The high colonic irrigation in the hands of experienced careful technicians is a very valuable therapeutic modality. Laxatives and purgatives will seldom be required if the right methods of case management are completely carried out. The indicated remedy will overcome many cases of constipation. Diet will correct other cases. Enemata and colonic irrigations will cover most of the remainder. All combined there will be little for other means. Laxative drugs have incidental of side effects not sufficiently evaluated. Usually these side effects are detrimental to the general well being of the patient.
If all of the foregoing is carefully observed in all cases of pneumonia and other acute diseases the death rate will be well under five per cent with no medication of any kind whatsoever.
However, the death rate in pneumonia should be kept down to about one half of one per cent and with the aid of the correct homoeopathic remedy is suitable potency this can be absolutely and consistently achieved.
REMEDY INDICATIONS IN PNEUMONIA.
The exactly similar remedy in suitable potency will abort or cut short the course of pneumonia, typhoid or any other acute disease. If the medicine fails to accomplish this purpose the prescription was incorrect.
Always confine your medication to the singly remedy selected in full agreement with the symptom ensemble of each individual case.
It is well night impossible to become a really expert prescriber if one allows himself to administer two or more drugs at a time or if he alternates remedies, either of which may or may not be homoeopathic to the symptoms. This method of prescribing leads to carelessness and finally to a weakening of the discriminating faculty. Routinism is almost the inevitable but into which any physician who pursues this left had path will fall.
Prescribe the single remedy in the single dose, having in so far as possible removed all obstacles to recovery by means of thoughtful and intelligent case management.
The selection of the potency when using the single dose should be confined within some reasonable limits until long experience and careful observation warrant an attempt at individual potency selection for each patient. The potency range suggested is from the 30th to the 1000th centesimal. Below the 30th, repetition is more often required. The very high potencies may unnecessarily aggravate sensitive patients and in case an emergency should require a stepping up of the remedy a still higher potency might not be quickly available. A very satisfactory medium potency is the 200th centesimal or the 2C. as it is sometimes called.
In all acute conditions, if the remedy fails to hold after satisfactory initial action, it is well, after checking the symptoms, to repeat in a higher potency, as for example following the 200th with the 1000th or as is often termed the 1M. potency.
A single dose of the 200th potency of the similimum will cure the vast majority of acute illnesses, pneumonia not excepted. If more than two doses of medicine in ascending potency are required, rest assured the remedy selection was in error.
Do not think of remedies in relation to any particular disease. Phosphorus is not a remedy for pneumonia but it will cure any curable case of illness which presents symptoms essentially similar in general to those produced in the provings of Phosphorus on healthy persons. The same is true of every other drug in the vast materia medica.
Study the materia medica and learn how to use the repertories and be ready to prescribe for the sick, be the disease what it may. To think of a lost of remedies for pneumonia and a list for some other disease is to run some risk of prescribing on the diagnosis rather than on the symptoms of the patient.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNA.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.