The physician who has his patients fill out some such form in addition to the usual taking of the case by direct interview will have more data on which to base a prescription than will those who limit themselves entirely to the ordinary methods.
Many people are incapacitated at more or less regular intervals by the pain and by the nausea which often attends it. The menstrual period is often the time for the attack, which may precede, attend or follow the flow. Other causes are nervous excitement, over-exertion, indiscretions in eating, lack of sleep or of proper elimination.
The head surgeon introduced a poor, miserable specimen of manhood to the class. In a very astonished manner he exhibited the patients thumb; he said, “Look, students, I cannot understand why this growth should appear here, when I removed a similar one from another part of his anatomy.”
This slow condition appears in the clinical verifications listed in Clarkes Dictionary of Materia Medica and in occasional reports in periodical literature; but the acute infections are apt to be very rapid. The same distinguishing characteristics appear to run through both types. Some of these, at least, will be observed to run through the case reports submitted herewith.
A drug proving is a living picture of the autonomic response to the drug which is being proved. A patients symptoms are a living picture of the autonomic effort to recover. To find a method of curing, it is certainly better to use the evidences of the efforts of the living body to cure itself than the pathological evidences, which represent failure of recovery.
These cases that I offer to the I.H.A. are not unusual. They are very ordinary cases. But each one has something peculiar about it that, the author believes, makes it worthy of comment. And each, it is hoped, will emphasize some truth that is well worth our attention.
In those addicted to the use of such drugs it is difficult for curative remedies to act until antidotal remedies have reestablished more nearly normal body states; Carbo vegetabilis, Magnesia phosphorica and Calcarea sulphurica have often proven very helpful in antidoting such drugs and restoring normal body states.
Previous to this awakening, I was using as much allopathy as homoeopathy and thought nothing of it. But when I began to study Hahnemanns writings and those who had made a name for themselves as true followers of his teachings, I discarded all adjuvants of a remedial source and gave the single dose, following Hahnemanns teachings.