Surely, we still have a sufficient number of homoeopathic hospitals, in name at least, in which cases of carcinoma and sarcoma might be used to determine the curative power of various potencies of Radium bromide. Not all the cases of malignant tumors can or need be turned over to the surgeon; some are looked upon, for reasons good and sufficient, as inoperable; in others, operation is refused by the patients themselves. Such should be used to build up authoritative statistics, with reference to cure or its failure, in malignancy. The utter lack of initiative in this direction, shown by our attending physicians and surgeons is amazing, unless one stops to reflect upon the well-nigh universal decadence of interest in the homoeopathic cause in North America.
Dermatitis After Arsphenamine. – “To the Editor:- Since April of last year, a 32-year-old man whose previous health had been excellent has taken twelve intravenous injections of neoarsphenamine and about twenty intramuscular injections of 1 grain each of mercuric salicylate.
The last dose of arsenic was given, August 7, and the last dose of mercury, August 24. About September, he began to have general pruritus, which symptom has increased until he is desperate. He has not had a rash or any objective sign of changes in the skin. He is impressionable and sensitive to any systemic irregularities. The urine is normal and the general health good. Has the arsenic or the mercury or both produced the pruritus, or is it a manifestation of his nervous state? Please omit my name.
M.D., Indiana.
ANSWER. – It is not likely that the itching in this case has anything to do with the treatment either with arsphenamine or with mercury. Arsphenamine sometimes causes itching, but it occurs promptly after the injection, usually the day after, and, if it persists, is followed by a dermatitis.” – J.A.M.A.
The above is thought provoking. If the 32-year-old man was an excellent health, why was he given intravenous injections of neoarsphenamine and of mercuric salicylate? Presumably he was syphilitic. We are not so sure of the correctness of the Jamalian editorial answer, that these intravenous injections had nothing to do with subsequent itching. How does the editor know?
Both arsenic and mercury are quite capable of inducing itching of the skin, as our homoeopathic provings will show. Does it not seem reasonable to suppose, that after such rather vigorous treatment, a patient would show something? No wonder that our colleague from the Hoosier state wishes to remain anonymous. The wonders of Scientific Medicine are marvellous indeed!.
Why Ledum? – Ledum palustre belongs to a small group of remedies whose pains and aches are relieved by cold and cold applications; now this is curious, because most of us turn almost instinctively to heat, when in pain. Is not the seductive, soft, red rubber hot-water bag proof of this assertion? Yet some remedies resent this life-giving heat and much prefer to be chilled instead, in order to obtain relief of pain.
And so we find it in Pulsatilla, Lac caninum, Ledum pal., Fluoric acid, Natrum sulph. and one or two others, but these are the principal remedies which come to mind when the modality better by cold applications is present. Quite recently, a devoted husband called us on the telephone, to impart the troublous news, that his gentle spouse had been suffering from rheumatic joint pains, which good old Rhus toxicodendron had ungallantly failed to assuage; he added a sort of verbal postscript, that her only relief was from the application of cloths wrung out of ice cold water. Ledum pal. we shouted back and so it was, for the thirtieth made short work of the good wifes trouble.
Now LAc caninum, the product of mans best friend, does this same trick too, but has a way of hopping from side to side, in a most mystifying manner, whereas our gentle Pulsatilla, she of the tearful countenance, whose pains are also relieved by cold, has a disconcerting way of sending them about the physical anatomy, without rhyme or reason. And so it goes! Mary develops a panaritium on her finger and dire things for Mary are predicted, visions of “blood-poisoning,” that bogey of orthodox practicians, whose common sense trails far behind their scientific knowledge.
Silicea may be thought of, but Mary finds that running cold water over her offending digit assuages her pain and sends the water meter joyfully sky-rocketing. So Fluoric acid has to be used instead and a ridiculous thirtieth or two hundredth potency does the trick. Should Mary be a slave to functional liver and gastro-intestinal disturbance, with post-prandial morning diarrhoea and an unesthetic, greenish-gray tongue, we feed her Natrum sulph. instead, particularly if Mary abhors wet weather.
