In presenting this paper the first thought in mind is an earnest belief that most homoeopathic physicians recognize the fact that the majority of surgical conditions are preventable if the patient can be seen before the stage of gross pathology.
It is now generally accepted that homoeopathic remedies act through the defense mechanism of the body. The action of highly potentized remedies is psychogenetic, while crude drugs are physiological. ALL drugs that have a physiological effect depress the defense mechanism.
It is well to consider here the statement of Dr. Alexis Carrel, for thirty years and until 1939 Conductor of Research in the Rockefeller Institute, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Surgery in 1921. In his book, Man, The Unknown, he said:.
Man is an indivisible whole of extreme complexity. No simple representation of him can be obtained. (p.2). He is the chemical substances constituting the tissues and humors of the body. He is the compound of tissues and consciousness that hygienists and educators endeavor to lead to its optimum development while it extends into time. (p.3.).
Further on Dr. Carrel says:.
Man cannot be separated into parts. He would cease to exist if his organs were isolated from one another. (p.44). And it is impossible for a specialist, actively engaged in the pursuit of his own task, to understand the human being as a whole. (p.45.) Still more harm is caused by the extreme specialization of the physicians. Medicine has separated the sick human being into small fragments, and each fragment has its specialist. When a specialist, from the beginning of his career, confines himself to a minute part of the body, his knowledge of the rest is so rudimentary that he is incapable of thoroughly understanding even that part in which he specializes. The more eminent the specialist, the more dangerous he is. (p.46.).
DEFENSE MECHANISM OF THE BODY.
This brings us to the subject of the defense mechanism of the body. In our present understanding it consists of the autonomic nervous system, reticulo-endothelial system, blood plasma, leucocytes (especially polymorphonuclear), monocytes, sensorium commune, diencephalon, thalamus and hypothalamus.
Dr. Carrel makes interesting comment in Man, The Unknown, as follows:.
There is not a shadow of a doubt that mechanical, physical, and chemical sciences are incapable of giving us intelligence, moral discipline, health, nervous equilibrium, security, and peace. Our curiosity must turn aside from its present path, and take another direction. It must leave the physical and physiological in order to follow the mental and the spiritual. (p.43.).
We can readily see embodied in this last sentence the essentials of drug provings originated by Samuel Hahnemann, and that these highly diluted remedies administered to the healthy individual for their action through the defense mechanism is proven by the symptoms produced as their effect is made known on the intelligence, moral discipline, and the nervous equilibrium.
Again, we KNOW that the highly diluted homoeopathic remedies affect the autonomic nervous system because it is through the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine glands that there become manifest the symptoms of fear, anger, shame, suicidal tendency, and the modification of cutaneous circulation.
The above commentary and quotations bring us to the subject of this paper.
SURGERY VS. Similia.
Surgery has never cured disease, yet it is essential often as a means for the preservation of life. Crude drugs and physical therapy are often of value as palliatives. Potentized remedies, applied according to the Law of the Similars, cure.
As specific illustrations I call to your attention the remedies in use in some of the more common conditions where surgical intervention is often required.
APPENDICITIS.
In the Journal of the American Medical Association, April 7, 1940, Doctor Alvarez of the Mayo Clinic told what he had learned from 385 appendectomies. Of these, 130 had suffered one sharp pain suggesting appendicitis, and after operation, 87 of them were cured. Of the other 255 patients, 60 were actually worse from the operation and only two were cured.
Now let us turn to homoeopathic prescribing:.
Many years ago Doctor Walter James, one of our most brilliant scholars, and under whose direction I received my homoeopathic training, once said to me: “Bryonia is the most indicated remedy in the first stages of appendicitis, the symptoms being characteristic of this trouble”.
Other remedies of special value are:.
Arsenicum: Chills; diarrhoea; restlessness; exhaustion. Thirst for small quantities of water at frequent intervals.
Lachesis: A most valuable remedy. Sensitiveness all over the abdomen; stitching from seat of inflammation backward and downward into things.
Belladonna: Severe pain in caecal region;
Plumbum: Tense swelling caecal region; its great characteristic being, however, retraction of abdominal wall. Eructation of gas and vomiting, both having faecal odor.
