ABOUT four years ago I read in the Columbus Dispatch, one of our daily papers, that a medical research man had discovered that, with the poison of this snake, he could cure the effects of snake bite poisoning in humankind. It was claimed that he was the first to make this discovery and he received an award for his discovery. Now let us ponder a little while and perceive how far he was from being the first to discover this precious remedy which has been used by the homoeopathic school of medicine with marvellous results.
I have a book in my possession that was published in Leipzig, ?July, 1852, translated with notes and prepared for the use of the American and English profession by Charles J. Hempel, M.D., Fellow and Corresponding Member of the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania and the Hahnemann Society of London. On page 267 you will Lachesis 30 as used in their time. A full proving is also given in the condensed Materia Medica by C. Herring, Third Edition revised, enlarged and improved by E. A. Farrington, M.D., Professor of Materia Medica, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, house 1884.
In 1890, while I was practising medicine in Nelsonville, Ohio, I was called to make a call in the country to see a woman who had been bitten by some very poisonous snake. At the time of my arrival the patient was found to be unconscious and had a temperature of 106, puls 165; her left leg very much swollen; general cyanosis and appeared as a very unfavourable case.
She was given Lachesis, 30 potency, four small pellets on her tongue every hour until improvement was noticed, then every two hours. When I saw her the next evening her pulse was only 120, temperature 103. She was still unconscious. The Lachesis was continued every two hours. In forty-eight hours from the time of my first call she became conscious with normal pulse and normal temperature. She was restored to normal health very quickly.
While practising there we had an epidemic of typhoid fever. It seemed to me that my quota was more than any or all of the other doctors. The cases were all reported to the health officer. He made a remark to a friend of one of my close friends stating that he did not believe all the cases I reported were typhoid fever. I called him up immediately and kindly asked him to go with me and examine them. After seeing them he was not long in changing his mind, the Widal test being unknown as this time.
The first call we made, there were two cases. After an examination he did not think one of them would live twenty-four hours. He was informed that he was again mistaken. The next call, there were three cases; he seemed to be quite sure that I would lose one of them. He missed his guess. The next call, he was surprised to find four cases; again he doubted their recovery. The next call, he found the mother and four children with only the father to care for them; they all recovered. The next was a family of seven; the father, mother and four children were at their critical stage with their elder daughter with a nursing infant and all of the six case to care for. They all recovered to normal health.
I was called to see a patient some more than 200 miles away. On my return our health officer was found to be in deep water. He was called to a family where they had four children with typhoid fever; two of them died very quickly an were buried Sunday morning, 10 a.m. He informed the parents of the children that he was going to have me come with him on his next call as he wished to convince them that if I had been there before the other two children diet, I could have done no more for the children than he had done.
I was very much pleased to accept his request. He seemed to be quite confident in his expectation of convincing them. We first examined a girl about eight years of age. The health officer said the decline of this girl had been the same as the others who had died and he had no hopes for her recovery. Then he went into another room to examine their son. The doctor said he thought the boy had rallied some since he saw him that morning. I them made him a proposition which was that I would take the girl, for whom he had lost all hopes of recovery, and for him to continue with the boy, for whom he had a glimpse of hope.
He accepted. My treatment of the girl was entirely opposite from his. After three of four days he became doubtful of his diagnosis of the girls case-her progress in recovery he could hardly believe. The fifth evening after my first call the doctor came into the girls bedroom and stated it was all over with the boy, that he would not live through the night. He asked me to come in the other room with him.
I found him gasping for his breath; he could not bear to have the clothing or covering on his chest; the nurse was fanning him to keep him alive. The health officer asked me what my impression was of the case. I very kindly informed him that if he would stop his crude methods, that Lachesis and proper care would restore him to health. It did. He said he had never heard of it before. I then told him that there were 100 more remedies in my medicine case that he had never heard of and every one of them was worth its weight in gold when properly applied.
The next day he came to my office and asked for some homoeopathic books or information on the subject. I gave him some. When he returned them he remarked that he had never before encountered such enthusiastic medical literature. I asked him after he had been an eyewitness to what had been accomplished how could homoeopathic literature be anything less than enthusiastic. He said he was too old and it was too late for him to endeavour to obtain the knowledge required for the practice of homoeopathy.
On April 28, 1906, I was called to a small city for consultation with two other physicians. Their patient was a man, fifty years of age; he was in a semiconscious condition, his whole body was jaundiced, almost a black jaundice. He had a temperature of 104, pulse 120. The city doctor had given up all hopes for his recovery; my only hopes were to find the remedy to match the symptoms of this case; the had been diagnosed as cancer of the liver.
The only diagnoses for the remedy, after making a comparison with all of the symptoms obtained from observation of the patient and his family, there was but one remedy that matched them and that was Lachesis, which was prescribed. After being given a few doses he became quiet and on the third day after giving Lachesis he passed a gall-stone and made a complete recovery.
