Three or four days after this remedy was given I saw him in my office. The fear was gone. so was the haemorrhage.
I believe differently, now than I believed years ago, that Aconite can also be used in chronic cases and especially in high potencies.
DR.BENTHACK:You are talking about Aconite in chronic cases. We, as good homoeopaths, may use any remedy when the symptoms indicate it, chronic or acute. If anyone comes in, especially a woman who has cried her eyes out, and tells me that yesterday she was in a doctors office and he gave her a gloomy prognosis, and said she has a cancer, when the mental symptoms indicate it, I usually give a dose of Aconite before I go much further and usually she is a good deal better in half an hour.
Dr.Schlegel, in his book on cancer, said, “If anyone comes to you who has a gloomy prognosis and is very excited about it, consider Aconite first, and give a few doses.”.
One other thing I want to say that the doctor mentioned the urinary difficulty. if an elderly man comes to me, and he has made a four-hundred mile drive with an automobile, and he cannot pass his urine and has trouble with the prostate gland, I think first of Aconite.
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DR.MOORE: I should like to thank Dr. McLaren for clearing the atmosphere for me. I spend a big part of my life digging steel and emery and all sorts of things out of peoples eyes. This will make it easier.
DR. CAMPBELL: This paper of Dr. McLarens on Aconite reminds me of a little deception I practiced on an insurance company. I had a patient who was perfectly sound, as sound as most of us are, who had been applying for life insurance for the fast year. He came up for repeated examinations and every time, but his apprehension about the examination caused his pulse to speed up and his blood pressure to rise. He was quite distressed about this and came into the office one day and told me about it. He was going for his examination the next day, so I gave him the powder of Aconite and told him to take it an hour or so before he went in for his examination. He passed with flying colors.
DR. FARRINGTON: I dont see how anyone can confuse Aconite th Ferrum phos. They are not the same. You are likely to make a mistake if you try to prescribe on congestion, redness and high fever only.
Ferrum phos. is similar in many respects but the chief difference lies in the fact that Aconite is fearful and restless, whereas Ferrum phos., even with a temperature of 106, may be quite complacent and calm, and is certainly not fearful. The only thing that we might go astray on is that the Ferrum phos, patient has a tendency to talk and chatter, but it is not excited or fearful. The pulse is also different. The pulse of Aconite is full and pounding; that of Ferrum phos. is full and falling.
DR. GARCIA-TREVINO: In regard to one point, I want to clarify this a little. I really dont know what the reason is for the more effective action of Ferrum phos. instead of Aconite in Mexico. We have found the Aconite does not respond down in Mexico as well, whether it is due to different climatic conditions or something like that; but we have found in some of the congestive stages where Aconite seemed indicated and tried it, without any result, I think there is some influence in the action of our remedies because of the climatic conditions and also the altitude, and it night be those are the reasons.
I have often heard that said among some of the oldest homoeopaths in Mexico. They have said that our Aconite is Ferrum phos.; that is their expression and their experience. I am quite sure it would not apply here.
DR. HINGSTON: I have been very much interested in what has been said quite recently as to the use of Aconite in chronic cases.
When I was in the West practicing, I saw a great many cases of tuberculosis. That is the place where the tuberculosis cases congregate. We know that very many times in tuberculosis we have, form some cause or other, occasional flare-ups of very high fever. Of course, they are temporary, but they are of even shorter duration if you find the remedy, and that is very frequently Aconite in tuberculosis.
It is not Aconite because it is the remedy for a high fever; you must have the indications, and I think there is no need to go over those.
Nothing has been said about Aconite in obstetrics. In many cases we are called where there is premature, violent pain. There pains do not mean anything except a great deal of distress. The patients very often have all the Aconite symptoms that you need for a good prescription. To illustrate: I was called to see a patient. She had received that morning somewhat of a fright though our injury of one of her children. She had been perfectly well up to that time.
It was practically her time for confinement and a few hours after this fright, she began to have labor pains, when I arrived there, she was very restless, very anxious, and having what appeared to be very severe and certainly very frequent labor pains. It looked as if she even might he well along through the first stage of labor. On examination there wasnt the slightest dilatation of the os, and apparently no reason for such violent distress.
It was an easy matter to select a remedy, of course, from the history of the morning, and from the condition she was in, and the extreme restlessness and the fear, without being able to say what she was afraid of. She had been afraid in the morning, but it extended into this condition. I only need to say that I gave a single does of Aconite in the twelfth decimal, which, I had with me, and it was sufficient to quiet her, and she went over a normal labor, a little over a week afterwards.
As to Aconite and Ferrum phos., I was wondering about that I practiced for a good many years in the West, for nearly two decades, about half a century ago, and I found Aconite rarely indicated in acute disease and especially in acute colds. That is a country which is exceedingly dry, but they always have a lot to drink, and one of my patients told me one day, when I asked him to take water to eliminate some of the toxins that were causing acute articular rheumatism (I wanted him to drink a lot of water) and he said, “We use water in this country to wash with. I havent had a drink of water in forty years.” They dont seem to drink much water, but Aconite seems to be a remedy that doesnt need water. It may be recommended if you practice in a climate similar to that in which I practiced.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: A grand characteristic of Aconite is agonized tossing about; and the late T.F. Allen stressed that very greatly in his encyclopaedia, that it is necessary in a case requiring Aconite, so you dont have any trouble to distinguish the indications.
DR. MCLAREN: The point brought up about possible uses of Aconite in these heart cases is worth remembering.
Dr. Farrington having mentioned his office nurse, I think it would be all right for me to mention mine. There or four years ago a young a man came into the office with a cinder in his cornea. I put in some cocaine. I am not a specialist, Dr. Moore, and I proceeded to try to get this cinder out. It was imbedded very deeply, couldnt be moved very well with the limited instruments I had at hand, and I thought over the thing and I decided that I would leave quite a hole in the cornea if I proceeded to dig that cinder out.
This office nurse had a brother who was an eye specialist, practicing down in Ohio somewhere south of Cleveland, and she was horrified when I told her I thought I would just leave the cinder in there. She knew that that cinder was going to ulcerate and go right though his cornea. However, I offered to bet her a box of chocolates that that cinder would be gone in the morning. She was horrified. I gave the young man several doses of Aconite 200, and we made a bet. He was to telephone her in the morning if the cinder was gone. If the cinder was still there, he was to come back to the office building and go downstairs to one of the eye specialists and have the cinder removed.
Bright and early next morning I got her on the telephone and I said, “Has Mr. Campbell telephoned yet?”.
“Yes,” the said.
I said, “Where is the cinder?”.
She said, “He never saw it again. He doesnt knew where it is.
