The baby had been born for an hour or more and although a neighbour woman had cut the cord and tied the babys end, the mothers had been left open with the placenta still in the uterus. After delivering the placenta manually there was still no response or contraction. Suddenly the patient threw down her bedclothes, threw up her arms and wanted air, yet she was cold ice and pulseless. There are classical symptoms for Secale in just such conditions. I gave her a powder of the 200th potency on her tongue, and in less than two minutes she turned on her side, went to sleep and that was the end of the haemorrhage and her life was saved.
DR. PULFORD: There is no doubt that occasionally things will happen in confinement, but there is one thing that is absolutely necessary to the obstetrical business and that is: you should understand distinctly what constitutes the totality of the symptoms in order that you shall prescribe not for symptoms but for the drug picture. You are working on natural law. Natural law is fixed. A drug, no matter on how many persons it is proven, will have a basic picture that will never change. But in every drug proving, the systems reaction to that natural drug picture changes and gives you a different phase.
If you are going to prescribe for the drug picture, other than the basic one, you will have to take all of the symptoms in or you are not prescribing according to your convictions.
In confinement, early in the game I learned that process, and by studying carefully Guernsey, who was the greatest prescriber that was ever known in any school, and Bell on Diarrhoea, to learn how they prescribed, that gave me the insight into this game.
For every man who is going to study obstetrics and is going to practice obstetrics, the thing for him to do is to learn what constitutes the symptom totality in every drug he is going to use. If he doesnt, he is going to fail.
