Aconite is indicated and it cures him. This case was six weeks or more from the time of the original exposure.
Another case is that of an elderly banker. While in New York on a business trip he was taken with a chill and fearing to be ill away from home, took the first train back. Arrived with temperature of 103, and a well developed case of bronchitis, which appeared to call for Phosphorus and later Pulsatilla. He made a very good recovery, and in ten days time was up and about the house.
Soon, however, he complained of a supraorbital neuralgia, which was absent in the day, came on every evening and lasted until about 3 a.m. When tired and exhausted he was able to sleep. He was restless while in pain, and had to get up and move about. Rhus tox. seemed to give some relief for a night or two, but did not cure him. He was quite worried and had to be reassured. Local applications did no good. Aconite cured at once.
In ending, let me say that I have noticed very frequently that the fear which possess the Aconite patient is so apparent that it transmits itself to the other members of the family and tends to also transmit itself to the doctor in attendance. When you find yourself afraid as in a case of croup, and the whole family afraid, give Aconite.
DISCUSSION.
DR.FARRINGTON:It is always useful to have these old friends of ours brought out, perhaps somewhat in new raiment. The doctor has given us some useful suggestions on Aconite. It is simply on a part with a story that my father told years ago.
One of his patients was quite ill and he called Dr.Betz in consultation. Betz, you know, was one of the most celebrated gynecologists we have ever had in the homoeopathic profession Betz looked the case over and prescribed pulsatilla,and charged the woman ten dollars, and she was exceedingly angry about that. She heard him mention the remedy and knew something about the ordinary remedies or homoeopathy, and she said,”The gall that doctor has to charge me 10 for such an ordinary remedy as Pulsatilla!”.
There are a lot of our remedies that are of commonplace and ordinary and certainly Aconite is not one of them. No doubt most of you who use Aconite, use it chiefly in acute troubles and it is the custom of our teachers to give a picture of the fully developed Aconite case, and not say anything about any chronic ailments that it might cure.
Fear is really the central feature of the remedy, so much so that this remedy will cure fear, even when it has been of long duration, fear that is unattended by any other symptoms at all.
Several times I have cured fear of crossing the street, in a pregnant woman, fear that she would be run over when there was not an automobile within a block; and any conditions from injury even when there is little swelling or redness.
I remember, again going back in the years to my preceptor, Dr.Korndoerfer, told me Aconite was to the eye as Arnica is to the soft parts of the body of the effects of injuries at that time Dr.Korndoerfer had the care of the men in a large foundry, and he said that he invariably used it when they got pieces of steel in the eye, and he claimed that when he was unable to remove those pieces of steel, Aconite would do it for him.
DR.BOGER: We have on tap the oldest remedy in homoeopathy except China and,thinking back over years of practice makes one recall instances where Aconite was applied for single symptoms with great benefit.
I remember crossing the Great Divide. I had a patient who is present here, taken with strangury, accompanied with great fear, and Aconite controlled the case in a few minutes.
The anuria of newly born children is more certainly controlled with Aconite than any other remedy.
If you have those things at your fingers ends-well, you should have them at your fingers ends. Aconite will help you out in many a tight place. Many cases of acute nephritis go on to death because Aconite was not given first. Instead of that they gave Mercury, or Arsenic, or some other remedy first. Aconite should not be preceded by ARsenic or some other remedy,.
The doctor spoke of a Aconite in controlling fear. Dont think it will always control fear and that it is the only remedy for fear. I cant imagine a more intractable case than a chronic case with predominating fear, and Aconite wont come within a thousand miles of helping it. We all meet those cases, some on the verge of the asylum, predominating fear, fear of anything which cant be controlled with Aconite, and you will be lucky if you can control them with anything to be found in the materia medica-just afraid of everything, afraid of fresh air, drafts, heat cold and night, any imaginable thing. You cant imagine anything they are not afraid of.
I want to digress just a moment here because this is a pretty full audience, and I want a chance at them, if you will excuse me.
I am engaged in proving a remedy, I have over four hundred symptoms I have gotten now and if anyone would like to know whether a potentized remedy will affect a well person, should like to demonstrate that it will.
DR.GRIMMER:Let us have it.
DR.BOGER: Well, will all of you promise to take a single dose of he medicine? It wont be under the 30th potency either, unless you want it lower than that. If you will do that and report the results to me, I will he happy. I have had a number of responses and,as I say, I have over 400 symptoms by now and some are very wonderful.
We have in this remedy an antipsoric with as great power as any other antipsoric in the materia medica, and I shall be happy to send you a 200th potency of it, and you write to me the wonderful experiences that you have had after it. It wont hurt you, either.
DR.ALFRED PULFORD: Early in my career I was a slave to all the possible higher theories of homoeopathy; for instance, the miasm theory, the long-and short-acting remedies, the acute and subacute, and the chronic.
As I grew older and got my one-cylinder brain working, I discarded those theories and prescribed the drug on the basic pathogenetic symptom and got the results.
Now we have no acute, subacute, and chronic remedies. Any remedies may be indicated whether it is one of today or of ten thousand years from now.
I reported a case of gallstone colic that lasted for over two years, the attacks coming on monthly. With one dose of Aconite that case was absolutely relied and remained so for nearly a period of five years, up to now.
Now, then, if Aconite is an acute remedy, how could it have healed that case, or how could it have cured a chronic condition so readily and have in hold?.
The length of time that the remedy is supposed to act is the time of the direct action of the drug to the time that the reaction comes to the surface, and that is all. We have no long- acting potentized drug. It acts immediately. There is nothing in the system to hold it, but if we give a crude dose of mercury, the system cannot free immediately all the power in the mercury and it continues to act through years and years until all that has passed away.
If you give a potentized mercury,say the 200 and 1000, then you dont get that.
DR.GARCIA-TREVINO:In discussing this wonderful paper, I want to say that in Mexico during the epidemic of Spanish flu, we had the same experience as Dr.Green in regard to Aconite. We found that in many cases, in the first stage of this acute condition, the congestive stage, they werent even finding th4e characteristic symptoms of Aconite. We did not get any response in many cases.
We found that in those cases often we had to use Ferrum phos. to get a response from the patients, and this has made many Mexican homoeopaths say that Ferrum phos, is an Aconite for the people of dark complexion of the tropics. We not only found this to be a fact, but also in all these acute fevers in the congestive stage, when some of the symptoms seem to indicate Aconite, we simply get better results by using Ferrum phos,.
I agree with Dr.McLaren that now Aconite will also be used in chronic cases. For some years I had the impression from the materia medica textbooks Aconite should be indicated or should be prescribed in the fist twelve or twenty-four hours of these conditions of congestive stages.
Recently I had in Chicago a case of pulmonary tuberculosis. The man had been in the City Tuberculosis Sanitarium for some time and had been discharged. He was a big fellow, a heavy-set Irishman, and after having been discharged for a certain time, he suddenly had a relapse in the condition and rather a profuse haemoptysis.
He never had used homoeopathy, but his wife is a good homoeopath, so she convinced him that he should try homoeopathy: I was called on the case and went to see him and found very clear indications of Aconite. I didnt want to use it in low potency, remembering what the books say about Aconite in low potency. This man had a very marked fear. He thought he was going to die. His haemorrhages were so profuse that he was certain he was going to die. This fear, the nature of is pulse, and other congestive symptoms, made me think of aconite, and I gave him a single dose of Aconite 200. That stopped the haemorrhage and he recovered.
