He defines the real China-debility thus, “There are no doubt cases where the disease itself consists of weakness, and in such cases bark is at once the most appropriate curative and strengthening remedy as where the sufferings of the patient are solely or chiefly owing to weakness from loss of humours, from great loss of blood (also from repeated venesections) great loss of milk in nursing women, loss of saliva, frequent seminal losses, profuse suppurations, profuse sweats, and weakening by frequent purgatives, where almost all the other ailments of the patient are wont to correspond in similarity with the China symptoms (see footnote in Materia Medica Pura) in morbid debility of other kinds, when the disease itself is not suitable for this remedy, the administration of China is always followed by injurious consequences although even in such unsuitable cases a stimulation of the strength is produced by it in the first few hours.” He says, “if there is no disease in the background to produce or keep up the loss of humours, then for this peculiar weakness, which has here become the disease, one or two doses as small as those mentioned, with nourishing diet, open air, and cheerful surroundings are as efficacious to effect recovery as larger and repeated doses are to cause secondary injurious effects.”
A quotation from HUGHES (Pharmacodynamics) is of interest here. He says, “Hahnemann found Cinchona in use for two great purposes- as a tonic, and as a remedy for intermittent fevers. He proved it to discover on what principle it so acted. That is caused a febrile paroxysm was the Newton’s apple which led him to formulate similia similibus as the law of specific therapeutics. He also found that it produced in the healthy a peculiar kind of debility; and that its tonic properties in disease, when analysed, were demonstrably applicable to weakness of this very sort. Where the weakness itself is the disease, Cinchona is curative, because homoeopathic to it. He acutely pointed out that the best results which were obtained from it were seen in the convalescence from acute disease, and were just correlative to the super-added debility caused by the depleting treatment then pursued. For all this you should read the preface to this proving, which is a masterpiece of observation and reasoning.
“This thought of Hahnemann was as original as it was brilliant and fruitful. It was a pure induction from his provings. Hahnemann’s doctrine was far more definite, and at once fixed its genuine and certain range of action. It will not cure anaemic debility like Ferrum, or nervous debility like Phosphoric acid: but in that occasioned by loss of blood; by diarrhoea, diuresis, or excessive sweating; by over-lactation, etc., it is a most effectual remedy. ‘In all these cases’, said Hahnemann, ‘the other symptoms of the patient generally correspond to those of China.’ In one particular especially they do so, viz. in their tendency to pass into a hectic condition. We have here the succession of chill, heat and sweat which we shall see to be characteristic of the drug, and which gives it a place in the treatment of ague. It cannot be too strongly impressed on the mind that China is the great anti-hectic. But remember that weakness from drain on the system is the sphere of the tonic action of Cinchona; and within it you will find it manifesting some of the most beautiful curative powers known to the art of medicine. They are seen alike in the most acute and the most chronic forms of debility so induced.”
In regard to the debility of China, one has again and again proved the value of the drug in patients who, after an attack of influenza, remained chilly and weak, and went crawling about feeling that they would never again be able to wear summer clothing, or go back to normal, and where potentized China promptly restored normality and the trouble was forgotten. Other, different cases, when, after ‘flu, the patient would feel indefinitely unwell, with a temperature of about 99* (when one took it) and a feeling of heaviness and shakiness: here the rapid remedy is Gelsemium. Or where the legacy is nervous-even mental- Scutellaria comes in. Or, again Influenzinum! One has always used it in the 200th potency; and has seen it clear up such little legacies as furious, unbearable tempers, hitherto unknown in the patient, and epileptic fits. Influenzinum has done some pretty work after ‘flu, though one cannot define its scope with any degree of accuracy: -except that these things have “only come on after an attack of influenza.” But chacun a son metier-even with drugs. You cannot expect a plumber to do the delicate work of a cabinet maker, or a typist to be a Paderewski.
