This power, being invisible, no science will ever be able to limit its divisibility nor will any microscope ever be made that will be able to record just when that power disappears. That upon which this power is to act, alone, will be the determining guide. Our potentization, as we are pleased to term it, does not change the power of the drug, if it did, then the action of every drug would change in ultimate result with every change of potency of that drug, but it does not.
Our potentization merely regulates the quantity of that power to be used on the one hand, and on the other so reduces the resistance of the drugs container or envelope as to make that power more able to escape, hence the more rapidly active. Calcarea carb. represents one distinct power, Sulphur another, but as soon as they become properly fused together into Hepar sulph, the entire power of both is changed and results in an entirely different action, producing a result distinct from either. Kent said: “The perverters of truth claim that the self-same agent will cure in any dose or any potency.
The indications may lead one to the curative agent, but not necessarily to the similimum, the proper potency does that”. So that the potency is necessary to the selection of the similimum. When men unknown to each other reach the same goal there must be some grounds in the reason that leads them to that goal.
Homoeopathy is not losing out, or discouraging us, because, in itself, it is deficient, but simply because we are trying to make it do with the wrong remedy what it cannot possibly do. If it is eventually lost to the world, it will be through wilful ignorance, and we homoeopaths will be solely to blame for it. Once it is fully unfolded and perfected, the characteristic or individual stamps searched for and found, we will be able to carry complete materia medica and repertory in our coat pockets, for all that we have to do, and all that we do do, is to match the individuals characteristics with the characteristics of the drug, for it is the individual and not the disease we are treating.
The scar on the cheek may be all that distinguishes between two men, yet while that scar is not sufficient to distinguish one man fro al other men, when it comes to fine points that scar is the deciding factor between those two particular men who are otherwise indistinguishable from each other.
So it is with the characteristic mark or stamp of the remedy, it does not necessarily indicate the remedy but must always be present in the conditions indicating that remedy if that remedy is to be specifically indicated and cure. It may consist of a single symptom or group of symptoms.
Speaking of the scar on the cheek recalls a case, typically Calcarea, of a child whom we saw for a bowel trouble, the child of a right good looking mother, who was heartbroken and very much distressed about the deformed morphological construction of the childs head. The characteristic stamps of Calcarea stood our all over the child, its hands and feet cold and damp, its occiput bathed in profuse sweat during sleep, wetting the pillow far around, etc. But the head! It was all out of shape, the ugliest head one could ever expect to see on a child, and on the right of the vertex was a bony lump as large as a hens egg. The child is now three years old.
While writing this, the father whom we had not seen for a year, walked into the office. When asked how the boy was, said: “The boy has not needed you for a year. I am now here for a cold he has just taken, his first illness since I saw you last”. When asked about the childs head, he said, “You would not know the boy, his mother is now proud of him. His head is as near symmetrically perfect as any childs head and the ugly lump has so far disappeared that it is not noticeable any more”.
TOLEDO, OHIO.
DISCUSSION.
DR. A. PULFORD: Here is a case that I think will be interesting to you. It was a case of eczema squamosum. The man was seventy years of age. He had been trying to get rid of it for twenty-five years. The trouble began between the thighs, extended to the scrotum, to the anus, and thence to the legs. His legs looked at if he had on a pair of alligator puttees. Both legs were a dark, angry red color, covered over with bright silvery scales. In the history taken by Dr. Dayton Pulford there appeared the characteristic stamp of Petroleum which is as follows:
The parts itched furiously, compelling scratching-and here is the peculiar condition that I want you to take in because I have proven it before-compelling scratching which caused a fluid to ooze which in turn caused him to scratch until the parts bled, after which they turned cold. That is a peculiar condition of Petroleum. The stools were loose during the day with an all gone feeling after stool. These symptoms must be present.
Here is another illustration. We had a man about sixty-five years of age who had what his doctor said was flu. Being born and raised under alloeopathy or modern medicine he had no conception of what symptoms or anything meant, and he was one of those gruff fellows whose approach didnt amount to anything. You couldnt get anything out of him. All that he had to offer was weakness profuse cold sweat at night, especially on waking or after the least mental or bodily exertion. We took those symptoms to the Repertory and the leading remedy came out Sepia. We gave him one dose of Sepia 1M and he made a beautiful cure, maybe.
Dr. Stearns has given you an idea of how the wrong remedy will suppress symptoms. He took that dose of Sepia and that night he had no night sweat, and he has had none of those profuse cold sweats since. But he did not bear the characteristic stamp of Sepia. After the first night he was elated over the condition and the result that we had produced. He came to me three the symptoms. We had given him the remedy.
The characteristic stamp of Sepia is indifference, stiffed affection, excessive mental and physical irritability, yellow saddle across the bridge of the nose and under the eyes, distressing emptiness, gnawing hunger at the pit of the stomach constipation; always feels as if there is a lump in the rectum, which is not better after stool; the stool covered or followed with yellowish jelly-like mucus; hands cold and sweaty. No matter what the other conditions are, with those symptoms present you will get your results.
As an illustration: We had a lady come to us over a year ago with a prolapsus that had defied every kind of treatment, mechanical or medical. She had that characteristic stamp. She received one dose of Sepia 1M and prolapse began to come up. Two days before we left she came into the office and said, “Dr. Pulford, I dont know that I have a pelvic region”, and that is the difference between prescribing the similimum and my similimum with one I. I dont give a continental for your Latin similimum.
DR. D. COLEMAN: Was that first one a case of syphilis?.
DR. A. PULFORD: Yes.
DR. D. COLEMAN: What was the Wassermann reaction before the remedy and what was it after the claimed cure?.
DR. A. PULFORD: That I dont know and it doesnt bother me at all. I dont believe in it anyway.
DR. E. WRIGHT: What did Dr. Pulford do to the poor man who was suppressed with Sepia? How did he get him out of his troubles?.
DR. A. PULFORD: That case is pending now and we are going to take the mans history over again, but those symptoms will have to be considered. If we had not seen the man we would have lost all of that.
DR. E. WRIGHT: You didnt try to antidote it?.
DR. A. PULFORD: No, I did nothing to it, because I think it would have spoiled the whole thing. You would get then a mixture not only of suppressed symptoms but of symptoms created by the drug which were not indicated in the condition. You would complicate matters.
DR. J.W. WAFFENSMITH: How long ago did you give this dose of Sepia to this man?.
DR. A. PULFORD: About a work ago or more.
DR. J.W. WAFFENSMITH: There is one point I want to bring out in reference to Sepia, and that is, very often you get a very tardy reaction. I have had considerable experience with Sepia among the Latin people. Sometimes one gets a condition which, as the doctor explained, makes one think it is the wrong remedy, or there may be the opposite result, a remarkable improvement which may last for a month, a month and a half, or two months. Unless you interfere with the action of the remedy you will then get a tremendous aggravation, and the longer the reaction is retarded, the more severe it will be. It is becomes very serious or if degenerative changes take place, I have found that Nux vom. or Ignatia very often take the rough edge off of a prolonged aggravation which has become retarded in this way.
Another point I want to bring out is in reference to perspiration in tubercular states. It is a most serious matter to suppress a perspiration in pulmonary tuberculosis. I have seen it done quite often. The patient is very much annoyed by profuse perspiration and will insist that you give something to alleviate that condition. And if you are not able to produce a return of that condition your patient will not live very much longer.
