Chronic headache of nine years’ duration. Head attacks one or twice a week. Very severe, constricting and bursting headaches. He gave first Graphites: when a red tender patch appeared over right eye, with two or three white-headed pustules. Then discovering that she had been vaccinated at three months, re- vaccinated at seven and fourteen years, and had small-pox about ten years go he gave Thuja. She started improving; then became actually ill with fever, nausea and perspiration. Then pimples broke out on face and in different parts of the body, which filled with pus, and died away. The symptoms were said to resemble those of her attack of small-pox. The headaches were well before this bout came on, and a couple of years later Burnett learned that the cure held good. No more headaches.
He gives cases of glands–hairless patches,–habitual influenza with ill-health and headaches, where the patient had been successfully vaccinated four times–of acne, face and nose, nasal dermatitis, after unsuccessful re-vaccination–neuralgia of right eye in a man who, when asked re vaccination seemed frightened, “I should not like to be vaccinated again!” because his last vaccination had made him so ill for a month–of diseased finger nails–of paresis (vaccinated six or seven times, when it never took),–of spinal irritation, a severe case with sickness and disability, had been vaccinated four times and a fifth un- successfully–of arrested development and hemiparesis–and a number of others showing the wide range of Thuja, and its amazing curative powers; the indications being less the present actual symptoms, for which Thuja might or might not be thought of, but the symptoms of the original malady, now latent and chronic, the fons et origo.
Burnett’s “Vaccinosis” is rendered easily comprehensible by going back to Hahnemann. Even Burnett never seems to have grasped the true inwardness of the matter:–i.e. that vaccination can, to a certain extent, protect from, or modify small-pox because the vaccinate had been endowed with a similar chronic parasitic disease, which renders him, more or less, immune from that “like” disease, small-pox.
Hahnemann tells us that, two similar diseases cannot repel one another; nor can they, like dissimilar diseases, suspend one another; nor can two similar diseases exist together in the same organism, to form a double, complex disease.
No–two diseases (different in kind, but very similar in symptoms and effects) will annihilate one another when they meet in the organism; the new, stronger morbific power, because of its similitude, will take possession of precisely the parts affected by the weaker, which is consequently annihilated–when vital force remains affected only–temporarily–by the new morbific influence.
Probably the modern explanation would be that the chronic disease to be kept in abeyance, must call forth the protective mechanisms of the body, which are therefore on tap for the repulse of a “similar” foe.
The manner of infection, and the after-history of the vaccinate, answers Hahnemann’s postulates regarding his chronic parasitic diseases:–
Infection takes place in a moment.
Then follows a quiescent period, till the whole organism, being infected, reacts vigorously, and endeavours to throw out the disease on to the skin:–at the place of entry of infection. Then, after a more or less violent reaction, the body ceases to struggle, and accommodates itself to a kind of latent toleration, in which, though no longer infectious, the organism lives on, scotched, not kind, to influence adversely the whole life-history of its host, together with his reactions to diseases and drugs:–in such way that the latter, even when homoeopathically indicated, having helped at first, help less and less, and finally fail to cure,–because not corresponding to the under- lying cause of the patient’s continued ill-health. Burnett’s Vaccinosis–a state of indefinite, chronic ill-health, takes different forms in different individuals according to their personal make-up: one becoming asthmatic–another epileptic–while others develop stomach or joint conditions–and others, again, neuralgias, or life-long headaches. Such cases are puzzling and baffling–terribly resistant to treatment–and never to be unlocked without the key that fits–Thuja… THUJA, that wonderful antidote to vaccination, alike in its acute and chronic forms; in those much vaccinated, or who have been excessively affected by vaccination, or again, those who have failed to “take”, i.e. to react acutely to the implanted virus. These last, as we have shown, being, in Burnett’s experience, the worst cases. Hahnemann gives us only 634 symptoms of Thuja, but the drug has been extensively proved since his day–often in the potencies, and Allen’s Encyclopedia gives no less than 3,370 symptoms (with, as usual, authorities for each symptom). In these later careful re-provings on one hundred persons of both sexes, we find that Thuja has caused, in sensitive persons, such serious conditions as asthma, epileptic convulsions, lumps in the breast: so it not only does, but should cure these things, with or without Burnett’s “vaccinosis” thrown in to give the casting vote. Thuja is also responsible for the most terrific headaches–for skin troubles,–and has determined, reproduced and cured urethral and other discharges. Some of these things you cannot touch without Thuja.
