Dr. C. M. retorts: “There are more thing sin heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in thy philosophy.”.
OBS. IV.
At this stage of things I felt curious to know what the sixth centesimal trituration of Natrum muriaticum might do to my humble self pathogenetically, I being in my usual health. So I took nearly 3iv. in about ten days in little pinches dry on the tongue at odd intervals. It produced-no, thats too bold a statement. I got gradually during that time a deep crack in the middle of my lower lip, which swelled and became burning and very painful; the Natrum muriaticum may have had nothing to do with it, but I gave it up and both crack and swelling went away. I never had the like before, nor since.
The same symptom is noted by Hahnemann, and Dr. Allen in his Encyclopaedia – but removed by the latter from the regional division of the “lips”, and placed under “skin” which is not only confusing, but also a mistake.
OBS. V
Mr. H., age 45, came under treatment for great pain in the stomach which sent him to bed and kept him there in great agony.
The last year or so he has been subject to these attacks of epigastric pain, and I was sent for to relieve this as on previous occasions, and the wife specially requested me to give something not only for this attack but to use whenever the attacks came on.
He had, besides the pain, vesicles on the lips drying up into scabs. I gave Nat. mur 6 trit. gr. vj. every two hours in water; next day (observed by Dr. Jones) it was followed with a great discharge of the urates and a regular attack of gout. Has since remained free from these attacks of pain, and this is now many months since.
It is impossible to tell whether the Natrum muriaticum had anything to do with the metastasis of the gout from the stomach to the big toe; moreover it is not now medico-scientifically fashionable to believe in metastasis.
OBS. VI
A girl of 15 suffering from Hemicrania dextra and cloudy, thick, red, sedimentous urine. I gave her Nat. mur. 6 trit. and received shortly thereafter a written report “urine quite free from sediment or cloud in a way it has not been for long.” The megrim was not affected.
The young lady and her mother attributed the changed condition of the urine to the powders; the urine had been in the abnormal condition for a long time and my ordination consisted only in prescribing the powders. Weeks afterwards the urine continued clear.
This case is not adapted to carry conviction to the mind, as we know that many atmospheric changes and accidental circumstances of all kinds alter the state of the water at once.
OBS. VII
A baby on the bottle some three months old. I find it has not slept well for some time and is now very restless and fretful, and vomits water. Give Nat. mur 6 trit. It at once began to sleep two or three hours at a time and the watery vomiting ceased. Two days afterwards measles broke out.
The mother conceived a very high opinion of the soothing soporific effect of the powders.
OBS. VIII
Mr. P., age 26, has had very thick urine for months, and for two months very great pain in small of back, worse on bending and very much worse when digging in the garden. Gave Nat. mur. 6 trit. The back pain and turbid urine disappeared in four days and did not again appear.
This case carries a little weight with it, and looks something like a medical cure.
OBS. IX.
A lady, aet, 54, with Stillicidium lachrymarum and bad chronic yellow excoriating Leucorrhoea, Nat. mur. 6 trit.
In one week the Leucorrhoea had quite disappeared but the Stillicidium was worse.
Chronic Leucorrhoea are not apt to disappear spontaneously in one week, though its possibility cannot be denied.
OBS. X.
Unmarried lady, aet, 24, Polyuria; constipation with much flatus; amenorrhoea these two months. First symptoms worse at the seaside. She is rather thin with an ill-coloured skin. Nat. mur 9 trit.
In a few days the menses appeared, and the renal and alvine functions became normal.
She had passed her second menstrual period.
A causal nexus between the taking of the Natrum muriaticum, and disappearance of the symptoms is not easily established here.
OBS. XI.
A clergymans wife, about 50 years of age consulted me on February 29th, 1878, complaining of severe dyspepsia with other symptoms of Natrum muriaticum. My visit was a hurried one so I did not enter very fully into the case. Nat. mur 6 trit. vj grains in water twice a day was the prescription; it cured in three days these symptoms: “Hiccough occurring morning, noon, and night, for at least ten years which was brought on by Quinine; it was not a hiccough that made much noise but shook the body to the ground; it used to last about ten minutes and was very distressing”.
