Another such remedy for desperate and rapid sickness is Rattle-snake poison-CROTALUS HORRIDUS. Blueness is a feature of Lachesis, yellowness and jaundice of Crot.. Rattle-snake poison gives you a beautiful picture of black-water fever, for which it may almost be said to be specific. I have seen black- water fever once, in one of my brothers, an R.E. officer, who had been doing delimitation work in Africa with some French officers. It was on the banks of the Gambia that he must have become infected. On the Gambia, we claimed ten miles on each side of the river, while the French had the hinterland. The natives used to come, he told us, entreating that their villages might be British. Well, he had been home some time before the blow fell: ill and not ill-that is to say, the least chill gave him malaria, for which he took, and had been taking, large doses of Quinine. I shall never forget the suddenness, or the deadly rapidity of the illness. He was rather irritable one evening-most unusual with him!-and next morning he sent for his father. ” I have got black-water fever.” He was bleeding everywhere; urine black and almost solid; stools black; and he began, in a few hours, the deadly black vomit of bad cases, with its peculiar, indescribable noise in retching. He was yellow; in a few hours his chest was pale green, and he could not lift his head from the pillow. A grandson of Hahnemann lived near by, and we sent to him for some Crot. in the middle of the next night. He was an old man, and merely sent it. I have that little bottle now. Well, after a very few doses of Crot., alternated by the doctor in attendance, with Phosphorus (a somewhat like remedy in the production of haemorrhages) he got rapidly well. Some weeks later, he had a huge abscess in the palm of his right hand-its position probably determined by the pressure of a golf club; this was opened, and again a few doses of Crot. helped to make him quickly well.
Crot. and Lachesis are perhaps our greatest remedies for blood-poisoning. And snake venoms, acting with great rapidity, are indispensable for disease of like intensity and rapidity.
Another deadly reptile poison we use is that of the spider, LATRODECTUS MACTANS. In whatever part of the body a person is bitten by this horrible spider, the results is the most agonizing heart pain. This pain extends down the left arm, which becomes numb and pulseless, Here you see a perfect picture of angina pectoris: and one has seen its magic work in angina pectoris more than once.
And here, another point. Poisons, used as such, or as remedies, affect primarily certain definite organs and tissues. They may especially affect heart, liver, spleen, lungs, blood, skin; and always by “sick-making”, or “sick-curing”. Because that, only, which can make sick has power to cure. That is why Homoeopathy is scientific. It KNOWS beforehand. It is most truly on the post.
But besides reptile and animal poisons-such as the poisons of diseases, which homoeopaths have been using for the last hundred years, prepared always according to the SAFE methods of Hahnemann (you shall hear about that later) we have hundreds of plant poisons; and these can be deadly enough, till tamed by Hahnemann. Power is always dangerous, but can be safely and delicately employed, if we know how. A steam hammer can pulp your finger, or daintily crack a nut. Electricity can rend trees, fire houses, burn and blast and destroy; but it will boil your kettle, toast your bread, and give you the music of all the capitals of Europe on your wireless. The greater the power, the greater its possibilities-for evil, or for good.
These tiny globules of sugar of milk, at which the unlearned have scoffed for a century, contain the venom of one of the most deadly of reptiles, in healing from-potentized and safe.
Among plant poisons, you have been told how BELLADONNA poisoning gives the most perfect picture of scarlet fever; and scarlet fever has been treated by homoeopaths ever since Hahnemann’s day with a minimal mortality, and, moreover, with an absence of the complications and sequelae that are apt to attend scarlet fever when not treated by “similars”. I remember when a student, listening to a lecture on scarlet fever from the Dean of out School of Medicine, She made me think, ” What a terrible disease! I would not care to have that!” She described its frequent bequest-kidney disease-for life. She told how it was often followed by rheumatic fever, perhaps damaging the heart for life; or by middle-ear disease, perhaps necessitating a mastoid operation; by different disease of bone, with their operations; by-I forget the rest! – but it did not sound too cheerful. Well, Dr.Edwin Neatby, the Father of your Missionary School of Medicine, once assured me that, working as a homoeopath through severe epidemics of scarlet fever, years ago when he had a very large general practice, and before all the cases were interned in fever hospitals and locked inexorably away from the mercies of Homoeopathy, he could not remember a case of scarlet fever that did not clear up under Belladonna, and without any of the complications and sequelae.
