WE attempted in our October issue to give some of the homoeopathic remedies in ANAEMIA, with indication for their use, and had intended to supplement them with an Editorial: but at the last moment there came a demand for some help in regard to homoeopathic air precautions” and what here follows got crowded out.
Now, in regard to anaemia, we are to be obsessed, in these days, with liver preparations, some of which, in some cases, particularly in pernicious anaemia, give very substantial help. But the public, via the Press, having got hold of the idea, one knows a young women, a prey in turn to every diet and slimming fad confidently advocated, who, with anaemia “on the brain”, liver for months almost entirely on almost raw liver ! Everlasting anxiety in regard to ones food does not make for good digestion or normal assimilation. St. Paul was a far finer dietician: “eat that which is set before thee, and give God thanks”.
Then, blood-transfusion is much to the front: but in these days it is not simple a matter as it sounds. Blood ? but not any blood: the right kind of blood. And the question, what may be introduced, of possible disease, with somebody elses blood ? We shall hear more of this anon: and personally, one would not care to risk it.
Then, in regard to the ancient ion- therapy: we forget to mention Ferrum protoxalate, so long in use in our hospital, in low potencies and rather frequent doses; this has been found an excellent way of supplying iron: and is said to be its most easily absorbed preparation. But we know that iron, in excess, or when ferruginous waters are consumed for a length of time, may give rise to a profound anaemia: therefore iron is homoeopathic to some forms of anaemia: but will not cure all cases, as is acknowledged.
Some have said that manganese is always associated with iron; and have suggested that it is the manganese, and not the iron, that dose the trick. Manganum has helped, to our knowledge, cases of “wondering ” rheumatism, associated with anaemia.
But anaemia, “want of blood”, Bloodlessness” may have quite a number of different causes, a variety of laboratory findings, and be secondary to many different diseases.
Among the first are, of course, big haemorrhages; small, constant losses of blood, as from piles; blood poisonings of many kinds;-from sepsis; from various diseases, malignant, specific, tuberculous, rheumatic, parasitic; and even from that little suspected cause, constant leakage of coal gases from rubber tubings or ill-fitting taps, now far more dangerous where the gas is reinforced, in regard to its luminosity, with carbon monoxide; that deadly, non-odorous gas which, making a stable compound with haemoglobin, impairs its vital function as a carrier of oxygen.
X-rays, again. We are told that “Death has also been caused by their destructive action on the blood-forming organs, producing a plastic anaemia.”-(TAYLORS Practice of Medicine p.5.).
In regard to pernicious anaemia, a curious fact is recorded, “Recent observations have shown that, although a diet containing meat is unable to cure pernicious anaemia, yet, if the meat is digested in the normal human stomach for an hour, and is then withdrawn and administered to a patient with pernicious anaemia, a cure takes place.
Thus, healthy gastric digestion produces a nitrogenous proteolytic substance ordinarily stored in the liver and kidneys and necessary for the production of normal red cells; but this is not formed in pernicious anaemia, because, owing to gastritis, there is a deficiency of pepsin and hydrochloric acid. In this connection it is to noted that the anaemias due to sprue and to the worm Bothriocephalus latus have a blood picture similar to pernicious anaemia; and there is also a deficiency of gastric secretion in these diseases.-TAYLORS Practice of Medicine, 1930 Ed., p. 509.).
Modern medical science concerns itself largely with endproducts; with obvious pathology: seeking to discover “the” treatment for this or that disease; as if disease were an entity, to be poisoned, or excised, instead of being the outcome of some more occult systemic condition; even reaction, as some would have it; a desperate effort to save life.
Anyway, Homoeopathy, on the other hand, concerns itself with healthy life and with drugs that can vitiate and threaten that life in different ways and degrees. It seeks to find out what can harm life, in what exact way, in order to use that self-same instrument in fine potentization, as the absolute stimulant, in each case, to reaction.
Drugs, which in large doses, poison and destroy life, and lesser doses in lesser doses inhibit or paralyse, in much smaller doses actually stimulate the self-same cells and tissues. And it is therefore that, by experimenting with drugs on the healthy, we learn how to use them with precision to stimulate reaction in the sick.
