Examination showed considerable swelling of the whole arm, which was hot to the touch, but the hand was cool. Touching the nerve of the arm at any spot caused the patient to shrink and cry out. There were gouty nodules on the fingers and it appeared that the patient had a gouty-rheumatic disposition. The patient obviously suffered from neuralgia of the great nerve of the left arm, due to a gouty disposition, and the attack was brought about by contusion.
She was given a millionth of a grain of Colocynthis, which at first produced a pronounced aggravation. On the second day she was given a trillionth of a grain of Colocynthis. After two days the swelling of the arm had been greatly reduced, there was less pain, movement was possible and continued improvement caused a complete cure to take place within a week. By referring to the symptomatology of Colocynthis, it will be clear that drug was the similimum.”.
I would quote a paragraph contained in Dr. G. Royals Diseases of the Brain and Nerves because the author briefly summarizes in it the leading symptoms of that drug, based on a proving:.
“With three students I proved Colocynth on myself. I began with the Ist potency and afterwards took three drops of the tincture. It produced on me, and also on the students, the sensations which follow: The modalities, especially that better from heat, were very marked on myself and two of the students; but heat did not affect the pain of the third student. The sensations are as follows: Dull, stitching pain in the left hip (this was true of all four of us); the pains come suddenly and shoot down the posterior part of the thigh to the knee, occasionally past the knee to the foot.
They usually began in the morning and often were better and sometimes entirely disappeared at night after getting warm in bed. There were sometimes sticking, drawing pains, rarely burning. There was a good deal of cramping in the calves of the left leg, occasionally the right. One of the students reported the sensation as if a sharp knife were drawn from the hip, cutting through to the bone and extending to the knee. The greatest relief was from heat. The most marked aggravation was from motion and touch.”.
Dr. G. Charette wrote in his book Quest-ce que L’Homoeopathie?:.
“While I was at the War Dr. L. . . ., who did not know that I am a homoeopath, asked me to see with him a civilian patient who for three weeks had been suffering from a right-sided and very painful sciatica which no treatment could relieve. My colleague had conscientiously searched for the cause of the trouble without result. He had not been able to discover a septic focus, infection, nor an anomaly of the urine. He had tried all the usual medicines, had applied blisters and other outward treatments, had examined the prostate, etc.
My colleague was much surprised when, instead of examining the patient, I merely asked a number of questions which established that he suffered from a burning pain, that it was relieved by hot applications and that his sufferings were worst about 1 oclock in the morning. When, in accordance with old-established custom, my colleague drew me into a private room to discuss the case I told him that I could not approve of the treatment he had given and that homoeopathy would probably cure the man. He was surprised and said: Treat him by all means in your own way as long as you do not poison him..
The symptoms clearly indicated Arsenic, which in strong doses produces burning pains which are worst at midnight and which are relieved by heat. I gave him Arsenic by the millionth of a grain, a dose every three hours. The first night the pain was so great that the patient frequently cried out. On the third day he was cured.
Six months later the same man had a similar attack of sciatica. My colleague, having been told what remedy I had given, treated the patient with similar doses of Arsenic without success. He wrote to me, mentioning that the symptoms had changed.
The pain was still a burning pain, but heat no longer relieved it. It was worst at 10 oclock in the morning instead of about midnight and there was trembling in the sciatic leg. Trembling with aggravation at 10 oclock in the morning indicated Gelsemium as the remedy. I sent my colleague Gelsemium in doses of a millionth of a grain and on the second day the patient was cured. The law of homoeopathy that likes are cured by likes was brilliantly vindicated.”.
While the allopaths favourite remedy for rheumatism is Salicylic acid in various forms, their favourite specific for gout is Colchicum, a drug which allays the excruciating pain but is exceedingly dangerous. Dr. John H. Clarke, after describing in his Dictionary of Materia Medica the case of an old gentleman who collapsed after the prolonged use of Colchicum, wrote that “the patients Colchicism was considerably worse than the gout which it replaced.” Guided by the homoeopathic law of cure, the follower of the new art of healing employs for gout any one of the numerous remedies of the Materia Medica which has the symptoms similar to those observed in the patient. Dr. J. Compton Burnett in his volume Gout and its Cure describes numerous cases which he cured by numerous remedies, according to indications, such as the following:.
