“When orthodox medicine proved unhelpful, I went to the hydropaths (they were called “quacks” then!) and had it hot, and cold, and long; but they also did me no good. Packs cold, and the reverse; cold compresses worn for months together; sleeping in wet sheets; no end of sweatings-Turkish and Russian-all left my old pleuritic trouble in status quo ante.
“The grape cure, the bread and wine cure, did no better. Not did diet and change help me.
“However, when I was studying what the peculiar people called Homoeopaths have to say about their Bryonia alba, and its affinity for serous membranes, I-What?-abused them and called them quacks? No!-I bought some Bryonia alba, and took it as they recommended, and in a fortnight my side was well, and has never troubled me since.
“There, friend, that is my second reason for being a homoeopath, and when I cease to be grateful to dear old Hahnemann for his Bryonia, may my old pleural trouble return to remind me of the truth of his teaching.
“What you and the world in general may think of it I care not one straw: I speak well of the bridge that carried me over.
“For my part, I make but one demand of medicine, and one only, that it shall cure! The pathy that will cure is the pathy for me. For of your fairest pathy I can but say-
`What care I how fair she be,
If she be not fair to me?”
From the above we see that not only is Bryonia a great remedy in acute pleurisy, but that it can also cure the chronic condition sometimes left by pleurisy.
NASH says: “It makes no difference what the name of the disease, if the patient feels greatly better by lying still and suffers greatly on the slightest motion, and the more and the longer he moves the more he suffers, Bryonia is the first remedy to be thought of, and there must be very strong counter-indications along other lines that will rule it out.”
Nash also says: “The dominant school do not know what they have lost in not being acquainted with the virtues of this remedy, as developed in our provings and clinical use, but we know what we have gained.”
And now, to sum up. If you ever get a patient with severe stitching pains: worse for the slightest movement: worse for sitting up: better for pressure: very thirsty for long drinks of cold water: very irritable: angry, and not only angry, but with sufferings increased by being disturbed mentally or physically: white tongue: in delirium “wants to go home” (even when at home): busy in his dreams and in delirium with his everyday business, you can administer BRYONIA and-bet on the result!.
