(3) Apis mellifica (3x, 6x or 30th). This is the famous honey bee medicine and our clear indications will illustrate how the orthodox doctors missed its real scope and value when grasping for a specific for all rheumatisms. Homoeopathy alone knew how to learn its limitations which are recorded without fear that its popular power will suddenly fail to help us, and this is again offered scientifically to the profession without cost.
First of all, in this type, there must be a very great swelling (oedema) of the parts affected, the local tissues are full of fluids which ought to have been carried out through the circulation by the kidneys. The skin over the swollen area will be shiny and sometimes waxy-white underlying stinging pains, just as if a bee was at work. The swollen parts have a sensation of numbness and the swelling pits deeply on pressure, the spot turning waxy- white.
These depressions are very slow to refill and to regain the colour of the surrounding tissues. Local pains are relieved temporarily by cold applications, but it is most unwise to employ such as they eventually retard recovery. Hot applications, though they may be objected to, assist the circulation to carry off the fluids.
Pains are worse from light touch though the sensation of numbness is always pronounced. Symptoms generally worse towards evening. Swollen areas are usually white to being almost transparent. Patients are drowsy or sleep heavily even to torpor in extreme cases. Urine is diminished and of very high colour with frequent desire to urinate with passage of but a few drops, which sometimes burn.
During the employment of the Apis mellifica medicine the flow of urine is increased enormously, showing storage of fluids. Summed up, this wonderful but circumscribed remedy must have the symptoms, great swelling, burning, stinging pains, thirstlessness, also suffocative feelings with pains worse after sleep and light touch about the doubtful pathology of the kidneys. It is enough that Apis cures.
As his type of rheumatism is not very common you can see how orthodoxy and the daily press missed the whole point. Is homoeopathy not the more scientific? Besides, is it not better and easier in every way to take a few drops of medicine internally and which does not event taste, rather than to challenge a few angry bees to do their worst? Homoeopathy is not quackery, not even funny.
(4) Rhododendron (3x, 6x or 30th). If this remedy is to be of use the patient will diagnose to the doctor thus: “I have rheumatism. I am a human barometer. I can always foretell a storm because all my pains become worse and very severe. I am worse when at rest, sitting or in bed.
I perspire much in bed, and it is sour, smelling like vinegar when I get hot. The pain is worst in my small joints.” Homoeopathic keynote, the human barometer type. It will cure this departure from normal, but buy your medicine from a special homoeopathic chemist.
(5) Ranunculus bulbosus, the common buttercup (3x 6x or 30th). If your rheumatism runs chiefly in lines along and between the ribs and if pleurisy can be excluded as the pains are rather similar, this drug will work quickly and well. The pains are stitching and so acute and sudden that they take the breath away. The painful lines follow the intercostal nerves exactly, leaving the local muscles sore, so that there is always pain when inspiration expands the chest wall.
I have seen some very pretty cures with these symptoms, allowing the inveterate golfers to get back to their game next day, after weeks of allopathic endeavour with Aspirin, Antipyretics, blisters, electricity and X-ray work thrown in for scientific appearance, none of them doing the slightest good beyond the movement.
(6) Actaea racemosa (3x or 6x). This is also called Cimicifuga racemosa in U.S.A. The rheumatism which this remedy will cure is chiefly in the fleshy or belly part of the muscles instead or where they are attached to the bones. Pains come and go with startling abruptness, they are like electric shocks. Many pains in the spine, more frequently in the upper three or four joints below the actual neck.
Often there will be found tremblings and nervous shudderings in many parts of the body, with general restlessness; any motion makes things worse. Besides being for these symptoms this is a wonderful womans remedy, so much so that that it is worth reading carefully about.
(8) Urtica urens. (Use the strong Mother tincture marked O by us, or the 1x). Take ten to fifteen drops of this strong tincture twice or thrice daily in a spoonful of water. Hold in mouth a minute at least. More water may be used if taken in sips. Use for up to three weeks if needed, but miss every third day.
This must be only bought from our own special chemists, making sure to ask for the Urtica urens, as sometimes the Urtica dioica is substituted by the ordinary trade as being easier to get. There is much difference from the medical standpoint. The real Urtica urens blackens the cork like ink and smells like spoiled wet hay if not freshly made, but this does not spoil its curative qualities. This Urtica urens is the dwarf stinging nettle.
It is of the greatest value for just one type of rheumatism and one only, this being when stored uric acid is causing the trouble. As a proof of the action of this remedy when taking same put an ounce or two of urine in a “V”-shaped glass vessel. Let it stand in a cool place for two days and, providing you are suffering from uric acid you will be able to see the crystals of uric acid at the bottom of the glass looking like grains of cayenne pepper.
You will then know that this drug is liquefying the uric acid deposits which are imprisoned in the muscles and that they are actually being carried off normally by the kidneys. The wise women of the villages knew what they were about when they advised people to take nettle tea in the Spring for the blood. Better to cut your meat diet whilst suffering thus and take more vegetables, even raw, and take fruits and vegetables soups and whey to flush the kidneys even if “you do hate all this sort of stuff”. They are good for you.
There are other homoeopathic remedies for rheumatism, each one must be most carefully selected on fixed lines, but the above will show you that we have a distinct scientific method of curing you. Even that fashionable over-prescribed pet of orthodoxy, Colchicum, has a well-defined sphere of usefulness. That is why it cures well occasionally in orthodox hands when it is accidentally homoeopathic to the case. When used by orthodoxy the dose is always too much. The trouble is that their methods are all guess work and employed without any guiding law.
What I have given will explain how we differentiate, as you must also if you wish to be successful. One other point is that you must see how little medicine will cure and dont dare to laugh at me because I have just prescribed the huge dose of ten to fifteen drops of the common nettle juice. Urtica will do you good. If you care to try the 3x instead, the chemist will oblige you. After all the size of the dose is not homoeopathy; it is the law of proper selection of the remedy which is homoeopathy, Similia, in fact. This is what helps. Long and common usage has resulted in the dosage of ten to fifteen drops as quoted.
A stubborn chronic rheumatism which is often an inherited echo of the sowing a wild oat type, even several generations back, and who can say his blood is absolutely 24 carat fine, may require a weekly dose of Medorrhinum 30, or higher, say 200, to be given along with some otherwise personally indicated remedy with, say, two days interval before and after the weekly dose of Medorrhinum, for not other medicine should be taken on those days when Medorrhinum is taken.
This intercurrent constitutional remedy is beyond dispute of value, there is proof of many decades for it One dose alone may stir up the vital reactive forces which every person possesses, either active or dormant. Upon reaction it is wise to stop this weekly dose. About four doses as a maximum is sufficient to make it possible for the symptomatic remedy to bring about a cure.
If you can obtain the service of a homoeopathic doctor, employ him. As the number of British homoeopaths has been reduced by death, many of may lay readers cannot get hold of s professional man. Under such circumstances laymen must try their hands.
Always remember that Aconite and Belladonna 3x, 6x or 30th, as recommended in “Common Colds” some, months back, may, it taken at the first sign of a chill, ward off trouble which might develop into rheumatism. So, if chilled, take a few doses of Aconite and Belladonna, alternating the two, and taking four or five doses of each with an hours interval for the sake of safety.
Remember also the use of hot Antiphlogistine applied locally to soothe the pain and to stimulate the circulation. If you have no Antiphlogistine at hand, use rubber hot water bottles partly filled, squeezing out the air before stoppering. Rheumatic patients and people with chills should avoid meat and its extracts and take fruit juices and whey in profusion and vegetable soups. All these assist kidney action. Use enemas instead of purgative pills.
