Cold feet cause various disturbances of health; through coldness of the skin the Odpositive emanations are hindered. Disease, therefore, is disturbance of odic equilibrium. Man changes as he progresses from health to disease, from an Odnegative to an Odpositive condition. Foot-sweat is of great practical value, and it sudden suppression has often the most serious consequences. This is easily understood if one consider that a normal function to the Odpositive and relieves abnormal Odpositive stasis in the body. Ulcers of the legs also act as vents for disease of the abdominal organs, as may be often observed, and for the same reason I have been in the habit, since acquainted with these odic relations, of questioning all chronic patients concerning the sudorific activity of their feet, and I have often gotten hereby excellent indications for the R.
Especially, according to my observations, are relapsing bronchial catarrhs and obstinate dysmenorrhoeas thus explained and cured. Here also belong scrofulous nasal affections, which are very frequently accompanied by foot-sweat, and which, by proper care and the corresponding R., Rhus., Sil., Lact. ac., Calc. c., Baryta, Kali c., Sul., etc., are surely improved. But because Sil. 30th has made a brilliant cure, it may not do so next time. One must prove the sensitivity, and then choose the potency.
Pettenkofer makes the following calculation. If a soaked woollen stocking weigh 45 gm., the water contained in it requires as much heat as would raise a half pound of water from zero to boiling point. If from the body so much heat is daily drawn, it should not surprise us if such patients are already cold. The purely local consideration and therapy of internal and skin diseases is wrong. We should rather always and everywhere try to find a relation. This the Od theory teaches as well as homoeopathy.
The disposition to habitual sweating depends chiefly upon an over-aqueous blood, the hydrogenoid constitution (Nat. mur., Calc. carb.). The organism seeks in every way to rid itself of the superfluous water. REichenbach speaks concerning this in his principal work, “The Sensitive, and His Relation to the Od,” Vol. I, Sec. 879, as follows: “Man changes as he goes from health to disease, from an Odnegative to an Odpositive condition; the Odpositive must increase at the expense of the Odnegative; the hydrogen elements gain preponderance over the oxygen. In walking, climbing, etc., respiration is fuller, deeper, the blood gets much more O, and the body undergoes a richer oxidation. now O is that negative chief constituent of the body which renders it everywhere Odnegative; it is the secretion and excretion of Odpositive H which it assists and effects”.
This is not only theory, but has been practically verified.
I am treating now an elderly woman who for years, partly from comfort, partly from cardiac degeneration and a consequent dyspnoea, has not left her room. This spring, after a bronchial catarrh, she developed oedema of the lower limbs and nightly asthmatic attacks. After Kali c., Puls., Dig., Stroph., Crat., and Cact., had failed to relieve, I gave her 5 gm. of Mercks 30 per cent. hydrogen superoxide, the best ozone preparation that we have at present, in 250 cc. of water. She improved at once, the dyspnoea becoming much better. The nurse called my attention to the polyuria. In short, the septuagenarian was again saved.
Grauvogl has emphasized the value of ozone water in carbonitrogenous constitutions. It helps especially when potentized R.R. fail. The air-hunger is best satisfied by an ozone preparation.
Hydro-superoxide is not toxic in 2 per cent. solution, but because of its biting taste may not be taken readily. It should be applicable in many diseases, dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria, diabetes, chlorosis, pertussis. Also externally in surgery, gynaecology, ophthalmology, otology, dermatology it seems indicated. I have hitherto used hitherto used it in diphtheria with considerable benefit, in pertussis with marked success. In diphtheria the foul odor speedily disappears, but the cure progresses slowly, but in all cases of pertussis an immediate diminution of the attacks occurred (instead of ten paroxysms during the night, only two), an improvement noted under no other remedy.
This is all easily explained if Reichenbach;s view is accepted, viz., that disease in an overbalance of positive ods. The addition of negative ods quickly restores equilibrium. The general use of sulphur is hereby seen in a new light. But ozone water appears to me a good adjuvant only in cases where the system, from some cause or other rendering respiration difficult, is hindered from getting its O normally.
But not alone for man is the Odnegative the mainspring of life, the plant world also required the negative sunlight. Seeds germinate and grow in blue light, in yellow or red they perish, i.e., they live in the negative od and die in the positive. The sun in the mightiest od source for plant life. When it rises, the plants rouse from slumber, the flowers open, the day is born. When it sinks, and the stream of radiating od is arrested, the leaves droop, the flowers enfold, the plant sleeps. That negative and positive ods are the causes of wakening and sleep in the vegetable kingdom has been proved by the experiments of the botanist, J. Sachs. He could at will cause a plant to sleep or wake during the day by placing it under red and blue glass.
Who does not here think of color therapy? Blue light strengthens and calms nervous patients, while red is adapted to blood and infectious diseases. And artists call blue cold, red warm in all their nuances, It is, moreover, striking that sensitives find blue colors cool and red warm. The psychical sense of the artists and the physical perception of the sensitive here agree. It is more than likely that this agreement rest finally upon the same basis, sensitivity. Apparently there has never been an artist- nature which was not sensitive (in the technical sense). Goethe has said: “All life has its atmosphere.” This atmosphere, whereby all living things influence their environment, can be naught else than the Od. With what interest would Goethe, himself a student and investigator of nature, have taken up the discoveries of REichenbach!
AT the close of his labors Reichenbach arrived at the conclusion that sensitivity is fundamentally, on the one side, a condition of disturbed health (genius). From quite other sources than science, genius and madness have long been considered near neighbors. Reichenbach, who died in Leipzig, 1869, and whose writings are with difficulty found in antiquarian shops, was perhaps the most modern of scientific authors, so modern that many of his views and discoveries are just gaining recognition. For his contemporaries he was too subtle, they undervalued his work.
The microscope has changed and advanced anatomy and pathology; the doctrine of infinitesimals, mathematics, homoeopathy and therapeutics. Similarly the doctrine of the infinitely fine processes, perceptible only to the most delicate reagent in the world, the sensitive nerve, will serve to advance the progress of physiology and medicine. Reichenbach in his day was called a mystic. The uncomprehended, the hidden meaning, however, is alone mysterious. As soon as a thing is comprehended, understood, its mystery depart. Reichenbach brought forward only clear and simple facts in nature, and established them in science by varies and stringent proofs, and hence is far removed from mysticism.
For homoeopathy the acceptance of the Od doctrine affords further support. In our future laboratories a dark room should not be lacking. The sensitives, therefore, are everywhere. In mediaeval times they tortured the insane, holding them possessed of the devil. With advancing knowledge came the humane treatment. And for the many sensitive patients, a better knowledge will provide a more reasonable therapy. Who knows if geniuses like Mozart and Schubert, sensitives of the first rank, might not have been saved from untimely death by a more sensible therapy.
In our drug proving, also, note should be taken of sensitivity, and thereby finer indications established. Kent says in one of his beautiful drug studies (Alumina): “This drug has few mind symptoms, and those we do know are not certain, and were discovered clinically. We need a proving in high certain, and were discovered clinically. We need a proving in high potency upon a sensitive individual to develop the finer symptomatology”.
Perhaps the Od will have to be rediscovered if official science is to believe. Nowadays the press speaks of the sixth sense of the blind. It is remarked that many of them are conscious of the presence, for example, of a wall two meters distant. In a room the larger pieces of furniture are recognized without touch. The sense for obstruction is much finger in darkness. A certain Hans Levy says: “Though I am completely blind, yet I know when I am opposite an object, know whether it be large or small, whether it be fence of wood or wall of tiles or stone.
