RADEMACHER ON THE INFLUENCE OF Saffron ON THE LIVER.
Crollius. in his treatise, De signaturis internis rerum cites Saffron as a remedy for jaundice. Rademacher had been treating liver diseases with Carduus, and finding the prevailing genius of disease alter (which he recognized from the fact that Carduus had ceased to cure the then prevailing liver affections), he began to test afresh for the remedy, and believed he had found in it Quassia.
A man of sixty years of age came under his observation for a painful chest affection with fever, cough, and bloody expectoration- (we should now call such a case pneumonia, broncho-pneumonia, or pleuro-pneumonia, probably.)
The action of Quassia was fair, but not so pronounced and rapid as Rademacher was accustomed to, and hence he concluded that he was not dealing with a real Quassia liver disease.
Patient took the Aqua quassioe for a week with some obvious benefit, when, tiring of its taste, Saffron was added to colour and mask it. Result: rapid and complete cure.
Subsequent observations shewed that the curative virtue lay in the Saffron, and not in the Quassia.
DYSENTERIA HEPATIC CURED BY Crocus.
Fever, colic, vomiting, rectal tenesmus, slimy, sanguineous, non-faecal motions, easily and promptly cured with small doses of the tincture of Saffron, because dependent upon a primary affection of the liver curable by Saffron.
“In former years I should,” says Rademacher, “have rushed into print in the medical journals and proclaimed Saffron as the greatest liver medicine extant, but since Paracelsus has broken my spectacles I see nature with my eyes alone, and it is now manifest to me that we cannot ascribe to any organ-remedy whatsoever absolute and unconditional curative power but that the really clear and obvious revelation of the same depends upon the kind of the epidemic genius of disease that happens for the time- being to be prevailing.”
Those who know their Syndenham will appreciate this. RADEMACHER’S CURE OF GALL STONES.
Rademacher’s observations are in all cases so reliable that I deem it a useful undertaking to give, in short, the gist of his experience of the medicinal cure of Gallstones.
Carduus, he maintains, is facile princeps in the attack; nothing equals it, he says. He was once enabled to recognise the presence of biliary calculi in the following extraordinary manner:-
An elderly man, who had formerly complained of heartburn, fulness, and regurgitation after food, was seized with violent colic, and, as all the abdominal remedies were without effect, he concluded that the abdominal affection was symptomatic of some other primarily diseased organ. He was sent for at an unusual hour to hear from the good man’s wife that a band age with knot in it at once stopped the pain. From this he concluded that only a mechanical affection cold be thus mechanically helped.
A slight and very peculiar feeling alone remained in the region of the gall bladder. Patient was treated during six months with Durand’s remedy, and was thereby completely cured of his supposed stomachic affection and of his colic. He remained quite well for twelve years. Then, after this long interval, the stony guest again put an appearance, though under another guise. He again administered Durand’s remedy where upon the troubler ceased and came no more, the patient dying long after at a great age of senile marasmus.
Rademacher relates how the symptoms of pleurisy and even of pneumonia may be really those of biliary calculi, and he instances the case of the wife, or rather widow of an admiral who was cured of an attack of gallstone colic with Durand’s remedy by him, and, being seemingly well travelled to Berlin, but fell ill of the same affection which was mistaken for pleurisy, and treated as such in the old antiphlogistic fashion with venesection and plasters, and under these the seventy-year old lady died.
Rademacher cites the case as a warning to the careless or inexperienced. He then remarks that Sulphuric acid has the power of stirring up biliary calculi to activity.
Of the tincture of Carduus in the attacks gallstone colic he recommends from 15 to 30 drops in a teacupful of water or milk five times a day.
MIXTURE OF OIL OF TURPENTINE AND SULPHURIC AETHER, OF DURAND’S REMEDY.
Paracelsus says that the oil of turpentine was first discovered by the jatro-chemists, and he strongly recommends physicians to try the curative effects of the oil in diseased human organisms.
