May 9.- These drops cured the burning pain in three days.
Rx. Phytolaccinum 3x,.
June 4.- No return of the pain at all. Patient has regained much of his lost weight, and is now as hilarious as he was previously depressed. At the seat there is nothing observable save a flap of flesh at the side of the anal month.
Rx. Sodium silicate 0.
July 2.- Not happy at the seat; mentally apprehensive; a close inspection shows, hidden behind the before-named flap of flesh, a small wart with a bleeding fissure athwart it.
Rx. Sambucus 0.
Patient was discharged quiet cured and in fine physical and mental condition just fourteen months from the beginning of his treatment. During the remaining part of his treatment. During the remaining part of his treatment he received from me Chelidonium majus 0, Urtica ur. in several differing strengths. Hecla 30, Kali iod. 30, Calcarea carb. C. C., and finally Silicea C.
In this case I did use one local application, viz, powdered Thuja applied direct to the bleeding comb-like processes behind the fleshy flap, and of this flap its shrivelled remains are still in situ.
FISTULA-VERRUCOUS GROWTH AND HAEMORRHOIDS.
Early in the year 1890 a gentleman verging on 70 years of age came from the country to consult me for anal trouble characterized by a sticky, gummy discharge. An examination of the part disclosed a wart-like growth of the size of a walnut, and also a pile.
I could not find any fistula. A month later I found the mouth of the fistula leading into a funnel-shaped discharging cavity.
He remained under treatment the best part of a year, during which time the fistula healed and patient greatly improved in health. Bacillinum C. Hydrastis can.0, Phytolaccin 3x, Sodium silicatum 0, Sambucus 0, were the chief remedies. The growth was much smaller when patient discharged himself, and was wishful to continue the treatment longer, but he was comfortable in himself, the anal region being dry since the fistula healed up. His digestion so very much improved that he “would not be bothered with any more physicking.”
CASE OF FISTULA IN A LADY.
A married lady, 33 years of age, was brought to me by her husband in the spring of 1891 to be treated for fistula-in-ano, that had been a source of annoyance and trouble for a little over two years, seemingly starting from the retention of a dead foetus at the period, which was then thought to have been three weeks dead.
At a previous confinement there had been considerable laceration of the perineum, the sequel of which had to be remedied by the electro-cautery, and thus a somewhat imperfect closing of the sphincter ani has come about, and loose stools being the rule, the poor lady had a sad time of it. A fistula alone is a humiliating possession, but when faecal incontinence is added, the condition becomes fearful. The fistula was situated at the back, and was in the habit of closing for a few days, and then it would burst and discharge. Besides the fistula and an inadequate sphincter muscles, there were piles; that, however, did not cause very much inconvenience.
Patient was put upon Thuja occidentalis 30 in infrequent doses for one month.
The cause was seen from month of month, and required some pretty careful differential drug diagnosis before it was permanently cured, patient discharged quiet well in the month of July 1892. The chief remedies used were Bacill. M. and CC. given altogether during four separate months, Helianthus annuus 0, Bursa pastoris 0, Kali iodicum. 3 trit.,. and 30, and Bovista 3 trit, have come into pay in between as indicated.
In this case I was guided to the use of the remedies from the state of the cervical glands and the circumscribed flush of the cheeks, and by the patient’s various symptoms.
CASE OF PREFISTULAR CELLULITIS DISPERSED.
Sometimes one is fortunate enough to get cases of prefistular gathering soon enough to prevent both abscess and fistula. Thus a middle-aged merchant from the Midlands came under my care in the fall of 1891, with a “lump at the seat” that was giving rise to inconvenience and anxiety to the patient, partly because he was quite familiar with fistula in his own family. He was well in three months; during the first half of the time he was taking Arnica montana, 1, twenty drops a day in water. This took away much of the swelling and nearly al the hardening, and then I gave Chelidonium majus on organopathic lines.
That we here prevented both abscess and fistula hardly admits if any doubt.
CASE OF RECTAL ABSCESSES AND FISTULA.
