into the various houses.
Well, eventually one got the following disease picture: very high, steadily rising temperature, going up to 105 at night, the pulse remaining somewhere about 100-110, therefore the pulse and temperature were quite out of proportion. He was extremely restless, never staying long in one position, very confused as regards the number of extremities he owned, there seemed to be so many arms and legs in the bed; he complained of extreme hardness of the bed, his back was so painful and the bed was as hard as a board.
He had received Rhus tox for his restlessness, also Arnica for the hardness of the bed and (?) remote effects of war injuries, also Baptisia, which seemed to correspond to the confusion of the mind and the sensation of there being more than one person in the bed: nothing would touch the illness, however; the weakness went from bad to worse. There were drenching sweats, an offensive, penetrating odour from his perspiration; he had to change his shirts several times in the twenty-four hours; his mouth and tongue were foul and yet Mercury did not touch him.
One did not give up hope; but continued to study the case. in the back of ones mind one knew there was something that would act as the key to open the door to this maze, this complicated septic fever. Suddenly it came to one, there was a certain remedy which had this arrhythmia of pulse and temperature; a high temperature with a low pulse or vice versa.
This was Pyrogen, and in reading up Pyrogen in the Materia Medica there was the simillimum: the extreme restlessness, the bruised feeling of the parts lain on, the relief by movement of feet, by change of position, offensive, disgusting perspiration, great weakness and lassitude: the imaginary crowding of supernumerary limbs in the bed: it was all there. So Pyrogen cm – the only potency one had except the mm, both Heath Potencies from America – was given two hourly in a watery solution, and by the morning, a few hours after the late night visit-one found the patient had slept more restfully and the temperature was down to 100, that night within twenty-four hours of starting this new medicine the temperature was normal, and it kept normal after that.
One continued the remedy for a couple of days and then finished off with one dose of Pyrogen mm dry on the tongue. One does not remember now, whether he had a constitutional remedy at the end of “seven days bed” after the temperature reached the normal level. Anyway, the patient was kept under observation for several years afterwards, and he had no after effects from his serious attack of “wartime flu”, and on the whole he came off quite lightly, compared with many other victims; he was only in bed for a little over two weeks: eight days temperature and seven days recuperative rest.
In this case the normal influenza, if one may be allowed to call any influenza normal – was complicated by previous inoculations of the various typhoid, paratyphoid and cholera bacilli; he had had anti-malarial inoculation, he had been vaccinated, he had anti- streptococci injections and inoculation against tetanus, and he could not remember what other inoculations he had had to submit to. I came to the conclusion that he was full of septic matter; and his blood stream was a battlefield of all sorts of serums and bacteria, and hence the drenching sweats, the high temperature, the offensive odour and the extreme prostration.
In my own mind I am absolutely convinced that this young man would have been another of the numerous victims of the fatal influenza epidemic if it had not been for our Pyrogen.
A number of years passed by, but the lesson one was taught of the action of Pyrogen was never forgotten: one day one heard of a poor woman lying dangerously ill in her own home after her confinement: she had been in hospital antenatally for several weeks with high temperature due to pyelitis, the story went, and he was sent out under the care of a district nurse with the instruction to call in a local doctor, even though the fever, etc., had not abated. There was such a call on the hospital beds she had to be sent out.
I heard of her accidentally, she had been at home for nearly a week since her discharge from hospital: the visitor told me that the temperature would not come down, but stayed round about 103, the pulse was only about 80 though; she was so weak she could not look after her baby, a kind neighbour was seeing to it. It seemed so tragic, poor Mrs. D. being so ill as there was a large family of seven or eight children. Across my mind flashed the story of the soldier suffering from septic influenza and his cure by Pyrogen; here, once again, was the abnormal pulse-temperature ratio.
As there was no doctor in attendance, the woman was too poor to pay for one, and the nurse was so worried, a dozen powders of Pyrogen 30 were sent, with the instruction to take one powder at four-hourly intervals, with the result that the evening temperature, the first temperature taken after the powders had been sent, was 99.8, and the next morning the temperature was normal and stayed normal. The patient reported herself a couple of weeks later as being very well except for a crop of vesicles on both her wrists and hands, which cleared up with a dose of Sulphur 30.
Here, once again, was a septic fever, caused by or following on some infection of the female generative organs, cured by Pyrogen which eliminated the poison, as often happens after homoeopathic medication, through the skin. A little while ago one came across this abnormal pulse- temperature ratio in a case of post-operative pyrexia. Pyrogen was exhibited and pulse and temperature came down together and the patient reported the curious fact that shortly after taking a powder she could taste pus in her throat and mouth.
She was a vegetarian and had never tasted meat in her life, so she said, and was probably hypersensitive. I gave her unmedicated powders to try and prove the veracity of her statements, and she only complained of the putrid taste after a Pyrogen powder. As it was given in the 30th potency it was certainly not a physiological reaction, more in the form of a proving.
Pyrogen – which is a product of sepsis – cures septic fevers of all kinds and conditions when the symptoms agree; it was proved on healthy individuals, and produced a distinctive type of pyrexia with definite clear-cut indications. Thus it proves again the great truth of the Homoeopathic Law: Likes cures like. in my hands it cured septic influenza, puerperal pyelitis and post-operative pyrexia, and it will continue to cure other septic diseases showing the typical symptoms.
Many cases of blood poisoning and ptomaine poisoning, peritonitis and pyaemia could be saved by Pyrogen, if the medical practitioners would only study our Materia Medica and apply it in cases which show the characteristics I mentioned. Pyrogen is closely related to various other remedies, it is very similar to Rhus tox., to Baptisia, to Arnica; one has to get together all the distinctive symptoms of each case and then apply the simillimum, the remedy which is most similar.
The general medical profession is getting on inkling of the truth, as it is using the serum and vaccines made from individual bacteria or a combination of bacteria found in different septic cases and injecting them hypodermically, and in certain cases they do get a positive reaction, a good curative result. But their doses are too big, and the results are too uncertain, and until they learn to give minute doses and apply them according to a definite law of cure their results will never be as good as our remedies applied strictly following the Hahnemannian laws:
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.