“And, finally, disturbed sleep–distressful.” Then he says, he began to use the virus with, not more confidence exactly, but with more familiarity. He also notes “very slight cough, only just enough to raise the phlegm, which came so easily that one might almost say it came of itself.”
DR. CLARKE was asked by Burnett for his experience with the new remedy, and his answer, with a small proving, appears in the third edition of Burnett’s book….
Clarke wrote, “I began to use Bacillin, and at the same time I proved it on myself, in the 30th and afterwards the 100th potency,” with the following result.
1. Pain in glands of neck, worse turning head or stretching neck. Right side more affected.
2. Pain deep in head, worse on shaking the head.
3. Aching in teeth, especially lower incisors (all sound). This was felt at the roots, especially on raising lower lip: the symptoms persisted many months, and I occasionally feel it now. Teeth very sensitive to cold air.
4. Sharp pains of short duration in chest and various parts of body.
5. Pain in left knee whilst walking one evening : passed off after preserving in walking for a short distance.
6. Nasal catarrh. Pricking in throat (larynx) then sudden cough. Single cough on rising from bed in the morning. Cough waking me in the night. Easy expectoration. Sharp pain in precordial region, arresting breathing. Very sharp pain in left scapula, worse lying down in bed at night, relieved by warmth.
7. An indolent angry pimple on left cheek. This persisted many weeks, and I began to fear it was something worse. After it had healed it broke out several times at long intervals, and even still a slight indentation can be felt at the spot.
Then he gives cases treated by the nosode. Several of these are inflammatory conditions of the eyelids, in which doses of Bacillinum acted very promptly and curatively. (And we have found it almost specific for ulceration of cornea in children.– M.L.T.)
Burnett gives other partial provings of Bacillinum, one by Dr. Boocock (U.S.A.), published in the Homoeopathic Recorder. Dr. Boocock, not having the 100th potency but only the 30th and 200th potencies, and engaged in further potentizing the 30th, grew tired of shaking, put down the vial, and dried his fingers on his tongue. Soon after experienced “a flush, some perspiration, and a severe headache, deep in.” Later, finished his potentizing, and foolishly did the same thing– “dried my finger on my tongue. Headache increased all over, mostly in temples and occiput. Stinging, stitch-like pains through my piles, and a stitching, creeping pain through left lung and a tickling cough. I felt very weak. I had no cough before, and yet now I had a tickling in my fauces and must cough; the headache continued, and weakness, and feeling in and under left breast, deep in.
“If this dilution, 2 drops or so, can make one in health feel as I did, I am sure there is a power in dynamization. A very restless feeling, not able to read with profit, so went to bed early; very restless, slept well, had to rise to urinate three times, urine clear, but of a very bad smell; putrid. Awoke at daybreak and could not sleep, feeling very tired” and the proving symptoms are recounted for ten more days. Like Burnett and Clarke, he found that it had power to set up a very severe headache, deep in; that it irritated the throat; the left lung, especially, and also inflated the bowels with gas (see Burnett’s proving); caused a soft, dark-green mushy stool, and affected the anus, relieving a troublesome eczematous condition there.
We make no apologies for reproducing these slender provings of Bacillinum. Most of our common remedies have been magnificently proved, and have received a thousand fold confirmation in the treatment of the sick: but with some of these scantily-proved remedies of great significance, we need all the light that can be thrown upon them by those who have actually experienced, on their state of health, the effect of the subversive–i.e. curative agent; together with the localities or organs primarily hit, and in exactly what manner. Little, actual pictures of drug-action, by keen and competent observers, are invaluable. Even Allen in his Keynotes, where he gives so many of the guiding symptoms of Tuberculinum, does not notice the headache, “deep in”, recorded by these three doctors.
Dr. H. C. Allen, in his larger Materia Medica of the Nosodes, gives a long Schema of Tuberculinum: but, curiously, he does not tells us there on what authorities, or how provings were made. Nash quotes Allen’s smaller Keynotes (which gives many invaluable indications for the use of the drug); and gives cases, to prove its great value.
