I have rarely seen a more satisfactory cure of a difficult, almost desperate, chronic case, and quite as rarely had a patient, with a worse family history. Which remedy cured the patient? All of them.
There is a Carduus case that should have come in earlier on, but I had mislaid the MS., and as it is short I will add it here, and principally because it neatly exemplifies the Carduus action. Five years have elapsed since the patient was cured, and there has been no return of any of the symptoms, and he has continued otherwise in uninterruptedly good health.
HYPERTROPHY OF LEFT LOBE OF THE LIVER; SLIGHT HYPERTROPHY OF THE HEART; STERNAL PATCH.
On January 27th, 1885, a young gentleman, twenty-one years of age, and who had long been ailing of no one seemed to know what, was sent by his father to me ” to be thoroughly overhauled and put right.” The overhauling disclosed slight enlargement of the heart, considerable enlargement of the left lobe of the liver, and a very prominent sternal patch. Patient complained of suffering a good deal from giddiness.
RX Carduus marioe p, five drops in water night and morning. He was discharged permanently cured in six months. During a considerable portion of the time he was taking the Carduus, which quite set heart and liver right, but the sternal patch I had to cure nosodically, of which…. une autre fois. I often see members of this gentleman’s family, including his parents, and know, as I said just now, that he has continued well ever since. We will now return to gall stones.
An elderly lady came under my observation early in the summer of 1888, for gallstones, characterized by frequent recurrent attacks of jaundice, colic, and vomiting, with the usual agonizing pains. She was under me a good many month- about eighteen, if I remember rightly- and then discontinued her treatment, and has since continued well. I strongly urged her to go on longer, lest there should still be present the remains of the old colic causing stones, but to no avail Why should I continue taking medicines when I am well?
She had in succession (and several repeatedly), Kali bichromicum, Carduus marioe, Hydrastis Canadensis, Prunus Virginiana, Cholesterine, iodoformum, and finally Ferrum picricum 3x. The last named medicine does capital service in bilious debility. CASE OF COLIC FROM GALLSTONES.
A middle-aged gentleman brought his wife to me three years since to be treated for gall-stones, and the usual attacks of colic with vomiting, that came on at odd intervals, from known and unknown causes. Patient had been long under their own doctor in the country, but to no good purpose; in fact, a chronic pain in the right side had been superadded to the before mentioned colic attacks, and patient had lost flesh a good deal. She paid me visits once a month for many months, until she was quite well and in a thoroughly thriving condition.
However, I told the husband that I did not think the biliary calculi were really entirely gone, and that I thought it would be wise to continue with the use of gentle gall-medicines till we had sounder ground for believing that there would be no further relapses.
But patient seemed and looked in such capital health that there really seemed, from their stand point, no reason for continuing my treatment, so my warning was not regarded.
The remedies that helped so brilliantly in this case were Hydrastis, Carduus, Chelidonium and Berberis, and two or three other which I have not noted.
It must be fully a year since saw any of the family, but this morning I was prescribing for her brother-in-law, who told me that she is now lying in the country very ill with gallstones, and her attending physicians consider her case hopeless. So all experience goes to show that the after treatment of gallstones should be carried on for a very long time, so as to get rid of the disease altogether. Long delay at the printers’ enables me to add that after having been thus given up, this lady again placed herself under my care, and has at last completely recovered her health, Euonymin and Thlaspi bursa pastoris p having helped most.
How the biliary calculi are dissolved I am unable to say; that they are eventually really and truly got rid of by dissolution I infer from the fact that the sufferers get well and remain so.
It might be asked: What is your indication for Bursa pastoris in Gallstones?
Answer: When the original liver-ailing started primarily from the womb. I will refer to this again.
CHRONIC BILIOUSNESS AND EMACIATION CURED BY Chelidonium.
A strumous gentleman, about thirty years of age, came over from Ireland to consult me with regard to loss of flesh, dyspepsia, and biliousness. He was over six feet in height, and only weighed ten stone. Hair reddish; thorax flat; pronounced venous zig-zag; digestion very weak; poor appetite; a brownish rash across the epigastrium; cannot digest vegetable.
