The patient took it. Next day he said he had not vomited once. In then increased the quantity of cream of dessert-spoonful doses, every hour. On the following day he complained of severe pain the stomach. I felt a large lump there the size of a fist. This his physician had pronounced to be cancer. It was none. I gave him two globules of Hyoscyamus on the tongue. He had no more pain after this.
I now ordered a tablespoonful of beef tea to be taken on the one-half hour, and the same quantity of arrow- root on the next half-hour, turn about. The young man kept on gaining weight steadily and in a short time he returned to his island a well man. When he received my bill, in the amount of one hundred dollars, he paid it promptly, at the same time telling me that I was the most sensible doctor he had ever met, and at the same time the most stupid, because he had expected to pay me no less than a thousand!.
This patient recommended a great many others to me, from Cuba.
CASE 4.
Later, while still living on Walnut Street, there came to my office a father and son. The son was in almost the same condition as the case just described. The father asked me what he should do. I told him to give his son small quantities of food, and often. When I turned my back the two slipped out of my office without paying a fee. I subsequently learned that the father said: “Anybody could have given him the same advice!” And yet it cured his boy! There is much truth in small suggestions like these, often overlooked, or disregarded by reason of their apparent insignificance.
Hering did not contribute much of clinical material from his practice to our literature. He made constant use of cases cured by others. In fact he remarked somewhere that he intended to write a certain book as soon as he could accumulate a thousand or more typical cases. This book was not written.
Hering never failed to write down the symptoms of his patients at their first visit, and again at future visits, for which purpose he carried with him a small note-book to the bedside, and in his office he used tablets of note-paper about three by four in size. While there had accumulated stacks upon stacks of such notes, carefully arranged upon shelves, not one of them could be completely deciphered to be of any use, not even by those among us who were familiar with his handwriting.
Other papers on Materia Medica and other subjects, though hard to read, are not beyond recovery. Since, after his death, I am probably the only person living who can read the papers, I have made it my business through the many years that they have been in my possession, to rewrite, copy and translate most of them. There is much material particularly of what was written in German, that was copied by his secretary who wrote a clear hand, almost equal to engraving; all of it in ink which so far has withstood the corroding influence of time.
The paper, of the best, also hold well. Good Lotzbecker snuff which the doctor used and let fall among his papers and the leaves of his books, has preserved them from decay and the ravages of the bookworm.
Hering says both Hahnemann and Stapf kept records of their cases in blank books, or ledgers, in which a single page was devoted to each patient. Between lines there was left room for remarks. The symptoms were numbered. After each symptoms were placed the marks signifying better or worse, as the treatment progressed.
Hering was the first to condemn the giving of castor oil on the third day after childbirth, which was almost universally done to produce a bowel movement with the lying-in. He claims that the seventh day after childbirth is the natural time for passage; if it does not come then he advises a dose of Bryonia, or Nux vomica. We see with satisfaction that that practice of purging is being largely ignored even by the ordinary practitioners of medicine. Owing to sanitation and better care of the patient cases of puerperal fever are extremely rare.
Hepar sulphur. Before the advent of modern surgery Dr. Hering fought off lancing abscesses, which he thought bad practice, and unnecessary if Hepar, in a high potency, were given to the patient. This suggestion came from him as early as 1827, while in South America. At about the same time Hartmann, in Germany, introduced Mercurius.
I have heard Dr. Hering say that in five years he had not once prescribed either Hepar or Spongia, remedies then in general favour for so-called croup, and much abused, as was the case with Aconite. He had good results from Arsenicum in croup in cases of great weakness, or a suppressed urticaria; and Belladonna for the spasmodic variety.
Nitrum. A keynote of Nitrum is: Drinking often, but little at a time. The patient drinks but little at a time because the act of swallowing interferes with respiration. Hering says this is Grauvogls observation.
Euphrasia and Cepa. Attention is called to a comparison between these two remedies.
Hering laid stress upon the following with a complementary medicine where the previous remedy had ceased to be beneficial after waiting a reasonable time, with a similarly acting medicine, preferably one from another group, as for instance Belladonna after Rhus tox.; Pulsatilla after Nux vomica in many variations. The key to his will be found under Chapter 48, Relationship, in Guiding Symptoms, the Condensed Materia Medica, and in the Repertory to these works.
Certain remedies are inimical and should not be allowed to follow each other closely, as for instance: Phosphorus and Causticum, also Rhus tox, and Apis; likewise Nux vom. and Ignatia. Only one of them can be properly indicated.
This is well illustrated by Hering in an account he gives of selecting, for proving, a specimen of the drug aloes. He says: I went into a drugstore in Philadelphia (Morris) to buy some aloes. He showed me two kinds. I told him that both of them were adulterations. He sent his boy out to all the drugstores in town for samples. An immense heap of aloes was collected, but all of them were bogus. The druggist was chagrined.
He sent to New York for more samples. I came to examine this large assortment but did not find a single genuine specimen among them. At last I noticed that the druggist held back a small package, carefully wrapped in paper, which he did not seem willing to show me. I asked to see it. He handed it over, smiled as I sad, “This is genuine aloes. Where did you get it?” He confessed that he had stolen it from a collection in the Academy of Pharmacy, of which he was a trustee.
The sample had been brought into the country by an expedition that had sailed around the world which had received the specimen from the Sultan of Muscat, who grew the plant from which the substance is derived. When you break a piece of aloes the fracture must show a purplish golden hue, almost transparent. The adulterated specimens were boiled in certain oils to such a degree that they made the paper in which they came greasy.
Aloes has its sphere of action in the pelvis. There is great congestion there, with a feeling of fulness, as if everything was tending there. Haemorrhoidal tenesmus.
Hering got the Arum triphyllum (Jack-in-the-pulpit) from an up- country Pennsylvania German who had it from an old woman, in one of the valleys of Pennsylvania.
After a proving it became a valuable remedy in his hands for scarlet fever in its worst form.
Hering was called to see three children located in a basement on Cherry Street. The oldest child was in the last stage of the sickness, evidently dying. The second was in the second stage and very sick. The third had just begun to sicken. He thought of the Pennsylvania Germans remedy, the Arum triphyllum, which he administered to each of the three children, in the sixth dilution. All three recovered.
The chief indications for the remedy are soreness of the mouth, cracked lips and salivation. He tried the remedy again soon after, this time getting an aggravation, probably due to a lower potency; higher ones were made use of later.
Hamamelis (witch hazel) was suggested to Hering by a consumptive at the point of death, who controlled his haemorrhages with the quack medicine, which he himself had introduced, and which made him rich, but which he kept a secret. Hering thought if a substance can stop haemorrhages from a lung almost gone, it must be a good remedy.
The consumptive had a fair daughter who impressed the doctor. She revealed to him the formula. Her father had planted acres with the witch hazel, had built a distillery by which to extract the sap of the bush during the month of February, when it is strongest, just before the flowering season, when all plants are strongest in sap. Hering says if it had not been for consideration of the daughter, he would not have had any time for a man who discovered a healing remedy and guarded its secret for material gain.
Either everything is chance or all things that happen are governed by laws; otherwise where would a line be drawn between chance and rule?.
The side that hates will lose.
