CASE OF INCIPIENT PHTHISIS.
On the 29th October, 1890, a country gentleman brought his twenty-four year old daughter to me. Himself one of those experienced semi-professional lay homoeopaths, he had treated his daughter with almost all our usual remedies but their effects did not last. Said he: “The worst feature is that she gets fits of rapid respiration, 45 to the minute, and she has lost flesh so.” Objectively the circumscribed redness of her cheeks at once struck me, and the breasts were very soft and flabby, in fact shrivelled and this is a weighty symptom in an English girl of twenty-four years of age. Patient complained of feeling very tired in the evenings; pains through the right half side of the neck feelable and even visible; the right mamma stringy and tender.
The bacillic virus in the one-hundredth potency produced some improvement, but not very striking. The rush of blood during an attack of hurried breathing reminded me of the action of Urtica and hence the prescription of Urtica urens 0 five drops in a tablespoonful of water night and morning. This seemingly cured the patient and she was verbally reported well on January 5, 1891. But the symptoms soon returned; the pains through the right lung became severe and the respiration very rapid. This acceleration of the respiration being very pronouncedly worse in the evening I ordered Psorinum 30.
March 6, 1891.-The breathing was normal after the Psorinum, but it has again returned seemingly from a slight cold. She is less tired in the evening, very depressed, lachrymose; the glands in the neck only very slightly improved. Bacillinum C.C.
April 29.-The remedy has acted promptly and decisively; the swelling of the glands has gone; the respiration is normal as is also the appearance of patient’s cheeks. To continue with the Bacillinum C.C. in the same manner, viz., six globules dry on the tongue at bedtime every eighth day, Placeboes being administered on the intervening days.
June 19.-Discharged quite well.
November, 1891.-Patient continues well.
Patient’s father is being successfully treated by me for an osteoma; her mother is asthmatic and was formerly under my care. And what I would specially refer to is the fact that patient’s environment is and always has been specially favorable to health and in no way conducive to consumptiveness.
In the first edition I stated how I came to discover that in Bacillinum cures ringworm; this discovery I regard as of very great importance; the cure is sometimes rapid, at other times it takes some months, but amelioration soon set in all the cases that I have treated. I may add that I used in all my cases of ringworm no external applications whatever, merely directing the head to be washed with soap and water two or three times a week. I will add just one more case of ringworm.
CASE OF RINGWORM.
In the first edition, as just stated, I communicated the important fact–many smaller things are called great discoveries- that ringworm yields readily to Bacillinum, and that I therefore regard this cutaneous eruption as a tubercular manifestation.
A little girl, five and a half years of age, was brought to me at the end of January, 1891, to be treated for ringworm. There was only one ring on the back of the neck–but this was well defined. Bacillinum C. was ordered and the whole thing disappeared within the month, and the little lady has been very thriving ever since.
So far as I am concerned in this work the curability of ringworm by Bacillinum is an established fact, and I therefore take leave of the subject so far as this work is concerned, but in view of its doctrinal and practical importance, I am contemplating a separate essay on “Ringworm.”
LICHEN RUB, DISCOLORATION OF TEETH, NOCTURNAL REST- LESSNESS.
A young lady of fifteen summers and winters came under my observation this summer to be treated for frequent eruptions of red lumps on her skin, much rolling and tossing about in her sleep and a greenish-yellow discoloration of her irregular but otherwise sound teeth. Her younger brother was formerly cured by me of a chronic hydrocephalic condition and blackish teeth. Her mother was strumous and many members of her family have succumbed to phthisis. I ascertained that the nasty colour of her teeth was in no way due to lack of cleansing care. Two months of Bacillinum brought me a written report of her good health, winding up thus: “Her teeth are now a very good colour.” Patient is of that fat strumous habit which some mistake for health.
