I hardly like to pen so remarkable a result, as it looks so strangely improbable……..Patient fell asleep within ten minutes, and uttered thereafter no further screams. He made a rapid and complete recovery, though his forehead still gives him a rather old-mannie look.
CASE IV.
In the early fall of this year, 1890, I was called upon to prescribe for a tall girl of 12 years of age, of a distinctly phthisic habit. She had a tedious little hack of a cough that had lasted for months, and refused to yield to the common homoeopathic remedies. As before stated, she was tall for her age; she had long fingers, almond-shaped nails, a long neck, indurated glands in the neck. Infrequent doses of the phthisic virus in high potency rapidly altered the entire face of the case, the cough went in ten days, and in a few weeks she was reported “perfectly well and getting quite fat.” Many of this young lady’s relatives have died of tuberculosis. It is in just this early stage of consumption that the virus acts with such promptitude and brilliancy. And I will add that the action of Psoricum is often very nearly equal to it in old cases, whereof I could cite some very notable examples, but here they would not be apposite.
CASE V.
In the early spring of 1887 a young lady of 15 years of age was brought to me from the North, for her age she was very big. She had very large tonsils, chronic running from the nose, worse in the early morning on rising; her speech was thick; her thorax, the so-called pigeon-breast; she menstruated freely; she has moist palms, and she perspires across the nose a good deal; she gets chilblains. She feels very chilly, and I find her spleen a good deal swelled. Distinct dullness on percussion at the apex of the right lung.
As patient had suffered badly from vaccination, I ordered my favorite arbor vitae. This brought no change for the better; her perspiration of chest, armpits, palms, nose and feet became very bad.
The virus of consumption was here administered; the thirtieth at twelve days interval, and after one month of this the perspirations had greatly diminished; after two months the dullness on percussion at the right apex had gone, the chest took on a much better shape (the depressed right side stood out much better). In another two months of the same medication she was in capital health, and her mother wrote me at the end of October, 1887,-“She is so well.”
And now, two years later, I am able to say that she has never looked back, and is a bonnie person-just a wee bit stout, perhaps. Patient had altogether forty-eight globules of the virus, of the thirtieth potency, spread over four months.
CASE VI.
It is nearly four years since, the exact date being February 25, 1887, that a married lady, then 38 years of age, mother of seven children, came to me for a bad cough, that troubled her all the more as she was then enciente. This cough was worse on going to bed and on getting up. She had been four times vaccinated, and three out of the four were unsuccessful. She had suffered from leucorrhoea a good deal, and from coughs. As she had three sisters die successively of consumption (at 28, 32, and 40 years of age respectively), her husband was much concerned about her future. Considering her family history, and the fact that the apex of the right lung was consolidated, though I did my best to cheer him up, I had sad misgivings myself.
She had from me in succession, and with very striking benefit, the following remedies in the order named, Thuja 30, Pulsatilla 3x, Bellis perennis 3x, Sepia 12, Hepar sul. 6, Thuja 30 (a second time), and Nux vomica 3x. We found patient after these remedies, at the end of the month of October, 1888, in a pretty bad way; there was the same dullness on percussion at the apex of the right lung, the same little hacking cough continuing all day, and exacerbating at bedtime and on rising, and patient was very thin. I then determined to try the phthisic virus. After being under it for a month she did not trouble to report herself till March 15, 1889, and then she only came because she had a cold, and therewith some cough again. She had been so well all the winter that she considered herself quite cured. Here I repeated the October prescription of the virus, and I discharged the patient cured in one month and two days therefrom, viz., on April 17, 1889. She has never looked back, and is now a stout woman.
CASE VII.
