The book is divided into chapters dealing with symptoms of the mind, symptoms of the head, symptoms of the eyes, vision, symptoms of the nose, symptoms of the mouth, teeth, of the inner throat, of the outer throat, and so forth. In each chapter symptoms are arranged alphabetically under headings such as, abscesses, adhesions of skin, anaemia, sleep, sensation, balancing sensation, band sensation, board or bar sensation, boiling sensation, bores head in pillow, caries, cerebral haemorrhage, coldness, etc.
The book is absolutely invaluable and irreplaceable. I use it everyday. I have a copy in my consulting room, a copy in my flat, and a copy in my house in the country. It is sold at six guineas and is very cheap at the price. There are translations in German, French, and other languages. No earnest student of homoeopathy can do without it.
There is no royal road towards the practice of homoeopathy. Each individual must study in the way his bent directs him. I personally, have been a voracious reader of homoeopathic literature. I have bought a number of libraries which were sold by the relatives of deceased homoeopathic doctors, and in that way and by purchases in shops I have accumulated a very large library.
I have been reading with the greatest assiduity and concentration for years, and I continue reading homoeopathy during my spare time. Homoeopathy requires study of the Materia Medica, and only those can practice this wonderful science and art successfully who devotedly study, study, study.
HOMOEOPATHY IN PRACTICE
I HAD been a very sick man for years. Orthodox doctors and specialists had tried their best to cure me, but they had failed. Year by year I got worse. At last I was scarcely able to drag myself along or to sign my name. It took me three weeks to write a short article which I dictate now in fifteen or twenty minutes. I easily got chills and could not get rid of them. I was racked with pain in the abdomen and stomach. I was in despair. As orthodox medicine had failed, I tried in my desperation to cure myself. Because I was weak, orthodox doctors had told me that I should live on strengthening food. I ate quantities of meat, fish and fowl, used plenty of spices, tried to energize myself with alcohol, strong tea, strong coffee, but to no avail.
At last it occurred to me that possibly my troubles might be due to over- nutrition. As I suffered agonies from indigestion, I thought that the most digestible food might be white bread without butter, washed down with hot water. On this ghastly diet I lived for about a fortnight, and I nearly died. Then I experimented further, and at last discovered that the most suitable diet for me was a vegetarian diet, extremely rich in mineral elements and vitamins, and thus I gradually evolved a diet which I have employed with great success on very large numbers of people.
I began to live on an abundance of bran, vegetables, potatoes boiled and baked in their skins, wholemeal bread and butter, cheese, a few eggs, superlatively weak China tea, raw fruit, salading and so forth. Gradually I recovered my former health and strength, and I wrote on my experience in dieting for the benefit of other people. Having been treated in vain by orthodox doctors, I had lost all faith in orthodox medicine. Sick people read my articles and books, and came to me for treatment. I always refused them, telling them that I had no experience in treatment, that I was merely a student of health but not a practitioner of medicine.
I was a voracious reader. I studied medical books in libraries, and I bought large numbers of books, haunting the second-hand book shops in Charing Cross Road, London. One day I went to Foyles book shop and found among the medical books Dr. John H. Clarkes Dictionary of Materia Medica in four huge volumes. If was the biggest Materia Medica I had ever seen. I carried the volumes to a table. They seemed interestingly written, so I bought them and took them home with me, and I discovered that this was not an ordinary Materia Medica but a homoeopathic work.
I had no faith in Homoeopathy. My father, an excellent doctor, had often spoken disparagingly of Homoeopathy, and I had a high opinion of him and of his views. I found in the absorbingly interesting work a number of amazing cures which seemed unbelievable. At the same time I had a feeling that the author was an honest and capable man. In the introduction to the book the address of Dr. John H. Clarke was given, but the book was twenty-five years old. I sat down and wrote a letter to Dr. Clarke, asking him whether he was still alive, and I told him that if he was alive I would be very glad to meet him.
He courteously invited me to his consulting rooms. I frankly told him that I had bought his book, read a considerable number of pages with absorbing interest, but that I could not believe that such cures could be achieved. At the same time I told him that I had a very good impression of his work, and said I would like to study Homoeopathy. I told him verbally: “I am willing to study Homoeopathy, and if I find that it does what it professes to do, then I shall give it the best advertisement I can.” Dr. Clarke smilingly told me the best way of studying Homoeopathy consisted in practising it.
“Read up homoeopathic books, get some medicines and practise right away.” But then I should compete with you. That would be distinctly unfair as I am not a doctor.” “Never mind, go ahead, and if you succeed in curing people I shall rejoice. There are not enough homoeopathic practitioners in the world.” I followed his advice, went to a well-known homoeopathic chemist, bought a stock of medicines and resolved to treat all the people who would come along and a ask me for advice.
In the beginning I treated people principally by dietetic means. I studied their customary diet, eliminated the mistakes they made, gave them what I considered the ideal diet for their condition, and added a few homoeopathic medicines. I studied with the greatest assiduity day and night, using the homoeopathic books mentioned previously. In addition I bought all the homoeopathic books I could get hold of.
Whenever a homoeopathic doctor died, I endeavoured to buy his entire library. I spent a very large sum of money on homoeopathic books, studied unceasingly, and treated the few people who came to me as well as I could.
At first success in homoeopathic treatment was indifferent. i experienced disappointments. Naturally, I blundered, but gradually I evolved a system of my own, and success grew from month to month and from year to year, and at last I felt that I could handle even the most difficult cases, and that I knew how to prescribe homoeopathically.
Homoeopathic doctors are divided into two camps; the high potency men and the low potency men. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, taught that the prescriber should only give one medicine at a time in the smallest possible dose, and as rarely as possible. A dose once a month or once in two months was all that should be given. Patients who have been treated by orthodox doctors are accustomed to take two or three doses of medicine a day. They would feel neglected if they were only given a dose once a month or once in six weeks.
Consequently, Hahnemann and his successors gave in the interval between doses of medicine, unmedicated sugar pills or powders. After all, the patient could not taste any difference in the medicated and in the unmedicated powders and pills.
In Hahnemanns time there was very strong reason for giving only one medicine at a time and watching its effect. In the early days of Homoeopathy very little was known about drug action. Hahnemann and his disciples anxiously watched every dose in order to discover the potentialities of the new homoeopathic drugs which had been evolved. Nowadays it is no longer necessary to experiment on patients with rare doses because the excellent text-books of Homoeopathy tell in detail how every drug acts.
The high potency men rely on the principles preached by Hahnemann and his great successors. The low potency men declare that the infinitely small doses of medicine favoured by the high potency men contain no trace of drug material, that they are an illusion, that the patient is not treated at all, and that either he gets well spontaneously or he does not get well. These men use exclusively low potencies such as the 1x, 3x, 6x, etc. I frequently discussed the question of potency with Dr. Clarke.
He smilingly told me that there was no absolute rule, that some people could handle better the high potencies and others the low potencies, that beginners would do well to use low potencies. he also told me that he himself used all potencies from the mother tincture and the 1x potency to the 100,000th potency and higher, that he was guided by instinct and experience in the selection of potencies, and that there was no general rule.
In a long practical experience I have found that wise Dr. Clarke was justified in his views on the much discussed potency problem. There is no absolute rule. Those who discuss the matter acrimoniously merely waste their time and confuse earnest students. There are people who do best with low potencies, and others who do best with high potencies. I have a patient in Afghanistan who does best with the 100,000th potency in very rare doses, but occasionally he does extremely well with medicines in the 1x potency. If the high potency does not act I give him low potencies. Everyone has to find out by experimentation whether his patients do best with high, low or medium potencies.
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.