“Natrum muriaticum, 6 trit., has helped me in some cases of acute gout very satisfactorily; the urine thickened and deepened in colour, and the attack was broken up. It is still used by me in gout pretty considerably where prominent Nat. mur. symptoms are present, and specially where the patient has taken much quinine, or is chilly, or his gouty attack is apt to be stirred up by a visit to the seaside.
I use 6 grains of the 6th trituration every two or three hours, and expect the urine to deepen in colour and thicken within two days, simultaneously where-with the gouty manifestations usually abate. I have no faith in gout cures unless they thicken the urine.”.
A good orthodox physician who sees twenty consecutive cases of rheumatism may prescribe Salicylates in most or in all of them. If the same twenty consecutive cases had been seen by a good homoeopathic physician, each would have been given careful individual attention, and the twenty might have been given twenty different remedies and possibly only one, or none, would have been given Salicylate treatment. Orthodox prescribing is as easy as homoeopathic prescribing is difficult.
When an orthodox physician, acting with the best intentions and in accordance with the directions of the best textbooks, has given Salicylates to a rheumatic patient, the patient may be very grateful to him for a cure effected in a few days. After a few weeks he may call again upon his physician and say: “Doctor, you have cured me miraculously of my rheumatism.
Now you must cure me of my heart disease,” little suspecting the cause of it. The doctor may murmur, “For heart disease give Digitalis” and prescribe that drug in a large or very large doses. Digitalis is a very dangerous drug. Sir Lauder Brunton wrote about Digitalis in The Action of Medicines:.
You might be called to a case where the pulse was quick, where it was feeble, and where the urine had ceased to flow, and if you only possessed the ordinary stock knowledge about Digitalis you would say: This is a case for the administration of Digitalis, which is a cardiac tonic and a diuretic. Yet the very symptoms which you observe might be due to an overdose of the drug.
This is no fancy picture, because one of the first cases in which I had ever an opportunity of observing the action of Digitalis was one of such cases where a man was found in a state of collapse with a very rapid pulse and an absence of urine, and, instead of giving Digitalis, the Digitalis which the man had been taking was immediately stopped and stimulants, such as brandy and ammonia, were freely given.”.
The man was snatched from the jaws of death. But for Sir Lauder Bruntons intervention, he might have died of medicinal poisoning. Dr. A. C. Cowperthwaite, a homoeopathic physician, wrote in his textbook of Materia Medica:.
“The chief use of Digitalis is in the treatment of organic disease of the heart. With the old school it is used indiscriminately, in large doses as a cardiac sedative. Given in this manner it will often afford prompt temporary relief, but the ultimate results are disastrous, the drug soon producing its characteristic physiological effects, weakness of the heart muscles, dilatation, etc., and thus hastening a fatal termination. Digitalis should only be employed in small doses, and only when its symptoms correspond to those of the individual case.”.
Dr. J. T. Kent wrote on page 121 of his Materia Medica:.
“The time comes when the doctor will be compelled to stop Digitalis and the patient dies of heart failure. Digitalis is never charged with the death and the doctor never seems to learn that Digitalis will kill.”.
The homoeopathic physician studies not only all the symptoms of the patient and uses the indicated remedy –Digitalis may be called for only in a small percentage of his cases–but he will inquire also into the causation of the disease and he may discover that it is due to vaccinial poisoning, which would require treatment with Thuja or some other remedy, or to physical strain which would call for Arnica, or for Rhus tox., or to a suppressed skin disease which would call for reproducing the skin disease by the use of Sulphur in infinitely small doses, or Cuprum, etc.
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.