It behooves the southern physicians to study the disease and its therapy for the benefit of our profession, and through the profession, for the poor patients.
The Commission, which I have so often quoted, declares that no treatment is known or necessary except the proper diet, which will save those patients not too seriously damaged by the disorganizing process of the disease. With this dictum, the writer cannot agree. Having had some experience with the disease, even among those who could not, or just did not, adopt the right diet to any great degree, he has nevertheless cured all his cases except one, his first one, which had been relinquished as hopeless by her good old allopathic doctor, and was already in a much degenerated condition, and too poor and helpless to have the proper attention.
In the other cases by far the most efficient remedy was Arsenicum album, rather low in potency. Secale, resembling the disease in Herings pathogenesis, was a disappointment, for reasons perhaps such as stated by the Commission-that the resemblance was only apparent, and no inwardly or essentially real. Natrum mur. also seems very homoeopathic. Sulphur and phosphorus both resemble pellagra in many points, and should be carefully studied. In connection with these two remedies allow me again to quote the Commission, under their paragraph on treatment. As a form of dietetic treatment, they include vitamin extracts of beef-liver, which they seemed to find quite efficient as a cure. Be it said in passing, that having found essential identity of pellagra and its cause and cure in humans, monkeys, rats and pigs, they attach as much importance to considerations of the lower animals as to humans (which I am not disputing).
In giving the chemical constituents of this beef-liver extract or vitamins, as they term it, they included both phosphorus and sulphur, in quantities equal to from one-half to 1x potency, to 1 1/3 and 2x. Query: Was it the vitamin in the liver-extract which relieved the patients, or was it the Sulphur or was it the phosphorus? I have long suspected that the much talked of vitamin, which all the authorities call an unknown and unidentified substance, is nothing more or less than microscopic or ultramicroscopic quantities of certain tissue remedies and antipsorics well known to every properly educated homoeopathic physician. The scientists say they are not the mineral salts, etc., but what do such scientists know about 12x, the 30x, the 60x and the CM potencies?.
To conclude, as said before, one of the most remarkable results of the Commissions work was the discovery that Aluminum lactate actually produced a case of pellagra in a rabbit. An allopath would not be particularly interested in that discovery because he does not know or does not believe the law of cure. But to the homoeopath it is of most gripping importance. Perhaps here is a possible cure for the disease. Let us call that possibility to the attention of our profession and endeavor to procure human provings of this substance. Let us have our manufacturing pharmacists prepare different potencies and let us try them in our future cases of pellagra and similar conditions.
Of course the first thing in the treatment of pellagra is to place the patient on a proper diet including the protein elements of animal origin, such as fresh meats, milk, eggs, cheese. To this should be added fresh vegetables.
WACO. TEXAS.
We can understand why quantity becomes an indispensable factor to the materialist who confines his practice to appreciable doses of crude drugs.
We can understand the line of reasoning which predicates coarseness and fineness of particles pulverized within certain reasonable limitations by the trituration, for instance, of silex, salt and sugar; we can comprehend how the particle of these and similar solid substances may be ground finer and finer quite indefinitely, because their particles are held together by what is called cohesive attraction, and a uniform diffusion or blending of molecules cannot take place between solid bodies. But it is quite different with solutions. The crystals of common salt or sugar may be dissolved in water and become amorphous liquids that are so uniformly diffused as to completely destroy the existence of coarser or finer particles.
The process of attenuation by the Hahnemannian method may be continued until all trace of quantity has vanished beyond the recognition of every possible physical test, yet we find dynamic quality or potentiality surviving. A.R. MORGAN, M.D., 1892.
