She had also found that in conditions such as menorrhagia, if the condition was due to a fibroid, it was safer, to begin with a low potency and work up, but if due to the menopause no result at all would be obtained unless high potencies were used. In one case with neuritis she tried Arsenic and Chamomilla and various other drugs, and finally thought that Plumbum might help and gave her 200. The patient relapsed after the first 24 hours and was just as bad as ever. She tried with Plumbum 6 t.d.s. for a week, and she improved and the treatment was continued twice a week and finally once a week, and she was cured. She could not explain how that happened.
As regards high potencies, she always used these for robust patients who had any kind of illness whether acute or not. She agreed with Dr. Blakie and Dr. Templeton that in acute organic conditions such as pneumonias the highest potencies were much the most useful, and in any of the mental conditions, such as anxiety neurosis, she thought the high potencies were the only ones that would clear up the condition. She remembered seeing Dr. Tyler, by means of high potencies, give a peaceful termination to patients dying of cancer, and she did not think that could be done with the low ones.
Wing-Commander NEUBERT said that this had become almost a school of confession. He would start off by saying that as he was not a general practitioner he had had practically no experience whatever of Homoeopathy except what he had read from books. The thing that had struck him was the discovery of opinion amongst the practitioners. For himself he kept about 150 drugs, nearly all of which were in the 30th potency, and he just tried various “strays” who happened to come into his life, and thought the results were very fair.
He gave them what happened to be in his cupboard, and only in occasional cases did he really try to do something else with different potencies. But looking at his cases by and large he wondered whether some of those whom he had treated would have been better if he had altered his potency more than he had done. At the same time, he could not say that he was dissatisfied with his 150 odd remedies all in the same potency.
Dr. CHARLES SUNDELL said that he was in the position of a lower fourth form boy in the presence of the science masters asked to write a paper on the Einstein theory. He wished to thank Dr. Rorke for his very thoughtful address. He had known Dr. Rorke for years, he was one of the worlds thinkers, and his thinking was infectious, he made other people think.
He had suggested that those who came to the rostrum might answer one, two, or three of his questions. He proposed to answer one only: What did they understand by power and by potency? Remembering something of his mathematical training, he recalled the word “power” as used in mathematics. A figure was raised to a certain power, and that was what power meant in Homoeopathy, in other words, dilution. What did “potency” mean? In his humble opinion it meant violence.
Dr. NEWALL suggested that potency was the mechanical means whereby we divided up the medicine, and power the effect on the patient himself.
Dr. RORKE said that he would add another quotation from the mining engineer whom he had already quoted. When he was told about these potencies that were admittedly beyond the material he quite saw the idea that in high potency itself there was a quality, and a quality constant to the remedy from which that potency was derived. “But,” he said, “you must be very trustful of your pharmacists. How do you know whether the 10m potency contains anything or nothing?”
He gave him the reply which was set out in Hahnemanns Introduction to Arsenic, and he said, “That is right enough, but supposing you give a dose of potency of a remedy that you consider is well indicated and nothing happens, do not your suspicions fall on the preparation of that potency? Then he was told about Dr. Boyds work and went into it as fully as he was able; he was very satisfied and very thrilled, and when he was told that Dr. Boyds chief difficulty at present was in getting a galvanometer sufficiently sensitive to record these emanations he said, “Well, has he tried the fog chamber?”
Dr. Rorke replied that if it was a well-known thing he was pretty sure Dr. Boyd had tried it, and he asked the mining engineer to describe the fog chamber and its work to Dr. Boyd. The form of energy that was in high potency medicine was something that worried Dr. Rorke a great deal, and it worried him very much when he knew that Dr. Boyd could detect and to some extent measure it by his emanometer, and still remain puzzled. Then he read the report of a lecture by Sir Oliver Lodge.
It was a dull lecture and did not interest him much, but there was one sentence in it which “hit him between the eyes”. Sir Oliver Lodge said, “The only constant that I have been able to recognize in physical science is the velocity C, commonly called the velocity of light.” That was an eye opener to him. Of course it is the only constant the only yardstick we have got.
The PRESIDENT (Sir John Weir) said that Dr. Rorke had staged a good discussion. They were getting down to the hard facts of everyday life and what they had heard would be a great help to most of them. He had thought that the best thing he could do was to go back to Hahnemann himself. He always went back to Hahnemann for comfort, and he quoted the following (para. 280):.
“This incontrovertible axiom founded upon experience, will serve as a rule by which the doses of all homoeopathic medicines, without exception, are to be attenuated to such a degree, that after being introduced into the body, they shall merely produce an almost insensible aggravation of the disease. It is of little importance whether the attenuation goes so far as to appear almost impossible to ordinary physicians whose minds feed on no other ideas but what are gross and material. All these arguments and vain assertions will be of little avail when opposed to the doctrines of unerring experience.”.
As regards low and high potencies, during 25 years in his experience this had been a perennial question. Low potencies could be used for physical illness external conditions, skin conditions, and so forth but when one came to the patient who was really ill one wanted to find symptoms, especially mental symptoms, and as these were only obtained by the higher potencies one had to use the remedies in higher potencies.
When he was a resident there was a patient who had a Rhus 3x and he gave him a Rhus 200 and the whole thing cleared up. He remembered being called to a mental hospital to a man who had a typical Cannabis indica symptom. He was given Cannabis indica, and was discharged in six weeks, though he had been there for two years.
It was a good thing they had a man like Boyd amongst them with his physicist ideas. He had come across Sharpes Tracts on Homoeopathy; these were nearly 100 years old, and yet almost as fresh as ever. On the question of being allergic, it took 250 times as much formic acid to produce symptoms in the healthy as it did in the person who was sensitive. In para. 228 Hahnemann said:.
“The smallest possible dose of homoeopathic medicine will operate chiefly upon the diseased parts of the body which have became extremely susceptible of a stimulus so similar to their own disease”.
Of course that was allergy. Dr. Woods had put in a nutshell the description of a sensitive person. His own great stand-by was Kali carb. He tried that remedy in potency. With regard to what Dr. Blackie had said about low and high potency, he recalled the case of a woman with cataract who had Phosphorus 30, and it was not repeated for thirteen months and the cataract cleared up.
They had had a really good meeting, and were extremely obliged to Dr. Rorke.
A note by Dr. MITCHELL and a letter by Dr. PATERSON, contributory to the discussion, were read by the Hon. Secretary.
The British Homoeopathic Journal, Vol. XXXIV., No. 4.