Rhus tox.: Swelling over McBurneys point.
CALCULI.
Over a period of years it was my custom to advise patients suffering from calculi that their best hope of recovery was through surgery. However, due to what might be considered a chance indication, Phosphorus, based upon the symptoms of the patient himself in contradistinction to the calculus-produced symptoms, I was able to cause the rapid disappearance of a calculus in the pelvis of the kidney the size of a Mexican kidney bean.
This patient had been operated for a like-sized stone in the opposite kidney and was convalescing from a nephrotomy done for the removal of a stone in the opposite kidney. He expected at some future date to return to the hospital for a second nephrotomy.
We have all experienced such startling results at various times in our practice when prescribing was based on the peculiar or mental symptoms of a patient and not expecting gross pathological changes to disappear.
The concrete experience I have just described brought me to a sudden realization that even gross pathology and calculi in various parts of the body have been known to disappear when the actual similimum has been discovered.
Two of my patients while under treatment for renal calculi have been given strictly homoeopathic high potency remedies. Both have passed stones varying in size from small peas to navy beans, following the use of Calcarea renalis and Berberis.
CHOLECYSTITIS.
This condition is often productive of cholelithiasis.
Stones in the bladder are cause of great pain only when they are of a size where passage through the cystic duct is possible with distention. Large stones, producing few or no symptoms, are often carried through life.
Inflammatory conditions, including acute and chronic infections which would usually involve the gall-bladder, are often secondary to hepatic inflammations and infections, and are responsible for symptoms.
Here the following remedies are of great value:.
Chionanthus: Periodic sick headaches, menstrual and bilious. Jaundice. Headache, chiefly over eyes with painful eyeballs and pressure over root of nose. Stools soft, yellow, pasty. Tender hepatic region. Sudden gripping pains as if slip knot around intestines was suddenly drawn tight and gradually loosened.
Chelidonium: Jaundice. Fixed pain under inferior angle of right scapula. Yellow coated tongue with imprint of teeth. Pain in stomach through to back. Relief temporarily by eating.
Cholesterinum: Obstinate hepatic engorgements. Burning pain in hepatic region.
Lycopodium: Right-sided pain, < 4 to 8 p.m. Craves everything warm. Intellectually keen, muscularly weak. Acid eructations. Melancholy; afraid to be alone. Red sediment in urine.
Cinchona officinalis: Great debility. Slow digestion. Vomiting of undigested food. Flatulence. Belching of bitter fluid which gives no relief. Worse after eating fruit. Tinnitus aurium.
Myrica: Bitter taste; nausea. Offensive breath. Strong desire for acids. Weak, sinking feeling in epigastrium. Jaundice. Dull hepatic pain.
Podophyllum: Hot sour belching. Thirst for large quantities of cold water. Empty gagging or retching. Distended abdomen with sensation of weakness or sinking.
Mercurius vivus: Sweetish taste. Salivation. Spongy, bleeding gums. Putrid eructations. Great thirst for cold drinks. Weak digestion with continuous hunger. Rectal and urinary tenesmus. Jaundice. Aggravation at night. Sweat without relief.
Natrum phosphoricum: Yellow, creamy coating, posterior half of tongue. Acid eructations. Jaundice. Sour vomiting. Greenish diarrhoea.
DIVERTICULITIS OF THE COLON.
I wish to mention this condition in passing because it was explained to me at Stanford University as often a fatal issue. My patient had a violent diverticulitis involving the entire colon, the x-ray picture showing multiple diverticula; the patient bedridden with at times feeble vomiting and copious bloody stools with great tenesmus. Violent cutting pains after stools lasting for hours. Permanently cured by Nitric acid in high potency. This is the only case I have ever seen of diverticulitis, with the exception of one patient (not my patient) that died at Stanford University.
FISTULA IN ANO.
One of my first demonstrations on the possibility of a cure of an anal fistula was in a patient who was president of a large wholesale drug company. This came shortly after my conversion to homoeopathy, many years ago. Two prominent surgeons had recommended immediate surgery, the patient consulting me after being told that nothing but surgery would be of value. I agreed with him that this was probably true, yet suggested that a brief trial be given the homoeopathic remedy.
Seattle.
Chairman, Bureau of Surgery