February 27th. From this date up to the present there has been a constant and general improvement in the patients condition. Tonsils are both clean and normal in size. Physically the boy is developing into a fine manly little fellow and the psychical development is really remarkable. I have seen him every two weeks up to the present time and I have not been able to observe anything that does not confirm my belief that the tonsils are free of the infection. Every visit shows a steady development in his psychical attitude and his moral character is blossoming out in such a way that his teachers all express surprise, and he is winning a place in his familys affection which is beautiful to see.
I want to say in regard to this case that, while I believe homoeopathy was the basic agent of any success we have had in its solution, we must realize the important part that the psychical therapy and careful physical hygiene played in bringing about a satisfactory issue, for the governess was a very intelligent person and co-operated with me most whole-heartedly and with a keen interest that entailed considerable self-sacrifice on her part.
NEW YORK, N.Y.
DISCUSSION.
DR. C. M. BOGER: I cant be expected to criticize Dr. Powers paper, because it is eminently satisfactory in every way. I can only prove two cases, which illustrate what may be done, what sometimes is futile, and what sometimes is better.
I partly described the first case at the meeting last year. The sequel is most interesting. This man came to me with an ulceration in the angle of the left eye, a true lupus. I went over his case. It had been sore for a long time, for several years. Crusts were flowing from it regularly and reforming, and they had lately become painful. I told him I would go over his case if he would give me time enough, so he came to stay with me an hour. We talked the thing over, and I took the complete history as far as I could get it at that time. I prescribed Calcarea carb. MM. That was about the first of April last year, maybe a little earlier.
He came to the office in about three weeks with the ulceration thoroughly healed over, with a clean cicatrix over it, and he was pleased. Then he had some business in the Northwest, and while there his friends persuaded him to go to a big sanitarium near there and have this thing examined. They said the only thing to do was to burn the area out. I dont remember whether it was x-rayed. But there was a severe burn, and it came back and began to do badly. He was very much alarmed and came to me.
I told him I would promise nothing but would see what I could do. I gave him another dose of Calcarea carb. It again healed up. It did not heal up quite as well as before, but the healing was complete. A few weeks after it healed up, he had an abscess of the right index finger, which opened up very nicely and discharged much more profusely than I thought it should. A few weeks after that, he sent for me one evening to come to the house. He said he believed he had a boil on the nates. I examined him and found beginning an enormous perineal rectal abscess. The next day I incised that abscess, and it just ran rivers of pus.
You know the odor of those abscesses is horrible. I thought things would be all right as soon as I had the abscess cleaned out. I kept him on fruit juices. In about a week he said, “Doctor, I have a pain right here.” I examined him and found an irritated and inflamed gall bladder. His temperature was running up all the time. The next day I called in our chief surgeon and told him it was time to do something. He took the patient to the hospital and found the gall bladder and the bile ducts in very bad condition and suppurating, serum oozing through the gall bladder preparatory for rupture.
We walled it off carefully with gauze and took two small stones out of the gall bladder. The man is well on the road to recovery. He had few a difficulties, which did not amount to much, a few minor things, in the surgical operation. Then to my consternation, I discovered that as a boy he had had a succession of boils on his back, for years. He should have had Hepar sulph. in the beginning. That illustrates what a position you are in sometimes in some places.I think the major part of his troubles were brought on by himself, having that thing burned. I was lucky in getting through the case the way I did. He stood a first-class chance of being dead in a few hours, when I took him to that operation.
The next case happened within the last four months. A man came to me from about seventy-five miles away. He said he had been through the hands of three or four doctors. Here is the history of the case: The man was a lumbar contractor. He cut down, the forest and turned it into lumbar. He stays out in the woods nearly all the time. He was suddenly taken with a great weakness, vomiting, loss of appetite, and a number of other symptoms, looseness of the bowels and tarry stools. I said, “Before we do another thing, I am going to send you to an x-ray man.
I believe you have a duodenal ulcer and how all these men failed to discover that, I cant understand.” Sure enough the report came back in a few hours from the x-ray man that it was a large duodenal ulcer. I regulated his diet and went through the symptoms very carefully. Without the notes from this case at hand I cant give you all of them, but it turned out to be Ptelea trifoliata. I gave him one dose of MM potency on his tongue there and sent him home, and requested to see him every two weeks. The day before I came away he said, “Doctor, I have never had a pain since you prescribed that medicine.”
Instead of being anaemic and pale and colorless, his color is as good as anyones. He said that out in camp ten days ago his hand was hurt, and he showed the scar across his hand. The doctor told him it would take six months to get that hand back, but it healed right up in ten days. He said, “I still stick to your diet, but I am perfectly well.” I asked him to have another picture taken that day. He said, “I cant do it today, but will do it as soon as you return.” I regard that as one of the most satisfactory cases I ever prescribed for.
None but the careful observer can have any idea of the height to which the sensitiveness of the body to medicinal irritations is increased in a state of disease. It exceeds all belief when the disease has attained a great intensity. An insensible, prostrated, comatose typhous patient, unroused by any shaking, deaf to all calling, will be rapidly restored to consciousness by the smallest dose of Opium, were it a million times smaller than any mortal yet prescribed.–HAHNEMANN, 1805.