As a collateral fact the influence of Bacillinum on the teeth I deem of some practical importance; it has won me the gratitude of quite a number of patients, notably of young ladies and of their mothers, and quite lately Dr. John Young formerly of Brooklyn and now residing in Switzerland came over from the Continent to see me in regard to a very peculiar case of arrested development in a lad. He had no teeth, he was stunted in growth and his skin was very dirty dingy-looking–having read the first edition of this work Dr. Young remembered what I say in regard to the influence of Bacillinum on the teeth and the tawniness of skin as an important indication for its use. Acting upon these indications Dr. Young gave Bacillinum in high potency for some time with the result that the patient took to growing and his teeth sprouted, and altogether he was very remarkably- changed under the bacillinic influence.
HAEMORRHOIDS IN THE PHTHISIC- ALLY DISPOSED.
By phthisically-disposed I mean those whom the experienced eye easily diagnoses as prone to consumption, though as a matter of fact they cannot be said to have consumption at all and, very possibly, they may never get it. They ail in various ways; some of them have hay fever and some piles. The phthisical and the phthisically-disposed are very prone to piles, notably those who are dark and dusky; and, indeed, I have often found the piles in such more troublesome and painful than the phthisis proper.
Simple uncomplicated cases exemplify best; thus :-
In the month of June, 1891, a married man of about thirty years of age, known to me from his boyhood almost, came to me for chronic piles of a most distressing nature that were making him almost an invalid. He had attacks of pain about an hour after stool; he was also a chronic sufferer from hay fever, and his teeth were tubercular (indented in dots) and the pains were greatly aggravated by coughing and sneezing, both of which he indulged in very freely.
Bacillinum 1000 cured him right off in a fortnight both of the piles and of the just-described pains after stool, and to- day, December 7, 1891, he continues quite well and has had no relapse. His hay fever was also seemingly cured in the same rapid way, but hay fever has an ugly knack of returning again and again after you have cured it! Two or three successive summers must pass before we can rely upon a cured case of hay fever being really cured to return no more. From the remedies I have found useful, and also useless, in the therapeutics of hay fever I have come to the conclusion clinically that what nosologists and clinicians call hay fever includes several aetiologically and pathologically totally different ailments or diseases. In some, I think hay fever very distinctly a manifestation of a phthisical taint,–about the others I have not yet made up my mind. The pollen of grasses has the same relationship to hay fever as the north wind has to a phthisical cough–the cough is hardly a north-wind cough in a pathological sense.
PRE-PHTHISICAL. DYSPEPSIA.
A married gentleman twenty-four years of age came under my care on the 2nd of March, 1891, to be treated for most distressing and inveterate dyspepsia of three years’ standing. He had the characteristic symptom “as if a tight rope were bound round his stomach.” Debility, paleness, acidity; nervous, a kind of dead-all-over feeling. He had from me at first Argentum nitricum 3x with a certain amount of benefit, but he was not cured by any means, and complained very bitterly. The dyspeptic generally know well how to grumble and their descriptive talents are by no means inconsiderable. But after I had him a few weeks under Bacillinum C.C. he turned all his talents at graphic grumbling into persuasive recommendations to his sick friends to journey forthwith to see the writer.
One of his friends came a long- distance–some 200 miles–
to see me and burst forth: “You have made a great cure of Mr. —, etc.”
I was ultimately led to give Bacillinum C.C. in this case because of the numerous peripheral glands that were visibly and feelably enlarged and indurated; by the fact that he had blood- spitting and because his mother had died of phthisis at 49 and one of his sisters had also died of phthisis.
He considers himself quite well these three months; I put it in this way as I have not seen him, he living so far away.
COUGH WITH CHRONIC PULMONARY CATARRH.
A London gentleman just turned fifty years of age came under my professional care in the first days of January, 1891. He was subject to a chronic cough with much catarrh of both the lungs; his cough was very distressing indeed, and no wonder considering the awful fog then on. But, though the cough was much aggravated by the fog, it was by no means due to it. There was some wheezing all over the chest, much worse of the left side, and patient gets feverish attacks which he terms his “heats and sweats.” Cough worse at night, wakened by it. Said he : “I was always a `coughing’ man, my father died at my present age of consumption, and I have lost a brother and also a sister from 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.