A BAD CASE OF TUBERCULOSIS


Obviously her troubles were largely due to the measles infection which she had had many years ago because Morbillinum caused an outbreak looking exactly like measles. Pyrogen 200 was also obviously indicated because in the right side where she had the old abscess there came “A throbbing like a gathering”, I sent her a similar selection of medicines as those which she had during the previous week.


ON May 20th, 1940, I was visited by a Miss M.B., an unmarried woman of 42 years, who lived with her parents doing heavy housework. She came to me in a desperate condition. She had been afflicted with tuberculosis in a very active form for many years, and she had spent considerable spells in sanatoriums during the three years 1916, 1920 and 1923. When she went first to a sanatorium she was 18 years old. She had always been in poor health and had had tubercular peritonitis.

Miss M.B. had had pneumonia twice as a child and measles badly. She was very constipated, was in a disastrous condition and had been in a bad condition all her life. She had seen a doctor shortly before she came to consult me and he had told her that the only thing she could do was to go for a fourth time to a sanatorium she would be dead in six months. She has seen one or two of my books and articles in which I had described cures of bad cases of tuberculosis and she resolved to put herself under my care.

The poor woman was terribly jaundiced with a brownish tinge, her eyes had no sparkle and her hair had no lustre, her lips and mucous membranes were very anaemic and she looked the picture of misery and depression. I tried to cheer her up as well as I could and she left me with some hope.

In sending her my directions I told her:.

“You are 42 years old, have extremely heavy housework to do in your parents home, carrying heavy buckets of a coal up many stairs. Your father, a tailor, is 66, and troubled with angina, and your mother is 65 and and well. Your parents have four girls.

You are the eldest, and in your family the first-born very frequently has tuberculosis. You have tuberculosis and were in sanatorium in 1916, 1920 and 1923, and the doctor wanted to send you again recently but you refused. You had pneumonia twice as a child and had tubercular peritonitis.

“You are pleasant to look upon, far too thin and your chest has extremely poor expansion, and you must practise deep breathing night and morning. You lost all your teeth many years ago; they were black and unsightly. You have the scar of an abscess on the right side, which kept discharging pus for a year and a half, you have weak ankles.

You have much cough at three in the morning with nausea or vomiting. You have had whooping-cough badly, are apt to get heavy night sweats, are irritable, tidy, restless, love sweets, but have practically no appetite.

“You live on next to nothing and take for breakfast merely four or five cups of tea and nothing to eat. I want you to take solid meals and take the liquid afterwards. It is impossible to keep your health on the present diet. You have distinct prolapse of the abdomen which can be corrected either by wearing a Curtis belt, made by Curtis & Co., of 7 Mandeville Place, London, W., to whom you can write for an illustrated catalogue, or you can try lying in bed with the seat well raised on a hard mattress or pillow.

As a result of under-nutrition you are very anaemic, ankles turn. Your tonsils and adenoids were taken out when you were ten. As neat eggs upset you you must take them only embodied in food. You must abstain from taking boiling liquids which are dangerous. You have a very red tongue and feel worse in damp weather”.

The most important thing was to improve Miss M.B.s digestion. I gave her a combination of Nux vomica and Carbo. veg. 3x, to be taken before meals in alternation with Hydrastis, mother tincture tablets. They act particularly on the liver, which was in a very poor condition. Because of her tuberculosis she was to take Arsenicum iodatum 3x first and last thing, and a combination of Ferrum 2x and Arsenicum 3x as a tonic after meals. She had a bad cough which was accompanied by nausea for which I gave her Drosera 3x to be taken as needed.

The unhealing abscess in the right side called for Pyrogen in the 200th potency, a dose to be taken last thing Monday night. I also gave her Lueticum 200, marked “poor sleep”, a dose to be taken last thing Thursday night, and Morbillinum 200 as an antidote to measles, to be taken last thing Saturday night. She was to report to me once a week.

Her first report sent on May 28th was not satisfactory. She has been losing a great deal of weight before she came to me and during the first week under my care she had lost 14 lbs., but she reported, “My appetite is improving and I have had no heartburn or night sweats!” The most interesting fact was her reaction to the once a week medicines. She wrote:.

