Are remedy aggravations caused by the remedy alone? Do not other conditions precipitate or decisively contribute to them?.
Pardon a personal illustrations as I have no better subject to raise up before you just now. Last May 8 I took the 500th potency of a very good similar, if not the similimum, one which had done very good work before. I had never taken that potency before, but had taken higher ones of the same remedy and had had aggravations from, them. But the first 500th had aced very smoothly and promptly with no perceptible aggravation. In about three months a repetition was needed, but it was held off because I was getting quite an appreciable benefit of another sort through vacation and exercise.
A few days after returning to work the 500th was taken the second time. Severe aggravations followed so that a good part of the third and again the sixth day had to be spent in bed. The symptoms of the aggravations were characteristic of what had gone before, no new symptoms whatever appeared. But I noticed that the intervals of amelioration were better than before taking the medicine so that I knew (as time has since proven) that the sickness was remedy aggravation.
Why should there have been such a difference in the two reactions? In each instance the single dose was used; diet and all external conditions, even the phase of the moon were, so far as I know, the same, except one. viz.: for five days before taking the remedy, the first five days of work, I was called out either at night or very early in the morning and it made me feel tired, sleepy and dull, physically and mentally.
My theory as to this instance is this: that the content of vitality had been temporarily muffled by the loss of sleep (which is not now well endured because of the impression of years of abuse in this respect) and was unable to cope at once with the dynamic power of the remedy. I believe that it would have been better to have at first taken a remedy to offset the loss of sleep or perhaps better still to have waited until sleep had been caught up.
Is it desirable to observe such special conditions and times with intent to select those most favorable? Might not such observation help in management of people who because of various condition of susceptibility have a tendency to prove or aggravate their remedy action?.
Personally, I believe that remedy aggravation as such do no good to the patient. WATERBURY, CONN.
DISCUSSION.
DR. STEVENS: Just lately I have had two or three tiresome cases one especially of mixed miasms-which show marked > on first having a remedy but soon are < again. On waiting a little there may be a second > but not so marked as the first. I have felt that this showed little hope for real recovery. Am I right?.
If a case has a regular time aggravation is it wise to give a remedy at that time? I have thought not. A few weeks ago I gave a high potency during a time of < and the patient really suffered a good deal. I felt that I was at fault.
In giving any remedy that has a marked time <, is it not wise to avoid that time? For instance, Lycopodium should be given in the morning rather than late afternoon?.
In regard to the aggravation belonging only to the remedy, I think DR. Hayes is right in saying that the lowered vitality would increase the aggravation. People often fail to understand that extreme fatigue or some other adverse condition does markedly lessen the good effect of a remedy and delay a recovery.
DR. WOODBURY: I have more often than not attributed a good many aggravations to such adventitious circumstances as dietetic, weather, emotional changes, etc., hence do not put so much upon the remedy as some who are always noting excessive aggravations. I recall prescribing, while in hospital work, for a case of chronic haemorrhoids in a Jewish patient, to whom I was unwise enough to remark that before the was better he might be a great deal discomforted, with the result that he was very angry when he did get an aggravation, and hinted that a doctor who would do such thing should be sued for it.
My impression about repetitions and aggravations is based a good deal upon what we were taught at Boston University by Dr.Maurice W.Turner, namely: that it was wise to wait until a natural exacerbation of the disease, e.g., chill in malaria, etc., had passed, and to give the remedy immediately following its cessation. This I find confirmed by conversation with my East india friends, Drs. M.G. and P.N. Raju, who since their term at the Postgraduate School of the Foundation, are spending some time in Boston in further study. I believe that the same rule regarding aggravations as applied originally (undoubtedly by Hering and his associates of the old American Provers’ Union) should be pertinent here:.
Born in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA on 20 Oct 1871 to Royal Edmund Hayes and Harriet E Merriman. He had at least 4 sons and 1 daughter with Miriam Martha Phillips. He lived in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, United States in 1880. He died on 20 July 1952, in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, at the age of 80, and was buried in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States.