It has become an approbrium of Homoeopathic practice that post- nasal and pharyngeal catarrhs are frequently not cured by internal medication. Specialists, treating nose, throat and ear affections are daily receiving patients who have been dismissed by Homoeopathic physicians as incurable, or who have become disgusted with the general practitioner.
I grant that one who devotes his exclusive attention to a given subject should be better qualified therein than those engaged in common practice. But the question is not one of comparative success in the employment of internal medicine; it is one of contrast between local applications and legitimate Homoeopathy. If the system of Hahnemann is universally true, that is if it is founded upon law and does not constitute a mere rule, it must as assuredly remove a post-nasal catarrh as a sore-throat or a cold on the chest.
There are three modes of defence, one or another of which is invariably employed in defending Homoeopathy against a charge of inefficiency; first, that if one can obtain the similimum, the cure or relief will follow; secondly, a local affection is always a part of a more or less latent constitutional dyscrasia, and therefore cannot be permanently cured until the latter is; thirdly, the failure is claimed to be due to errors in selection or in potency, in repetition or in the administering of drugs singly or in alternation.
To all such illogical proposition, I emphatically object. I believe that the similimum will help, because I believe in the universality of the law, and consequently. I reject alternation of remedies. I accept the law because I think that it is logically deducible from revealed truth. If any one agrees with me here, my strictures do not apply to him. They apply to those who admit the truth of Homoeopathy, because, they have tested it and have been satisfied from experience; and this class includes the entire medical profession.
Having proved Homoeopathy, then, in the same manner as did Hahnemann, the only reasonable position is that the system is effective because it cures. When, therefore, it fails, a consistent defence is not paucity of material and knowledge, but an earnest, painstaking and persistent series of experiments instituted as a crucial test.
With all due deference to specialists, they have not carried out this plan. Failing with the means at hand, they have felt compelled to preserve their reputations by resorting to collateral measures; for more is expected of them by the public, than of the general practitioner. Specialists should spare no pains to institute provings.
There are many unproved or partially proved plants and minerals which are known to exert some sort of an influence upon the naso-pharyngeal passages. It is incumbent upon those most interested to thoroughly explore the subject and determine what this influence is in each drug. A few years ago we could not readily cure cases, which now, since the introduction of Sanguinaria Nitrated and Antimonium Auratum, are easily relieved.
I propose to enumerate the remedies known to affect the posterior nares, and to offer some suggestions concerning a few not often employed.
The Known drugs are :-
Aconite.
Aesculus Hip.
Alumen.
Alumina.
Anacardium.
Ant.Crud.
Ant. Sulph. Auratum.
Argentum Nit.
Ammonium Bromium
Baptisia.
Bryonia
Baryta
Calcarea Ost.
Calcarea Sulphur
Carbon An.
Carbo Veg.
Cepa
Coccus.
Coral. Rub.
Cistus.
Cinnabaris
Chlorine
Digitalis
Eriodictyon
Euphrasia
Fagopyrum
FerrumPhosphorus
Flouric Ac.
Gallic Ac.
Granatum
Hepar
Helianthus
Hydrastis
Iodine
Iris Vers.
Kali bichromicum
Kali Jod.
Kali Mur.
Kreosote
Lycopodium
Mercury
MercuriusBin.Iodium
