“Homoeopathy is very good for women and children.”
THE first time I ever become aware that a heavy forefallen womb could be in the least helped by medicines was somewhere about the year 1874, when a kind-hearted district visitor interested me on behalf of an elderly widow, whose life was greatly incommoded by her prolapsed uterus. I treated her with little homoeopathic doses of Helonias dioica for many months, and the outcome of this treatment was such that I became quite satisfied that a forefallen or prolapsed womb could be medicinally influenced for good. The dear old lady declared that the womb was very much better, and that she was restored to a feeling of comfort in the parts to which she had long been a stranger. The patient was not suffering from any disease properly so-called, and the uterine region having been rendered comfortable, patient had no further complaints to make.
ABOUT Sepia.
I was not very long after this driving one day into the country accompanied by an eminent clergyman, a grand old man, and a staunch old homoeopath, whose benign smile of pity for all non homoeopaths very much impressed me, who spoke to me during the drive thus:… “I took my daughter Julia to Dr. X. (an eminent gynecologist), because she complained of a pain across her back and local catarrh, and he examined her and told me the womb was enlarged, and that she must wear a support.”
“But surely, Dr., you do not suggest that for a young woman like my daughter Julia; can you not cure that condition with medicines?”
“No, there is no cure for it except wearing a support.” “Well, Dr., I cannot consent to such a thing, I must find something better than that; what do you think of homoeopathic medicines?”
“Homoeopathic medicines! what nonsense.”
“Poor man,” concluded my venerable friend, “we must pray for the Lord to open the eyes of his understanding that he may see the truth; I gave Julia Sepia for some time, and quite cured her.”
Here the eminent specialist treated the very idea of homoeopathic remedies having any good effect in such cases as utter nonsense. For all that the girl’s father quite cured her with globules of Sepia. And how could the mighty gynecologist know the effects of homoeopathic medicines since he had never tried them? The opinions of allopaths on the value of homoeopathy are nothing but spiteful splutter: vulgar and nasty.
MATER TRIUMPHANS.
Stevenson’s song of the mother is one of joy at her inevitable influence, for…
“From out of the dainty the rude, the strong from out of the frail, eternally through the ages from the female comes the male.”
I have considered that being a mother is about the biggest thing on earth, but on this point all women do not agree; some willingly face death without daunt in order to become a mother; such a one was the following:- A childless lady, nine years married, and who, though childless, had yet had seven miscarriages with all their attendant miseries of floodings, grief, and disappointment, placed herself frankly under my mare on January 26, 1880, for the purpose of putting a stop to these habitual mishaps, and in the hope of having living children. The late Dr. Smith was of opinion that one-half of this lady’s womb was ossified: the curious thing was that patient regularly aborted at 5 1/2 months, and the placenta was always adherent. Period normal; some neuralgia of right ovary. The uterus itself was thick and heavy, and one side of it much more rigid than the other. After Alumin. 3x, and Kali chlor. 6, each for a month, she felt pregnant, and with a view of trying to lessen the unilateral hardening of the womb, so that it might properly expand at the right time, I put patient on an exclusively fruit and vegetable diet; but she appeared unable to stand it, and so I allowed her one meat a day-one o’clock- but nothing else night and morning save fruit and soft vegetables at will. Big baby boy born May 22, 1881, and since then she has had five others, all hale and hearty, so she told me the other day (August 1893). Of course, patient had a number of medicines to prevent abortion and for her very troublesome piles-Ferrum 6, Aesculus 12, Silicea 12, and Sulphur 30 but the principal lesson teachable that stands out is the elementary fact, that the organ diseases of women are amenable to drug action, and that diet can be made to play a part in abortion. I kept this lady on very low diet, and on several occasions with her first three children was very imminent, I stopped nearly all food and all drink, allowing only fresh fruit for days together, till the hypogastric tumult had been starved out. With her last three children no treatment and no dietetic precautions were needed or taken. One has often an opportunity of narrating such a long history as is here possible.
SPERMATOPHOBIA.
This is the other side of the picture of the MATER TRIUMPHANS. The lady whose case I have just narrated, and who has the six bonnie living children, is herself still a very good- looking woman-fresh and plump, and though poor in this world’s goods, is yet proud and joyous, and in her children rich beyond compare. THE TRAUMATIC UTERUS.
One meets with a number of youngish married ladies who are constitutionally sound and are yet great sufferers. In May 1880, such a one came to seek my help: she was 26 years of age, had been married five years, was the mother of one child, which was born at the end of the first year of married life. Applied Malthusianism accounted for the childlessness of the subsequent your years. Patient, from being of bonnie round figure, had become bosomless; her spine had two aches, an up and down rhachialgia and a pain across the back,-the classic uterine backache we all know of. The menses every sixteen days; the womb thick, sappy, and low-lying; leucorrhoeal ooze coming from the os. Patient was a mere wreck of her former self, and all for fear there should be too many people born into the world.
“No, I will not; I do not care; I’d rather die.”
I should have said patient suffered much from insomnia, and had frequent attacks of nerve-tortures.
I regarded the state as one manifestly from a battered, misused uterus, and so proceeded therapeutically with Hypericum perf. 3x, with Arnica 2, and concluded with Bellis per.1. There was much improvement in the uterine sphere, and the menses had become less frequent. But the spinal irritation was much to the fore: Guaco 3 “did me great good; it stooped all the sickness and relieved the back very much.”
Then a long railway journey upset the spine a good deal, and flooding set in; Kali chlor. 6 and Ferrum phos. 6 stopped the bleeding, and Cuprum acet. 3x took the pain away from the side.
Then came Guaco 3 and Bellis p. 1, each a month by itself, with much amelioration.
There finally remained a condition in which almost any excitement brought on the poorly time, and this was cured by Cedron 3x, 5 drops in water every three hours. To Cedron I was led because patient complained very much of coldness in the abdomen: “Oh, my stomach is so cold.”
Cases like this pass before practical physicians pretty well every day, and the one I have just cited is a mere sample of many like it. There is not any disease properly so-called to be cured, but an insulted womb with its attendant worries, and spinal hyperaesthesia. It is not easy to get rid of the neurasthenia till the spine is righted, and the enlarged womb has to be seen to before the spine will mend properly, and hence I start with muscle-and-nerve anti-traumatics, utilizing any sound symptom for a differential purpose, as, e.g.; Cedron (cold, etc.). I have somewhere read that it is hard to kick against the pricks, and the wife who cheats nature finds how true this is. With this question I am here, however, not concerned, further than to point out that genesiac fraud causes disease and produces a debased state of the womb; it becomes too fibrous, hard; loses its erectility and contractility, and instead of ballooning about in the abdomen in happy unconsciousness, it flops down on to the floor of the pelvis, miserable and discontent, and a sorry burden,-it has been cheated, and it verily does not bear it uncomplainingly. This might be designated the Defrauded Womb. It concerns us here because it is almost always enlarged and displaced, and hence I think I may profitably add the following little chapter, as it bears on the etiology of many cases of enlarged uterus.
THE NEMESIS OF PHYSICAL WRONG-DOING.
During the past twenty years the number of cases in which married women prevent conception is steadily on the increase; their many dodges in attaining this end need not be dwelt upon, but the almost uniform results are the following:-
1. The breast shrivel, and in extreme cases almost disappear: the erstwhile fine bust, the shapely breasts shrink into shocking ugliness.
2. The great female characteristics diminish, and the individual is apt to become hairy in the face and elsewhere, while the rotundity of limb is a thing of the past: the limbs are often scraggy and thin, or, if obese, flabby and old.
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.