This brings out the point that when you recognize a nosode, however, use it with caution, since we all understand that it is a very powerful missile. Again I repeat that the repertorization of nosodes is an extremely rare occurrence, and if and when it does come out it certainly stands some investigation, and invariably it turns out to be the similimum in the case.
DR. WAFFENSMITH: One point that has not been touched upon in this paper in my experience has been very valuable, and that is the euthanasia power of Tuberculinum. Very often after prescribing for an incurable acute condition one will find that the remedies, as indicated in series, fail to hold, and that of course is a positive diagnosis of incurability. As the patient progress toward the final stage the family is restless, the heat is applied, and something is expected to be done to neutralize the ultimate agony of death.
It is here, if you will study Tuberculinum very carefully and find that there is or has been in the history of the case characteristic symptoms pointing to it, or a family history of tuberculosis, that you will often get a remarkable pre-death improvement. Very often your nurse will tell you she believes the patient will get well. Dont allow that to deceive you. It will be of short duration.
The patient, where previously he had been unable to even swallow the medicine you have given, or liquids, may for a very limited period of time ask for nourishment and will be able to swallow it, but again dont allow that to deceive you, as it is the pre-death euthanasia which comes from any similimum, but particularly from the nosode Tuberculinum in many of these cases. It has been of great value to me frequently in my work.
DR. FARRINGTON: As the last speaker has said, there are many interesting things that might be brought out in this discussion, but I presume you dont want to take up too much time. I believe that those cases our essayist reported were not acute cases at all, but acute manifestations of the chronic underlying condition. It is true that we seldom get a nosode in repertory work, and I think that is because the knowledge of the particular symptoms of these diseased products is deficient and the repertories contain comparatively few of them.
If you look deeply at Dr. H.C. Allens nosodes you will see that there is a wealth of symptoms, especially for Psorinum and Medorrhinum, and some of them which can not be found under any other medicine. That is especially true of Medorrhinum. If you have ever used Dr. Allens slip repertory you will have nosodes coming out more frequently. Many of the symptoms that are recorded in the other repertories in his are marked in high degree.
Dr. Allen has been accused of abusing the nosodes, but I do not believe it. He knew more than any other living man about those remedies, and like Guernsey with his keynotes and like some of the others who have had some special line or method of prescribing, they knew so much about clinical symptoms that with one or two symptoms they saw other things, and perhaps without realizing it themselves they prescribed really on the totality.
I have seen a number of cures with nosodes, especially with Tuberculinum, where it was the only remedy in the case. It is true, however, that as a rule they carried the case to a certain point and other medicines had to be given to complete the cure.
Another thought was this: Have you had many aggravations from nosodes? I have never had any. Dr. Grimmers case, where he gave Tuberculinum, he said got well by crisis. Isnt it possibly true that although under good homoeopathic prescribing lobar pneumonia gets well by lysis, if there is a hyperpyrexia that is not possible, that when the temperature is 105 degrees, or as in one case of “blue” pneumonia, so-called (which is not supposed to be pneumonia, I understand), a temperature of 105.5, after a dose of Phosphorus it came tumbling down in two hours to 101 degrees, the patient got cold and sweat and almost collapsed.
It was a young woman of twenty-six who had just recovered, after a long period of homoeopathic prescribing, from tuberculosis, and I dont know in this case whether it was galloping consumption or pneumonia. She recovered, but her hair all fell out. She got bald as an egg. Then the hair came in curly and my oldest son fell in lover with her and married her. I didnt know I was doing such a good job!.
DR. PANOS: The nosodes are a very wide field and take considerable space in our materia medica and should be studied more than they are.
Recently the wife of one of the best homoeopaths in Dayton suffered from what was termed colitis and, as usual, one goes to the symptoms. For two years he prescribed to the best of his ability and finally consulted a few other men outside of the city, and he asked me if I wouldnt help in taking care of her. He told me the remedies they had been giving: Arsenic, Lachesis, Carbo vegetabilis and a few others.
