If we assume that the toxins contained in the soil through the excretion of poisons by the roots are the same throughout the world, we must also assume that there are certain plants which have learned destroy, or neutralize, these poisons and which may have similar medicinal qualities for the use of men. However, we cannot conclude that, to give an example, Aconitum napellus, grown in Europe, will produce the same effect in India or Brazil which it produces on people living in the districts where in flourishes.
It appears that the efficiency of medicinal plants is largely dependent on the character of the locality where they are grown. Pharmacology should, at least theoretically, take notice of these local distinctions. We cannot rely on the effect of remedies guided solely by the text books. For instance, Lycopodium may prove ineffective if given in a district where for miles around no Lycopodium grown naturally.
Under these circumstances it will be wise to give in combination a number of plants which have more or less the same effect or to give these plants in alternation. Practical experience shows the superiority of combining the most important remedies belonging to a group in dynamic Oligoplexes which deal rapidly with the stagnation produced by chronic diseases. I would mention that biologic physicians and lay practitioners have been prescribing these combined remedies in ever-increasing numbers.
Their use has particularly spread not only among the biologic physicians but also among the German lay practitioners, who number six or eight thousand. They are neither strictly allopathic nor strictly homoeopathic, and they are solely guided by the successes which they obtain.
Users of combined remedies are often reproached because, if a combined remedy is given, no one can tell which of the remedies contained in it has proved curative. One might as well reproach a sportsman because he uses shot instead of a bullet. Men cannot live on one kind of food alone. Similarly we cannot always cure by a single remedy.
PHARMACEUTICAL REQUIREMENTS.
Those doctors who wish to treat patients biologically must realize that their change in attitude means not only a change in treatment but also in pharmaceutics. If we wish to treat biologically, we must not treat patients with medicinal plants which have been dried, heated, or the composition of which has been altered by the extraction of components, or by the addition of alcohol. The old science of herbal treatment went down when it became the custom to use dried herbs in decoction. That method of treating them destroyed in the first place those hormones which are susceptible to heat.
Further, all those substances which are intimately connected with the undissolved material were thrown away. The mere drying of herbs produces great changes in them which may destroy their medicinal properties. For instances, the Bryonia root is as harmless as a potato when it has been dried. The physician who wishes to prescribe herbal remedies must demand that the right medicinal plants are used, that they are collected at the proper season of the year, that they are cultivated and collected in the proper manner and that the effective parts of these plants are used.
The world contains millions of different plants and the medicinal properties of some thousands of these have been described. It is scarcely permissible to expect that a chronic disease of some individual may be cured by a single plant. In view of a practical experience extending over many years I have come to the conviction that the entire indicated group of plants, as contained in the Oligoplexes, provide extremely valuable, and perhaps the most valuable, remedies of Nature.
In consequence I recommend single remedies, such as Pulsatilla, only when I am quite certain that there is only a functional disturbances. The search of the simillimum requires much loss of time. Therefore one should treat a patient with a combined remedy, with a group remedy, with an Oligoplex unless the single remedy has produced an adequate result in a few days.
The season of gathering medicinal plants is very important. Fresh plant shoots contain many growth producing factors which are called Vitamin A. If an animal lying in its deep winter sleep is given an injection of spring vitamins it wakes up and remains awake. These vitamins disappear from the leaves in Autumn and they are replaced by other substances which produce a sense of tiredness in warm-blooded animals.
In other words Nature produces in Spring sleep-destroying and in Autumn sleep- inducing substances. Therefore the time of gathering of medicinal plants is extremely important. Spring and Autumn cures with plant juices have a deep biological significance.
If insoluble chemical substances are given they should be supplied in a colloidal form, in infinitely small particles. In this form they have a very different effect from the same substance if given in more substantial form. One can cauterize with colloidal silver while ordinary triturated silver has no such effect.
Ordinary powdered Sulphur placed into the bowel acts only after seven or eight hours, while the same Sulphur in infinitely small particles, in the colloidal form, acts already after fifteen minutes. Minerals which in Nature never occur in as pure a form as Sulphur should always be given in the same combination in which they occur in Nature.