But among the out-patients who flock to us for help, there are quite a number of persons not demonstrably ill, but tired and below par, to whom a dose of China in potency is a marvellous pick-me-up. “Oh, that last medicine did me the world of good! Can I have a repeat?” If the trouble has been from anxiety, and night-nursing, and broken, or los of sleep, one thinks rather of Cocculus: of if it has been a case of “moving house” and over- exertion and muscular fatigue, then Arnica will be the restorative: these are not China cases.
It is wonderful what Arnica will do for strain of all kinds- heart-strain, even-from over-exertion; or mental strain from overwork and anxiety-the doctor’s overwork, when he begins to wonder, has he done this or that?-and has to go back and look: here Arnica every time. It is not in the big and savage ailments only that Homoeopathy comes in: it has great uses in restoring the overwrought, the “weary with dragging the cross. Too heavy for mortals to bear.” It pays to get a grip of the inwardness of our remedies! And, mind! the thing that you cannot cure, another person may, easily, because he has a grip of the remedy that is needed, which you have not: whereas, another case, impossible to him, is child’s play to you-for the same reason. Some of our drugs are mere bowing acquaintances: we know their names, and have met them. Other, friends, have become “grappled to our souls with bands of steel”, because they have stood us in stead in desperate situations, and we have learnt their powers, and can trust them with life and death. But all these things come only with use.
In regard to DIARRHOEA where one sees some of the most out- standing curative actions of China, Hahnemann says:
“As cinchona bark in its primary action is a powerful laxative (see the symptoms 497 et seq.) it will be found to be very efficacious as a remedy in some cases of diarrhoea when the other symptoms of china are not inappropriate to the rest of the morbid symptoms.” The symptoms of the provings referred to are these:-
“Three times soft stool with smarting, burning pain in the anus, and with bellyache before and after each stool.
“Looseness of the bowels, like diarrhoea.
“Frequent diarrhoeic, blackish stools.
“Severe purging.
“Diarrhoea of undigested faeces, like a kind of lientery.
“Diarrhoea: as if the excrement contained undigested food it comes away in separate pieces and when it is passed, there still remains desire to go to stool, but no more passes.”
As to the extreme HYPERAESTHESIA of China, Hahnemann has this to say:
“Those attacks of pain which can be excited by merely touching (or slightly moving) the part and which then gradually increase to the most frightful degree, are, to judge by the patient’s expressions, very similar to those caused by China. I have sometimes permanently removed them by a single dose of the diluted tincture, even when the attacks had been frequently repeated. The malady was homoeopathically (see note to 685) as it were, charmed away, and health substituted for it. No other remedy in the world could have done this, as none other is capable of causing a similar symptom in its primary action.” (The footnote referred to reads,” “It is peculiarly characteristic of China that its pains are aggravated not only by movement, and especially by touching the part” (here a number of the symptoms of the proving are referred to) “but also that they are renewed when not present by merely touching the part, as in the symptoms 749, 772 and then often attain a frightful intensity, hence this medicine is often the only remedy in cases of this description.”)
All the writers since Hahnemann lay special stress on this extreme susceptibility to touch, as affecting pain: and often relief from hard pressure. As Guernsey expresses it, “from touching the parts softly.”
Practical tips in regard to the favourable action of China in INTERMITTENT FEVER are also given by Hahnemann in this preface. He says, “An intermittent fever must be very similar to that which China can cause in the healthy, if that medicine is to be the suitable, true remedy for it, and then a single dose of the above indicated minuteness” (i.e. the 12th potency) “relieves-but it does this best when given immediately after the termination of the paroxysm, before the operations of nature are accumulated in the body for the next fit. ” Hahnemann did not know the natural history of the malarial parasite: but, as usual, his observation fits the case! He adds, “Cinchona bark can only permanently cure a patient, affected with intermittent fever in marshy districts, of his disease resembling the symptoms of China, when the patient is able to be removed from the atmosphere that causes the fever during his treatment, and until his forces are completely restored. For if he remain in such an atmosphere he is constantly liable to the reproduction of his disease from the same source.”
