Although my own prescription of Carduus was from pure experience, there can be hardly any doubt that an adequate proving would shew its homoeopathicity to the case, inclusive of the enlargements of liver and spleen.
Riel’s proving of Carduus shews it to produce pathogenetically: “nausea, uneasiness, pain, vomiting, with inflation of the abdomen, &c.”
The generally improved appearance of the young lady after she had been a month under the Carduus was very striking, and repeatedly remarked upon, by friends who were not acquainted with the circumstances of her ill-health and its treatment at all.
The kind of liver enlargement which Carduus cures is in the transverse measurement.
By way of comparison I will now quite shortly exemplify the kind of enlargement of the liver which is cured by Chelidonium; it will be seen that the comparison is crude and mechanical, yet withal, I submit, not without practical value.
ENLARGEMENT OF THE LIVER IN THE PERPENDICULAR LINE CURED BY Chelidonium.
An independent gentlemen of thirty, usually resident in Paris, came over to London to consult me in the early part of the year 1886, and that for his liver and for dyspepsia. He had twice had jaundice in previous times. His symptoms were waterbrash, indigestion, constipation, attacks of intra-abdominal chilliness; he was very dusky, his urine had a strongly urinous smell. His liver reaches almost up to the right nipple.
An ounce of the tincture brought the liver back to the normal; the dose was five drops in water, two or three times a day, and sometimes once a day. But altogether he consumed nearly an ounce.
This is the kind of hepatic enlargement which Chelidonium rights in small material doses. But it did not restore the patient to complete health; why? For the simple reason that the increase in the perpendicular measurement of the liver was only a part of his complaint, the other bearings of the case being foreign to my present thesis. Suffice it to say that his liver was cured by the Chelidonium, and patient continues well in these (and now in the other) respects to the present time.
It is well to realize that an organ remedy while capable of curing an organ-disease, and all the concomitant symptoms which arise from the organ-disease, nevertheless can in the nature of things not cure the concomitant symptoms in the patient when these symptoms stand in no nexus with such organ-disease. Thus I treated a young lady for a liver disease and gave her successively Carduus, Chelidonium, Natrum sulphuricum, Taraxacum.
She had a mapped tongue and vomiting, with headaches and squinting. The liver was reduced to its right dimensions and the vomiting was cured, but the mappiness of the tongue remained, and patient did not feel well. But the tongue became normal after a month of Thuja 30 She had headaches which she herself termed bilious and the others neuralgic, and there was a third kind of headache called by another name and which seemed distinctly connected with the squinting. The bilious headaches ceased after the use of the before mentioned hepatics; the neuralgic headaches continued till after the Thuja, and disappeared simultaneously with the mapped state of the tongue. The squint headaches she still gets, and remedies like Glonoin and Gelsemium do them good.
From these considerations it is manifest that there are cases that cannot possibly be cured by one remedy and in as much as the symptoms form part respectively of groups of different causations, covering the totality of all the symptoms present in the patient would be a useless and fruitless task. Hence it is that Rademacherian organ-testing helps me so much in my every-day practical clinical life; for, if I cure an organ with its Appropriatum Paracelsi, and certain symptoms go while others remain I am enabled slowly to unravel the most complex groups of symptoms and finally find a simile or even the simillimum of the ground evil.
The adage Naturam morborum ostendunt curationes also comes in here as an auxiliary. With me it is an axiom to relieve uncomfortable or dangerous organ-states with simple organ remedies as promptly as possible, leaving the more remote and deeper going to be afterwards considered, and treated, if possible, with its pathological simillimum, or else aetiologically, say according to Hahnemann in his Coethen phase.
Carduus Marioe IN ITS RELATION WITH LIVER AND THE SKIN.
Perhaps it would be more correct to think of the matter as mention the seeming connection between the cutaneous surface of the sternum and other internal affections, notably of the left lobe of the liver therewith.
Subsequent experience has taught me that although the Carduus cures these cases very promptly and indeed brilliantly, still the cutaneous eruption is apt to recur. In support of this connection; or, perhaps, it might be wiser to say concomitancy, I there give some Carduus cases thus:-
THE “STERNAL PATCH.”.
One often meets with liver affections connected with cutaneous manifestations.
I would like particularly to refer to a patch of eruption on the skin covering the lower part of the sternum which I have several times found co-exist with heart disease and swelling of the left lobe of the liver. In my case-takings I call it the “sternal patch.”
I have four such cases in my mind at this moment, the first I will narrate is that of a mayor of a large town in the north:- He had a patch of brownish eruption on the sternal portion of thorax of the size of a woman’s palm; with it were associated an enlarged liver and a cardiac affection evidenced by palpitation, systolic murmur, and general uneasiness. He came to town to see me at odd intervals for about two years, and was then discharged cured. He has passed under my observation since, but though his liver gives no trouble the same cannot be said of his skin, and he has moreover pyorrhoea alveolaris.
I treated him antipsorically and organopathically, the most notable benefit being derived from Carduus marioe in five drop doses of the strong tincture given three times a day.
The second I remember was a Manchester merchant, with the same kind of cutaneous patch on the sternum, and very notable heart trouble with arcus senilis as a concomitant. Here the ease and comfort brought by the Carduus marioe were very striking. Under date of January 31, 1883, I find in my case book these words of the enthusiastic patient-“It had a most marvellous effect, soon made me right; the patch went away in a fortnight; had it for years.”
This gentlemen has remained under my care, calling upon me at odd times when in town, and during the past two years has had besides the strong tincture of Carduus, Bellis perennis 1, Aurum Metallicum 4, Vanadium 6, and Acidum oxalicum 3x, and some other remedies, and I consider him vastly improved, and his life- speaking commercially-worth 40 per cent. more than previously.
The third case was that of a New York merchant, who suffered from liver and had come over to Europe to consult a physician, as he seemed to get no better from the treatment of his New York advisers. I found his liver very much enlarged, and also the before mentioned sternal patch of skin disease. I gave him Carduus in like dose to the foregoing, and he came in a week declaring himself quite will. I advised him to remain awhile under observation, to see if the cure proved permanent, but he hurried out of my room in great glee, and I never saw him again.
The fourth case in which I found the sternal patch and enlarged liver, giddiness, and palpitations of the heart was that of a London lawyer. Here the liver got well, and the heart too, together with the giddiness, but it needed a course of antipsoric treatment to finish the cure of the patch of diseased skin. I might say the same of a fifth case, an officer in the Royal Navy, where this patch co-exists with hypertrophied liver, and in which the affair has a specific air about it, probably inherited, and it may be that when Sarcognomy is better understood, and when the relations of the various cutaneous regions will be recognized as constituting the very base of medical and medicinal diagnosis, this sternal patch will be understood to indicate “liver and heart.”
But the following CASE CURED BY Carduus is also instructive in considering its relationship to skin and liver.
A city merchant, thirty years of age, unmarried, came to me in May, 1888. for windy dyspepsia, the probable ground-work of which proved to be an enlargement both of liver and spleen, and he had amongst other things very numerous sebaceous cysts strewn about his body, looking for all the world like the malva seeds (cases), children call cheeses.
At first I gave Ceanothus Americanus, believing it to be primarily a spleen affection, and then Pulsatilla, but they did no great good; when Carduus, given for a little over a month, brought the liver back to the normal and all the wee wens were gone.
The enlargement of the liver and the wens disappeared simultaneously, but the genuinely causal nature of both was neither hepatic nor cutaneous: That was scrofula. But as scrofula can only be treated in its manifestations, he who treats such manifestations successfully cures it. The general improvement under Carduus was most striking and lasting: patient got quite well and has since happily married.
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.