Surgery has never cured disease, yet it is essential often as a means for the preservation of life. Crude drugs and physical therapy are often of value as palliative. Potentized remedies, applied according to the Law of Similars, cure.
Where a homoeopathic remedy has replaced the usual surgical procedure a permanent cure is possible.
Where surgical intervention has been necessary in the preservation of life, a renewed opportunity presents itself for again discovering the curative homoeopathic remedy with a possible permanent cure.
As specific illustrations I wish to describe the remedies in use in some of the more common conditions where surgical intervention is often required.
CHOLECYSTITIS.
This condition is often productive of cholelithiasis. Stones in the bladder are causes of great pain only when they are of a size where passage through the cystic duct is possible with distension. Large stones, producing few or no symptoms, are often carried through life.
Inflammatory conditions, including acute and chronic infections which would usually involve the gallbladder, are often secondary to hepatic inflammations and infections, and are responsible for symptoms.
Here the following remedies are of great value:.
Chionanthus: Periodic sick headaches, menstrual and bilious. Jaundice. Headache, chiefly over eyes, with painful eyeballs and pressure over root of nose. Stools soft, yellow, pasty. Tender hepatic region. Sudden griping pains as if slip-knot around intestines were suddenly drawn tight and gradually loosened.
Chelidonium: Jaundice. Fixed pain under inferior angle of right scapula. Yellow coated tongue with imprint of teeth. Pain in stomach through to back. Temporary relief by eating.
Cholesterinum: Obstinate hepatic engorgements. Burning pain in hepatic region.
Lycopodium: Right-sided pain, < 4 to 8 p.m. Craves everything warm. Intellectually keen, muscularly weak. Acid eructations. Melancholy. Afraid to be alone. Red sediment in urine.
Cinchona off.: Great debility. Slow digestion. Vomiting of undigested food. Flatulence. Belching of bitter fluid which gives no relief. Worse after eating fruit. Tinnitus orum.
Myrica: Bitter taste, nausea. Offensive breath. Strong desire for acids. Weak, sinking feeling in epigastrium. Jaundice. Dull hepatic pain.
Podophyllum: Hot, sour belching. Thirst for large quantities of cold water. Empty gagging or retching. Distended abdomen with sensation of weakness or sinking.
Mercurius vivus: Sweetish taste. Salivation. Spongy, bleeding gums. Putrid eructations. Great thirst for cold drinks. Weak digestion with continuous hunger. Rectal and urinary tenesmus. Jaundice. Aggravation at night. Sweat without relief.
Natrum phos.: Yellow, creamy coating of posterior half of tongue. Acid eructations. Jaundice. Sour vomiting. Greenish diarrhoea.
DIVERTICULITIS OF THE COLON.
I wish to mention this condition in passing because it was explained to me at Stanford University as a fatal issue. My patient had a violent diverticulitis involving the entire colon, the x-ray picture showing multiple diverticuli; the patient bedridden with at times feeble vomiting and copious bloody stools with great tenesmus; violent cutting pains lasting for hours. Permanently cured by Nitric acid in high potency.
This is the only case I have ever seen of diverticulitis with the exception of one patient not my patient that died at Stanford University.
FISTULA IN AND.
One of my first demonstration of the possibility of a cure of an anal fistula was in a patient who was president of a large wholesale drug company. This came shortly after my conversion to homoeopathy, many years ago. Two prominent surgeons had recommended immediate surgery, the patient consulting me after being told that nothing but surgery would be of value. I agreed with him that this was probably true, yet suggested that a brief trial be given the homoeopathic remedy.
After careful history taking, the following symptoms were evident: Greasy taste. Aversion to sweets. Feeling of rawness about rectum. Sensation as if lime were burned in stomach.
Causticum completely cured this patient within three weeks time. The relief was immediate and the cure progressive.
Silica: Chronic suppurative processes. Patient is cold, chilly, hugs the fire. Wants warm clothing. Hates drafts. Lacks grit, moral and physical.
Nitric acid: Splinter-like pains. Irregular edges. Exuberant granulations. Fetid foot sweat.
Graphites: Anus extremely sore. Stools covered with mucus. Eczematous subjects cracking behind the ears.
Ratanhia: Constriction about anus which burns and aches for hours after stool. Cutting lancinating pains in rectum with dryness.
Paeonia: Fissures with large amount of oozing. Anus offensive, moist and sore. Smarting and burning all the time.
Platina: Crawling itching, especially at night.
