Secale cornutum (Ergot) (3x to 30th). This is the much-abused orthodox drug given routinely at childbirth to contract the womb when it is given in massive doses. This, however, has a secondary action not considered by orthodoxy. It is then serious. We Homoeopaths employ it always in minute dosage for its nerve impulse, which is never harmful.
But first let me state that when the massive doses are given at childbirth by orthodoxy to prevent bleeding, its secondary action is to injure or completely destroy the milk function in every woman who is susceptible and this is why so many women cannot nurse their babies. This action of sucking is arranged by Nature to induce contractions of the womb, which thus becomes of normal size during lactation. Breast feeding should be urged every time, even if the baby has to have bottle feed at the same time. It is a stupid risk to ask the baby to take Ergot every two hours.
As an alternative to Ergot at childbirth an attendant should without fail keep a hand on the womb for at least one hour and if at any time the womb relaxes when it is no longer feelable it should at once be grasped through the abdominal wall by the attendant, and by firm and careful squeezing with the hand it will soon contract, feeling like a small cannon-ball, which term is classical in the profession.
This obviates the routine doses of Ergot to prevent bleeding, as a cannon-ball womb wont bleed and the latter lactation wont be spoiled. Very little mention of this is every made, to the undoing of many women. This mistake is not made by real Homoeopaths.
Now for the sphere of usefulness of Secale from the homoeopathic standpoint, and this use, I venture to say, is quit unknown to orthodoxy. To be of use here in painful menstruations there must be great cramping, expulsive, forcing pain accompanied by great surface coldness of the body.
Yet the patient will say that she cannot bear to be covered. She wants to throw something off if she is bed. Yet with this surface coldness she will complain of internal heat. This surface coldness may extend from clammy conditions to icy cold sweats with weakening and slowing pulse and with very cold and pale face.
These agonizing expulsive menstrual pains may occur for a long time without resulting flow. Pain are very irregular in spasms. When the flow is seen it will be abnormally dark, often a few small clots with much cutting pains referred too the bladder and lower bowels. Oftener than having clots, the flow will be almost black, fluid and foetid. Flow worse from the last motion. All parts of the pelvis (uterus and ovaries) very sensitive to touch. Menses generally too profuse and of too long duration.
Many patients complain of creeping, tickling sensations under the skin (formications). But on of the chief guides to Secale is the coldness of surface of the body, dry sometimes, though oftener damp to icy sweat, with some wrinkling of the skin and complaints of extreme weakness. These cases are very restless. The body type of such patients is amongst the frail, thin, scrawny subjects with lax muscular fibre.
How different all these painful menstruations, and yet to the orthodox they are all just dysmenorrhoea. To the homoeopath they present as much difference as chalk does from cheese and that is how are able to cure them without curettings and dilations.
Homoeopaths have other remedies for peculiar types of painful menstruation. The lesson of these few drugs will be to teach you how we choose our medical aids. Many women will actually employ the identical word we have given. In fact these symptoms have all been taken from the lips of woman volunteer provers who bravely tested these same digs on themselves.
Their expression were all recorded for our future guidance and your use. These complaints on the part of patients are as Nature crying out for the one medicine which will help them. The remedies are not interchangeable. They cannot be mistaken one for other. The more peculiar and even outlandish the symptoms are the clearer they point to this or that remedy.
I shall follow this with an article on profuse menstruation and later sum up some other abnormalities of the function, hoping that they will help someone. This is the message and intent of “HEAL THYSELF”. As a journal it is unique in the world. It is fighting for you and your family. If you find help and if you heal yourself, then be a Samaritan and pass on the good word to many.
Orthodox brother, I am trying to help you, but pro bono publico. There are many more families waiting for good homoeopathic doctors than you realize, but they know they wheat from the chaff. In the meantime I beg my unknown lay readers to try this method for themselves, occasion arising. You can do a great deal of good and you wont do the slightest harm, nor can you ever create a drug-disease nor drug-vice, nor can our remedies ever carry a death risk (vide Sir W. Willcoxs condemnation of orthodoxy).
