Chapter 1 – Tinea



Whether ringworm in itself is beneficial or hurtful, I am unable to say with certainty, but incline strongly to the belief that it may be beneficial, I mean that the presence of the fungi being sequential to internal ill-conditionedness, and being on the outside of the economy, may live on what harms that individual, and thus determine the hurtful matter from the within to the outside, thus acting as living derivatives. Inquiring of my practical cattle-kenner whether the men who tend ringwormy cattle catch the disease or not, he said,-“Oh, yes, sometimes, but not as a rule.”

The man who attended to this particular herd of heifers did catch the disease; and I found on examining him that he was phthisically disposed, he was phthisically disposed, he was very dusky, he tanned unduly in the sun, was morose and taciturn, and always felt tired and weary. I found, further, that he had had to give up a good situation in a large town, and had been recommended to find an outdoor occupation in the country, the doctors telling him he would go into consumption if he stayed in the town.

I remember years ago attending the family of a farmer, when several of the children were presented to me as having caught ringworm from the cows, and one of the boys afterwards became very distinctly consumptive, and was given up as past praying for, and then he was sent up to London to me. Four months of Bacillinum, high, quite cured him, and he is now thriving.

This all confirms me in my view, which is the underlying idea of this book, that there is some close relationship between tuberculosis and ring worm. the precise nature of which deserves attention and study.

I have already quoted from the first London edition of my Five Years Experience in the New Cure of Consumption, which see.

In the second (American) edition of this same work the following may be found:-

Case of Ringworm.

In the first edition as just stated, I communicated the important fact- many smaller things are called great discoveries that ring worm 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 (New Cure for Consumption), the curability of ringworm by Bacillinum is an established fact and I therefore take leave of the subject so far as this work (New Cure for Consumption)-is concerned.

Here in this little volume I am concerned purely with the question of ringworm from the organismic standpoint, and so I will adduce a little more clinical evidence from my case-book.

Neumann’s statement that healthy people are as liable to pityriasis versicolor and herpes tonsurans as those who are delicate I absolutely deny. Eczema, marginatum is pretty common, and, therefore, I have seen a good many cases of it. Neumann is of opinion that eczema marginatum is a modified form of herpes tonsurans, which I doubt, as one meets with eczema marginatum in many fairly vigorous adult males, though they may not be truly healthy.

Moreover, eczema marginatum does not yield to Bacillinum. Eczema marginatum I have known to improve under the influence of this remedy, but that is all. If, therefore, eczema marginatum is the same thing mycologically as herpes tonsurans, there must be in its modification a tertium quid, a different pathological entity. Four Cases of Ringworm (Sisters) cured by Internal Medication.

Miss Winnie, X, aged ten, came under my care in the mouth of July 1891 to be treated for ringworm There were several large patches on her scalp and numerous little ones; the largest was on the crown of the head, a trifle to the left, and nearly two inches in diameter. The child had a profuse mass of hair; is of fairly healthy parentage. I say fairly, because I formerly cured her mother of an abdominal tumour and her brother of very severe eczema. Winnie herself is small for her age, thin, and not robust looking, though she has been living in a fine healthy part of Yorkshire. Her neck was thin, and on both sides studded with feelable, large, hard glands. I put her on Bacillinum in my wonted way; in a month her glands were smaller and the herpes tonsurans was less active; and in three months the glands of her neck were well, she had grown, had taken on a healthy look-quite ruddy- and the ringworm was nearly gone, the hair all growing again. At the end of the fourth month she was in all respects normal, and a bright, bonny girl, and so she continues.

The three other sisters of Winnie had the same disease, and the same general conditions of non-thriving; numerous pretty large, hard glands on both sides of the neck, and patches of the ringworm on their scalps and necks, and, like Winnie, with the bald ringworm patches, great shocks of hair. They had the same treatment for the same length of time, and with the identical result: the ringworm quite disappeared the indurated glands got well (i.e., impalpable), the girls took to growing, and took growing, and took on a ruddy, healthy appearance.

The cure of the ringworm in these four cases-as also in my others-was effected solely by the internal treatment by high potencies of Bacillinum. The improvement was gradual, general, and all along the line, as one, indeed, should theoretically expect from any remedial agent that cures organismically and organically. Note well; the cure is not only organismic, but organic; not chemical, not mechanical, not local, not topic, not antiparasitic, but organic, vital. The fungi die, and their spores cannot germinate any further in the same soil. In these four cases three of them had profuse heads of hair hanging down their necks; one had been cropped.

I ordered these fine heads of hair not to be cut off, but just left so as to put the treatment to the severest possible test, by thus leaving the spores of the fungi en masse all over the place. But this notwithstanding, no further development took place after the patients got well under the influence of the remedy, the progressive amelioration being steady, continuous, and complete. There are tow elements in herpes tonsurans to be thus considered: 1st, the soil-quality; and, 2nd, the fungi. Every organic thing needs certain conditions of its own life in order to thrive, and what I maintain in regard to ringworm is, that the disease proper is not to be sought in the presence of the fungi, but in that quality of the body which constitutes its fitness for the fungi to develop and thrive. In other words, a really healthy individual does not, and cannot catch ringworm.

I say catch, and by that I mean get it from ordinary together- living with ringwormy individuals. I do not refer to inoculability, where force is used, and the stuff is injected into one’s flesh and blood direct, because here a new order of things is created, which fact is commonly entirely lost sight of. I will, however, not touch upon this question here, contenting myself with observing that catching a complaint in the common and natural order of things, and being compelled to take it by the injunction of material quantities of its stuff, are not equivalent by any means, though Pasteur, Koch, and biological experimenters very generally work and write as if they were. And this, indeed, constitutes the weak link in their chain of argument.

More particularly is this the case with Koch and his experiments in tuberculosis. True, he renders certain (healthy) creatures by inoculations immune against tuberculosis, but our tubercular patients are not by any means healthy, but very unhealthy, inasmuch as they are tuberculous, and they can only be cured slowly, organically, by the processes set up by the action of homoeopathic potencies of the remedy; for, if anything like a material dose be used, the action set up is on the same line and in the same direction as the disease, whereas the homoeopathic high potency of the virus sets up a contrary__the opposite__action which tends to cure. This is the true reading of the phenomena, and this reading sheds light upon the whole subject, and affords a sound working hypothesis, and all the known phenomena are thus readily comprehended, and stand out in the clear light of reason tallying exactly with experience. Only the Homoeopathic law of the double and opposite action of different doses renders the use of viruses as remedies possible.

The greater the poison the greater the remedy; true, but only homoeopathically. Throw out the homoeopathic law, and the high potency and you are stranded, and your virus is a virus and nothing more; and where is Koch? Stranded just here__at this very point. He casts aside the homoeopathic law, he ignores the possibility of the action of high potencies, and tries nevertheless to cure with likes or identicals, and he fails; and he not only fails to cure, but he kills, as do all who follow him, as he and their own published results clearly testify.

James Compton Burnett
James Compton Burnett was born on July 10, 1840 and died April 2, 1901. Dr. Burnett attended medical school in Vienna, Austria in 1865. Alfred Hawkes converted him to homeopathy in 1872 (in Glasgow). In 1876 he took his MD degree.
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.