At the beginning of July, 1887, a young woman of about 30 was brought to me, far gone in consumption. She was very, very emaciated, the menses had ceased. Her two sisters had died in the same way, and all hope for her recovery had long since been abandoned; but hearing, or rather having observed, a young lady in the same neighbourhood get well of consumption under my care, her mother accompanied her to me. Having used Thuja (the poor thing had been vaccinated four times, the last three unsuccessfully), Calcarea, Hypophos., and Cardius Mariae, with decidedly good results, I felt encouraged, and thought it almost possible yet to save her if we could only get rid of the fever. With the virus I succeeded in doing this after a few months; patient lost her cough to a very large extent, the expectoration came down to a mere nothing, and she put on a few pounds in flesh, and lived for nearly two years free from consumption, or rather, free from the ordinary symptoms of that disease, such as fever and cough. Her mother said to me one day,–” You seem to have cured the consumption, and yet my daughter gets weaker and weaker every day, and the dropsy goes on getting worse and worse.” And so it was; and of the dropsy she died, nearly two years after the consumptive process seemed cured.
This case in unique in my experience. The phthisic virus cured the phthisis so far as I could tell. I used a good many remedies then to meet the varying symptoms with, at times, very good effects, but the effects did not last. To give some idea how persistently I treated her, I will name the remedies she had from me,–Fragaria vesca 0, Chelidonium majus 0, Ceanothus Americanus 1, Scilla maritima 0, Iodium 3x, Aconite, Baptisia 3x, Pyrogenium 5, Calcarea phos., Rubia tinctoria, Ferrum acet., Cholestearin, Arsenicum, Phosphorus, Iodoform 3x, Pancreatin, and Spirit. glandium quercus. Still in the end I failed, and she died of hepatic dropsy, due to hopelessly far advanced granular atrophy. When I say the phthisis was cured, I, of course, do not mean that to be taken literally; on the contrary, I mean that though the fever, etc., were quite extinguished, and patient’s condition was for some months relatively comfortable, still, the frequently recurring haemorrhages showed that occult processes were still going on within the closed circle of the economy.
CASE VIII.
I will now briefly narrate the successful case through which Case VII. came under my observation :-
The patient was 17 years of age, and her sister had just died of consumption of the lungs.
Patient was very anaemic, sickish, pale almost to whiteness, profound debility, dyspnoea, cannot mount or hurry, menses very irregular.” She is going just like her poor dear sister, she has the same fever every evening.”
Of the diagnosis there could be no doubt, and the sister’s fate determined me to use the virus 30. This was on the 4th of October; on the 1st of November then next following, I find in the case a record : “Certainly better, the evening feverishness has gone.”
I then used the virus in higher potency (and at all times and in all cases at certain intervals). She got quite well of all the consumptive symptoms, but remained neuralgic and anaemic; but these ailings having been righted by Mangan. acet. I, Zincumacet. I, Ferrum acet. I, I discharged her cured. She is a fine, bonnie woman now, and anything but consumptive looking.
Here I conclude that the phthisic virus acted, and acted adequately, curatively–its stop-spot being on the offside of the disease as expressed in this damsel.
As to the use of the other remedies, I would specially insist upon the fact that the phthisic virus only acts within its own sphere, and that this sphere is very sharply defined as to time, and what it does not do soon Second Edition: When I say soon, I mean that its action begins at once-only, of course, as phthisic processes are generally chronic, the treatment thereof must also be the same, i.e., chronic. and promptly it does not do at all. Its action is, if I may so express myself, acute: its chronic equivalent is Psoricum.
CASE IX.
“I have come to town again for the purpose of preparing to go abroad. You will remember that you advised me to go south last year, and that I spent the winter and spring at Cannes. You sent the powders to me there. Those white powders did me a great deal of good-almost set me free from bronchitis. Since I last saw you I have had but very little bronchitis. I look well, and people tell me I am looking very much better than I did last year.” The complaint was dependent upon a phthisical taint in the constitution, and it was the phthisic virus that cured the case. At first it was given over two months, and later on for six weeks. The one-hundredth potency in very infrequent dose. Patient’s brother had died of consumption.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.