THE anatomist does not know the mind because its existence cannot be shown by dissection. Orthodox medicine speaks of disease of the brain, but the brain of a patient whose mind has been deeply affected might be absolutely normal from the point of view of the anatomist, the pathologist and the brain specialist.
The mind is an intangible entity which is scarcely considered by orthodox medicine. It is of very great importance. The brain may have been affected by an blow, by a malformation, by a tumour, by tuberculosis, syphilis and numerous other circumstances. The mind may act on the brain and on the body as a whole through brain and nerves, and may act very powerfully.
If an employee in a bank has forget book entries for his personal profit, or if a business man has made a false balance sheet or made misleading statements to the income tax authorities for his own ends, he may in due course begin to fear that he will be found out, and be dishonoured and punished. The fear of consequences may prey on his mind. He may become nervous, complain about sleeplessness and indigestion, he may fall off in weight, become anaemic or jaundiced, and eventually he well be urged to consult a doctor or a specialist.
Doctors and specialists may examine such an individual most once conscientiously and most ably, but they may not find any physical cause for his obvious suffering, and eventually they may tell the individual that his sufferings are not organic, or that his troubles are purely nervous, or that they are imaginary, and he may be told to pull himself together, or to take a rest or go in for some healthful sport, etc.
What are called diseases of the nerves or diseases of the brain are very frequently diseases of the mind. A woman may decline in health because she desires children and has none, or because she lives in the fear that her husband may be unfaithful to her, or that she is going to lose her good looks, or she may be ailing because she is not a social success, etc.
Orthodox medicine delights in classifying diseases and disorders. In the orthodox text-books we find the various aberrations of the mind from which people suffer, classified under numerous headings, and those who are guided by the orthodox text-books endeavour to classify and label every case which comes before them, and then they endeavour to treat the case in accordance with the recommendations contained in the standard literature on the subject. Unfortunately the text-books offer poor guidance.
They suggest bromide and luminal for the nervous and the restless, they suggest even stronger poisons for other defects and disorders. The dopes recommended will keep the individual fairly quiet, but they will not cure the obvious disease.
It is extremely difficult to deal with diseases of the mind. Some people suffer from delusions, others are morose, deeply depressed, suicidal or almost suicidal. There are men and women who are so weak that they can scarcely undertake the most trivial tasks such as writing a letter or keeping their bodies in fair condition. There are those who sit in a corner and stare into space or on the floor, and refuse to talk. There are those who chatter incessantly.
There are old men and women who tell you the same story half a dozen times within an hour. The busy general practitioner or specialist, when he sees any of these cases, especially if they are chronic cases, is apt to shake his head and to say that nothing can be done except making the individual a little more comfortable, and the treatment is often more dangerous than the disease.
In diseases of the mind the practitioner should either decline the case or he should be determined to be thorough and painstaking in the hope of producing a cure. If he wishes to do the latter, then he must start by enquiring carefully, tactfully and thoroughly into the causation of the trouble.
He may discover that the trouble was due to a heavy fall or blow, and if the practitioner knows anything about Homoeopathy, he will immediately think of Arnica, which is a princely remedy for such emergencies. Arnica is apt to cure injuries done before, during or after birth, it is equally good for injuries to the muscles and to the nerves, to the body and to the mind.
If the injury occurred many years ago, then Arnica is given in a high potency, let us say the 30th potency or the 200th. The latter is a favorite prescription of mine. There are, of course, many other injury medicines, among, is perhaps mare suitable for injuries to the body than injuries to the mind. An injury may hurt bones and muscles, but it may also hurt the nerves.
In nerve injuries Hypericum is particularly valuable. Many diseases of the mind or of the brain are caused by a fall producing a lesion of the spinal column. A fall on the tail-bone is particularly dangerous because it produces a concussion along the signal column and it is apt to affect the organs of the body, the brain, of which the spinal marrow is an extension, and the organs which are activated by the nerves springing from the spinal narrow.
One must carefully enquire into the history and inheritance of patients whose minds have become affected. Syphilis is a most important factor. It may be acquired, or it may have been inherited by the patient. Therefore the practitioner should make his own test with a few doses of Syphilinum, let us say in the 200th potency given once a week or so. Usually the first dose shows clearly whether Syphilis should be seriously considered as a factor.
In a serious cases on must carefully discuss the position not only with the patient, but also the patients relatives, who may be able to throw a powerful light upon the cause. An unhappy home, desire for children or fear of children, and innumerable other factors have to be considered. The practitioner must forget that he is a practitioner, and he must act as a detectives if he wishes to cure.
Every disease from which the patient has suffered in the past must be taken under review. The patients mind may have been upset by a bad measles attack, or by an apparently slight measles attack which was considered to be slight because there was not a sufficient eruption. Vaccination is apt to upset not only the body, but also the mind. Skin disease is an endeavour of Nature to eliminate poisons from the body by way of the skin. Suppression of skin disease by outward treatment has created innumerable cases of disease of every kind, including insanity.
More than two thousand years ago Hippocrates drew attention to the fact that insane may frequently be restored to normal health by the free use of powerful purgatives. Constipation and auto- intoxication undoubtedly lead to disorders of the mind. Everyone suffering from constipation is apt to bet troubled with headaches and depression. If depression has become deep-seated permanent, then it is called Melancholia.
The vast majority of cases of Melancholia are due to selfpoisoning, which, as a rule, comes front the bowel. If taken in time, practically all melancholics can be restored to normality, or something like normality, by judicious regulation of the intestines, and I think dietetic regulation is infinitely better than regulation by the use of purgatives.
Mental power depends largely on physical health, and physical health depends largely on nutrition. If one goes through an Indian village after a good harvest, one finds that the people are contented and smiling. A year after when one goes through the same village, and if there has been a bad harvest or starvation, one finds that a large number of the inhabitant have become mentally abnormal.
One can produce mental abnormality in animals by starving them. Once can also produce mental abnormality in animals by giving them enough to eat, but by feeding them on demineralized and devitaminized foods with an inadequate proportion of vitamins, become diseased in body and diseased in mind. Hundreds of experiments on unfortunate laboratory animals have yielded this result.
The practitioner who wishes to cure must not only study the patients health history and inheritance,his injuries, his complaints and worries, may of which he may wish to hide, but he must also study the diet of the patient, and he should, before all, order a diet composed of the most natural non-putrefactive foodstuffs in their most natural condition.
Homoeopathy has a great wealth of medicines which act on the mind. The irritable can be greatly relieved by Nux vomica. Those who are irritable and at the same time unreasonable will be greatly benefited by Chamomilla, especially if irritability is coupled with desire for movement and hyper-sensitiveness to pain. A child who yells and demands her doll from the nurse, and throws it at the nurse when doll has been handed to her, who shrieks and yells and demands to be carried, may be cured of he tantrums with a very few doses of Chamomilla 3x.
For depression of the ordinary type, Ignatia 3x is extremely valuable, particularly if the patient sighs a great deal, and does not wish to talk. That remedy is also excellent in hysteria. It will rapidly cure those women who complain that they have the feeling of a ball rising from the stomach to the throat which compels them to swallow all the time, yet they cannot swallow down the ball.
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.