Another such case : the police `phoned through to one of our doctors, ” A patient of yours is very ill in the cloak-room of Victoria station; she wishes you informed.” As he could not go, I went, to find her, a pail beside her, propped against the shoulder of the senior cloak-room a attendant; a case of diarrhoea with constant retching and vomiting. She was shivering’ cold; collapsed. They were awfully good to her there. It seems she had come up from the country that afternoon for shopping, and some food that she had eaten had poisoned her. There was a fight with the ambulance people, who “could only take her to Charing Cross where they took their patients”. They gave in, after telephoning for permission to take her to our hospital instead. There was a fight with the buffet people for a little brandy, for which she begged, since “it was past 5 p.m.” – but she promptly vomited it-so that was merely lost time. I sat by her, while she vomited, in the ambulance; hurried her into bed, with hot bottles, hurried some Arsenicum alb. 1M into her, then waited while she grew warm and quiet. She only vomited once after she got into the hospital, but that was before the Arsenicum. Next morning, she was found dressing to go home-herself again, and very grateful. Well might Hahnemann say, ” God’s good gift, Homoeopathy!” One of our doctors was converted to homoeopathic potencies by a like experience with ptomaine poisoning and Arsenicum, when in America. That was evidence enough for him!.
So you need, for desperate sickness, desperate remedies : but the symptoms must correspond. One remedy will not do for another. And you know exactly what every poison can do curatively, by finding out exactly the fiendish things it can do poisonously.
That is why lay homoeopaths often do great work. That is why we train you Missionaries in order that, far from professional help, you may yet be able to obey Our Lord’s command, which was not only ” Go ye into all the world, and preach the good news to every creature,” but, also, ” HEAL THE SICK.” Of course, the healer should have full medical training; it is most important that he should be able to recognize its possibilities; but it is even more important that he should recognize the remedy. As Browning puts it :
” In this world, who can do a thing, will not”
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive;
Yet the will’s somewhat – somewhat, too, the power –
And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.”
The lay prescriber is only a “half-man”; he lacks so much that may mean safely for his patient. On the other hand, the doctor who does not know Homoeopathy is only the complementary “half-man” He lacks what could mean, so often, healing and life.
A great and deadly poison, already mentioned, may help you to save life-often many lives in day in the tropics, viz. the corrosive sublimate of mercury-our Mercurius corrosivus.
Another patient in the hospital-in the women’s ward, under the gynaecologist, a very good prescriber, who failing to help her or to check her diarrhoea, called in one of the physicians. She was very collapsed, with bloody diarrhoeic stools, and, to the disgust of the physician, nothing helped her, and she died. Post mortem they found the intestines thickened, and green, and gangrenous. The wretched woman had taken corrosive sublimate to get rid of her unborn baby, and in trying to murder her infant had destroyed herself-in a particularly unpleasant way! Always remember Mercurius cur. for dysentery As said, the worse the distress-the more terrible the “never-get-done” straining, the more the blood and slime, the more certainly Mercurius cor. will help. We get told how our missionaries score here, sometimes to the surprise of some doctor who knows nothing of Homoeopathy.
CHOLERA is a long story. It must wait for another day. Cholera, once, publicly, twined the laurel wreathes for the brows of Hahnemann. Europe rang with his fame in those evil days.
I have been telling you about some desperate remedies for desperate conditions; but, abroad in the tropics, diseases are so urgent, and so quickly fatal. You, especially, will need to know these.
But do not run away wit the idea that our remedies are all of that description. The stinging-nettle cures burns for us, in the most miraculous way-and gout-and some cases of malaria. Marigold and St. John’s Wort cure wounds and cuts; the latter especially injuries to nerves, and to parts rich in nerves, as lips and fingers. Arnica cures bruises and injuries to soft parts-may cure people years later, who have never recovered form some ancient injury.