But Belladonna can do more that abort, or cure; it can prevent. Hahnemann was on this the start of his discoveries, when, in a houseful of scarlet fever, one child only escaped, a child he was treating with Belladonna. Belladonna is so like the real thing, that it can, if administered where there is risk of infection, raise the body’s resting powers, after the manner of the real thing, and so forestall it.
It is a tragedy that these acute fevers have passed, practically, out of out hands. It is on these that Homoeopathy can most easily demonstrate its powers. WE WANT A FEVER HOSPITAL. By the way, speaking of Belladonna….. a man narrowly escaped hanging a few years ago for the death of several persons who had eaten a rabbit pie made by him. Luckily it was pointed out that rabbits can eat Belladonna with impunity perhaps they have too little brain for Belladonna to affect! – and that the poison got into the pie via the rabbit, and not the man, who was innocent.
The great action of Belladonna is on the brain : it is one of the violently deliriant drugs. Babies with undeveloped brains are said to tolerate larger does than grown-ups. One learns these things in Old School text-books. The ordinary doctor’s idea is, ” How much can I give without danger?” – the homoeopath’s idea is, ” How little can I give to get the result I want?” Ours is safer! I remember, when we were students, we were told by our lecturer that the dose given in the text-books for Santonin (for worms) had more than once caused death. He advised us to cut it down!
You will love your remedies, when you come to know and trust them. The Romance of Homoeopathy is positively fascinating.
Another plant poison that we use, infrequently, but in his in its place, to save life, is Ailanthus. Ailanthus glandulosa. “Tree of Heaven”, is a large and beautiful tree. I remember two of them, in our garden at Wyvenhoe, when we were children, Years ago the child of a homoeopathic doctor was taken frightfully ill; it looked like a case of malignant scarlet fever, the skin livid, with purple patches; extreme prostration, and torpor. The father was in despair, thinking his child must die, when it solved the question by vomiting Ailanthus berries. And ever since, Homoeopaths have used Ailanthus to cure these very desperate cases of scarlet fever.
Mineral poisons, again, are among our very important remedies : Arsenic, for instance.
A couple of years ago, in hospital, a man was seen, deeply jaundiced, unconscious, bringing up mouthfuls of dark blood; convulsed, from time to time; dying. It was a puzzle-case. Jaundice? Yes! – but vomiting of blood, and convulsions, do not fit in! a homoeopath goes for the symptoms; and the symptoms were undoubtedly those of Phosphorus, or Arsenic, and it was evidently a case of poisoning. He died in a few hours, and the Coroner was informed, and a pathologist of renown came to remove organs for examination, surprised that we should have spotted the poison, ” Yes, it was Arsenic or Phosphorus; he thought more likely the former, as more common.” And so it turned out.
One cannot imagine a more brutal way of murdering a fellow- creature than by Arsenic; whether slowly, or by one fatal dose, as in this case.
Arsenic causes the most perfect picture of ptomaine poisoning, and is, therefore, practically specific for that condition – with its agonies of vomiting and purging; its restlessness, its most profound anxiety and prostration.
One has seen several such cases. In one, a woman, staggering down the out-patient stairs, with her husband’s help, looking more dead than alive. She had been ” vomiting and purging ” all night, and ever since. ” No! she could not come into hospital; she had a baby at home and small children.” So the only thing to do was to cover her up on a couch, give her Arsenicum in high potency, and send the husband away for a couple of hours, while one saw what Arsenicum could do for her. Looking in, after half an hour, ” Could she have a cup of tea?” ” Why, yes!” ( The magic was working!) Another hour, she was found sitting by the couch, up, and ready to go home.