OSTEOMYELITIS.
Silica: With old fistulous openings and sequestra discharging a yellow creamy pus.
Asafoetida: Caries with offensive discharges. Intolerable soreness about fistulous openings. Especially indicated in osteomyelitis of the tibia.
Aurum: Especially of the cranium bones, the palate and the nasal bones. Pains < at night. Offensive odor. Discharging small sequestra.
Platina muriaticum: Especially in tarsus (Mezereum).
Stillingia: Especially luetic of long bones; < at night and in damp weather.
Phosphorus: Involving most of the lower jaw. In osteomyelitis of the hip it is useful after Silica. Known luetic.
Fluoric acid: Especially dental, but also of long bones with thin, excoriating discharges.
Calcarea carb.: Especially of the vertebrae. Sour sweat. Obesity. Waxy, white complexion.
HYPERTHYROIDISM OR TOXIC THYROID.
Amyl nitrosum: Deep facial flushing. Pulsation all over body. Anxiety as if something might happen. Must have fresh air. Throbbing in head. Bursting out feeling in ears.
Kali iodatum: Fright at every trifle, every little noise. Starting, apprehensive. Excited, quarrelsome. Eyeballs painful on movement. Throat swelling of thyroid gland with sensitiveness to touch and pressure. Choking in trachea. Irregular action of heart and pulse, with tensive pain across chest, especially affecting right ventricle, which gradually becomes dilated. Tremor of limbs, tearing above right malleolus. Gait disturbed. Emaciation. Marasmus. Nervous mobility. Trembling. Subsultus tendinum.
Lycopus: Increased mental and physical activity in evening. Vertigo. Pressure in forehead. Eyes feel full and heavy. Constriction across lower half of thorax. Quick, weak pulse, occasional haemoptysis.
Ferrum: Confusion and heaviness in the head; vertigo. Epistaxis. Constrictive sensation in the throat. Oppressed, short breathing.
Hypericum: Apprehensive. Mental excitement. Great heaviness in the head; confusion, vertigo. Dryness of the lips and mouth. Great thirst, desire for warm drinks. Anxiety in chest in forenoon with short breath. Palpitation, pulse rapid and hard.
Baryta iodata: Glandular enlargement and new growth, on indications suggested by its two elements.
Bromine: Symptoms are those of Iodine with the exception that it is used in a blonde patient of thin muscular fiber and pink skin.
Duboisinum: Excitable. Dizziness. Pupils widely dilated. Ringing in ears. Throat dry. A rapid pulse; faintness.
Natrum mur.: Palpitation, hearts pulsation shaking the body. Short of breath on least exertion. Lachrymose, worse with sympathy. Emaciation of throat; craves salt.
Iodine: Confusion of head. Anxiety, fear, shuns people. Restless agitation. Feeling of depression above eyes. Protrusion of eyeballs. Salivation. Pyrosis. Inflation of abdomen.
Belladonna: Palpitation of the heart, increased by exercise. Pulsation of the larger arteries. Irritability of the heart. Thyroid enlargement. Eyeball appears to become increased in size. Eyelids do not close, even in sleep. Excitability. Irritability. Depression.
PROSTATIC HYPERTROPHY.
Chimaphila: Tenesmus. Frequent urination. Sensation as of sitting on a small ball.
Conium: Urination difficult. Intermittent.
Ferrum picricum: Especially in the aged.
Thuja: Frequent pressing desire to urinate with small discharge and great straining. Stitches from rectum into bladder.
APPENDICITIS.
Many years ago Dr. Walter James, one of our most brilliant scholars, and under whose direction I received my homoeopathic training, once said to me: “Bryonia is the most indicated remedy in the first stages of appendicitis, the symptoms being characteristic of this trouble.” It was his practice to recommend surgery unless marked improvement was evident within twenty-four hours.
Arsenicum: Chills. Diarrhoea. Restlessness. Exhaustion. Thirst for small quantities of water at frequent intervals.
Lachesis: A most valuable remedy. Sensitiveness all over the abdomen. Stitching from seat of inflammation backward and down- ward into thighs.
Rhus tox: Swelling over McBurneys point.
Belladonna: Severe pain in caecal region; < from slightest touch, jar or motion. Patient lies on back with legs drawn up.
Plumbum: Tense swelling caecal region, its great characteristic being, however, retraction of abdominal wall. Eructation of gas and vomiting, both having faecal odor.
Seattle.
Chairman, Bureau of Surgery