DR. MOORE: Dr. Roberts, just what is your technique of ionization?.
DR. ROBERTS: I dont do it myself; Dr. J.H. Evans does it for me. They put a moist plate saturated with sulphate of zinc solution over the mastoid process, and another one, active, on the back, and play the current between. This explodes the pus cell – the nuclei – it is not the cells.
DR. BALDWIN: At low wave?.
DR. ROBERTS: A low wave, yes.
DR. BRYANT: I have tried to treat eyes and tried to treat mastoids and I have had some success. Of course, you have all used and all are familiar with Capsicum in mastoids.
Since I have been in the homoeopathic school, which has been since 1907, I have had only one mastoid that went to surgery and I really think that that mastoid might have been spared had it not been for the idea of the family and some influence on the outside.
Where you have this red, oedematous type of the mastoid, I have rarely seen it fail to eliminate that trouble. Dr. Roberts has spoken of ionization. I have never used it, but I have used a salt solution in the same way. I didnt like to use the zinc or the copper because I felt that it might suppress. Still, I may be entirely wrong about that.
Now, I have prescribed for eyes, and have done it continually, but that is a long and tedious subjects, and those of you who havent got Nortons book on the eye, should have it. To me it has been a most wonderful help. I use it often and it has an excellent repertory in connection with it.
DR. ROBERTS: May I say one word more? What Dr. Bryant says is very true. You can, if you have your patients with you early in the game, avoid practically all mastoid cripples. I dont think there is any question about that, but when a patient comes to you, as they have to me this last winter, having been under the care of ear men there, and they told them they were going to operate the next morning – such a patient is too late for Capsicum or Silica or any remedy to do any particular good alone unless you can also destroy the results of the process that has been going on. That is why I say ionization.
I have never yet had a case of mastoiditis develop in a patient that I have been taking care of. I have had a good come to me who have been dragged over a period of time up to the point where operation had been deemed necessary.
DR. VAN SCHOTTE: It is too bad that more people arent armed with homoeopathic remedies, especially in treatment of diseases of the ear. I have not been in practices so long as many of you men, but I can say truthfully that in sixteen years I have never had a mastoid in my own practice.
One thing that is important after otitis media, especially in children where we see most of these, is the anatomical structure of the drum which runs much more obliquely in the child than it does in the adult; so we should not be in too bit a hurry to incise a red drum in a child, because oftentimes there is apparent bulging there when really it is only the normal anatomical structure. I think the great percentage of these cases would clear up under accurate homoeopathic prescribing; then if there is any sign of pus or perhaps when it is swollen and bulging without pus, simply with the serous exudate, to make a liberal incision in the drum and give the drainage.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: In my own practice I dont believe that I ever had a case of mastoiditis.
One night about eleven oclock I was called out to see a little girl. She had had four operations for a mastoid. Now, I dont believe you see very many cases of mastoid. The child had every symptom of Belladonna. The fifth attack was just exactly like the one that had preceded it. I gave her one dose of Belladonna and in fifteen minutes the little lady was sound asleep.
She is now married and has children of her own and she has never had an attack of mastoiditis since.
DR. HUTCHINSON: What strength of Belladonna?.
DR. PULFORD: The thirtieth.
DR. GRIMMER: Speaking of mastoids, I can suggest a couple of very fine remedies that I have cured some very bad cases of well developed mastoids with. One was double mastoids. The remedy called Aurum natrum fluor. was used; the other is its twin, Aurum kali fluor. I have used those two remedies in some of the very worst cases.
One winter in Chicago there was a quite an epidemic of mastoid troubles and Dr. Brown, of chicago, and I, took care of a number of these cases and, strange to say, these two remedies were the most frequent ones we had indicated, and they invariably cured these cases, some of them of a very, very severe type.
DR. MOORE: Is there a proving of these two remedies?.
DR. GRIMMER: There is no proving, but they can be obtained at Ehrhart and Karls Chicago.