How do you know that the hiccough was really produced by quinine? I enquired. She answered. “At three separate times in my life I have taken quinine, for tic of the right side of my face, and I got hiccough each time, the first and second time it gradually went off, but the third time it did not; when the alter Dr. Hynde prescribed it, I said, do not give me quinine as it always gives me hiccough, but he would give it me; I took it and it gave me hiccough which lasted until I took your powders; it is more that ten years ago since I took the quinine.”.
The cure of the hiccough has proved permanent.
This patient is a most truthful Christian woman and her statement is beyond question.
She has been a homoeopath for may years and my patient off and on for more than three years, during which time I have had to treat her for chronic sore throat,. vertigo, palpitation, and at one time for great depression of spirits.
She had also previously mentioned her hiccough incidentally but I had forgotten all about it, and on this occasion she did not even mention it, so as far as the hiccough goes the cure was. . . a pure fluke! But it set me a thinking about the Hahnemannian doctrine of drug dynamization for the thousandth time and has seriously shaken my disbelief in it.
Hiccough is known effect of Chininum sulphuricum; Allens Encyclopaedia, vol. iij., p. 226, symptoms 370 and 379.
We note from this case that:.
1. The effects of quinine, given for tic in medicinal doses to a lady, may last for more than ten years, that.
2.Natrum muriaticum in the sixth trituration antidotes this effect of quinine while.
3. The same substance in its ordinary form, viz. common salt, does not antidote it even when taken daily in various quantities and in various forms for ten years. Inasmuch, then, as the crude substance failed to do what the triturated substance promptly effects, it follows, therefore, that.
4. Trituration does so alter a substance that it thereby acquires a totally new power, and consequently that.
5. The Hahnemannian doctrine of drug dynamization is no myth but a fact in nature capable of scientific experimental proof, and, inasmuch as the crude substance was taken daily for many years in almost every conceivable dose, in all kinds of solutions of the most varied strength it results.
6. and lastly, That the Hahnemannian method of preparing drugs for remedial purposes is not a mere dilution, or attenuation, but a positively power-evolving or power-producing process, viz, a true potentization or dynamization.
This case is probably as good a one as we may ever expect to get, and it might here fitly close the subject as far as its simple demonstration is concerned, but I have others in my case- book both corroborating it and presenting new features.
Before leaving this Case XI. let us reflect for a moment on the certainly immense number of modifying and perturbating influences this lady had been subject to during those ten years, as well as living at the seaside and including the daily use of salt and yet her hiccough persisted until dynamized salt was given.
Before coming to these conclusions I exhausted all my ingenuity in trying to explain it away, and that backed by no small amount of sepsis, but I cannot avoid them do what I will. Moreover, I require more sepsis not to believe it than to believe it.
I am thus in a dilemma; either I must believe in the doctrine of drug dynamization or disbelieve the most incontrovertible evidence of facts, which is the province of the demented.
Or canst thou, critical reader, being more ingenious and more sceptical than I, help me out of the dilemma? would I believe thou canst, for this doctrine of drug dynamization seems to take away firm material ground from under ones feet and leaves one standing in the air. But I must emphatically decline Dr. Kidds tacit method as going quite beyond my skill and intelligence.
The next observation of which I have notes, is.
OBS. XII.
A lad, aet, 12, living at Parkgate. He suffers for some time from constipation, loss of appetite, dirty looking complexion, emaciation, frontal headache going round to the back, sleepiness towards evening and first thing in the morning, urine thick with nasty smell.
Excepting the “nasty” smell, which the boy could not define, I find all these symptoms in the pathogenesis of Natrum muriaticum in Allens Encyclopaedia of Pure Materia Medica and numbered respectively 529, 353, 251, 885, 64, 970, 561.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.