It has happened frequently to me that a doctor has asked to attend my consulting room in order to watch my work. At the end of the session I usually ask the doctor, “How many medicines do you use?” and very often there is the reply, “I use twelve or fifteen medicines. That is all I need”.
Some time ago I was visited by a pharmaceutical chemist. We talked about medicines, and he told me that in his neighbourhood there was a doctor with a large clientele who employed only two prescriptions. The one was a digestive mixture which at the same time acted as a tonic because it contained a little strychnine, and the other was a cough mixture.
This doctor has for years employed these two prescriptions exclusively for all his patients. It does not matter whether his patients suffer from diabetes, cancer, arteriosclerosis, or whatever it may be, they get the digestion and tonic mixture. They frequently feel a little better, have a better appetite, digestion is better, and they feel quite happy. If, in addition, they have a cough, then they get the cough mixture as well. By the exclusive use of these two medicines, the doctor in question has apparently made a good living for many years.
I dont know this doctor, but I am quite sure that his two prescriptions are far safer than the prescriptions issued by many of his colleagues. He may not do much good, but he also does not do much harm. If he should venture to use the latest and most scientific drugs and injections, he would probably damage, ruin or kill numerous patients.
The orthodox Pharmacopoeias describe only a very moderate number of remedies. The orthodox doctor picks out a few of these remedies. He has his favourite medicine for cough, indigestion, constipation, etc. He has his favourite tonics and sedatives. He does not feel the need of more than a few drugs.
If his favourite medicine has not acted, he is apt to say to his patient “You had better see a specialist”, or he may send him to the hospital, or recommend him to have all his teeth extracted or his tonsils taken out. After all, the doctor must do something, and if he has not sufficient knowledge, then he must hand his patient on to someone else. I have seen hundreds of patients who have had their tonsils taken out, or their teeth extracted, and who after these operations were much worse than previously.
Homoeopathy employs about a thousand different drugs, and each drug may be given in a great number of different strengths. The orthodox doctor wishes to obtain what be calls a physiological effect. He wants to be sure that the drug acts, and therefore he gives a large, or a very large dose, and often the dose given is dangerous to the patient, because drug tolerance and intolerance among human beings is not standardized, but varies.
One man may swallow with impunity thirty grains of quinine, day after day, while another man may become terribly upset when taking two or three grains of quinine. Most people are relieved from pain by a morphia injection. My mother had an absolute intolerance of morphia. If she was in violent pain, and was given a morphia injection, the pain remained, and she became so terribly agitated that she seemed almost insane. My father, an excellent doctor, had to stop giving her morphia injections, however severe my mothers pain was.
While orthodox doctors employ as a rule maximum doses, which frequently lead to disaster and death, homoeopaths are taught to use minimum doses. They use all the poisons known to the orthodox doctors, but they use them in minimum doses, where they cannot possibly do harm. I have explained in another chapter that small doses have an effect opposite to large doses.
Black coffee prevents sleep by creating over-activity of the brain. A millionth or a decillionth of a grain of coffee will give sleep to those who are sleepless through over-activity of the brain. Every homoeopath learns that he should use the minimum dose, and the effect is miraculous, provided, of course, the right medicine is chosen, and the right quantity or potency is given. It follows that the work of the homoeopathic prescriber is infinitely more laborious than that of the orthodox prescriber, who looks upon him with contempt.
The homoeopath uses not only hundreds of medicines unknown to the orthodox prescriber but he has to decide in every individual case whether he should prescribe a tenth of a grain, a thousandth of a grain, a millionth of a grain, or a decillionth of a grain, and frequently he has to experiment with the various potencies in order to find out which strength of drug is best suited to the individual patient whom he wishes to treat.
Some years ago a hard-working and energetic, middle-aged business woman, who lived in the Midlands, wrote to me that she had fearful pain in the right side, in the region of the appendix, liver, gall bladder and right kidney. All the symptoms pointed to Lycopodium, so I sent her Lycopodium 12x which means Lycopodium by the billionth of a grain. Lycopodium is the pollen of clubmoss, and is used in orthodox medicine for dusting pills so that they shall not stick together.
It is described as absolutely inert in the orthodox Pharmacopoeias. The triturated pollen is an invaluable medicine to the homoeopath. It acts particularly on the right side of the body. I prescribed Lycopodium because the trouble was on the right side, and many of the patients symptoms made me think it was the inclined remedy. The result was terribly disappointing. The patient reported that the pain was getting worse and worse. She could no longer eat, she had lost a great deal of weight, she was in despair. She lived in Sheffield, and could not come to London as she was too weak to travel.
Believing that the pain was due to a stone in the gall bladder, in the right kidney or in the right ureter, the tube which leads from the kidney to the bladder, I urged her to be examined at a hospital, and to let me know the result. She was carefully examined by a distinguished surgeon, who came to the conclusion that there might be a stone somewhere. The X-ray picture was obscure, so he suggested an exploratory operation.
She hesitated to undergo an operation. I then sent her Lycopodium in the 200th potency, a dose to be taken once a week. I sent her four doses, a supply sufficient for a month. The 200th potency is expressed by a figure where under the figure one, there is a figure one followed by four hundred noughts. Immediately after taking the first dose of Lycopodium in the 200th potency, vigorous improvement began. In a few weeks the patient was completely well, and had gained about a stone in weight.
The homoeopath is taught that if the correctly selected remedy fails to cure, he should reduce the dose, because the smallest doses are the most potent. They act most deeply, and their action is long continued. One can safely take a few grains of Sulphur day after day, but it would be extremely dangerous to take Sulphur in infinitely small doses, in very high potencies, more frequently than once a week or once a month. Doses in high potencies very often produce the most wonderful curative results, such as was the case of the lady to whom I sent Lycopodium, when frequent doses of the lower potency had failed to act.
Orthodox doctors are taught that there are standardized diseases, and the standardized doctor who has followed the standardized course of study, and has passed standardized examinations, learns from his textbook that he should give insulin for diabetes, salicylates for rheumatism, etc. If there were standardized diseases in nature, his task would be very simple, provided he had made a correct diagnosis. Hence orthodox medicine lays so much weight on diagnosis. Unfortunately, in all complicated cases an exact diagnosis is very difficult, if not impossible.
Errors are frequently made, and if physiological doses, which means maximum doses, are given on the basis of a wrong diagnosis, great harm is done to the patient. There are no standardized diseases in real life. No two cases of diabetes, disseminated sclerosis, tuberculosis, etc., are alike. Each case must be treated individually, and in each case the causation of the trouble is all important. The belief of the orthodox doctor that diseases are standardized, and that consequently treatments can be standardized, is fatuous and faulty. That belief is unfortunately kept alive by the medical journals.
There are articles which describe, let us say, sixty cases of psoriasis, which were all treated with the same drug, and at the end of the article there is a summary which tells us that 78 per cent. of the patients recovered completely, that, let us say, in 13 per cent. considerable improvement was obtained, while in the remaining 9 per cent. no change took place. An unsophisticated doctor who reads such an article believes that it is perfectly safe to use the new medicine employed for psoriasis. It may be that the article in question is perfectly bonafide, it may be that it has been inspired by the producer or manufacturer of the new drug.
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.