We decided on Arsenic. Arsenic brought some relief. We waited for two months, but there was no further progress. Then she got cold and the doctor prescribed, hurriedly, Aconite and Bryonia. then we decided a dose of Sepia might clear up something. Sepia was given with no results. The sweat and the characteristics of Psorinum were present and we gave a dose of Psorinum.
There was an aggravation for a week and then she came back with the previous line and stayed there for four weeks, when Lachesis became very nicely indicated, and one dose of 10M. cleared up the case very beautifully and she is very well today.
DR. WILSON: One aspect of the nosodes that hasnt been touched at all is the use of some of the nosodes against some of the prevailing diseases.
When I was a student at Hahnemann here the seniors had the privilege of going to the municipal hospital and seeing smallpox. I wanted to see smallpox because I thought I would never see it when I got into practice, and if there was a possibility of seeing it I wanted to see it.
We went up to see diphtheria, scarlet fever and then smallpox at two-day intervals. The first day we went in to see either diphtheria or scarlet fever, and the intern asked to see our vaccinations. I happened to be the oldest man in the class and he looked at them all and passed me by. I dont know why. I finally said, “Dont you want to look at mine?” I had one that was done way back in the eighties. He said, “How long ago was it done?”.
I said, “Twenty or twenty-five years ago”.
He said, “I would have one or two scratches made if I were you”.
Some of the other fellows were vaccinated. Some of them didnt go in when the critical time came, but I began taking Variolinum, and took it for a period before I went in and after I came from seeing the case of smallpox.
Again, last year, in the town of Englewood, N.J., they had quite an epidemic of typhoid fever, and the school authorities insisted that all of the children in the schools should be inoculated against typhoid. Dr. Powers had a family in Englewood with whom I had seen them in consultation. I knew something of the children, and some of those children went to school, and of course the question came up of inoculation and I kicked. So did Dr. Powers, and I came down and got some powders, a CM. of typhoid and paratyphoid from Dr. Stearns. I sent the powders over with instructions to given each one of the children a powder of a CM. of typhoid.
They insist in New Jersey, or try to insist, that all the children be Schick tested. You know there is Schick and Dick and God knows what they dont do. They insist on Schicking all the children in school, and there was one little one in my practice. My attitude toward vaccination has always been that the more healthy the child, the less fit he is to be vaccinated, and as a consequence I never have vaccinated anyone and I wouldnt be vaccinated myself if I could help, so I sent some powders of a CM. of Diphtherinum to the mother of this child in place of having her Schicked by injection.
The health authorities called me up and wanted to know about it. I didnt tell them what I had done, but I simply said that in my estimation the child was thoroughly inoculated against diphtheria.
So I have used those things, the Variolinum and the Typhoid and Diphtherinum, in that way, though of course, as Dr. Hubbard says, we have used them where we think there lies (and under all of us lies some) tuberculosis, some syphilis, some gonorrhoea. We cant help it. It is somewhere around, and lots of times an intercurrent of one of those nosodes help out a lot.
DR. VAN NORDEN: With regard to the nosode Tuberculinum, Dr. Allen used to tell us that when people were weak they got tired easily, and where you could not get results with other remedies, Tuberculinum would often do the work. I have followed that out many times in practice and I have found it to work almost invariably.
DR. CAMPBELL: When you look through the old Recorders, you find that almost every year there is a discussion on the nosodes, and each year there are some aspersions cast on these remedies, namely to the effect that they have never been known to cure completely without the use of some other remedy. Why the nosodes should be singled out in that fashion I dont know, because they are used mainly in chronic conditions, and if you will think over the cases that you have treated over a good many years, chronic cases, and recall the number of them that you have cured with one remedy alone, regardless of what the remedy is, I think you will be surprised at how few they were, and to say that the nosodes fail to cure alone in singling them out improperly, because there are few of our remedies that cure chronic conditions unaided by other remedies.
