My sense of smell told me the cause of her trouble. I asked her: ” I am afraid you are very constipated? She replied: “I am .” “How often do you go to stool ?” She answered: “Sometimes once a week and sometimes once in ten days.” The doctor had sent the poor woman to the surgeon who had done his best in cutting out the cancer, but neither had troubled to enquire into the cause of the disease.
If the woman had been told immediately after, or better before, the operation, that her internal foulness was responsible for the cancer, that she had to live on a strictly vegetarian diet and see to it that the bowel was emptied two or three times a day, she would probably not have had a recurrence.
A clergyman came to me with diabetes. Of course he was given insulin because it is considered the specific, exactly as the use of radium is considered a specific in the treatment of cancer. We are told that cancer is due to an organism, and thousands of researches throughout the world try to find the organism. The one case of cancer described by me was due to heat, the other was due to poisoning of the bowel. These factors are not considered by the germ specialists who wish to discover the guilty microbe, and refuse to consider any factor except the microbe when studying disease.
The clergyman with diabetes was under the impression that the only treatment for diabetes consisted in a rigid diet and in insulin. I have never prescribed insulin in my life, and hope never to do so. If a patient wishes to have insulin he must go to an ordinary doctor. As far as I know insulin has not cured a single case of diabetes. I did not enquire into the percentage of sugar or the quantity of insulin used, but wished to discover the ultimate cause of his trouble.
I found that many years ago he had suffered a terrible love disappointment, and there was every reason to assume that this was the cause of sugar in the urine. The sugar increased and decreased in accordance with his depression brought about by thoughts of his old love. For such a condition Ignatia is indicated, and Phosphoric acid. I gave him both Phosphoric acid and Ignatia, and after a few days he was able to leave off insulin and he became completely cured.
I am the son of a highly successful doctor, but I have not studied medicine in the orthodox way. I took up the study of medicine when I was a very sick man, because the doctors had failed in their attempts to cure me. At the time when I suffered from ill-health I lived on a mixed diet, and the weaker I became the more strengthening food I took. i made the mistake which so many people make. I hoped to get strong by taking more and more meat, strong tea and coffee, alcohol, tonics, chemical foods, etc. Nothing availed. At last I thought that I would try dieting.
I simplified my diet more and more, and I discovered after many false starts, what I consider the ideal diet, a diet consisting of the most natural foods in their most natural foods in their most natural condition, and I have given that diet to a very large number of patients who have come to me. The results have been most gratifying. So I have come to the conclusion that diet is the most important factor in preserving health and in restoring it when lost.
Approximately equally important is medication, but as homoeopathic medicine is infinitely more potent for good than orthodox medicine, and as it is infinitely less dangerous, it is obvious that homoeopathic drugs should be employed.
The homoeopath has no favourite remedies. He should in each individual case make a careful study of the patient so as to find out what remedy he needs. He must therefore be thoroughly acquainted with something like a thousand remedies and their curative potentialities. Naturally, this is an absorbing study which requires concentration, discrimination and a powerful memory. It requires years of study to understand fully the homoeopathic Materia Medica, but the knowledge thus acquired is invaluable.
The homoeopath learns that there is no specific for any disease or disorder. He must in each case study all the symptoms of the patient and prescribe individually for each case of disease. He may see twenty consecutive cases of asthma or psoriasis or catarrh, and he may have to give twenty different remedies to the twenty people who suffer nominally from the same disease.
In order to treat homoeopathically with adequate knowledge, unending study is required. While the orthodox doctor studies disease, the homoeopathic doctor studies disease, the homoeopathic doctor studies health and numerous remedies known to homoeopathy. Homoeopathic doctors depend not on tools but on a battery of books.
ORTHODOX doctors and consultants who are leaders of their profession require a very large array of scientific instruments and tools. It is no longer sufficient to listen to the heart with the ear. If we wish to make a scientific investigation we start by listening to the heart with a stethoscope, then we make graphs with the electro-cardiograph, we take the blood pressure with an ingenious apparatus, and we watch the heart action by means of x-rays.
If a leader of the profession wishes to investigate the working of the stomach, test meals are given, the stomach is pumped out, a gastroscope may be inserted into the stomach, this is an arrangement of tubes at the end of which there is a mirror and electric light, and the eye of the observer can inspect every corner of the stomach. Then the working of the stomach can be observed under x-rays, and there are countless tests. A leading doctor of the orthodox school will have to spend a large fortune if he wishes to have a thoroughly up-to-date scientific outfit.
There are some homoeopathic doctors who wish to demonstrate the fact that they are as scientific as the allopaths. They employ all the diagnostic methods of the dominant school, and after having made an orthodox examination proceed to the homoeopathic examination. According to my experience the orthodox examination is worth little except for impressing the simple-minded patients who have an implicit faith in mechanical investigation.
The principal tool of the homoeopathic prescriber is his brain, assisted by his five senses. But as the brain has only a limited capacity, he must rely in his investigation on books. Books are particularly necessary to the homoeopathic schools and colleges is, as a rule, quite inadequate. A homoeopathic lecturer lectures in the abstract on various remedies, and he may examine his students and take them to the bedside and show them how to prescribe. But this method is time-wasting.
All the best prescribers whom I have known have learned homoeopathy by the study of books, and when they have learned a great deal from books then they have to refer to books because the human brain has only a limited capacity.
These pages are addressed principally to beginners, to both laymen and doctors who would like to know more about the art of healing. I therefore would advise those who wish to study homoeopathy to begin with the simplest literature. Most homoeopathic doctors were originally orthodox doctors, and they became homoeopaths because either they were desperately ill, could not be cured by orthodox methods and came across a homoeopathic doctor who cured them, or because they were dissatisfied with the orthodox treatment of disease, tried homoeopathy and succeeded in curing apparently incurable diseases and disorders.
Among the best homoeopathic writers is Dr. John Compton Burnett. Dr. Burnett wrote plainly and simply and persuasively. His best known book is a little book entitled “Fifty Reasons for Being Homoeopath”, published at the low price of six pence by the Homoeopathic Publishing Company. This is a volume of 87 well- printed pages. It begins with an account of the writers conversion to homoeopathy. Burnett tells his own story in the following words:.
“When I was a lad I had pleurisy of the left side, and, with the help of a village apothecary, and half-a-hogshead of mixture, nearly died, though not quite. From that time on I had a dull, uneasy sensation in my side, about which I consulted many eminent physicians in various parts of Europe but no one could help me. All agreed that it was an old adhesive something between the visceral and costal layers of the pleura, but no one of my many eminent advisers could cure it. And yet my faith in them was big enough to remove mountains. So faith as a remedy did no good.
“When orthodox medicine proved unhelpful, I went to the hydropaths (they were called quacks then!) and had it hot, and cold, and long; but they also did me no good. Packs cold, and the reverse; cold compresses worn for months together; sleeping in wet sheets; no end of sweatings – Turkish and Russian – all left my old pleuritic trouble in status quo ante.
“The grape cure; the bread-and-wine cure, did no better. Nor did diet and change help me.
“However, when I was studying what the peculiar people called homoeopaths have to say about their Bryonia alba, and its affinity for serous membranes, I-what? -abused them and called them quacks? No! – I bought some Bryonia alba, and took it as they recommended, and in a fortnight my side was well, and has never troubled me since!”.
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.