Dr. Kent: Speaking to another point: I have had a great deal of experience with tubercular glands on both sides of the neck. Each had about four or five fistulous openings.
She had had such glands for some time:
The neck was whittled out, and very thin, the fistulous opening persisting.
She had a tuberculosis family history; and:
Other tubercular symptoms, with these glands.
I started her on a series of Tuberculinum bovinum. I used the bovinum in that case because it comes from the glands of the cow’s neck. She was kept under a series of potencies, probably to the ten thousandth. Then those glands all subsided and healed, and the neck there was perfectly smooth.
She afterwards became pregnant and brought forth a healthy, perfectly normal child.
Before she finished nursing the child those tubercular glands rose again.
I then had her stop the nursing, placing her again under treatment.
At the end of about six or eight months she appeared perfectly well and, so far as I have heard, she has not had any return nor any sign from those tubercular glands of the neck.
Another case was operated three times by our excellent Dr. Pratt, here in Chicago; the enlargement repeatedly returned, and he operated three times. When they reappeared for the fourth time, advised by one of her friends she came to me. Her symptoms were clear for Tuberculinum bovinum. There were but two remaining glands, which became inflamed and nodular hard masses and she was suffering from the swelling of the tissues. Tuberculinum bovinum took down all that swelling.
She came to me some time in the winter and I treated her until summer; she appeared to be perfectly well, a picture of health, and gaining in flesh.
Then her mother thought her well enough to spend a week in Canada where she could have a nice home and a big time. So she went up there. I advised and urged her most earnestly to remain where I could keep watch of her, so that when her symptoms should begin to return I might give the indicated remedy; but, No, No, she must go.
So soon as she arrived there in the cold weather and storms, she took cold; the cold went to her lungs and she died of tuberculosis. I am satisfied from the way she had progressed that, if she had been where I could watch her and keep her free from colds, she would have regained her health.
So I have seen any number of patients, with such glands of the neck, entirely restored to health by the aid of Tuberculinum bov.
Dr. Kent speaking to another point: After removing the adenoids the child goes right on with whatever tendency happens to exist in that child.
Every individual born at the present time, with all the fierce tendencies of our living bad governing, bad rearing, bad clothing and bad feeding, that we have at present in the entire human race is capable, just as soon as you thwart one mischievous bent, of developing something else! No one can foresee what that will be.
Suppress an eruption: some will then have brain trouble; others, lung trouble, and others will develop abdominal troubles. Whatever is their weakest point will then be manifest.
If this child had been permitted to go right on with the adenoids, the disease directions would have been continuously towards the adenoids; to increase and intensify the catarrh. But somebody operated: cut out the entire activity there, probably cleared it all up.
If he had left a part of the condition, there would have been, for this particular kind of disease, the things directing his attention there.
When that was carved out, so beautifully removed, then the next weakening that the child had would manifest: in this case, as hayfever; so that has developed.
The probability is that the same remedy would be indicated now as was indicated before from center to circumference.
We can never tell what will happen, or what the direction will be, when you remove adenoids.
If the tonsils are not removed, it may be to the tonsils;
Ear troubles may develop;
It may be lung-trouble:
Almost anything may appear; but it is generally internal: very seldom is it an eruption.
If eruptions are removed, one can never tell what center will then be attacked.
What I wish to say is, that any part of the body may be affected, according to what is the weakened place.
When I make a test with tuberculinum, the response for which I first look is:
The mother says the boy feels so much better;
He eats better;
He is feeling better, in a few weeks after he takes it.
If any such response is obtained, it is possible, if the symptoms are pretty certain, that I may test with another dose but generally I am pretty well satisfied that Tuberculinum is the basis of it.
If you have the symptoms of Tuberculinum, of course you will stand by it; but in many instances, with those puny things with large glands, stopped up noses, breathing through the mouth, and semi-idiotic or degenerate, we have nothing but the physical condition on which to depend: no symptoms. Hunt here, hunt there, hunt somewhere else; you have nothing on which to depend: everything is suppression.
I test such cases at once with TUBERCULINUM; or:
If there is pain with Psorinum; and these tests are legitimate experiments with me.
First, one dose of one of these remedies, according to the symptoms: as the symptoms develop, I try another dose.
The second dose may fail.
If a remedy is specifically indicated by the symptoms, I use this specifically homoeopathic remedy and then:
Continue with a series of potencies.
By developing the remedies and working up the vital strength, the child will begin to give symptoms; the patient will begin to have symptoms, here and there. It is a brilliant sight, to observe the anti-psoric remedy standing out, right clearly; then I follow that out.
After getting indications, I commence to sound first the responses to my test for TUBERCULINUM, to see if possibly there is a tubercular test in this constitution, a tubercular tendency with that which is indescribable, that thing we have never been able to put into language; I am guided by that instinct of which I am conscious, but cannot put into words: you will have to imagine it.
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.