I wavered between Diphtherinum and Thuja, but Thuja eventually won the day. Fear by anticipation, coldness and chilliness, aggravation from tea and onions, left-sided neuralgia were all Thuja symptoms and the original cause inoculation with an animal serum. Diphtherinum can always be given later, I argued. Thuja cleared the deck all right. Quite a different being greeted me a month later, much less scared, neuralgia much better. She was kept on Thuja for several months and the change in her disposition was remarkable.
No more trembling, no more shaking, no longer struck with dumbness, she could talk with animation; she was able to join a dramatic class and able to sing solo in a charity performance at the church, which she had been too nervous to do for years. Later on Thuja was worked out and her symptoms pointed to Pulsatilla, which is closely related to Thuja and frequently follows.
This young woman is no longer afraid of insanity, she is bright and cheerful, can mix freely in company and hold her own with all sorts and sundry. She has lost her bronchitis and her tendency to colds and chills, her digestion is excellent, her neuralgia is gone and she is completely new creature. Thanks largely to Thuja. She was certainly very near to a mental breakdown when seen first.
Thus Thuja has some very distinctive mental symptoms and would cure a certain number of insane people. One rather odd symptom in the Materia Medica reads: “thinks he is made of glass, thinks he is brittle and cannot be touched.” As I have mentioned before in this Journal, I came across this peculiarity in a funny old man, who had been an inmate in a private asylum for years. He was quite harmless, except for this oddity, he was certain he was so fragile, he would break if he were touched, as he was surrounded by glass.
He used to snoop round the reading room in the asylum and steal all the papers, all the journals he could find and pad himself with the papers. He was as round as a barrel and he was quite upset when the attendants now and then had to undress him and remove all the old papers from underneath his waistcoat. As soon as backs were turned, he was busy stuffing himself again with newspapers. Nobody knew what to do for him, and there he remained, a poor harmless looney.
Years later I met this symptom in a middle-aged woman who confined to me in a whisper, she had to pad herself as she was afraid of being touched, she was sure she would break across. I gave her Thuja 30 every seven days and when she saw me again a month later, she was so happy. she had lost this awful sensation of being made of glass. There was no need for her to go to an asylum. Thuja cured her rapidly.
This fear of touch due to hyperaesthesia of the superficial nerve endings is met with very frequently. I saw a very marked example of this in a child between 3 and 4 years of age. She was a bad doer, never got on well, still only weighed about 20 lbs. though her weight should have been over 32 lbs. She had no appetite in the mornings, she would not touch anything until her midday meal except a little water. A very determined young person who knew her own mind very well, even at that early age.
What her mother complained of most was this-the odd characteristic, that she would never let anybody handle or touch her; she hated being fondled or kissed, she cried and struggled, even, while she was being dressed; the moment she was left her own devices and finished being dressed, she was quite happy. She was indeed like the cat, that walked by himself: it was curious to see such a baby completely happy, occupied in a world of her own, and others noticed the immediate change when handled and the horror of touch. Thuja 30, then 200, and later the 1M potency worked a great change.
The mother thanked me with tears in her eyes that at last she had a normal child who would come to her and allow herself to be dressed and even kissed. She began to grow and put on weight. And again, this marasmus, this stationary weight was due to being vaccinated twice without taking either time.
Many years ago, I was puzzled by many infants being discharged from a particular maternity hospital in a state of acute marasmus which lasted for may weeks; the could not suck even, they were so weak. I soon found out the case. The particular medical officer in charge of the maternity department was a fanatic on the question of vaccination and had such a persuasive manner and such charming curly hair as one mother told me that they all fell for him and had their babies vaccinated by him within the first week after birth with disastrous results.
This influx of wasting babies from this hospital ceased after six months, so I presumed that the M.O. in point had sought pastures new.
But for some more late effects of vaccination. A much vaccinated trained nurse developed a cyst in her upper eyelid which grew rapidly and threatened to close her lid completely over the eye. She was much perturbed naturally, and before advising her to go to the eye hospital for removal of this cyst, I bethought myself of her history of repeated vaccinations and tried the effect of Thuja on the cyst.
It literally melted away. I think it only took a mere two or three weeks for this cyst to disappear. After this rapid cure, I had several other cases of cysts of the eyelids which all responded to, and cleared up with Thuja. Cysts, polypi, fibroid tumours, specially cauliflower- like new growths area among the late effects of vaccination and the homoeopathic literature is full of such cases cured with Thuja.
A handsome junoesque lady weighing nearly 18 stones complained of flooding for several months. On examination I found a 3 inch long uterine polypus. She had been a great traveller in her twenties and had naturally been vaccinated several times.
It would have been somewhat of a job to remove this polypus surgically, because of her size, so I tried the homoeopathic scalpel and gave her Thuja 30, a few doses of it. There were no further haemorrhages and I dont know what happened to the polypus, I could never find it again, it was spurlos versenkt.
A child, aged 8, had been vaccinated twice and had chronic nasal discharge and obstruction high up in his nostrils ever since, the discharge was thick, unpleasantly so, and green, he used endless handkerchiefs, his voice was thick and indistinct. I found a nasal polypus high up in the nose and another hanging down from the postnasal space. Before sending him to the surgeon, I tried the effects of half a dozen doses of Thuja 200, and the polypi disappeared, his catarrh vanished and his voice became clear and bell-like. He even joined the local church choir after that.
Now for warts, which are due to late vaccinal poisoning or even to a delayed sycotic infection a generation or two back. One sees hundreds of these cases in school clinics, and I must say that a local application with double strength Thuja tincture with a covering of gauze and bandage makes the warts shrinks and dry up, specially if daily doses of Thuja in potencies of 30 or 200 are given for a month.
One sees many cases of multiple minute wartlets on hands, wrists and face; and this treatment makes them disappear rapidly. The larger, harder sessile type without a stalk take much longer; but children get weary of coming regularly and treatment is therefore spasmodic and difficult to control. Other antisycotic and difficult to control. Other antisycotic medicines may be required after Thuja, such as Nitric acid or Dulcamara or Calcarea carb., according to the particular symptoms of the individual, but Thuja gives very good results on the whole.
I saw a case of large tender warts on the sole of the foot in a child who had been evacuated to Dover at the beginning of the war. She went bathing and became infected with these horrible warts. Many of the children in her group had them as well, she said.
She had treatment at Dover for eight months and the warts grew larger and more painful every day. Her parents brought her home then and when I saw her, she was unable to walk, she could not put her heel to the ground. There were two large warts the size of a shilling each. Thuja locally bandaged over on to the warts and daily doses of Thuja 30, and in three weeks the warts had disappeared. Wasnt the child happy, and the parents so grateful for the rapid cure.
Thuja is a truly great remedy with vast possibilities for aiding poor deluded humanity who believe false prophet rather than follow the light of Hahnemanns teaching, so simple and yet so far reaching in its effects. I wonder what great mind it was who first gave the name “Tree of Life” to Thuja?.
