Homoeopathic Treatment Of Tropical Infections


The question of hill-diarrhoea had always been interesting because one looked upon it very often as the precusor of sprue. Patients with sprue often said that it began with hill-diarrhoea. It was not know what caused hill-diarrhoea but he was glad to hear Dr. Overmans suggestion about the water supply. Hill- diarrhoea had to be treated symptomatically, but the treatment of sprue had vastly improved.


DISCUSSION

DR. FOUBISTER thanked Dr. Overman for coming so far to give his paper. He found it a little difficult to express an opinion about Dr. Overmans treatment of acute conditions, as his treatment was contrary to homoeopathic philosophy. Dr. Foubister had found Pyrogen useful in many cases of the non-specific tropical diarrhoea which went under different names in different places, and in a few cases of severe reaction to T.A.B. inoculation; Gelsemium had fitted the symptoms perfectly.

He had spent three years in India and Assam during the war, but had not nearly so much experience in the treatment of acute tropical conditions as Dr. Overman had. He agreed that in the treatment of severe cases of malaria, quinine, and sometimes intravenous quinine, in cerebral cases was the best method of treatment. In epidermophytosis he had tried the orthodox treatment of Whitfields Ointment, gentian violet or potassium permanganate to kill the fungus, and this was satisfactory in most cases. When there was an excessive tendency to epidermophytosis and it was difficult to clear up, constitutional treatment had been most effective. Graphites and Silica had often been indicated.

He had spent over a year on a hill station (Murree) dealing with convalescents from malaria, dysentery, typhoid and typhus mainly. In many cases removal from the plains was all that was necessary; in others constitutional homoeopathic treatment had been very useful. There were two remedies he would like to mention: Psorinum in cases making a very slow recovery, especially if the well-known mental symptom “despair of recovery” was present; the other remedy was Medorrhinum. The mental symptom of apathy, a complete indifference to any form of pleasure was often found in cases needing Medorrhinum. When this was coupled with amelioration at the seaside, Medorrhinum was strongly indicated.

Dr. COOKE said that he was the last man who should speak because he was not a homoeopath, he was of the ordinary school, but he was very glad to have heard Dr. Overman and to have had a little encouragement from him when he said that there were allopathic medicines which seemed to act more quickly than homoeopathic drugs. There was no doubt at all that advances were being made in the treatment of tropical diseases.

The discovery recently by Colonel Short, that the interval in the malarial infection period between the time that the parasites were injected into the blood by the mosquito and then disappeared, and when they re-appeared again in the blood in ten or twelve days was occupied by the parasite in developing in the liver. This explanation of the interval should also explain why, in some patients, malaria remained latent for a considerable time and then re-appeared. Here was an opportunity for homoeopathy to find a drug to deal with the infection in the liver. If that could be done malaria would be cut short much more rapidly.

The question of hill-diarrhoea had always been interesting because one looked upon it very often as the precusor of sprue. Patients with sprue often said that it began with hill-diarrhoea. It was not know what caused hill-diarrhoea but he was glad to hear Dr. Overmans suggestion about the water supply. Hill- diarrhoea had to be treated symptomatically, but the treatment of sprue had vastly improved.

He had been struck during the last few years with the tremendous improvement in the treatment of bacillary dysentery. He could remember during the first world war having a whole ward in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases full of patient suffering from bacillary dysentery and these unfortunate people went on suffering for years, from bowel irregularity. The use of sulphaguanidine and other sulpha drugs had totally changed the outlook in bacillary dysentery, now one could promise most of these patients rapid amelioration and freedom from post- dysenteric effects.

Amoebic dysentery was often chronic. It is not often seen in this country in its acute stage but many people suffer from the chronic condition. Recently, however, instead of hospitalizing them he had treated them with dihaloquin or savorquin, and found that this cleared away the cysts from the faeces. it did not in all cases give a cure. It was easy to take, could be taken at home and saved the patient having to enter hospital.

Dr. FRASER KERR thanked the lecturer for his stimulating paper. One thing Dr. Overman had said seemed to him to show one simply way of viewing, and possibly solving, that rather difficult problem of the bacteriological theory of disease in contrast with the homoeopathic concept of the vital force and Holism. It would seem that the body cells and the microbe cells live in symbiotic harmony during ordinary health, when we receive no harm from the microbe cells and they no harm and probably some good from us. In disease this happy state of balance is lost.

Dr. ALVA BENJAMIN said that the only experience he had had was in the first world war when he was not homoeopathically inclined but he wondered how far Dr. Overman was justified in making a distinction between the diseases due to mankind and those due to influences other than mankind. In quite a number of diseases due to other causes there was just such a general reaction as in the ordinary infectious diseases passed from one man to another.

He would like to compliment Dr. Overman on his excellent English, that was the only point which might have led to confusion.

He did not quite follow the statement that the patients reactions to his infection worked out to a drug other than those drugs associated with that condition. Looked at from the homoeopathic philosophical point of view he did not think homoeopathic physicians did as a rule associate any particular drug with any special pathological condition. The drugs one chose for ones patients were not generally based on the pathological conditions. If a drug were indicated why should it not be given? Dr. Overman said that he had proved from his experience that it was best to do otherwise, perhaps he could explain a little more.

The CHAIRMAN asked what was Merc. aurat.

DR. OVERMAN: It is a compound of mercury and gold.

A MEMBER said that he had not had much experience of tropical diseases and Homoeopathy. He though the difficulty of getting the remedy in a case of disease in Dr. Overmans second group, that is, the group which came from infection by other living animals, was the patients suffering from any of these diseases produced a typical picture of the disease. It was very difficult indeed to find the symptoms of the patient, which were very much more important to the homoeopath.

In a case of bilharzia infection, which was common in Egypt and in the Sudan, the patient knew what he had got, he saw the blood in the urine, most of the symptoms were related to the pain in the bladder and the increased micturition. In order to find the homoeopathic remedy far more was needed than that. That was where the difficulty arose with malaria, rickettsia infections and so on. The diseases were too overwhelming sometimes to find the proper homoeopathic symptoms.

Dr. NEWELLS asked whether Dr. overman gave the orthodox remedy with the protozoal type of infection, and the Homoeopathic remedy with the micro-organism type of infection.

Dr. MARWAHA asked if the two drugs which Dr. Overman had mentioned had been proved and if so what was the result? What was the basic underlying principle on which Dr. Overman gave certain remedies?

The CHAIRMAN said that we were indebted to Dr. Overman for reminding us that there were two very important aspects of tropical diseases. His own theory of “natural” and “unnatural” human infections brought out two aspects which interest us as homoeopathic physicians. One aspect is the physical and the other is the dynamic. Where parasites quite foreign to the natural flora of the human body are introduced and are very active, something of a physical nature must be employed to deal with them for their immediate and urgent symptoms. Having done so, the subsequent constitutional treatment by homoeopathic measures would certainly accelerate recuperation.

The physical aspect had become the arena for modern research in the old school with some quite encouraging results. This was a challenge to homoeopathy. Mother tinctures and very low potencies of proved drugs had not been given sufficient study by our school to show their possible merits. Dr. Overman had given us examples of a very few-there must be very many more. We were indebted to Dr. Overman for reminding us that low potencies can relieve acute states when the drugs employed have strong confirmation of the acute symptoms in their provings. This, of course, was not Homoeopathy.

It was a method of employing potentized medicines to ameliorate acute symptoms. When these drugs were judiciously selected the state of the patient became safe enough to allow the physician to select the simillimum. Such a procedure required great skill so that our treatment with the palliative potency would not introduce proving symptoms (artificial drug disease) to confuse the issue.

C. L. W. Overman