A number of years ago I reported a case to this society, of a young fellow of eighteen who was supposed to have had dementia praecox cured with Tarentula, and his symptoms and his general behavior were just as Dr.Roberts has described. He would fly into a rage over sometimes and throw whatever was in his hand, whatever he could reach. He nearly killed his mother with a big pitcher. She objected to something he had done or said, and the threw i ant her and just missed her, and smashed an enormous mirror to smithereens.
Another interesting symptom of Tarentula is the heart. A number of you know those hart symptoms, sudden and violent, and in some of our materia medicas the condition Tarentula produces and cures is called St.Vitus dance of the heart.
Several years ago I was called in the middle of the night to South Bend.
Indians, and found a man of forty-five years of age, pale as death, frightened. His heart was beating rapidly and he thought he was going to die; in fact, the physician who examined him told him that he had a serious heart trouble and did not have long to live.
I examined his heart very carefully and found no lesions whatsoever, but every now and then he would start to jump, and then it would go like that, up and down, and then settle down; and he had a previous history of diarrhoea and digestive symptoms, referable especially to the colon, and I have to add, though I asked him as few questions, I could get very few symptoms besides the objective ones. I think what I said to him did him almost as much good as the medicine. I told him he was suffering from autointoxication and had no heart disease at all, and I gave hi a dose of Tarentula. Two weeks later he was up to see me, apparently a well man.
DR.GREEN: I have had a chance to watch Tarentula fairly closely and I want to add to what Dr.Roberts said about the sudden sly, destructive tendency, a tendency to change ones disposition altogether from a sweet, wholesome, rational persons, to someone who is so terribly self-centered and selfish, and who wants nothing but to have everyone standing around waiting on him, and even to interfere with the nurse going on or off duty, because of some imaginary ailment like feigning a swoon, or something to oblige that person to stay near, and also in this particular patient over and over again a false fainting attack, which is not really a fainting attack at all, because the patient has a red face, a bluish red, almost purplish, just suffused, and the pulse is going, fainter and fainter until it begins to come back again. The person will collapse on the floor just like a regular fainting spell, and there is a very temporary unconsciousness.
DR.Benthack said that before the knew Tarentula was used in ulcers, he used to depend on Arsenic for burning ulcers. That reminds me to say that I have learned that Tarentula and Arsenicum are complementary remedies in some chronic cases.
DR.DIXON: Just a word about Tarentula, not covered by the paper at all, but so interesting that I thought I ought to mention it. Kents Repertory given it in heavy black type for diabetes. I have had an interesting case vary recently, diagnosed in one of the eastern clinics, and the patient was advised to take insulin, but never took it.
The lady came home and reported to me, and on the repertory study of the case I decided on Tarentula, and the lady had only one dose. It apparently cleared up completely.
DR.MOORE: I just want to give the point which Dr.Guy Beckley Sterns has worked through, and probably Dr.Grimmer and others. Nowadays, instead of everyones having tuberculosis, everyone has the flu. I speak of this because this was a meningitis following flu. Flu comes through on the tests above everything else in the American people of the eastern part or the country in this day; and the influenza remedies seem to be quite successful in a great many cases, often where there is no history of a real attack of flu.
DR.GRIMMER: Dr.Farrington asks why. It is true that Dr.Stearns started that observation. We have had communications off and on, being both interested n in a similar line of research, and Dr.stearns has gotten a nosode of flu.
Chronic flu as we know it is related very closely to bovine tuberculosis vaccination, and that form of tuberculosis that is associated and comes directly through the bovine type, and it is astonishing how many cases will show this strain; and until you get a remedy sometimes to relieve that, you wont make much progress in your case, if it is a chronic condition. It is a chronic form of strain, and Dr.stearns has several types of this influenza, the Spanish and chronic, and the ordinary, rheumatic type of flu. He has those nosodes and he has almost gotten routine in giving them. I think he may find it more frequently than I do, further inland, but I have found it and I have confirmed his findings, and I have confirmed the value of the nosode that he has prepared and sent out.
It is worth your investigation and if you get a case that is not responding to your indications, or you have poor indications in a sick patient, this remedy may help you out.
DR.EDWARDS: I dont know whether your American papers print your murders, but your murders are printed in our papers. Last week Mr.Kelly was acquitted of killing his wife; and today your remarks have brought the solution of that whole thing to me. Dr.Roberts spoke of these things developing suddenly, violently. Dr.Gray got him off as insane, dating his whole history from the time that he had flu in 1918 and was given serum injections. It is in our papers of last week.
If he had had Tarentula, or if he had had some other homoeopathic remedies, he would have got better; but I never thought then of Tarentula. I believe there is a point in that. If that patient had had Tarentula after the flu was cleared up, he would never have committed that murder.
He is now in the Protestant State Asylum in Montreal.
DR.NEISWANDER: When I graduated from medical school, I didnt know anything more about homoeopathy than the use of 3x. and tincture and combinations. A few years ago, through Dr.Green, and Dr.Boger, and a few of the other people, I learned about the school at Washington which later was moved to Boston, and since attending there I have gotten some things out of Homoeopathy I never had before.
I have also used Tarentula in a vase of diabetes, a few years ago, in which there was severe cerebral haemorrhage. We thought for about a week she would not survive at all. She was given Tarentula several different times. I have forgotten the potencies but there was 30th and up. She got so she was able to get around and walk about, and do quite a few things in her home.