And now, let us take NASH’S little list of indications…
“Cosmopolitan: never satisfied to remain in one place long: wants to travel.
“Wandering pains in limbs and joints: stiff when beginning to move: (<) standing: (>) continued motion.
“Longs for open air, wants door and windows open, or to ride in a strong wind.
“Takes cold on least exposure, can’t get rid of one before another comes.
“Emaciation, even while eating well: so hungry must get up nights to eat.
“Pain through left upper lung to back. Tubercular deposits being there.
“Persons with a history of tuberculosis in the family.
“Symptoms ever changing, begin suddenly, ceasing suddenly.”
HERING, Guiding Symptoms, says that fragmentary provings were made by Swan: and he quotes, inter alia, Burnett’s New Cure of Consumption.
KENT gives many of his personal observations, “recorded in his interleaved copy of Hering’s Guiding Symptoms”; these “now guide me in the use of Tuberculinum”, and on these he drew for his Lecture. We will extract and condense.
“I do not use Tuberc. merely because it is a nosode, or with the idea that generally prevails of using nosodes–that is, a product of the disease for the disease, and the results of the disease that is not the better idea of Homoeopathy. It belongs to a hysterical homoeopathy that prevails in this century. Yet much good has come out of it. It is to be hoped that provings may be made, so that we may be able to prescribe it just as we would use any other drug.
“It is deep-acting, constitutionally deep. When our deepest remedies act only a few weeks, and they have to be changed, this medicine comes in as one of the remedies–when the symptoms agree.
“One of its most prominent uses is in intermittent fever: stubborn cases that relapse and continue relapsing. When the well-selected remedy has acted, and the constitution shows a tendency to break down, and the well-selected remedy does not hold because of vital weakness and deep-seated tendencies; then it is that this remedy sometimes comes in.
“Burnett dropped an idea that has been confirmed many times– patients who have inherited phthisis, whose parents have died of phthisis are often of feeble vitality. They are always tired: take on sicknesses easily : are anaemic, nervous, waxy or pale. Burnett evidently used this medicine in a sort of routine way for this kind of constitution, which he called `Consumptiveness.
“The mental symptoms that have given way when the patient was under treatment, the mental symptoms I have seen crop out under the provings, and the mental symptoms that I have so often seen associated when the patient is poisoned by the tubercular toxins are such as belong to many complaints and are cured by Tuberculinum. Hopeless: aversion to mental work: anxiety evening till midnight: anxiety during fever: loquacity during fever: weary of life; cosmopolitan: thoughts intrude and crowd upon one another during the night. A person running down, never finding the right remedy, or relief only momentarily, has a constant desire to change, to travel, to go somewhere and do something different. That cosmopolitan condition of mind belongs so strongly to the one who needs Tuberculinum. Persons on the borderland of insanity: and phthisis and insanity are convertible conditions, the one falls into the other.
“The most violent and the most chronic periodical sick headaches, periodicaL nervous headaches.
Tuberc. breaks up the tendency to periodical headache, when the symptoms agree.
“Sore, bruised feeling. Aching of bones. Sore, bruised eyeballs, sensitive to touch, and on turning the eyes sideways.
“Face red to purple. Aversion to all food. Aversion to meat– impossible to eat it. Desire for large quantities of cold water during chill and heat. Craving for cold milk. Emptiness, faint feeling; all-gone, hungry feeling that drives him to eat.
“Emaciation : gradually losing flesh: a growing weakness: growing fatigue.
“Constipation is a strong feature of Tuberculinum. Stool large and hard, then diarrhoea. Excessive sweat in chronic diarrhoea. Driven out of bed with a diarrhoea, or diarrhoea worse in the morning. (Aloe, Sulphur)
“Menses too early, too profuse, long-lasting: amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea.
“Desire for deep-breathing. Longs for open air.
“Especially when the tubercular deposits begin in apex of left lung: an indication verified by a number of observers.
