Acute colic.
In case of acute colic, renal hepatic or intestinal one can give relief by fairly snapshot prescribing. When you go to such a case and know that morphia and atropine will relieve the spasms it is very tempting to use them. If you cannot get your homoeopathic drug in a snapshot way I think you are bound to give the patient relief with your hypodermic. To my mind the disadvantage that after such relief, it is necessary to begin to treat the case now masked if not actually complicated by the action of the morphia. Secondly, there is always the danger that in an acute case of this kind the morphia may conceal the development of a surgical emergency which in consequence may be missed. Suppose you have a hepatic colic it is quite likely to be due to a stone pressing down into the bile ducts, which may perforate. If morphia has been used it is quite possible one has seen it happen that owing to the sedative, indications of the perforation are not detected for hours afterwards. The clinical picture is masked and you are exposing the patient to a very grave risk. So if there is a method of dealing with these colics apart from morphia I think it is wise to use it. But, as I say, you are only justified in using it if you are getting relief; the patient need not suffer merely because you would prefer using a homoeopathic drug to a sedative. Fortunately the indications in these colics are usually pretty definite.
If you have a case of a first attack of whether it be hepatic or renal it is a very devastating experience for the patient and he is usually terrified.
The pains are usually extreme and nearly drive the patient crazy and if in addition, the patient feels frightfully cold very anxious faint whenever he sits up or stands up and yet cannot bear the room being hot Aconite will usually give relief within a couple of minutes.
You will seldom get indications for Aconite in repeated attacks. The patient somehow begin to realise that although the condition is frightfully painful it is not mortal so the mental does not seem to act.
Another case having repeated attacks each short in duration developing quite suddenly stopping as suddenly associated with a feeling of fullness in the epigastrium, and any fluid and accompanied by flushing of the face dilated pupils and a full bounding pulse, Belladonna relieves them almost immediately.
Consider another patient who has had liver symptoms for some time, just vague discomfort slight fullness in the right hypochondrium a good deal of flatulence intolerance of fats, and who is losing condition becoming sallow and slightly yellow. He develops an acute hepatic colic, with violent shoots of pain going right through to the back particularly to the angle of right scapula, which subside and leave a constant ache in the hepatic region, and then he gets another violent colicky attack. These attacks are relieved by very hot applications or the drinking of water as hot as it can be swallowed. Chelidonium relieves these attacks in the most astonishing way.
In the cases, X-rays usually reveal a number of gallstones. And in contrast with what happens with morphia has been given frequently show that one or more of these gallstones have passed almost painlessly. So with Chelidonium you are well under way with your treatment of the gallstones whereas with morphia and atropine you merely relieve the acute attack of pain.
In other words you have already taken a long step in the treatment of that patient towards clearing the condition altogether. That is one point to be said in favour of your homoeopathic treatment rather than the merely sedative relief.
There are quite a number of other drugs for these colics, some of them hepatic some renal and some intestinal and they all have their own individual points which are very easy to pick up at the bedside. If one memorizes them in this way it is astonishing the ease of your work in acute cases. You see I am not giving you the full description of these drugs, I am picking out only the points which apply to this type of case. That is how you have to do i tin practice, but you must remember that these drugs I am giving you for these conditions are the common ones, and that every now and then you meet a case which appears to call for one of these drugs and yet the patient does not respond. There are certain homoeopathic physicians who sometimes call me out in consultation for acute cases and I know perfectly well before I leave my room that it is no use my thinking of these drugs as they will already have been given and what I have to get is something that is not common but out of the way. I remember seeing a case of not common but out of the way. I remember seeing a case of gallstone colic with one of out very good physicians. It was an elderly woman, and she had that typical chelidonium picture. Of course she had Chelidonium already but without benefit. The doctor said, “I don’t understand this case at all; I think she must have a malignant liver.” I asked why, and he said, “Because she has all the chelidonium indications and she does not respond.” This is the sort of odd case you will meet with so if that should happen to be your first one do not think therefore that Homeopathy does not work; you will find that as time goes on you get more and more cases that do work and the exceptions are fewer and fewer. As a matter of fact that particular case responded to a dose of one of the snake poisons but I have never seen another case that had a snake poisons for that condition and one gave it purely because she had already had her chelidonium; had I seen the case in the first instance.
I should certainly have given Chelidonium. In spite of the odd cases it is cases it is worth while getting these ordinary drugs at your finger ends so that when cases crop up you can prescribe easily on the few indications of the acute condition as presented to you.
There are one or two other drugs that I can touch on which you will find very helpful in these colics.
For instance, Berberis, which is extremely useful in colics whether renal or gallstone. The outstanding point about the Berberis colic, no mater its situation is that from one centre the pain radiates in all directions. suppose you have a renal colic and when Berberis is indicated I think it is more commonly on the left side than the right you will find that where you get indications for Berberis the colicky pain starting is the renal region, or in the course of the ureter, there is one centre of acute pain, and from that centre the pain radiates in all directions. If you have a hepatic colic you get the centre of acute intensity in the gallbladder and from there that pain radiates in all directions, it goes through to the back, into the chest, into the abdomen. That is the outstanding point about these Berberis colics.
In addition to the where you are dealing with a renal colic you almost always get an acute urging to urinate and a good deal of pain on urination. Where you are dealing with a biliary colic it is usually accompanied by a very marked aggravation from any movement; this is present to a slight extent in the renal colics, but it is not so marked; and in both the patient is very distressed and has a pale, earthy looking complexion. The pallor, I think is more marked in the renal cases, and where there has been a previous gallstone colic you may get a jaundiced tinge in the hepatic cases.
It is a very useful drug and I do not know any other which has the extent of radiation of pain that you get in Berberis. It is surprising how widespread the area of tenderness can be which is associated with a Berberis colic, so much so that in gallstone attacks you get so much tenderness and resistance that you are very afraid of a perforated gall-bladder –
you get such a resistant right upper rectus and you may be very suspicious of a peri-renal cases again because of the extreme resistance of the muscles on the side of the abdomen.
In Berberis renal case the urine is as rule rather suggestive. More commonly it is not bloodstained, but contains a quantity of greyish-white deposit which may be pure pus, but mostly contains pus and a quantity of amorphous material usually phosphates sometimes urates. Although it is a very dirty looking urine it is surprisingly inoffensive.
There are two drugs which one always thinks of for colics of any kind and they are Colocynth and mag. phos. It does not matter where the colic; is when you have an acute abdominal colic of any kind one always thinks of the possibility of either colocynth or Mag-phos. Both remedies are often useful for colic in any area uterine, intestinal bile ducts, or renal it does not matter which it is. The point about these drugs is that they are almost identical, that always in doubled up with pain. In both cases the pains are relieved by external pressure and by heat. In Mag phos there is rather more relief from rubbing than there is in colocynth, which prefers steady, hard pressure.
The next thing about them is that their colics are intermitting. The patients get spasms of pain which come up to head and then subside.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.