Then gonorrhoeal rheumatism. One has seen a case of rheumatoid arthritis (? gonorrhoeal in origin), where Thuja did wonders in loosening up the joints, and restoring locomotion and power, when other, seemingly-indicated, remedies had failed.
Clarke has a striking article on Thuja in his Dictionary, well worth reading. He gives the gist of Burnett’s little book, with many observations of his own.
Hering’s Guiding Symptoms also gives interesting Thuja cases, some after vaccination.
But where I imagine that I am “going one better” than the lot, is by trying to put forward the theory that why vaccinosis is what it is, and why it can do what it can do in the way of vitiating health, is because it is one of Hahnemann’s CHRONIC PARASITIC DISEASES. Nothing else will completely account for its course–or its cure.
And now for a few recent cases, in one’s own ken, which still further widen one’s knowledge of the curative virtues of Thuja; prescribed on the basis of Burnett’s Vaccinosis and its great remedy Thuja, and on Hahnemann’s conception of the parasitic nature of chronic diseases; passed with merely a shrug of the shoulders, and regarded as a stumbling-block and rock of offence, till Science took the matter in hand to demonstrate its truth. These cases will be found detailed in my pamphlet Hahnemann’s Conception of Chronic Diseases as caused by Parasitic Micro- Organisms. We will only give them briefly as quoted in a letter to one of the big medical journals, which roused the interest of the Editor, but not sufficiently to secure its insertion.
This letter pointed out:
“In regard to Professor Maitland’s Presidential address to the Pathological Society of Manchester (to which you refer in your issue of October 29th, 1932), and his suggestion that resistance to vaccination after recovery from infection might depend on the PERSISTENCE OF THE LIVING VIRUS in the tissues:–it is interesting to note that a similar suggestion was made by Hahnemann one hundred years ago–in regard to all Chronic Diseases:–and that homoeopathic practice, based on that theory, is producing results which appear to confirm it.
“Our great antidote to vaccination is Thuja occidentalis, which will abort vaccination, as we have seen, and which proves powerfully curative in chronic conditions of persons who have been repeatedly vaccinated, often without result, or have been made very ill by vaccination and `never been well since.’
“Here are a few cases. Small girl, ever since vaccination, pustules on legs, or alternately, when these disappeared, epileptic fits. Thuja quickly cured.
“Small boy, purulent onychia, very intractable. Nail removed and thumb healed. Then abscesses in different parts of the body, till it was discovered that he had been eight times vaccinated by a persistent and conscientious G.P. Thuja promptly ended the trouble.
“Woman of twenty-nine, epileptic fits at least once a week, with (for Aura) a Thuja symptom, `Before attacks ears feel numbed’. 27* She had other Thuja symptoms, worse for onions, which provoke an attack next morning: drops in sleep. Twice vaccinated, the last took badly. After the first dose of Thuja, in `high’ homoeopathic potency, the fits entirely stopped for the ten months she was under observation. She said,`I don’t have them now.’
“Woman of sixty. Blinding headaches all her life. Vaccinated three times, last took very badly: `laid up with it, and delirious.’ She was given Thuja. A month later, `only one head- ache, and not a bad one; putting on weights. But `breathless, as when vaccinated, and bones have been aching, as when vaccinated’. The return of old symptoms, on the road to extinction, proves the remedy. Patient had lost headaches, had put on 8 lb., and was returning to work when last heard of five months later. She had, what most of these Thuja patients have, sensations rousing her from sleep, of dropping into a bottomless pit.
