DR. W.W. WILSON: I am not doubting Dr. Woodburys findings at all. I have been called upon to treat a very few cases of gonorrhoea. I very seldom see a case of it. Those I have treated have always been treated with homoeopathic remedies. My difficulty is, as Dr. Woodbury says, the cases get along, the discharge grows less and less, and the patient is not apt to come back. I do not think I have ever been able to follow one through to its ultimate, as far as I could see. I have never treated a case with any injection of any kind. When Dr. Woodbury spoke of using single doses, and so on, I wondered how long his cases persisted, because the cases that I have treated have persisted for quite a long period of time.
I had one interesting case with the chronic conditions. It was one that no doubt is often met, one of apparent chronic rheumatism. It would not respond. It localized in the knees. No doubt lots of our members have such cases. I could not do anything with the fellow. He was a married man and had three grown daughters. Finally one day I asked him, just on the spur of the moment, “Have you every had gonorrhoea?”
He hesitated a minute, and then said “No”. I turned my back and walked to the door and put up some powdered Thuja for him. The next morning he said, “why, doctor, I cant tell you how much better my knees are this morning!” Presently he said, “Just close the door, will you?” And I laughed again. Then he said, “I lied to you yesterday. I had gonorrhoea when I was seventeen years old.” He was forty then. There you had the thing. Presumably he had been treated by injection.
We do often find those things. We know very well that in war times many cases recurred when the men were put at laborious work, digging trenches, and they hardened up. Then there was the extreme regularity of their system up at a certain hour, breakfast at a certain hour, lunch at a certain hour, dinner at a certain hour, bed at a certain hour. Certainly many, many cases recurred at that time.
I know at Camp Meridian, New Jersey, the leader of our Glee Club asked the fellow one night if they would to over and sing to these fellows. He said, “It is a shame. They are isolated. They are all of by themselves. Even officers are put in there. They wont have their stripes.” They went to that camp under guard. There were two armed soldiers who conducted them to the gate, and they were put in there. It seemed a shame because many of those cases were cases of recurrence rather than acute cases.
I say again that i was not questioning Dr. Woodburys testimony at all, because the cases that I have treated myself were treated homoeopathically.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY: I think it is very true, as Dr. Wilson says, that it is not such a simple matter as it seems, because we do hear people say they think of gonorrhoea as nothing more than a common cold and that it will get well itself.
The modern treatment of gonorrhoea, as carried out in the hospitals now, I believe, especially in the women, is through irrigations, just hot irrigations. But if that is tried in a case that is far advanced, I am very much afraid you will get just the condition I mentioned in meningitis. I would never allow such a thing as that again, because I think that it is very wrong.
I have had occasionally a few cases to treat of gonorrhoeal arthritis. That is not so easily managed, but Rhododendron and Natrum sulph. and Thuja are some of our best remedies. To mention some of the remedies that help the condition in acute cases, I have had more help from Cannabis sativa followed by Mercurius- Cannabis sativa being Jahrs old remedy, and he generally used Mercurius corrosivus. Then Cantharis and Gelsemium are sometimes used and Natrum sulph, Rhododendron, Thuja, Sulphur, Sepia, Selenium, Medorrhinum and Pulsatilla, of course. I think that about covers the list of remedies.
I feel truly it is well worth while thinking about. Homoeopathy works wonderfully. You can prove it. The microscope gives such wonderful proof of it. There are the slides to this day that stand for those cases. I have been surprised to find these people coming in either voluntarily or when we questioned them. Some of those records were old records and in transferring we lost some of them; at least they were filed away so that complete records of some of the case that come to the clinic are not known except them. Another twenty-five of those cases, I feel sure, would show the same results. I think if we could carry out a venereal study on a more extensive scale, we would be well satisfied with the results.
Dr. P.L. BENTHACK: May I ask one question. What do you tell your patients? The ordinary, old school physician would tell them that they never would be what they were before. What do you tell your patients?.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY: I dont know what to say about.