“On Sunday, after taking Morbillinum 200 on Saturday night, I came out in a dreadful measles rash, all over my body, the face not so bad, but was covered elsewhere, still have a little rash under the skin. After taking Pyrogen 200, the place in my right side is throbbing like a gathering; I think I told you that just below the scar of the abscess last year there came a lump, as though another one was forming. This is the place which is now throbbing. This lump went away.

“I forgot to say last week, I have had three courses of treatment with Kochs Tuberculin, the first I had six injections into my sides alternately in 1910. Then about 1917, I had ten injections in my arms and about 1924 I had for six months an injection every week in my arms.”.

Obviously her troubles were largely due to the measles infection which she had had many years ago because Morbillinum caused an outbreak looking exactly like measles. Pyrogen 200 was also obviously indicated because in the right side where she had the old abscess there came “A throbbing like a gathering”, I sent her a similar selection of medicines as those which she had during the previous week. My patient reported very punctually and I was eagerly awaiting her second report. On June 4th she wrote:.

“I had another attack of measles rash on Sunday, not so bad as the previous week, although when I sat out in the sun it became very red, but soon went off again.

“There is a marked improvement in my breathing and I can take a longer breath and while inhaling can count six, while at first it took me all my time to arrive at five. In addition I am feeling more energetic”.

I was delighted to hear that there was marked improvement in my patients breathing. She needed a tonic and I sent her China arsenicum 3x. On June 11th she wrote to me:.

“During this week, I have made steady progress, I am feeling stronger and my appetite is improving, and when weighed to-day have gained 1 lb. The pain in my shoulder is much better. After casting some clothes off yesterday, I got a chill and had sharp pleurisy pain in my left side, but I took Bryonia and Aconite alternately and to-day I am much better”.

I sent her once more, Hydrastis for her digestion and liver, to be taken before meals, Lycopodium 12x for her pain in the right side, to be taken first and last thing, and Ferrum Phosphoricum 2x as a tonic, to be taken after meals. In her next report, dated June 18th, she write:

“This week brought a disappointment. I was gong steadily ahead till Friday, when I started a severe cold. I seemed to get a chill inside somehow and was troubled with heartburn and vomiting, and then started a cold on my chest, a bronchial cold, which until to-day made me rather poorly, but there is improvement to-day, although the cough is very troublesome. I have had three night sweat this week, but after them I have not felt to be without energy as I used to. My right side, too, has been much better, only coming on severe when I get overtired. So that despite having a cold, I think I am doing very well”.

The poor woman was in delicate health and easily caught colds and chills which upset her badly. A case like hers needs careful nursing and watching. I sent her Aconite 3x, marked “chills, fever, emergencies.”, Belladonna 3x, marked “inflammation”, and Eupatorium 3x, marked “influenza”, to be taken in alternation every half-hour or so if she caught a chill with influenza-like symptoms. I sent her Pyrogen 200, marked “septicity”, a dose to be taken last thing Monday night, Lueticum 200, marked “poor sleep”, to be taken last thing Thursday, and Bacillinum 200, marked “constitutional”, to be taken last thing Saturday. The Bacillinum was, of course, for her tuberculosis. Her next letter dated June 25th, filled me with joy. She wrote:.

“On Thursday I took Lueticum 200, and all day Friday I did not know where to put my back for ease. I scarcely dared to move with it. The region of the gall bladder was very tender and between my shoulders ached, my chest was tight and breathing difficult until about 10 a.m., and I had fit of coughing, which seemed as though it would burst something, and sputum like thick matter came, which greatly relieved the tightness of the chest. Saturday morning early had another attack, but much smaller quantity of nasty sputum and have felt better for it.

“On Saturday I took Bacillinum 200, this was not so difficult to trace; I had a heavy night sweat and was feverish on Sunday, with a flushed face near tea time. Was very depressed, one of the things I am not troubled with usually. I had a pain across my shoulders and abdomen, rather like the pain I got as a child when troubled with tubercular peritonitis and felt as though I wanted to go to stool, but could not get any action on the bowel. I felt much better and brighter by Monday.

J. Ellis Barker
James Ellis Barker 1870 – 1948 was a Jewish German lay homeopath, born in Cologne in Germany. He settled in Britain to become the editor of The Homeopathic World in 1931 (which he later renamed as Heal Thyself) for sixteen years, and he wrote a great deal about homeopathy during this time.

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.