February 26th.
R Variol. 30.
March 26th. Back is on the whole better; tumour rather smaller; g giddiness.
May 9th. Pain in left side.
R Ceanothus Americanus I.
June 8th. Toothache and pains in the back.
July 23rd. Much pain in the left side, which is tender. Tumour is smaller, which is evident from general appearance.
R Tc. Chionanthus virginica O.
September 3rd. Side better; the left nipple is very sore.
October 2nd. The nipple is better, more comfortable; the tumour of womb about the same.
R Trit. 4, Hecla lav.
December 5th. Feels much freer from pain, and more easy and comfortable in herself than for long. This remedy has cured her constipation.
R Repeat.
January 26th, 1886. Is very giddy ; fairly comfortable in uterine sphere : left nipple has been gathering. She is so cold in her stomach.
R Tc. Cedron. I.
March 9th. Feels dreadfully sick.
R Trit. 3x, Hecla lav.
May 29th. Patient is so much better that she is getting very irregular in attendance. The diminution in the size of the tumour is considerable.
R Repeat.
August 6th. Continued marked improvement in the size of tumour, but there is good deal of pain in her legs, worse on getting up out of bed in the morning.
R Tc. Bellis per per. 1, 3iv. Five drops in water night and morning.
October 6th. This is the date of my last not when patient presented herself normally menstruating, in blooming health, plump and ruddy, though still complaining of some tenderness of the left ovary and left nipple. One can see where the little tumour formerly was on the left breast by the deeper colour of the skin. I prescribed Kali chlor, 6, which, no doubt, has taken away the tenderness complained of.
This is the long weary course of my treatment of this terribly complicated case, lasting, as the notes show, just five years. During this long period my patient was very often importuned by her well-meaning friends and relations to undergo an operation, but she steadfastly refused, wavering only once or twice when her homoeopathic friends also urged surgical interference. If patient should call again before this goes to press, I shall add a few words more. Patient subsequently came to know if she might accept an offer of marriage, which I answered in the affirmative.
May 15th, 1888. Patient continues well. I give it as my opinion, that had this lady been treated surgically, she would have died long since, and that miserably.
It is not merely medicines that will cure tumours, but diet and suckling will also do so. Let me give the following case, and to which I have previously referred.
TUMOUR OF LIVER CURED BY MEAGRE DIET.
In the Herald of Health Mrs. Nichols, a very talented lady, had been giving a retrospect of her own life-experience. The following portion has a moral, medical, and scientific value:.
“I think that much of the sympathy I feel for the sick is due to my own ailments. If I had been born a strong child, if I had not known so many the ills that flesh is heir to, I should never have been a physician. I have loved my profession only because it has enabled me to relieve suffering-to reach the sickness of the soul, often through that of the body. Long ago I became convinced that all sickness if from sin-from voluntary or involuntary disobedience to the laws of life. It is not the sin of the individual alone, but the sins of progenitors, that afflict us with our many diseases. The study of the human race, its passions, its sins, crimes, sorrows, and agonies.
“I have had my aspirations. I have loved literature and art. I have longed for a life of beauty, of abstraction from the sorrows of this earth-life, but sickness of body and soul was born with me my humanity; for when I had suffered and had learned a way of relief, how could I refuse to hep others?.
“I did not study the art of leading in any ordinary way. I learned the science of cure in my own person. To illustrate this statement: I was born with disease of the liver. No matter what part of a parent is weak or diseased, of that weakness or disease the child will partake. The child is specially made from the mother. If the paternal element is strong, it takes hold strongly upon the maternal, but what the mother has not, that she cannot give. If she has weak lungs or liver, or fragile bones, her child has the same in greater or less degree.
“I inherited from my mother a diseased liver. When a young child I remember (for my memory reaches to my second year) bilious disorders which caused me intense suffering. Of course I knew nothing them, except that I was ill; and my parents knew no more than I did. For ordinary illness they used domestic remedies-tea made of tanzy, oak of Jerusalem, motherwort, etc.
For serious illness the family doctor was called, and his practice was severe and sanguinary. Bleeding, calomel, jalap, opium, antimony, etc., formed the materia medica of my childhood. An empiric Thompson protested against bleeding, and introduced emetics of lobelia and the stimulus of capsicum, but the first robbed the blood of its serum to reject the poisonous lobelia, and the last was little better than drunkenness, the capsicum being prepared with spirits, and a severe irritant in itself.
“The tender mercies of all medication were cruel in those days. If any pessimist says the world does not grow better, I have only to say to him, Look at the diseases and medication of fifty hence. As much blood was shed by the lancet as in a war, and mercury was found impacted in its crude state in the bones of patients who had taken the orthodox doses of calomel. The world is very bad in this 81st year of the 9th century, and much of its medication is a cruel and unwise thing, but homoeopathy is a fact, and water-cure is widespread as prophylactic or remedial, and the power of sympathy is recognized by many.
“The diseased liver which formed a part of my evil inheritance became so bad in 1868 that I sought the assistance of a learned water-cure physician. Certain reasons prevented a diagnosis, and I was thrown back upon myself to try I could do for my relief or cure, as the even might be. A tumour had formed in the liver, so large that it had to be supported in the daytime by an elastic band, and in the night by a pillow. I had no rest, and scarcely any sleep. At about five oclock in the morning I slept a little while.
I could not take food without great distress. Digestion was never begun under seven hours, and only accomplished after hours of torment. In this condition I resolved to take but one small meal in the twenty-four hours, and that at mid-day. I began this practice, and the third day I was so weak and giddy that my husband me to take some food. I was convinced that I must die if I took food, and I could only die if I did not. I therefore resolved to rest what I could in bed, or on a sofa, and continue my fast. I took one meal at mid-day, and when thirsty drank lemonade or orangeade.
This I took in the forenoon, and I found it refreshing and not hurtful. In a week from the beginning of my fast I slept well six or seven hours in the night. My spirits rose to cheerfulness. I was weak, and my working time was a good deal abridged. I could work after my dinner, but I did little in the forenoon but endure my weakness and a passionate longing for food. This, however, gave way after a time, and my greatest suffering was from weakness and inability to work. For six months I kept this fast, only taking a moderate meal at mid-day, and sometimes a glass of lemonade or orangeade in the forenoon.
“At the end of six months, one day I took breakfast and dinner. The consequence was a burning indigestion that made me more miserable than I can describe. Only once was I seduced into eating a breakfast. I continued my fast for another month, and the tumour on my liver was gone. It had been so large as to be felt by anyone from the outside. It was now entirely dissipates, so far as I could judge from internal feeling and external examination.
“I now began to take a very light breakfast of bread and fruit, and a little milk and water, and I made my dinner about seven hours after. This I have continued to do with good results, for the years that have elapsed since my cure. My digestion is slow, and I find that two meals a day suit me better than three. I have sometimes varied from this course when away from home, but have uniformly found my health and digestion better when I have returned to the two meals a day, taken seven hours apart.
“I have had a great deal of practice in disease of the liver, and what are called “Indian livers. Much oily food causes and exacerbates hepatic disease. I have found in such cases a diet of whole wheatmeal bread, porridge, and a half-pint of milk for breakfast, and another half-pint at dinner with fruit, only a little whole wheatmeal bread or fruit for third meal, most beneficial.
“we give the hot-air bath where the patient can bear it, and the half pack at night. Sympathetic remedies and Hydrastis canadensis we have found beneficial. The kneading, or movement cure, and judicious exercise,a re most useful. But of all remedies the diet is most important. Oily food of all kinds is disastrous for diseased liver; neither chocolate not cocoa are admissible.
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.