FURTHER RESULTS IN THE HOMOEOPATHIC TREATMENT OF CANCER



Burnett changed from high potency to a low potency because the high potency is too strong. When the patient is overloaded with poison the lower, functional potency is a better aid for nature cannot throw off the condition alone.

If we can get cancer cases in time, I believe we can cure 90 per cent. of them, and those that we do not cure live much longer and much easier. I hardly ever have to resort to a dose of morphine, although in extreme cases I have used it.

I have had a good many cases come to me with a fearful odor, and with homoeopathic remedies I have been able to get rid of the odor, prolong their lives and give them a fairly easy death.

DR. C. M. BOGER: This wonderful paper gives me an opportunity to say two or three things. I will begin by mentioning two cases of cancer. One was a case of a middle-aged woman whose mother died of malignant cancer of the breast. The mother lived eight years under homoeopathic treatment for the malignancy. The daughter had a lump in her breast, also, and went to a surgeon and had the lump taken out.

This was about six years ago. About four months ago, she came to me and said, “Doctor, I have a pain in that old scar. There is something wrong in my armpit.” I examined her, and sure enough there was. She had a pain in the old scar and a lump in the armpit. I gave her one dose of Bellis perennis 30th potency, and repeated it in two weeks. The lump has entirely disappeared, and the pain has gone away. She says she is entirely well and is overjoyed.

The point that I wish to bring out in connection with this case is this: From old school sources we have been led, for many years, to believe that cancer and injury were of some relation to each other. The old school men are not mistaken in everything. There are some good points. You put these two things together in her case, and it gives you the solution very well.

The other case is a woman eighty-four years of age. Twelve years ago she had gallstones removed by surgical operation. Six years after that a lump appeared in the right breast, which gradually enlarged until it now extends below the nipple and is about the size of a saucer. It is dark blue in color. The peculiarity of this case is that she does not have much pain in this lump, but every now and then she has an attack of acute inflammatory erysipelas.

Finally I discovered that Arnica covers both symptoms, erysipelas and higher cancer. Her last attack of erysipelas occurred less than ten days ago. It came on severely with high fever, intense drowsiness, terrible prostration and eruption on the chest. She was down with an erysipelas just thirty-six hours. That is the shortest she has ever had. The attacks of erysipelas are getting shorter and shorter. This shows what is possible in the case of cancer.

There is another part of this paper of which I wish to speak. It has nothing to do with cancer. There are many investigators, nowadays, who seem to labor under the delusion that they can do evil and have good results therefrom. Men who are doing this are the vivisectionists and men of that type. Oh, yes, we have been taught in the old school that many victories in medicine are due to vivisection and so on, but how we get around the moral law and the logic of the thing, I dont exactly comprehend. If anyone here can enlighten me and tell me how one can break the moral law and do evil, and have good come out of it finally, I shall be glad to get the information.

DR. A. H. GRIMMER: The doctor spoke about potency. It is an important factor, and it is going to take much more experience than I have had yet to trace out the relative merits of the potencies. They all have merit.

You can go clear back into the literature and find that there have been many cures made, and Buckley, Burnett and Cooper have undoubtedly given us authentic cures. It is true, as the doctor observes, that if we give the potency too high at first, especially if the cases are advanced, we are going to cause unnecessary suffering and perhaps create an aggravation we cannot get rid of in these advanced cases of cancer. So I start with the potency around 30th in most cases and feel out to see how the reactions are. If they stand that well, the succeeding potencies will carry on with the work very beautifully.

The diminution of the odor is a favorable symptom in the cure of cancer. When you find that taking place it is one of the surest indications that your remedy is working, that the patient feels better, looks better and is better. It may be some time before the growth begins to show the improvement we hope for, but if that order prevails, your remedy is doing its work. If any other order prevails, if the cancer is healing but there is more pain and more odor, your remedy is not the best.

Again the doctor mentions the diet. I stated in the paper that the diet must be selected for the needs of the individual case. I think that covers that subject pretty well, with one exception. You should limit the meat you give a cancer patient, because the uric acid in the meat has a specifically deleterious effect on the cancer. This has been proven by a good many good observers outside of our homoeopathic ranks, and some of them are getting results. One of the first men to note this was an old school man, a Dr. Buckley, of New York, who cured a number of cases with nothing but diet.

Dr. Bogers observations are absolutely true. They refer to the irritational part of our text, injuries, and so forth. We have the most wonderful remedies to correspond with these things, and such remedies as he mentioned, especially Bellis, have given us a great many cures. Bellis has probably given us as many cures in breast cancer as any other one remedy, if you can get the specific history following an injury. It competes with Conium. In Conium the breast is apt to be free of pain. In Bellis you are apt to have more or less pain.

Hypothesis has no part nor lot in the homoeopathic prescription; the homoeopath does not attempt to translate the simple, truthful language of the symptoms into the ever changing, and always unintelligible jargon of pathological diagnosis.

A diagnosis of the symptoms of any given case might indeed point to fatty degeneration of the heart, or to a cirrhosis of the liver, or to some other artificial classification; nevertheless the true homoeopath administers the remedy indicated by the totality of the symptoms, not stopping to ascertain whether or no that remedy has ever caused fatty degeneration or cirrhosis. Any attempt at a pathological basis, for homoeopathic prescriptions, must at once exclude mental and subjective symptoms, and these are often our surest guide to a proper selection, even though they be pathologically insignificant.—E. J. LEE, M.D., 1881.

A. H. Grimmer
Arthur Hill Grimmer 1874-1967 graduated from the Hering Medical College (in 1906) as a pupil of James Tyler Kent and he later became his secretary, working closely with him on his repertory. He practiced in Chicago for 50 years before moving to Florida. He was also President of the American Institute for Homoeopathy.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.