Yes, dear old homoeopathy has many a bag of tricks, if we will only use them.
The Plays The Thing! – We recently had occasion to witness at first hand and close proximity a major operation upon the gall- bladder of one of our patients. Clad in gown, cap and mask of spotless, germless white, we felt purer than we ever had been before upon this troubled sea of life. Surgeons, nurses and onlooker presented a sort of oriental appearance, as though freshly transplanted form the arid deserts of Morocco; it was awesome, truly grand, with the soft, gray-tiled walls of the operating room as a stage setting.
Noiselessly, with unerring skill and confidence, the surgeon deftly carved his way into the abdominal cavity, while the fair and buxom patient breathed quietly under the anaesthetizing cone of the confident administrator. Below, in room 527, an anxious, sadly troubled husband paced to and fro, conjuring in his distraught brain all the tragic possibilities of this momentous occasion. The operation over, the limpless patient was wheeled down the long corridor to her room and gently slid upon her waiting bed.
IMpressive, dramatically so and calculated to stir the emotions of relatives and friends, who in their tense solicitude and expectation, joyfully place a halo upon the operating surgeons head. And this is Surgery, that magnetic science and art, to which all youthful medical aspirants turn, even as the flower turns its yearning leaves to the great god Sun.
Treatment With the Patients Own Pus. – “Lutz injected the patients pus subcutaneously in twenty-five cases. The treatment failed in the large majority.” – Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift.
As it so often must, when such crude isopathic methods are employed; to use potentized pus or the potentized excretion or product of any disease, is quite another matter and incidentally safe. The recklessness with which physicians employ vaccines is appalling and too often the result of ignorance. Anaphylactic shock has often enough proved fatal, to put physicians on their guard. No one yet knows the ultimate reaction, which may occur in those who have been the innocent recipients, of repeated vaccinal injections.
Dangers of Electric Waterbaths. – “Loewenthals patient, a young woman, received hydro-electric treatments. A sudden change of current made her adduct both thighs so high that the knees touched the chin. The necks of both femurs were broken by this sudden movement”.
Well, this account savors of high jinks in some of Broadways Night Clubs, only that femurs are rarely broken in these resorts; pocket-books receive the major casualties. However, no doubt the spectacle provided by Lowenthals patient, was both electrifying and stimulating.
Malandrinum and Smallpox. – Dr. F.V. Bryant of Martins Mills, Van Zandt County, Texas, writes us an interesting letter giving his personal experience with Malandrinum when used as a prophylactic of smallpox; he has also seen apparent positive effects from this remedy, in nullifying a “take” of the usual external vaccination with standard virus and requests that physicians with experience in the prevention and treatment of smallpox, contribute accounts of their experiences to the pages of THE HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER. These communications we are glad to receive and publish, in the interests of knowledge and truth.
Our own conviction concerning Malandrinum, based upon actual personal experience, is to the effect, that this nosode possesses absolute prophylactic powers. The remedy needs investigation and experiment under proper laboratory and clinical conditions.
The Doctor In Old Age. – It has been estimated that approximately 5 per cent. of the number of physicians, some 140,000 in the United States, become penniless and absolutely dependent upon charity in old age. There is no other profession which, as does the medical, seeks to destroy deliberately and persistently, the sources of its own income. Preventive medicine in conferring a great boon upon humanity, knocks the very props from its own support. Years ago typhoid fever and malaria were almost the mainstay of the physicians yearly income.
To-day, thanks to the medical profession, it researches along bacteriologic and hygienic lines, these scourges have been almost entirely abated and the physicians income also stops and very few medical men are versed sufficiently in the ways of the business world, to make money for themselves; indeed, very few of them have the time to attempt to do so. Hence medical men are almost necessarily altruistic in their attitude toward their fellow-men.
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.
Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.