CASES FROM DISEASED AND DRUG ACTION


The case, from beginning to end, was of a kind to exclude all possible doubt as to any one of the facts here stated. It is given as a representative of a class which bears important testimony as to the nature of that power which relieves pain and cures disease. That testimony declares plainly, it is submitted, that this power is a force, and is not matter.


The first case is memorable in the experience of the writer, it being the result of his first attempt at a homoeopathic prescription for a patient. It was the first experiment in a series which the importunity of a valued friend had extorted the promise, a very reluctant one, that he would make. The whole intention on the part of the writer, in these experiments was, to prove for himself, and others, that there was nothing in homoeopathy. If it be objected that this was altogether unfair, and unbecoming the importance of the subject, it is admitted, but still it is true, he intended to prove the worthlessness of the whole system, and had not the least doubt he should be quite able to do it. Here is his first attempt and its result.

It will be seen that homoeopathy had nothing to expect from him, except what could be extorted by the most apparent and stubborn fact. The experiment was made with poor despised “globules”, and no one certainly ever held them in greater contempt. It was on a patient verily believed to be incurable of the particular trouble for which these poor globules (now my dearest pets) were given. The writer had tried his best, according to the maxims and practice of the school in which he had been educated, for months, to relieve the poor sufferer, without the slightest success.

He acknowledges, with shame, that it was just because he thought the case incurable that it was taken for this experiment. Here, of course, would be a failure, and he wished for no success. Then the patient was poor and ignorant. She had never heard the word homoeopathy in her life, and so he was to escape the wonderful effects of imagination, which he, with a multitude of other foolish persons, thought to be the efficient a gent in all the so-called homoeopathic cures. She was black, and had formerly been the slave of an old school doctor, whose name she bore.

This person, now about 48 years of age, when a child, fell from a tree and struck her side one the top of a board fence, breaking several of her ribs. She had from that time occasional attacks of pain at the points of fracture, increasing in frequency and severity as she grew older, till at the time she came under my care, it had become permanent, and yielded to none of the many expedients resorted to, as before stated, for a number of months. Indeed she grew worse. The seat of pain was so sensitive she positively refused to allow it to be touched. Here was the case, of more than forty years standing.

In this state, she was handed a powder of fine sugar, in which were concealed six globules of Arnica, of the sixth potency, or at least they were purported to be so. She was directed to take the powder dry, on the tongue. This she did at 11 oclock a.m., in the absence of her medical attendant. When seen the next day, at 9 oclock a.m. she was in great terror. She seemed to have been exceedingly frightened, as much so as any person I ever saw. She would not let me come near her, but kept herself in the extreme opposite side of the room, and repeated more than once, addressing her physician. “You meant to mill me. You gave me mercury.

I know mercury. I lived with Dr. Hazzard, etc.” After quieting her apprehension somewhat, not an easy matter, she was asked if she had taken the powder. She said she had, and the manner of her reply was just that which might characterize an indignant person, who regarded himself as having just been made the subject of a rather severe and wholly unwarranted practical joke. She was soon pacified, and then was asked what was its effect ? “Effect ! It went from there to there passing her finger from her tongue to the seat of her old injury and recent pain. “like lightning ! You gave me mercury. I know you did”.

And this thought renewed her terror. She could not overcome the first impression that she had been poisoned. In a little time, however, she answered to the question, “What happened then ?” “Why, the pain and soreness went all right away !” This was t rue, and they never returned. The side right now may be handled with the utmost freedom, without giving pain. The person, next to herself, most astonished, was her physician. Rosanna was, after this, a servant in his family, till near the time of her death, which resulted from disease of the heart, and he knows the old trouble did not return.

Of the suddenness and completeness of the action of this dose there was no possible chance for a doubt. That it was literally as quick as lightning, she stoutly maintained. That she was really cured of her great pain could not be denied. And now the only question we have with the case is-What was it that passed from the tongue to the region of he false ribs of the left side, so suddenly as to give this great alarm to this poor ignorant creature, and so rapidly there to cure this great pain, as to so greatly astonish her doctor ? Was this matter ? The very suddenness of the action proves that it was not.

The second case was that of a little girl, five years old, who was suffering from double pleuropneumonia, of exceeding severity, when the sticking pain in her side was so sharp as all but to prevent her breathing at all, and to reduce this to the shortest compatible with continued life, a teaspoon of water was offered her, in which a few medicated globules had been dissolved, with the assurance that if she swallowed the water it would relieve her pain. At the very instant the spoon touched her tongue, she shrieked, and declared it did not, but made it worse. It was with the suddenness of thought.

There was, however,but this one stab, and it was never repeated. The writer administered the dose. The patient was his own child. The occurrence was before many witnesses. The case, from beginning to end, was of a kind to exclude all possible doubt as to any one of the facts here stated. It is given as a representative of a class which bears important testimony as to the nature of that power which relieves pain and cures disease. That testimony declares plainly, it is submitted, that this power is a force, and is not matter.

P P Wells