5. Mention should here be made of aspirin which sometimes brings relief to an asthmatic patient, but which is not tolerated by others in whom it may produce violent crisis. In addition to these therapeutic agents-which today seem the best treatment of asthma-there exists the highly specialized method which is still being studied: radiotherapy, irradiation of the thorax and spleen; pyreto therapy, which produces artificial fever by short waves or by the injection of oil suspension; vaccinotherapy (antistreptococcic vaccines, tuberculin); actino therapy with the aid of ultraviolet rays.
Whatever may be the type of asthma presented for treatment, it must not be forgotten that asthma is a capricious disease in which any treatment may succeed or fail and that it is a form of malady calling for exceptional therapy.
Independent of vago-sympathetic and humoral disturbances, there is a large number of asthmatic individuals where the mental factor must be borne in mind.
There is nothing that works quite so well, in the exceptional treatment, as the indicated homoeopathic remedy improving the patients general health as well as the asthma. Herein lies the specificity of tissue reaction of our remedies as well as constitutional betterment. I have no argument to make over the repertoires. Some find they can use one better than another.
Personally, I prefer Lent because there are so many finer shadings of your case and it is rich in mentals. In my part of the country the remedies of first choice have been Phos., Lach., Ars., Kali carb. and Nux vom. Those less frequently used are Carbo veg., Puls., Sep., Syph., Lyc., Med., Ip., Kali ars. Usually your case is a mixture of many drug miasms and in some cases a round of Nux will help; in others you may be dealing with the following obstacles to recovery which you may best get out of your way before attempting to prescribe:.
(a) Aluminum poisoning which I have been taught to antidote with Cadmium iod. 50M.
(b) Look out for a previous history of poison ivy for which a dose of Rhus tox. CM. works nicely to unfold your case.
(c) The patients mouth may be full of old amalgam fillings or even a red vulcanite plate, which is gradually liberating bichloride of mercury in the system.
(d) There may be a morphine or an old your case-history of suppressed diarrhoea or an old gallbladder colic stopped with a hypo. Likewise ovarian neuralgia.
(e) In one case where Phos. failed to act in an overseas man I gave Phosgene CM., which turned the tide toward cure.
The patient may be allowed to tell his story uninterruptedly. Many of these cases are severe sufferers, therefore it may be necessary to re-repertorize the case rather frequently if one dose of the single remedy does not act. There may be an old suppressed itch or ague of many years ago. These are two disease conditions that are considered the earmarks of a native-born Hoosier. The nosodes are very valuable in many of these conditions.
Bacillinum has proved one of my most useful remedies, even in case where a definite history of tuberculosis could not be obtained, especially useful where there is a very bad chronic cough accompanying, and many calcified nodules throughout the chest as shown by the x-ray plate.
I struggled with one case all winter. Nux held best for a time. then one evening as I went out the door the mother remarked, “Jackie hates to see night come, he is always so bad.” One dose of Syphilinum 5M. promptly cured that case of twelve years standing.
There may have been a history of silver nitrate cauterization and in this day and time a suppressed hay fever from the use of that popular treatment of zinc ionization.
Vaccinosis must be considered and finally, last but not least, a mental remedy may unlock your case.
I do not believe that one single dose nor one single remedy will ever take your case through to complete cure.
If after many repertory studies on your case there is a deadlock between the usual polychrests, restudy your case, using more mentals, especially in Kent. Obtain the mentals from the family or people who live with the patient. In difficult cases I recheck the symptoms in both Kent and Boenninghausen.
GREEN FORKS, INDIANA.
DISCUSSION.
DR. PANOS: I wonder if Dr. Bond, being so near my locality, hasnt found Dulcamara very often being indicated in his patients. In the Miami Valley I found that remedy indicated, in my experience with asthmatic patients, especially in the acute states.
In one particular case a patient came in and asked for some relief, and I said, “Im sorry, I have to go out, and I will see you tomorrow”.
He said, “Wont you just give me something? I suffer so much!” It happened that the day was cold, damp, rainy day, and I said, “All right, I will give you something. Just step back”.
That patient was for years in our tubercular sanatorium, and he went back, after the Dulcamara, relieved of the symptoms, and a few days later (I never did expect to see the patient again) came back much relieved. They asked at the sanatorium what he was doing and he said, “I am taking these pills.” They said, “You had better go back there and get taking these pills.” They said, “You had better go back there and get some more of those pills”.
DR. WILSON: Dulcamara, of course, happens to be one of the Solanaceae. Dr. Bond was talking about Belladonna being the original remedy used so extensively. Perhaps there are properties in Dulcamara that make it beneficial.
I had a case of asthma with bronchiectasis, and that was relieved by horse dander. It didnt cure it, but it was relieved very much by horse dander.
DR. MOORE: My experience has been that Pulsatilla has done the most for these cases. That is Dr. Roberts outstanding remedy. I have seen it in a case of apparent T.B., night sweats and all the rest with the asthma, and seen the whole thing clear up with Pulsatilla.
DR. OLDS: These asthmatic cases are without doubt those that require a great deal of work, a great deal of patience on both the patients part and the physicians. As a rule you must treat them for years. As the doctor said in his paper, occasionally one remedy clears the thing up, but not as a rule.
I have found more frequently for the acute attacks that Bryonia was indicated, but as I recall one case that I had been treating for a number of months, perhaps a year, of a girl of fourteen, she was having her attacks whenever she got a cold. Just as sure as she got an ordinary cold she would come down with an asthmatic attack. She was helped through the attacks by Bryonia but that didnt seem to do a lot of good until her aunt one day said, “Have you noticed that this girl always has a bad attack at two a.m.?”.
I said, “No, I didnt know anything about that”.
Well, I studied the symptoms over again, and there was Kali carbonicum. A dose of Kali carbonicum 10M. completely knocked those asthmatic attacks out for a period of months, and an occasional dose of it afterwards was all that she needed.
DR. WILSON: What was the basis of her asthma?.
DR. OLDS: I dont know. It was hereditary. Her father had it.
DR. GRIMMER: Asthma is one of the cases that will make anybody work if he really wants to cure some of the cases.
Dr. Wilsons remarks remind me of a case that I had of a little girl that was sent to me from Michigan. She came to Chicago and got relief almost immediately, and would stay well so long as the remained in Chicago. She would go back to Michigan, to the farm, where her father came in after working with the horses, and she would get an attack of asthma. I never was able to cure that girl so she was able to live at home. I didnt was able to cure that girl so she was able to live at home. I didnt know anything about horse dandruff at that time or I might have given her a dose!.
Another case some fifteen or twenty years ago, of man who had been through the usual treatments that the essayist has spoken of, the “old school treatments of all kinds, I think before they had adrenalin, however. He had everything else but that, and his remedy was Arsenicum, and Arsenicum cured that man, apparently. I heard nothing, after a couple of years of treatment, until a month or two ago, after an interval of ten or twelve years. He came in and said, “Doctor, I have been perfectly well all these years and had none of my asthma, but I am beginning to have some more asthma. I would like some more of that medicine”.
I sent him another dose of Arsenicum, somewhat lower, 1M. potency, and it gave him very quick relief. He reported at once that it was very much improved.
DR. DIXON: I didnt hear the first part of Dr. Bonds paper and I am perhaps repeating something that he stressed that I have found so often and that I think should be mentioned, and that is the miasmatic reason for asthma. It is accredited to be of the psoric type so often, and I have so often found definite results from the sycotic that I think we should not overlook the fact that Medorrhinum may unlock your case immediately. I have had it do so especially in children that developed asthma in their early childhood.