Rademacher remarks, however that as a rule physicians are more concerned to gain over the patient world by saying smooth thing to them than with the advancement of the healing art, and hence the recommendation was not followed and fell into oblivion.
Paracelsus affirms that turpentine with the right appropriate or organ remedies is helpful in all indurations.
Those who know of turpentine only that it is good for tapeworm, and that it, combined with aether, will dissolve gallstones, know but very little of its virtues.
He thus summarises : “All we can with certainty maintain is, that the symptoms which we ascribe to the presence of biliary calculi are not merely silenced by turpentine in aether, but by its long continued use are got rid of so completely that patients remain thereafter free of their troubles forever, or, at any rate, for many years.”
He finally remained true, after many trials, to a mixture of sixteen parts of Spirit sulph. oeth., and one of Ol. tereb.
And as to dose: one must begin gently and cautiously with ten, and, in the very sensitive, with five drops of the mixture in half a cupful of water three times a day, and the dose must be slowly or rapidly increased according to the tolerance of each individual case.
At first there is often a little pain in the liver soon after the dose, lasting a few minutes. This he declares is desirable, but the dose must not be increased till this pain has not been felt for a few days. Then the urine must be watched, and as soon as the urine begins to get darker in colour (in which case the patient at the same time is apt to complain of an uncomfortable sensation in the epigastrium), the said mixture must be temporarily stopped and Carduus administered till the discomfort in the epigastrium has gone, and until the urine has again become clear and of the colour of light straw. And then the mixture is to be resumed, but in a small dose-smaller than it was when left off, and the dose is not to be too hastily again augmented.
CHRONIC ENLARGEMENT OF THE LIVER CURED BY Podophyllum peltatum 6x.
In the month of June of the year 1883, a widow lady came under my observation for diarrhoea. It was clearly of hepatic nature, and patient felt as if she were sinking into the earth; icy cold feet; pains in the abdomen; has piles; last year nearly had jaundice. A physical examination revealed chronic enlargement of the liver; the patient looked ill, and in very ill-health.
With an enlargement of the liver, tenderness of the hepatic region, pains in the abdomen, piles, diarrhoea, and evident Angegriffensein of the organism, I think the ordination of Podophyllum pelt.6x may be fairly called scientific; in fact, I maintain that the prescription was demonstrably and strictly scientific.
It cured the patient slowly- seven weeks-surely, and permanently and not only subjectively but objectively, for her improved appearance was very pronounced.
I often wonder in this age of science that its scientific spirit so much neglects the scientific therapeutics of Samuel Hahnemann, particularly as Hahnemann has been so long dead. It cannot now make any difference to him! And faith! it makes no difference to me either.
Then why do I stand up for homoeopathy so persistently if it makes no difference to me? Why, indeed? Only one reason.
And what might that one reason be? Shall I confess, or let the black secret die with me?
Just this: Homoeopathy is true, that’s all.
And if true, why do people sneer at it?
Fools always do sneer at what they do not understand.
PRACTICE OF MODERN FRENCH PHYSICIANS IN THE TREATMENT OF HEPATIC COLIC.
M. Germain See in “La Medecine Moderne,” Nr. 6, 1890, treats of this subject, and shows a distinct advance on the common treatment of hepatic colic.
He notes, that the Salicylate of Sodium is an excellent cholagogue; in watery solution the Salicylate of Sodium augments the biliary secretion, and particularly the watery part of the bile And further, by a singular coincidence, this remedy, besides its action as a cholagogue, has a powerful analgesic action which is of prime importance in the attack.
He insists that in prescribing cholagogues great care should be taken in dissolving them in an ample quantity of fluid.
Rademacher was clearly of the same view, for he gave each dose of Carduus in a teacupful of fluid.
M. See speaks also with much satisfaction of the free use of Olive Oil in Biliary attacks.
He considers purgatives contraindicated. He also condemns all substances that lessen the biliary secretion, such as the salts of potassium, calomel, iron, copper, morphia, atropine, and strychnine,
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.