I recently met an old friend who said that he and his sister had lately become interested in a dear little child whose parents had died of tuberculosis. These friends were trying to help the child along through school, but the school doctor said it was useless effort. that the child’s head was all stopped up with adenoids. This child was also stupid; it was sickly, having night sweats and many symptoms suggestive of TUBERCULINUM. My friend offered to pay for my attention but I said I would be as generous as he and that it would give me great pleasure to help the child; and I did.
I sent Tuberculinum.
After a short time the child was breathing through the nose and was gaining in school. In the course of about four months they thought the child was so much better that they showed her to the doctor to see if he still considered that adenoids were present. He said they surely were there, very marked, but that now he did not see them at all; that he also had heard of those things getting well of themselves.
I have cured probably 100 cases of adenoids with Tuberculinum alone, so that the children breathe through the nose, and close the mouth.
Only four weeks ago, a child with adenoids was brought to me; I couldn’t find much of anything else, except a history.
She was irritable;
Extremely stupid;
Unable to breath enough to keep going, day or night, except through the mouth; and the doctor said there was nothing to do with that child but to remove those adenoids by operation.
To-day I received a letter, after only four weeks, telling that the child is now breathing through her nose. Why, that is almost as quickly as you can do it with a knife or a red hot iron!
Yes, probably a hundred cases cured with Tuberculinum alone; that has some significance.
Another case I had took eighteen months for cure, but the father was a dyed-in- the-wool homoeopath and did not give up. He reported that the specialist had said: “It must be operated; you are criminal if you don’t do it at once.” But the father said: “My doctor don’t do such business.”
Well, sometimes the child was better, breathing through the nose for awhile; then it would take a little cold and the nose would close again.
In eighteen months the child was entirely well and is the picture of health:
There are several children in the family, and this one, who was such a poor, sickly, good for nothing baby that required eighteen months to cure with Tuberculinum, is the healthiest.
Many of these cases could be reported; it would be only about the same story over and over again. I advise you to study the symptoms.
Question: So often we have children brought to us with adenoids, on whom the operation has already been performed. What are we to do?
Dr. Kent: There you will not succeed so often as you would if they let the patient alone. This is your problem.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.