DR. P.L. BENTHACK: I will tell you what my experience is. I have had lots of experience with it. I tell them they will be in better health.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY: I have known that to be the case. I have seen it, but, of course, you cant guarantee anything. There is an observation that I think is true.
DR. P.L. BENTHACK: I say, “I will get you in better health”, and I do.
DR. C.C. WOODBURY: The great thing is to get them to follow our treatment. They will hear about injections, and they must have injections, and away they go. Some of the faithful ones are in that list.
Dr. P.L. BENTHACK: In the old school, what is prescribed is worse than the disease.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY: One interesting thing about it is, if they are under homoeopathic remedies, I have never-with the exception of this case of salpingitis and one other case of orchitis, which I think is mentioned-seen a case of ophthalmia, never any epididymitis, or anything of the kind that followed in the wake of these things.
DR. A. H. GRIMMER: If you explain to your patients the danger of the suppressive treatment, they will stay with you much longer.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY” Oh, yes. Great many people are of the opinion that people like injections, but they dont. They much prefer the simple method of taking remedies. They dont like the injections, and I dont blame them.
DR. PLUMB BROWN: I think this method of telling them they will be better than they were before is a dangerous one. I have had cases come to me when they were not feeling well, and had them ask me that question. i have told people who had an attack of gonorrhoea or syphilis they would be much better, and had them come back in a few months time and tell me they havent been feeling better.
DR. C.M. BOGER: I think, particularly in the venereal diseases, it is easy for us to get on the slide which leads us into specific medication. The temptations is very great. I do not think Hahnemann himself was free from it when by him in the treatment of syphilis. He rarely mentions any other remedy. To illustrate that matter a little more thoroughly, I rarely think of the disease itself-especially venereal disease-but prescribed for the patient.
There was a young married woman who came to me some months ago with a phagdenic chancre. It was a bad one, because in a short time it was larger than a quarter, between a quarter and a half dollar, in about ten days. It made that much progress. I gave Mercurius. It did not do any good at all. It never touched it. The chancre kept growing bigger, and they grow pretty fast at times. Finally the patient said, “Doctor, I believe that thing is eating into my urethra.”
Then i came to my senses and prescribed to her constitutional aspect and gave her a single dose of Calcarea carb., and from that day on her chancre began to get smaller and smaller. When the secondaries came-sore throat and falling out of the hair and so on-she got along quite well. She is in the secondaries not, but they are very mild, about as mild as you ever see them unless they are entirely absent.
I think this is an extraordinary confirmation on prescribing for the patient and not the disease.
CHAIRMAN PULFORD: We will go on to the next paper, which will probably throw a little more light on Dr. Wilsons question. We have all been saying that you could not suppress symptoms. I think the dose Dr. Wilson gave his patient brought out a mental symptom that was well suppressed.
Will Dr. Lyle give the laboratory report on the case of gonorrhoea?.
DYSMENORRHOEA.
The author offers the following classification in place of the usual textbook one: 1. Simple neuralgic including spasmodic. More rare than usually supposed. 2. Obstructive, malformative or traumatic. 3. Diathetic, largely due or strongly prejudiced by rheumatism, gout, phthisis, anaemia, etc. 4. DYSMENORRHOEA due to tubal, ovarian or uterine disease. For the neuralgic type due to cold he suggests Acon., Bell., Puls. With cold eliminated and no leading symptom then comes difficulty in selecting the remedy from a long list. Viburnum prun. seems useful in many such and, Vib. failing, Caulophyllum is probably next useful.
Obstructive: For stenosis little good from remedy alone, almost always some dilatation is necessary; flexion, surgical measures; varicocele of broad ligament, rest, tamponading, surgery, and such remedies as Lappa, Arnica, Calc. fluor. For young girls in whom vaginal examination is impossible try Veratrum viride. For diathetic type, rest, chronic remedy. Tub., Iod., Ars., iod. often useful. Tubal, ovarian and uterine DYSMENORRHOEA, find cause. Salpingitis very amenable to homoeopathic remedy. Surgery often indicated.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.