Who would believe, that among the Homoeopathically treated, only 15-20 per cent were lost? And the whole treatment performed with tasteless drugs and placebos, without crying as after the oily drugs (which by the way, the Chinese, adults and children, detest moist.)
The subject I have chosen to write about is not destined to bring new methods of Homoeopathic treatment. As to dilutions I will mention that under unspeakable difficulties I managed to produce the 200x of the most prominent polychrests and from some drugs I found especially suitable under local conditions: causticum, pyrogen, tabacum, syphilinum, tuberculinum Koch I managed to dynamize up to M, starting with a 100. It took me nearly four weeks (out of these, three whole Sun days). Most of the drugs I used in the 30x, except certain drugs whose efficiency I found only in lower dilutions, f.i. ceanothus (4x), crataegus tinct. or 1x), chin. sulf. (1-2x). But these were drugs with a small range of action.
The difficulties of dosage and repetition I experienced in the beginning were numerous. But still more difficulties were to be overcome under so different condition as given in China. It is not easy for a Homoeopathist and foreigner to embark on a thorough questioning. Patients over there suppose that all sorts of examinations and apparatus make any questioning superfluous. But the most formidable difficulty is the linguistic one. But once this valuable instrument has been forged, it is a real joy for a Homoeopath to penetrate into the details which a chinese patient will furnish you with.
Little by little they learn and appreciate the fact that the doctor is interested in the patients case, that there is nothing which would interest the doctor so much as this patients particular case. The Chinese language gives the most detailed description of symptoms, and a Chinese will accompany this description with the most elaborate characterizing of his pains, their extension, depth of layer affected (e.g., pains after malaria in the “upper skin,” or below the skin, which is identified with the nerve, or in the muscles, in superficial or deeper parts of the bones).
But the whole scenery changes as soon as you are interested in a patients mentals. First, those are matters not to be divulged (touching f.i. the question of consolation, aversion of company, weeping), to a man or to a foreigner (this is the case in the lower classes), secondly all these questions are, according to patients opinion, muddling the relationship of a doctor and his patient; he just came to get rid of an age-old lung tuberculosis and as a sign that he is right, he will gladly spit a sample of his purulent or bloody expectoration on his palm to present you the very important symptoms you have got to remove.
Another difficulty to fight, is the idea that any treatment should be performed with many drugs whose symposium has to follow the idea of combination of a sort of antiphlogistic with a tonic treatment (hot or cold in its intrinsic quality). But this would lead me too far away from the subject I had in view.
On coming back to the problem of dosage, I may confidentially say that in acute cases with a most complete picture of the personality on hand, a high potency, with one or two repetitions, will suffice (7-10 days between the first and second, 14-21 days between the second and the third). This is my experience backed up by eight years of observation.
I made this group a subdivision for cases where the picture was partly incomplete (lack of mentals) : there, I prescribed a 30x, following up with 12x. For instance, cases of pneumonia in the stage of hepatisation requiring phosph. or Iod (30x) were followed up with Chelid., Kal. Iod., or Sang, etc. in the 12x, according to the symptoms. Much easier is the treatment of chronic diseases: there is always such an abundance of more or less important symptoms. There, I could wait after having administered 2-3 doses of a higher potency until the improvement subsided or new symptoms started to trouble the patient.
No treatment is possible on purely objective symptoms. I pity the many beginners who, instead of starting with the Organon and a Materia Medica, proceed with a manual where diseases are being treated. They bungle for years, and abandon the Homoeopathy, looking for consolation to complex-electro-Homoeopathy, etc. China was a great experience for me as I learned the British and American Homoeopathy there. Unfortunately I had but very little opportunity to continue my studies. In 1941 the war started, and Central China was completely cut off.
As I got if from my teachers, so I did prescribe two to five drugs in chronic cases as long as I was in Europe; potencies ranging from the four to 30x, or in some drugs like tubercul., sulf, psorin to 100x. There was chronic feeling in me, which drug might have been useful, then was the chronic question whether here was no possibility to encompass the whole personality as in a frame, instead of treating a constitution, afterwards the the organs affected with some side tracking to Schusslers conceptions. Knowledge, experience, and the simple fact of lacking many drugs, bottles, alcohol, sugar of milk brought about a profound change in my work as a Homoeopathist.
The result of this mental aggrandizement was a tremendous work, and the conviction of the Chinese that I might have brought special drugs from Europe hitherto unknown in Asia. A European patient may go and see a Homoeopathist, either out of sympathy for Homoeopathy, or after having been forced to do so through the incompetence of an allopathic treatment.
A Chinese patient never understood the meaning of Homoeopathic treatment: I could bring it near to the mind of a few intellectuals who knew of some methods of isopathy used in Old China (pus out of fistulas to “kill the fistular worm,” or diluted excrements against dysentery, etc.; the old medical expression for this kind of treatment being; i-tu-kong- tu, which means the poison is also the antidote).
It was a great satisfaction for me and will remain with me, to know that people used to series of injections, huge bottles with colored medicines all sorts of auxiliary treatment (especially the use of marvellous tonics of the three kingdoms) come to acknowledge the force of a couple of powders, or the secret strength (li chi) of two drams of a tasteless liquid. No nobler commentary than that of a Chinese scholar who quoted in a banner presented to me, an address of a Chinese emperor to the most famous physician in Chinese history. Hoa T eou: “Your treatment comprises the strengthening forces of the Kosmos”.
