An interesting case came to me in 1940. A woman, thirty-two years old, had a pyloric ulcer, its existence having been proven by x-ray pictures. She felt better from warmth, worse from fried food, seasoning, salted food, and sour and sweet foods. Generally, after the evening meal, there was a churning in the stomach with pain, faintness and vomiting. In twelve days there was very little nausea and vomiting.
In two months she was perfectly well and eating normally. While studying the case, I gave her Kochs Cancer Cure 1M. as a constitutional remedy. She was cured without further medication. She had been told that all she had to look forward to, in later life, was cancer of the stomach. I assured her that the doctor had no basis for his prognosis. Did that assurance or the remedy cure her?.
One of our Huron Road doctors had a woman brought to him who had suffered for years, had many doctors and no relief. After a thorough check up at the hospital, the doctor informed the husband that he could find nothing to account for her suffering. The husband then informed his wife that they could find no reason for her suffering, that he was tired of it, and that she should either get well or die. She immediately recovered.
Some prescribers go into the mental or emotional conditions first. Others get the patient to tell their story in their own way and watch the unfolding of the mind which gives a clue to those conditions which need to be examined minutely. You cannot find the emotional sickness if you are pathologically inclined.
Psychosomatic means having physical suffering of emotional origin. A typical Psychosomatic sickness case was a man, in the forties, who had recently lost all sexual vigor. He and his wife were naturally much concerned and asked me if I could find a remedy for him.
I went into his history carefully and then went to my Materia Medica. I finally read to him the symptoms which had been produced by Agnus Castus on the mind and sexual inclinations. He said, “That is a perfect picture of my condition.” I gave him a dose of 50m. It acted for three weeks perfectly, then ceased its activity and a repetition of the drug had no effect. I could find no other remedy for his condition. Later, his employer transferred him to a much better location and his sexual vigor immediately responded. Did you ever hear of a more typical emotional sickness?.
We now have three methods of diagnosis:.
1st. Laboratory Statistics. Bare facts of medical history; physical examination. This is diagnosis by exclusion.
2nd. Laboratory Statistics, bare facts of medical history, physical examination and personality study. This is Psychosomatic diagnosis and treatments.
3rd. Laboratory Statistics, personal-family medical history, including drug habits, objective physical examination, subjective physical examination which includes places and character of all aches and pains with aggravation, a personality study, which includes change in mental attitude, apprehensions, fears, and dislikes and hates.
Here we have both the picture of the physical sickness and the personality or emotional sickness with which we are enabled to find the drug or drugs which have experimentally caused a similar sickness. We have many drugs which have experimentally proven their ability to profoundly affect the mind, the emotions, and the nervous system, and we feel that when prescribed homoeopathically, they will be found of great value in Psychosomatic Sickness.