In the month of January 1892 a London professional man came under my care.
Two months previously he had had a very large abscess of the rectum, which had been freely incised but would not heal, and a fistular state remained, with much discharge : or, rather, I should say that there remained a hole in the flesh fully two inches long, discharging matter profusely. And notwithstanding the profuse discharge from this gash, there was another large gathering on the other side of the anus, which the surgeon was on, the point of operating on.
Patient’s father and one of his sisters had died of phthisis. I began the treatment with Ignatia amara 1, alternated with Hydrastis canadensis 0, because of patient;s low nervous anorexial condition. This was continued for a fortnight, much to his comfort and feeling of well-being, when early in February gout broke out in his right foot. This was met with Aconite 6 and Bryonia 0. With the outbreak of the gout the activity at the seat lessened,, and the gash in the flesh began to heal from the bottom. I had applied nothing to the wound, but rather encouraged its activity.
The treatment was continued-patient all the while attending to his professional duties-with some ups and downs, till May 25, 1893, when patient was discharged cured, and in capital health and spirits.
Many remedies were needed and used, and of these the chief were : Bacill, CC. and C.; Bryonia alb. 0; bellis perennis 0; Chelidonium majus 0; Chionanthus virginicus 0; Nat. mur.; 6 trit.; Levico (strong); Thuja 30, and Lycopodium 6. To give the reasons for giving the various medicines would occupy more space than I can here afford, but there were there leading ideas underlying them viz. :-
1. The hereditary phthisic taint.
2. The enlarged unhealthy liver.
3. The gout; and then we had to meet-
a. The debility.
b. The anaemia.
c. The anorexia.
d. The neurasthenia, the last-named being a potent factor in the sum; at any rate, neurasthenia cannot be operated away.
GRAVE CASE OF RECTO – VAGINAL FISTULA.
A childless lady, many years married, 42 years of age, came to consult me for rectovaginal fistula early in the year 1890. Both of her parents died about 80 years of age,- in fact her mother lived to be 82; and all her brothers and sisters still alive and well, and patient herself being of very fine build.
I was quiet astonished to hear the following narration of her health-history and present state :- Formerly had a fearful cough, remaining as a sequel of a pneumonia, the cough, being so bad that some thought it from a form of asthma. Formerly very thin then stout (Large, not obese), i.e. polysarcous, and now losing flesh. It noteworthy that when she began to get perineal abscesses her cough entirely disappeared.
In childhood she bad had measles, whooping-cough, and scarlatina in the proper way,- since then a carbuncle on her tight arm. Menses copious; she is weary and tired; tongue gouty, with no “strawberry” pips (a very important point); considerable leucorrhoea; she is very chilly. Not with standing the history of pneumonia, and not with standing the very bad cough that disappeared as soon as the pre-fistular abscesses began to appear, I still could not regard the fistula as in any sense indicative of a phthisic taint, but I came to the conclusion that it was a case of genuine vaccinosic mainfestations; the chilliness, the leucorrhoea, the polysarcia, the pithy tongue, the sterility all, in my judgement, pointing at any rate to the hydrogenoid constitution of Grauvogl.
The fistula was sequential to abscesses at the spot, and patient stated that it had gathered twelve times.
Patient had been operated on by a distinguished surgeon three months previously but without success, and a further and very much more serious operation was in prospect, and hence the lady’s visit to me. Now it happened that this lady’s house was, and is, the rendezvous of quite a number of medical men all sincerely attached to this lady’s husband. “Nearly all our friends happen to be medical men.” said she, and my husband has discussed the question of the possibility of my fistula being cured with medicines, and they all declare it to be absolutely impossible, an my husband is so sure that it is impossible that he has refused to come with me.”
Still, in an aside, she gave me to understand that he privately hoped she would come, on the off-chance of a cure, and so avoid the alarmingly radical operation in contemplation.
It is to be remembered that an operation for fistula depends a good deal on the kind of person to be operated upon as well as its position.
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.