The great publishing house of John Murray has just issued the third impression of my book, Miracles of Healing and How They Are Done, in which I have endeavoured to give a readable account of the wonderful work done by homoeopaths the world over.
The first edition came out in November, 1931, it had to be reprinted in April, 1932, and now the third edition has appeared. The book has had an interesting history. Many years ago I was a sick man. From week to week and from month to month my health had deteriorated. I had received treatment from many orthodox doctors, both in England and abroad, and had gone to many health resorts in search of health. My endeavours and those of the orthodox medical profession were in vain.
My health became worse and worse and at last I was unable to write an article, unable to walk, unable to even to sign my name. I led a life of misery and considered myself incurable. The doctors had advised me to overcome my weakness by a strengthening diet. I took large quantities of meat and other stimulating foods, strong coffee, tea, wine, etc., but my endeavours to improve my condition by high feeding and medication proved in vain.
At last it occurred to me that possibly my troubles might be due to faulty diet, and that intensive feeding might be responsible for my sufferings. I began to experiment and my first experiment consisted in an exclusive diet of dry white bread and water which I thought ought to be digestible. At that time I knew nothing about vitamins, mineral elements, etc. That diet almost killed me.
However, I went on experimenting and at last discover that my trouble was due to overnutrition. I simplified my diet, became a vegetarian and recovered my health.
Not unnaturally this experience caused me to study dietetics and the dietetic causes of disease, and I started writing on the subject, for, at that time, I was a very frequent contributor to the leading monthlies, weeklies and dailies. Like so many literary men I haunted second-hand bookshops. One day I went to Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road, and on looking through the medical books I discovered a book entitled Dictionary of Materia Medica, by Dr. John H. Clarke in four large volumes. It seemed interesting,
I brought it, took it home and began reading it. Without knowing it, I had bought one of the most wonderful books of the Homoeopathic school. In the volumes numerous cures were quoted, cures which seemed to me quite unbelievable. They seemed to me all the more improbable as my father, an excellent medical man, had frequently expressed before me his contempt of homoeopathy. I discovered Dr. Clarkes address, wrote to him and told him that I wished to see him.
He gave me the most courteous reception and I told him that I had looked through his book, that I could scarcely believe the miracles done by homoeopathy, that I had an open mind, that I wished to study it day and night. He gave me every help, recommended me some books, gave and lent me others from his library, and encourage me to treat people so that I might discover by actual experience whether the miracles of homoeopathy were a delusion or a fact. For years I met Dr. Clarke once a week for a long talk, and I became an enthusiastic homoeopath.
I had told Dr. Clarke that if I should be convinced that homoeopathy was a real science and a benefit to mankind, I would write a popular book on the subject. As soon as I felt that I had the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge, I began working on a volume which I entitled Miracles of Healing and How They Are Done– A New Path to Health.
In the course of 1931 the book was written and Dr. Clarke, with his usual unselfishness, went carefully through the typescript of the book, and then through the printed proofs, advising, helping, criticizing and praising. Then he fell ill. When I saw him last, I found him in bed, a broken and a dying man. I saw him only for a few minutes and with glistening eyes he asked me: “How is your book getting on?” Unfortunately he died before the volume appeared.
As I said before, I have endeavoured to give a popular account of the miracles done by homoeopathy, and I am glad to say that my efforts have been appreciated by the public.
I have tried to produce a readable and thoroughly practical book which is illustrated by hundreds of cures made by reliable homoeopathic physicians. I cannot very well give an appreciation of my own book in this place. Therefore I venture to give extracts from one of the chapters which may interest the readers of this magazine.
RHEUMATISM AND HEART DISEASE, GOUT, SCIATICA, ETC.
During the last few decades the health of the people has been greatly improved by improved drainage, better water, higher wages, a better food supply, the greater care of infants, the provision of false teeth for the aged, etc. However, while tuberculosis and other diseases of poverty, bad housing, etc., have declined, other diseases have fearfully increased their yearly toll. During the last twenty years the mortality from heart disease has doubled, deaths from arterial diseases have trebled and deaths from arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, have more than quadrupled.
Rheumatism is fearfully prevalent and is the most serious incapacitating factor among the workers. Acute rheumatism, rheumatic fever, is frequently followed by heart disease, and we have been told that the micro- organism responsible for rheumatism is apt to attack the heart. That explanation is not satisfactory. It is easy to blame “the guilty microbe”, and treat it as the universal culprit. Thirty years ago Sir Lauder Brunton warned us in his Therapeutics of the Circulation:.
“Cardiac disease certainly seems to be greatly on the increase. It is quite possible, however, that the difference in the treatment of rheumatic disease fifty years ago and now may be responsible for the increased amount of cardiac mischief. Formerly a case of rheumatic fever was treated by alkalies. The course of the disease was slow and the enforced rest in bed was necessarily long.
Nowadays, by treatment with large doses of salicin compounds, the pain in the joints quickly disappears, and the patient is often able to get about in a few days, instead of weeks or months. The great difficulty which one has often to meet with is that of keeping the patient sufficiently long in bed, because the modern treatment by salicylates lessens pain so much more quickly than the old treatment that it is much more difficult to ensure prolonged rest.”.
In Hahnemanns time patients were mercilessly tortured by copious bleeding, leeching and burning them with hot irons, and by giving them huge quantities of the most nauseous and the most drastic drugs. These methods, against which Hahnemann protested with the utmost energy, have disappeared largely owing to his action. The modern doctor follows a different policy.
He strives to give his patients comfort, regardless of the consequences. Pain is immediately allayed by strong drugs, such as Aspirin, Morphia, Opium. Sleep is given to the sleepless with Bromide, Veronal, etc., and the pain of rheumatism is promptly relieved by the Salicylates. The morbid matter in the swollen and painful joints disappears and is apparently driven to the heart. Dr. Percy Wilde, of Bath, stated in the thirty-eighth volume of the Homoeopathic World:.
“Far worse than either Antipyrine and Sulphonal is the mischief done day by day by the Salicylate treatment of acute rheumatism. It is an ideal antipathic remedy, for does it not remove the pain, and abate the fever? But as a result of this treatment 70 per cent. of the patients suffer from heart disease, and relapse or recurrence is a regular result, and there is always a prolonged period of convalescence. The physicians of this generation really think that this is the natural course of events in rheumatic fever.
I have for the last twenty years been in a position where I have to deal with some part of the wreckage of humanity produced by the Salicylate treatment, and, side by side, I have watched the course of rheumatic fever and the after-history of the cases in which neither salicylates nor anything allied to them have been used, but on the contrary every effort made to assist the organism in those efforts which it usually makes, only too feebly; to get rid of the poison which saturates the tissues of the patient.
Fever is met by fever artificially induced, and cold is used to excite reaction. As a result of a prolonged clinical experience under exceptionally favourable conditions for studying the nature of rheumatism, I have learned to regard heart disease remaining after the attack of rheumatic fever as rare. I have no hesitation in prophesying that the till will come when every practitioner in this country will look back with sorrow and regret to the use of salicylates in rheumatism, and regard it as one of the false doctrines of an ignorant past.”.
Dr. E. B. Nash wrote on page 365 of his Leaders in Homoeopathic Therapeutics:.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.