Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and I am bold enough to say, that if the monster of this fell malady has ascended the culminating height of its destruction and if death knocks at the very gate of life, it can still be asserted without any fear of contradiction that Tuberculinum will undoubtedly carry off the palm of victory by bringing about a happy amelioration of all the principal agonizing symptoms.
Then why be stampeded? Why all the hysteria? Why the instillation of Satanic fear in the heart of the student or the doctor in embryo? Fear is the child of ignorance. It belongs, in medicine, to allopathy. An acquaintance and association with allopathy breeds and fosters fear, while the same with homoeopathy breeds and fosters courage and confidence.
Superficially it looks as if both men were colossal egotists filled with self-conceit; but there were saving factors in each case. Both men were of intellectual greatness and tremendous powers of concentration. If they were conceited they had good reason for it. Probably both realized their weakness in their moments of introspection, but justified themselves by referring to the treatment they received from their contemporaries.
Many a snug fortune has been built upon the lucrative returns of the sales of patent medicines for cold in the head head, yet the victims each year sneeze on and on,and reddened noses and dripping nostrils snort defiantly in the face of science. Modern homoeopathy, pandering to popular clamor,both lay and professional, has its shot gum prescriptions, in the shape of the insinuating combination tablet, that invention of the combined devils of ignorance and sloth.
Man is a three-fold dynamic force composed of Body, Mind, and Spirit-operating as a single entity. Although subject to subtle influences from within and without, if his normal balance is maintained, no limits have been, or can be, imposed upon his achievements. However, many failures, mental kinks, moral lapses, and physical wrecks are directly traceable to elements deficient or out of balance.
They curetted, cauterized and dressed without the aid of chloroform; but just a month later the ulcers again appeared, one after another and again the best surgeons of Benares, being of the same opinion as their Simla brethren, scraped, cauterized and dressed, and once more they were healed within a fortnight. But in another month the first bulla made its appearance once more.
Thus for Rhus poisoning, we find that poisonous effects of Cantharides are much like it, and this is all we have used in general active practice for the last forty years; we do not have to consider a certain per cent. of cures or failures. It cures all cases and cures them promptly, and I do not remember of even having to prescribe more than once in case of ivy poisoning, and there is much of it in this country.