With the sole addition of Medorrh. C. the treatment was as in the last case, and of about the same duration, viz; about a year, and with an equally satisfactory result; he got well, and has remained well to date, working very hard almost all the time. This I know, as he has come about four times a year to be assured that his old enemy had been, not merely scotched, but killed.
In this case I myself originally gave a bad prognosis to the gentleman’s wife, and it was the Cholesterine that brought life and hope into the matter. It is very difficult to cure a tumid mass of any kind with one remedy: one needs Organopathy, Homoeopathy, Amekeanism, and empiricism, together with theories no end, if the full extent of the possible is to be attained.
In my judgment the full range of the art-cure of disease by remedies and on scientific lines starts from the due recognition of the primary seat of the disease, and of the remedies that electively affect such primary seat. This, I take it, is the homoeopathic specificity of seat. Experience teaches me that if we are to avoid false issues in treatment we must start with diagnosing, if possible, where the malady is primarily located. At any rate, I find this the shortest way to curing. If this be neglected we not infrequently cover and cure the symptoms, leaving the malady itself more or less untouched.
No doubt-and on this I lay some stress- when the symptoms are scientifically (i.e. homoeopathically) covered and cured, the disease causing the symptoms is at the same time often radically cured also; but also, and not seldom, the symptoms are got rid of, but the disease remains.
It has been urged that any untrained person can treat homoeopathically by mechanically covering the symptoms; and no doubt, this is, to some extent, true. But such cures are not worth much; they do not reach very far, and are only of practical value when the malady and the symptoms are convertible terms. The simillimum of the symptoms may, or may not be the simillimum of the malady; if of latter, we have an ideal therapy beyond which there is nought to be desired; if of the symptoms only, we are apt to keep on curing our patients till they die.
If homoeopathy is to go on advancing we must face the question of getting behind the symptoms, so that we may not only treat the symptoms homoeopathically, but also the malady in its essence. In other words, it will not suffice to find the simillimum of the symptoms, but that being found, it will be needful to put this pertinent question: Is this symptomatic simillimum also homoeopathic to the anatomical essence of the malady itself?
In the simple and well-defined forms of disease affecting an isolated organ, Paracelsic homoeopathy or organopathy is a very valuable guide to cure, and helps to define the disease and to fix its cure with the pathologic simile.
This results from a recognition that certain organs of the body are, as it were, organisms within the organism; minor systems with in the general system. They have special individualism, both as to their functions and as to their diseases. Such an organ is the liver. It can be made ill by the organism, but, in its turn, it can make the organism ill. They act and re-act upon one another. Neither can exist without the other.
Certain drugs have been discovered by man, almost in all places and at all times, that have an elective affinity for these organs, and these drugs have some of them received names indicative of their action, hence we have head medicines, spleen medicines, liver medicines.
This small volume is intended to shew that the greater or more common Diseases of the Liver can, for the most part, be readily cured by hepatics or liver medicines.
In as much as a large number of hepatics are well-known to us, our chief difficulty lies in finding out which remedy will cure a given case. How far I have succeeded in overcoming this difficulty is shewn in these pages, and where I fail, others, beginning where I leave off, may succeed.
The cure of organ-diseases by organ-remedies is often called organopathy, and this it was that very largely constituted the practice of Paracelsus, and for which he was hounded to death. His success was so great that envy and hatred arose and fiercely attacked him. There can be no doubt that Paracelsus was foully murdered by the hired servants of his fellow practitioners; and oh! the number of medical tom tits that have thrown dirt on his memory all through the after-living generations!
For all that, his great genius flames still bright above the horizon, lighting up the life-paths of such as have the power to see. It supplies light, but not eyes.
I would remind those homoeopathic practitioners who throw their little handfuls of dirt at Paracelsus that it was he- Paracelsus-who planted the acorn from which the mighty oak of homoeopathy has grown.
It was just as impossible for Paracelsus to work out a homoeopathic equation on the purely scientific ground of drug physiology or provings as did Hahnemann, as it was impossible for the farmers in the time of Hahnemann to use the steam plough i.e. it was not there to be used.
I have long maintained that organopathy is elementary homoeopathy that in the very nature of things, homoeopathy necessarily includes organopathy.
Paracelsus was an organopath, being the founder of organopathy. I think it most likely that he picked up its elements and elementary principles on his travels, applied them in practice, and having made cures that have rarely been equalled, he systematized it. Personally I acknowledge my great indebtedness to Paracelsus, (largely through Rademacher) with all gratitude. I am constantly and increasingly impressed with the importance of ascertaining the exact primary seat of any localised malady, and I have been driven to this by certain of my failures in purely symptomatic treatment. To really and radically heal of disease, one must often dig down and find out where the fons et origo mali is, and to this end Paracelsic organ-testing is of the very greatest service, indeed it often leads to the most important clinical discovery. And what may the most important clinical discovery be? That which nec dextrosum, nec sinistrosum leads straight to the goal of every true physician- mastery over disease, i.e., its direct art-cure.
CASE OF GALLSTONES AND ASTHMA.
It must be nearly ten years ago that a widow lady from abroad came to consult me for asthma and biliary calculi: and I will relate her case, not only because it is apposite as a cure of a liver affection, but because the lady has been more or less within my professional ken ever since, and at this present time she is in very good health, and for long has had neither Asthma nor Gallstone attacks.
Another point of interest for me lies in the fact that four well known homoeopathic physicians had treated the case during over three years with only indifferent success. They treated the symptoms without any physical diagnosis, and after having prescribed for the symptoms and temporarily cured many of them, the patient remained pretty much where she was before. Had they gone into the case they would have found that the bronchial asthma, retching and vomiting had their point de depart in the gall bladder.
No doubt this had again its origin in the constitutional crasts of the individual, and hence I began the treatment with very infrequent doses of Psorinum 30. This much lessened the pain in the right side, and it greatly relieved the cough. Then during about five weeks patient was under the influence of Chelidonium, 1, and pain and cough quite disappeared.
In a fortnight the pain starting from the gall bladder returned, and was accompanied with much retching. Patient was of opinion that the side pain had originally come from taking such quantities of phosphorus for her cough years ago. At any rate, she affirmed that she never felt pain in this region before.
There is no return of asthma since she left off the Chelidonium.
I next prescribed Terebinthina-3x, four drops in water three times a day. The Terebintha rather upset her at first, and then she got better.
After this an attack of gall colic came on from exertion. The duskiness of the skin, and the big brown patches on the forehead, led me to give Nux. It did much good, and under its influence patient’s skin became lighter and cleaner. Then followed Thuja 30, and subsequently at odd intervals, according to the symptoms, Mercurius vivus, Antimon. tart, 3, Pulsatilla 3x, Cholesterine 2, Ipecac., Alnus rub, Nat, Sul. 6, and Calcarea carb. 30.
But these were mostly for the gallstones, as there had never been any return of the asthma after the Psorinum followed by the Chelidonium, and that is more than nine years ago.
This I consider the more remarkable, as both her own mother and her own son had asthma; and an asthmatic lady, daughter and mother of individuals similarly afflicted, would hardly have a transitory or spurious kind of asthma.
RADEMACHER’S HEPATIC.
Rademacher’s liver medicines are Quassia, Chelidonium, Liquor calc. mur., Nux vomica, Crocus, and Carduus, though he does not reckon the last-named as solely an hepatic. These remedies have been already sufficiently considered, excepting Crocus and Quassia, and of this latter I have myself no experience, and will therefore pass it by. Of the former I will presently speak.
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.