The there are the homely “polycrests” – remedies of constitutions-calcarea, Sulphur, Natrum mur., Lycopodium, Sepia; and the remedies of chills and fevers-Aconite, Bryonia-invaluable in diseases less violent and not so rapidly fatal, yet which may threaten life, or make it a burden. These are less spectacular and arresting-merely the modest and efficient handmaidens of our everyday life.
II.
PEOPLE talk of Allopathic medicines, and Homoeopathic medicines.
What is the difference? None, necessarily. The difference is, not in the medicine, but in its application.
An allopath who (as we said) uses Ipecac. to cure vomiting; Cantharis or Terebinth for inflammation of kidneys; Salicylic acid or Quinine for Meniere’s disease; or Vaccines, is practising Homoeopathy.
Why? Because Ipecac. is their most precious emetic; Terebinth and Cantharis both inflame kidneys; and Vaccines are crudely homoeopathic, changed by preparation, as Hahnemann puts it, “from Idem” (the same) “into Simillimum” (similar).
Bits of Homoeopathy are scattered through Old School text- books. Norman Walker, in his Introduction to Dermatology, writes of Potassium Iodide (p.47): “In rare cases the lesions produced are at first solid, and later break down in manner so similar to gumma, that one or two patients have been dosed into their trouble.” And in Frederick Taylor’s Practice of Medicine we read that ” Charcot, remembering the effect of large doses of quinine in producing deafness and tinnitus,” used this drug in Meniere’s disease, with success. While Gowers found Sodium salicylate useful here…..
All medicines, by whoever applied, and whatever their nature, ARE homoeopathic, if used to relieve conditions similar to those they are capable of provoking. and a homoeopath could do quite good work in an allopathic surgery with allopathic text- books for his guide; only he would use the allopathic medicines in exactly the opposite way to that intended : i.e. he would employ purgatives for diarrhoea, emetics to control vomiting, diuretics for enuresis, etc. But he would use a very different dosage; and he would get-very different results!
You see, it is not the name of the medicine, or the fact that it is peculiar to our vast homoeopathic Materia Medica-or even that it is prepared and sold by a homoeopathic chemist, or prescribed by a homoeopathic doctor, that makes it homoeopathic…. It is only homoeopathic if its salient and characteristic symptoms correspond with those we are seeking to cure.
The cottage wife who doses her baby with castor oil for diarrhoea, and cures it, is practising Homoeopathy. She gives it, in common with members of the profession, with the idea of washing away some irritant in the bowel that is causing the diarrhoea. But, generally, after the dose of castor oil, there is no evacuation-to her surprise.
Remember always, wherever you go, and whatever you see, that what any substance-medicine or poison-can cause, that it can cure; and nothing else.
If you should come across astonishing cures by natives, with plants of which you know nothing, take heed how you despise them. Find out all you can about them. Look out for power everywhere. You can use these strange substances, or help us to use them, for “like” conditions. They can be “proved” and so made scientific and absolutely reliable.
In such ways the homoeopathic Materia Medica has grown, and grows.
Some of our very great remedies-Gelsemium-Baptisia- Caulophyllum-Cimicifuga-have been learnt by homoeopathic doctors from the North American Indians. God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. We have no monopoly of knowledge. In company with the great Newton, we are just children, picking up here and there, a pebble beside the ocean of Truth.
Doctors who go to the ends of the earth and, wedded to what they have been taught, try to crush out native healing, are certainly not advancing knowledge.
My Father was always greatly interested in medicine. When a (very) young officer of Engineers in the West Indies, people there were dying like flies from “yellow jack”. The treatment of he doctors was the favourite “blue pill and black draught”. He was Aide-de-Camp to the Governor, Sir Charles Darling. Lady Darling died of yellow fever. a black doctor saw her in consultation. He said, ” My opinion, is, BLEED COPIOUS.” My Father found that the people with yellow fever who fell into the hands of the old native women with their indigenous remedies, generally recovered while the patients of the doctors died. Don’t be above learning form the old-native woman, if she can cure what you cannot.
