The patient was extremely restless, with great anxiety, tossing about, her temperature had gone up and she was very thirsty, but drinking little at a time. In one word, she asked the parents if she had ever been given arsenicum in massive doses, and it was then that I was informed of her having been sick with malaria for which had received arsiquinine four years before. “I have never been well since that time,” the patient said, “everything that I eat seems to disagree and I have not been able to regain my lost weight.”.
The whole thing was clarified in my mind: it was a true Arsenicum aggravation that the patient had immediately after taking Arsenicum iod., because her system was still intoxicated with the drug taken four years previously. I proceeded to give her an antidote to Arsenicum, trying to select one that could also cover some of the respiratory symptoms now present. The remedy was Hepar sulph. 200 and the results were amazing. She took it about midnight and two hours later the patient was so much better, her respiration much easier and she was resting more quietly, that I left her house convinced that she was going to sleep the rest of the night. Next morning the symptoms were practically gone and the patient continued under the action of that prescription for four weeks, when I had to give her another dose of the 200th potency because of a slight cold that soon yielded to it. The young lady was married last month.
COMMENT: I will make the comment on this case by quoting from the great homoeopath, a personal friend and disciple of Hahnemann, Boenninghausen, when he says:.
Every beginner will probably at times have seen, what in the case of experienced and observant homoeopaths is recurring more and more rarely, that even with very careful selection and apparent adaptability of the remedies, success does not always come up to the expectations, and at times no action at all or even an aggravation of the patients troubles ensues. In such cases we may safely depend upon it, either that the remedy given has been formerly misused in allopathic doses and on that account its symptoms have become habitual and very manifest, or that, on account of the oversight of one or more symptoms of the disease which would contraindicate the remedy, its choice was a mistake and therefore without effect. in the former case there will be, as a rule, an increase in the patients sufferings, in the latter no noticeable change will be observed; in the former case there must then be made an attempt…..
to destroy the old drug disease by homoeopathically selected antidotes, and in the latter case by a careful examination of the disease image, and by a circumspect selection of the remedy, the previous mistake should be rectified.
I have presented these three cases in order to show how manifest is the hereditary or family influence in cases of asthma. Also to insist upon the fact that there is no single exciting etiological factor in the determination of the attacks; it might be an acute respiratory condition, a gastro-intestinal disorder or a nervous or mental commotion. And above all, to prove that cases of asthma can be cured only if we succeed in removing the miasmatic underlying condition, the eternal handicap, whether it be syphilitic, sycotic, or due to a suppression or a combination of two of them or of all three. And we all know that homoeopathy is the only system of medicine that possesses curative means of removing the miasms. The problem lies in the proper selection of the deep acting constitutional remedy, capable of removing it, for each particular case. Even in cases where allergy plays a decisive factor, the homoeopathic remedy will build up a resistance to the allergic element.
I have been treating two other cases where all these facts are plainly shown. A very nervous young mother, Mrs. A.R.B., and her twelve year old son, E.B. The mother will get into a nervous crisis and will bring on the attack, and the boy will go out of the household and eat disorderly and will soon come down with a spell. For the last two years I have been able to fairly control these two cases, the mothers with Kali carb. and the childs with Ammonium carb., to the extent of delaying the attacks and making them much milder each time. They are so well satisfied with the results of the treatment that I am almost sure to be able to hold the cases long enough to successfully remove the miasmatic underlying conditions, by doing which we will some day effect a complete cure.
A long list of helpful remedies for asthma can be found in materia medica, but we will always have to look for the antipsoric, the antisyphilitic or the antisycotic remedy which when used with due opportunity, will set the “machinery” of the patients organism on the road to complete recovery.
Can an auto-nosode, as I have called them perhaps improperly, homoeopathically prepared form the patients own sources, play this most important role in the treatment of asthma cases? I do not know, for I have used them inefficiently, as mentioned above. I have tried them because I once treated successfully a case of hay fever with the patients auto-nosode; and I present these cases in which I have used them, in order to bring the question before you to learn from your own personal experiences.
Allow me to end this paper by stressing the need of educating our patients, if we are to cure asthma cases, to the point of being convinced that their treatment will have to be over a long period of time, long enough to successfully cure, together with the asthmatic condition, the more chronic constitutional disease that forms and gives shape, mentally and physically, to his whole being, without which he will be able to enjoy complete health. And that the most proper time to institute this constitutional treatment will be apparently healthy intervals between the attacks, when the patient usually fails even to report to the doctor because of his feeling better. How long that period of time will be, it is hard to predetermine; but it will surely be in direct proportion to the patients cooperation.
MOTERREY, N.L., MEXICO.
DISCUSSION
DR. GRIMMER: Mr. President, I think this paper is very valuable to us in showing one way not to prescribe for asthma. He has plainly shown that it is a mistake to do too much palliation, even homoeopathic palliation. Get to the basic remedy and stick to it in a series of potencies, and you will cure your cases.
I really think that that case, instead of being Calcarea carb., was Kali carb. The aggravation was very consistent throughout, and the general type of patient, and it did respond some to the lower potency. I think if he had stepped up at intervals he would have brought the patient up with Kali carb.
DR. DIXON: His comments on his failures are rather illuminating, and I am sure we have all been guilty of doing things just about as badly as that, in those old chronic cases. He shows that he has an insight into the homoeopathic philosophy, and I am sure with a few more failures he Will be scoring many successes.