DR. MOORE: What potency do you use?.
DR. GRIMMER: I used these in the 10,000, but they are available from the thirtieth up.
DR. HUTCHINSON: What indication would you have?.
DR. GRIMMER: The Aurum indications are predominant, the character of the discharge and the severity of the type. There may be some of the deeper indications of sodium and potassium elements, the weakness, and so forth. They would really have to be given largely empirically after other remedies failed, if you have no other indications for some of our known good remedies. There are only a few remedies in these bad cases, Hepar, Aurum, Silica, Capsicum, and a few others. They are all you need to study, in the really severe types of these diseases, and, if you find they are not working, given one of these others and you will be delighted.
DR. MOORE: Do you find these remedies indicated electronically?.
DR. GRIMMER: Yes. That is how I got in touch with them. There is no other way we could develop them, but you can give them empirically on those broad lines.
On this same subject I might relate something which might be of value to the society. It is the case of a middle ear infection with dreadful pain and no discharge. This case refused to yield to all the common remedies and even to mercurius as advised by Kent in such conditions. Cuprum metallicum cured promptly.
DR. BALDWIN: May I say in this connection that Dr. Grimmer prescribed for a case for me a while back. It was of six or eight years standing with a fistula from the mastoid clear down through the throat and pus draining through the fistula; it had been that way for seven years, and the patient had twenty-five or thirty convulsions a year, in all these seven years, and Aurum natrum fluor. positively cured that patient. The patient has had no more convulsions but is rugged and hardy and has had children since, and I made good on the basis of that prescription.
I had another patient so much like that that I also prescribed Aurum natrum fluor. after which there was wonderful improvement; but after one year I gave her Aurum kali fluor., and she made a recovery. Those were two cases of six or seven years standing that got perfectly well from those two remedies.
DR. MOORE: Dr. McLaren spoke about Belladonna, and we usually think of that Belladonna picture, the flushed face and throbbing carotids, and all of that. Well, we can get the Belladonna picture where you have none of that, get it in a chronic, old case.
I spoke of a case last year, the case of a child of eleven with a discharging ear from the age of two, foul discharge from the ear. Something happened a day and a half before this was brought to my office. The child had a temperature of 104 plus, with vomiting and was seriously ill for a day and a half, which meant this trouble had broken inwardly. We have seen these cases and seen them treated surgically and we are not too proud of the record. Some come through, but most of them dont.
Well, this case figured Belladonna in my repertorizing, and I gave the two hundredth, and the child was better the next day, and the day following was better than that; these were poor people who lived in a neighboring town and I didnt see that child again until – what will we say – the spirit moved me. In a weeks time something said to me, “You go and see that child.” So I drove to the neighboring town. I found the child had been screaming all night, wanted someone with it constantly.
While I was there there was projectile vomiting and the whole picture. I went back to the office and figured this again, and Dr. Dixon suggested we might try something else, but I could only get Belladonna so I figured the thousandth; the father came over and got it and gave it at ten oclock in the morning and the by three oclock in the afternoon the patient was quiet and at seven o clock was asleep and slept till seven the next morning, a natural sleep.
At three oclock in the afternoon there was a telephone message from the father who was on the line and he said, “If anyone said to me, “Your child is ill, I wouldnt know why. They say she lost twenty pounds, but she seems all right”.
That is quite a loss for an eleven-year-old child, but she has been perfectly healthy and came right along out of it. If there was anything wrong, I would know about it.
There is your Belladonna in a chronic case with an acute flare- up. Some men make a wonderful use of Belladonna in ears and use it almost exclusively and get wonderful results. As for swelling up high and above the ear, my experience has been in most of the cases that means necrosis of mastoid cells, and in this little to it is not necessary to do any more than the very slightest operation with ethylchloride, open it and drain it; the point there where you get your drainage is already established, and it needs just a little curette and you are in and out in two or three minutes, and that is all there is to that.