The state of the liver led me to prescribe Chelidonium 1; five drops in water night and morning.
Under this prescription (with the same diet, occupation, and place of abode as previously), he increased five pounds in weight in thirty-two days. In six months he had reached 1–stone 12 lbs. in weight, and he long after reported to me that he had “remained in very good health, indeed.” Besides being for some months under the influence of Chelidonium, he had inter-currently also Badiaga 3x and Psorinum 30, each during one month.
The state of the skin caused me to interpose Psorinum, m and some symptoms of indigestion led me to give the Badiaga.
But the strikingly great amelioration set in first under the sole influence of the Chelidonium, but this remedy did not extend its influence far enough or wide enough, and hence it had to be supplemented by the other two, but with the spheres of action of them we are here not concerned.
ENLARGEMENT OF LIVER, PRODUCING SHORTNESS OF BREATH AND PALPITATION, CURED BY Chelidonium majus 3x.
Some years since a retired merchant, sixty-eight years of age, consulted me for a supposed affection of his heart. He complained of obesity, fulness in the stomach, violent perspirations on moving about-so much so that he was in the habit of changing shirts during the forenoon already; feels puffy on going up a hill; loses his breath from the stomach on the least hurry. Has a fresh healthy look. No arcus senilis. Is very active, and takes a good deal of exercise.
After taking twenty drops of Chelidonium maj. 3x per diem for a few weeks I noted, at his dictation: “The puffiness is much better; I can walk with greater ease; I feel as if something were gone from me.” That is to say, his swelled liver had gone down and there was more playroom for his lungs and heart.
He weighed 15-stone 9 lbs., and under the action of Chelidonium this came down to 15-stone 6 lbs.
He afterwards had Chelidonium 1, and also Euonymin 3x, and after 15 months’ treatment he had gone down one stone in weight, and was able to go up hill and upstairs with comfort.
I saw him a year ago for neuralgia, when Silicea 200 was followed by the disappearance of the neuralgia.
CASE OF GALL COLIC CURED BY Myrica Cerifera 3x.
In the year 1889 a lady of some 30 odd years of age came to consult me for her liver, She seemed healthy and bright, but severe pains in her right side, pyrosis, and certain brown patches on her skin clearly implicated the liver. Patient took for a month Chelidonium p with distinct benefit. She afterwards had Ignatia amara 1 and subsequently Hydrastis Can. p, and both with some considerable benefit.
She came then to town to see me, when I again failed to find any thing to account for her dyspepsia, though the pain I could trace clearly to the gall-bladder.
After taking Myrica cerif., 3x, five drops in a table- spoonful of water, for some weeks, I received a very grateful letter from her, in which she says: “That medicine has done me a great deal of good; I have lost all pain in my side, and have had only one headache, and no indigestion, and I walk six miles a day.”
What the exact state of the gallducts was of course I could not tell; I could not feel any calculi; none had ever been passed, she thought.
Although Chelidonium and Hydrastis both did much good, it was the Myrica that really hit the mark curatively.
When a patient gets the right organ-remedy it is often really astonishing how their feeling of bien-etre is augmented: they not only become well, they very emphatically feel it; they are, as it were aggressively well.
Of course, a good complexion means health, more or less, but the liver is very specially involved in producing a clean skin and clear complexion; and I propose by and bye to dilate upon this point- CASE OF TAWNINESS OF SKIN, BRONCHIAL CATARRH, AND COUGH.
The tawny skin is met with in greatest perfection in those who have lived in hot countries; and where this dirty-looking dinginess of the skin is not from constitutional disease, or inherited from phthisically-disposed parents *See, on this subject, my “Five Years’ Experience in the New Cure of Consumption.” * it is quite amenable to treatment. The tawny discoloration can be more or less removed. This tawniness I regard as chronic subicterism, and, indeed, the anti-icterics cure such cases beautifully. They generally take a good deal of time to be really and permanently cured, and a whole series of such remedies have to be brought into play in succession, one after the other, together with here and there an inter-current nosode; but at times they will mend quickly from one or two remedies only.
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.