Mid-West Hom. News Journal, October, 1932.
MRS. S. came to me with a very severe case of exophthalmic goitre. Her eyes protruded until she could not cover them with her eyelids. The goitre mass filled all the space from her chin to top of breast bone. The vibration of this mass was synchronous with the heart beat of one hundred and thirty to the minute. The tremor was marked. She had lost thirty pounds in weight in the past sixty days. She came to me because a mutual friend had told her of the cure of toxic goitre in my wifes case. She did not want an operation. Cases like hers do not make good surgical risks anyway.
I undertook the treatment on the one condition that she would follow it up for eighteen months if necessary. Ten days after beginning treatment this woman, her three children and her husband developed scarlet fever. At the end of eleven months treatment the eyes were normal in function and appearance, the tremor was gone, the pulse and heart action were normal, the thyroid normal in size and appearance.
The only time I was able to keep this patient in bed during her treatment was while she was sick with the scarlet fever. This patient was treated eight years ago and she is still well. The remedy was Natrum muriaticum 30x tablets. The last sixty days of treatment she had, in addition to the Natrum muriaticum a one-third grain Calcidin (Abbott) at bed time which I think helped to restore the thyroid to normal size.
I do not think there is such a thing as specific medicine for any particular disease, but Natrum muriaticum 30x comes very near being, for cases of toxic goitre or Hyperthyroidism.
While on the subject of Natrum muriaticum I think I will give the case of John G. John moved from Iowa to the low lands of Arkansas. He acquired Malaria, or real old fashioned ague. From time to time he suppressed the chills with massive doses of Quinine. In spring he moved back to Iowa, he became a patient of mine. The chills came on about 11 a.m. every second day. They were accompanied by very severe headache and great thirst for cold water, and followed by high fever and later, profuse sweat.
I gave him a two dram vial of disks medicated with Natrum muriaticum 30x, and told him that his next chill would be the most severe of any he had ever experienced and also told him it would probably end his chills for good. When he entered my office again the second day after, he told me that during his chill the day before, he shook so that the windows rattled in the house and that he was unconscious from the headache for over an hour. A slight chill that did not stop him from work in the field next day was his last ague chill.
Mrs. M. was under the care of a good physician of the dominant school for two weeks suffering from erysipelas. When I was asked to take the case I found her skin from the chin to pubes seeping an irritating fluid or with large blebs filled with the same serum. The burning and discomfort was intense. No local application that had been tried gave relief. There was a marked bladder irritation. Cantharis gave almost immediate relief and I dismissed the case in four days.
Mrs. J. was a neurasthenic invalid of several years standing. For years could not go out in company without having a heart attack and nervous chills. If a neighbour or old friend called upon her, she would send them from her room within five minutes saying “I cannot stand it.” When she became a patient of mine, she was practically bedfast. There was a history of severe attacks of sickness some years before. The principal thing the family could tell me about it was that she had very profuse sweats.
I put a good deal of time on this case trying to find a remedy. She complained of pain in and around her heart and the inability to have company of any kind. Any other symptoms were such as you would get from any neurasthenic patient but nothing that helped. Finally one day I noticed for the first time an odour from her body that made me think of something that had been dead for some time.
I turned to her husband and asked him if the sweat he had told me about when she was first taken sick, had an offensive odour, and he replied, “It stunk so I could not stay in the room and in summer time I slept out of doors.” I gave her Psorinum 200 on that symptom. On that remedy she made full recovery. The mental symptoms changed entirely so that she enjoyed going out, attended church and Sunday School, visited her friends and had them visit with her. She was old in years when I treated her, eight or nine years ago, but she is still well.
While on the subject of peculiar smelling sweats, I am reminded of the case of Steve Harris, a veteran of the Civil War and getting along in years. The condition he developed seemed to be a pleurodynia. Pains in all parts of the lungs, a little cough and expectoration. But the marked symptom was the profuse sweat. It soaked his clothing and his bedding, was constant day and night without let up, but the peculiar thing about it was the smell. It was mouldy and musty to a degree I never experienced before or since.
I searched all the materia medica books I had, and went to see my old preceptor about it. Finally in H. C. Allens book on Intermittent Fever I found odour of sweat, musty and mouldy. The remedy given was Stannum in black type. Stannum 6x stopped that sweat in twelve hours. My patient made a good recovery.
Miss B. was operated on for empyema in 1916 and had a continuous flow of thick yellow pus from the pleural cavity until about one your ago. In October, 1930, she came under my care. Under Hepar sulph. 30 over a period of five months, the discharge finally stopped and the drainage opening closed.
I will close my notes with a word for Lycopodium for colic pains in young babies. To my mind it is the coli remedy par excellence for babies from the age of one or two weeks to one or two years. The only indication I can give you is the time of day of aggravation 4 to 8 p.m. I use the 6x and the 200. I get the best results with the 200th potency.
After thirty-five or more years of practising homoeopathic medicine I am more and more convinced that it is still the best system ever used in the care of the sick.