Dr. Cronin Lowe (recent Liverpool Homoeopathic Congress) described 100 cases of rheumatism investigated at their Hospital during the past two years. He reported that three out of every four of the cases were women; 50 per cent. of the more serious cases were married women, while nearly one-third were definitely anaemic.
The moral of which is-as we read it ! Never forget Medorrhinum, or Thuja, or Nitric acid as possible remedies in the chronic diseases of women, whether rheumatic or no; also in the rheumatic or choreic affections of children.
Nitric acid. Excessive physical irritability. Twitchings in various parts.
Hip as if sprained. Pain in legs as from excessive fatigue. As if small of back were stiff. Arms as if beaten. As if dogs were gnawing flesh and bones; as if sinews were pulled up; bends of knees swollen: with all its “splinter-pains”: worse on touch. Rheumatic pains mostly in forearms and fingers. Many uterine symptoms, with leucorrhoea: ropy, greenish, acrid, brown, offensive; or flows like water, clear and acrid, down legs. Worse cold.
Thuja. Painful laxity of hip joints. Tension hip joint to groin, and along posterior thigh down to knee. Weariness, muscles of thighs. Pains in feet and ankles: could not walk (after suppressed gonorrhoea).
Rheumatism, with numb feeling; worse in warmth; from moving; at night after 12 p.m.; better from cold and after sweating. Warts and ulcers, vulval. Left ovary inflamed: pains may extend to groin; to left leg; sometimes burning, etc. etc.
Medorrhinum. A characteristic is: Tender, itching ball and soles of feet. Pains, etc., worse daytime (rev. of Luet.). Pain between scapulae; whole length of spine sore to touch. Lumbar vertebrae painful and sensitive.
But some recent cases are pointing also to the extraordinary value of our Streptococcic preparations, in the potencies, not only in chronic rheumatism, but in the cardiac disabilities it may leave. Some day we hope to give a number of telling, illustrative cases. Meanwhile we give this one.
AORTIC AND MITRAL STENOSIS.
Mrs. Annie H. (43), there children. First seen at Out-patients August, 1933.
Rheumatic fever at 12 years old, and again badly, at 18. It was this second attack, she said, that damaged her heart. Also, she had been less well since flu two years ago.
Symptoms suggested Phosphorus: and Phos., generally in the 12th and 30th potencies, and Arnica, also in the 12th and 30th potencies, helped her again and again, when she came, every couple of months, “to be kept going”. She quickly lost the palpitation that to her at night and prevent sleep; and the heart became less enlarged. She would report, “Heart only worries me sometimes”.
The heart was examined again and again by different doctors who came to see work; but, really, one looked upon it as a case where one just helped her along by prescribing what was demanded by the symptoms of the moment-colds-digestive troubles and so on.
The recently, a change ! We will epitomize the actual case notes from now on, as they are extraordinarily interesting and illuminating.
November 30th, 1937. Dyspnoea again. Heart as before She said, “It was all since rheumatic fever at 18”, she had it also at 12, but (?) heart not affected then. Streptococcin 200, three doses six-hourly.
January 9th, 1938. She had had a return of the old rheumatic pains, “so when she had rheumatic fever”, eleven days after she started the medicine. They lasted for two days. She “could not stand”. Now, heart fair. Feeling better. Is definitely improving.
March 1st. Feels much better. “Only wants the medicine to keep her going”.
April 8th. Better. “Heart very well.” More indigestion lately. Everybody says she looks very well.
June 14th. Very well. Digestion easier: only one turn 14 days ago. Heart does not bother her as it used; only if she feels very energetic. “Better November.” Looks very well. “People who havent seen her for some time say, My ! you look ever so much better. What have you been doing ?”.
August 9th. Very well. Feels the heat. Doesnt feel her heart as she used to. Streptococcin was now repeated:-Why ?.
Oct. 11th. Turns of indigestion. Only feels heart again recently since indigestion. Was very well till “the Scare” (Gas masks, etc.). Volunteers that she “has been very much better than for years since last November”. Looks absolutely well. Heart again examined: “Mitral and aortic stenosis. Cardiac rhythm good.”.
