Sir John Weir mentioned a case of ciliary blepharitis, where infection was so severe that after pathological investigations it was decided to remove all the eyelashes. A dose of Argentum nitricum 200 was given, and improvement was so marked that within twelve hours no surgical interference was necessary, and the patient made a complete and quick recovery.
Dr. JOHN PATERSON said that he was sorry he had not read Dr. Fergie Woods paper beforehand, but there were two points which occurred to him while reading it to the meeting, and that was the reference to the use of silver in conjunctivitis. He had a vivid experience when on the staff of the Glasgow Public Health Department in charge of ophthalmia neonatorum wards.
All knew how distressing that could be and the routine treatment was the the instillation of the silver preparation or argyrol, the swabbing and douching of the eyes, and so on, and if that was not vigorously carried out there was bad trouble. When he went into general practice he still had this impression on his mind and yet he had used, and from his experience would say that the condition could be treated by, Argentum nit. in the potency. He was perfectly certain that these cases responded to homoeopathic treatment.
He had been trying to find references to the role of metals in intra-cellular reactions. In the old days, iron was given for anemia in large doses, but he thought it was recognized now that unless very minute amounts of copper were included, the iron would not act. He believed that it was now asserted that the metals could act in very minute doses as activators of enzymes. Going back to the analogy of copper and iron, it seemed that the minute action of copper was necessary to get the haemoglobin formation in the cell and a very recent note drew attention to the fact that nicotinic acid seemed to be the activator of insulin, and he wondered whether gold or silver played some part in activating the nerve cell.
Dr. PATERSON thought that was the explanation, and it raised a point with regard to replacing deficiencies in tissues. He would take rickets as his standard example. In his student days every child fed on the bottle got lime water, the argument being that Glasgow had a very soft water supply which did not contain any lime, thus the child lacked lime in its tissues and in consequence developed rickets. Glasgow children were still drinking Loch Katrine water, but they no longer suffer from rickets.
It is now accepted that administration of vitamins or exposure to natural sunlight accelerates calcium metabolism. Rickets is still due to a shortage of lime in the bones, due not to a lack of lime in the food, but lack of power of the cell to absorb the lime. Calc. carb. in potency can correct this, not by a substitution process, but by a stimulation to normal function.
The same argument applies here, the silver in potency cannot act by substitution or chemical union, but acts by a process of stimulation of the tissue cells of the conjunctiva. Zinc, he believed, was stored in the body, it was found in the liver and caused an acceleration of the action of the thyroid. It was a question of stimulating the cell to absorb the natural salts of the body, it could not be the simple absorption of silver.
The CHAIRMAN: That is presuming that it is the local action of silver on the eye which brings about the cure.
Dr. PATERSON said that was the orthodox view. He presumed that the silver stimulated the cell to act. It was the same with the so-called chemotherapeutic remedies of the present day, they allowed the cell to function more normally.
The CHAIRMAN: About your lime water, are we not getting calcium in the bread?.
Dr. PATERSON: Yes! and we are suffering from it!.
Dr. LESLIE G. SCOULAR asked Dr. Paterson how long it took to cure the cases of ophthalmia neonatorum with Argentum nit. Did the babies have their eyes washed out as well?.
Dr. Paterson said that he only gave Argentum nit. in potency, and it was a matter of hours. An eye could go very bad in a few hours, but taking the point of time, if one saw a child in the same stage one would instil argyrol over a number of days. With Argentum nit. the eye cleared quickly and did not require any other treatment.
Dr. SCOULAR asked what potency was given to the infants.
Dr. PATERSON said that it was the 30th potency of Argentum nit. He had the experience in the Glasgow office of seeing these eyes going absolutely bad, so much so that the consultant had to be called in. What impressed him was that with the routine treatment its various stages had to be kept up most rigorously or the treatment failed, but when he dared to use the homoeopathic remedy the eye got better quickly. The rate of deterioration with lack of attention from the orthodox local treatment, so called, was just the reverse of the rate of improvement one obtained from the internal homoeopathic method.
Dr. SCOULAR asked what organism was isolated, and Dr. PATERSON said that it was usual organism, the Diplococci.
The CHAIRMAN asked if these results had ever been published, to which Dr. PATERSON replied “No”.
Dr. SCOULAR asked if the eyes were filled with pus.
Dr. Paterson replied that they were cases which should have been notified there and then and treated with the routine treatment, but they were never notified because, under the potency treatment, there was not any need for it. If they had persisted for more than twenty-four hours he would have been compelled to give notification, but they cleared up so quickly it was not necessary.
Dr. SCOULAR said that if these infants had silver nitrate drops, 2 per cent., they did not develop ophthalmia neonatorum, but if they had argyrol or something similar, the eye might go bad. The effect of the silver nitrate 2 per cent. was to precipitate the superficial layer of the conjunctiva, and the explanation was that this layer giving way brought away all the organisms, and there was a further epithelialization. A possible explanation would be that there was a greater absorption of the silver into the system because of this loss of superficial epithelium caused by the silver nitrate 2 per cent.
The CHAIRMAN asked members to give their experience of Aurum in suicidal cases.
Dr. TATIANA HARDY said that they all had would-be suicides, but if one gave Lueticum one did not need Aurum; if Aurum was given one might need Lueticum.
Dr. Hardy said that she had one suicidal case, and she gave him Aurum 200, and he committed suicide the following day. She never gave it again. He looked terrible, and he had lost money which was one of the indications for giving Aurum.
Dr. PATERSON said that he had just recalled the fact of one case he saw many years ago of a woman who had actually thrown herself in the river and had made several attempts at suicide. She was given Aurum, and although he saw her as a patient again recently there had been no return of any attempt at suicide. The remedy was Aurum and the indications were certainly mental. It happened in his very early days of homoeopathy, and he gave the remedy on the mental indications.
The CHAIRMAN said that Dr. OHanlon had been successful with a case in the hospital, whom he had been treating for sometime with all sorts of remedies. Dr. OHanlon worked out her case when she entered the hospital. The great symptom was depression, she gave her Aurum and she had never looked back, and that is now at least twelve months ago.
Dr. SCOULAR asked how soon after the giving of the Aurum the change was noticed, to which the CHAIRMAN replied, within a week.
Dr. SEYMOUR asked whether, to get the most rapid effect with such a drug as Aurum, one should give the cm. He remembered having such a patient whom he did not know very well, but who was evidently about to commit suicide. A chemist rang him up to say that the man was in his shop and wanted to buy potassium cyanide, did the speaker know him. He did know him, having seen him eighteen months before. He spoke to him and he seemed perfectly rational, and told the chemist that as far as he knew he would be all right. Within an hour the man had taken the potassium cyanide and was dead. Had he been given Aurum, what potency should it be given to affect his mentality?.
Dr. PATERSON replied that the higher the “Mentals” the higher the potency; in actual mental cases the higher potencies should be used. That was the working rule.
The CHAIRMAN said that on general principle if one wanted a quick result one must give high potencies. One had to risk an aggravation.
Dr. HARDY said that she had wondered if she had given her patient a high dose of Aurum whether she would have saved him. Because of her lack of experience she prescribed Aurum 200, and only, one dose. Should she have given several doses?.
The CHAIRMAN thought yes, that it was comparable to giving the acute remedy every quarter of an hour in cases in extremes.
Dr. HARDY said that that was probably right, one dose would aggravate.
Dr. GHAI asked if Aurum would be prescribed on one indication of suicidal tendencies.
