Suddenly new capital came into the firm and younger blood into the management who insisted that this man had outlived his usefulness for them, and peremptorily discharged him without advance pay. He found himself approaching seventy after a life of absolute devotion to the firm, felt their ingratitude deeply, but expected that his record would furnish a new job immediately. The weeks went by in fruitless search until the fact of his age began to press upon him as final.
Although a friendly member of the old firm came to him in regret and actually paid off a mortgage upon his home as a partial reward for his fidelity, he was tremendously discouraged when exposure brought him under my care. I employed what seemed to be the right remedies, but on the third day he “turned his face to the wall” and died. Would he have recovered if I had given him something applicable to his mental state? Who can say?
I have had no experience worth mentioning with poliomyelitis.
DR. STEVENS: Truly a Christian Scientist couldnt have done it better! We have a tremendous amount to learn about the mental effects of medicine.
I remember the case of a man of 60-plus who telephoned me in the later evening. He had a little cold, had been struggling with his furnace and now could not breathe well. He acknowledged himself scared. I made him count his pulse; the result was satisfactory. Then I prescribed Aconite (by number out of a box) and he was relieved in fifteen minutes,.
I have had little experience with poliomyelitis.
DR. BROWN: We all believe in the truth of homoeopathy, we try to follow its precepts, but some of us have not the acumen of Dr. Hutchinson. However, this confirmation gives us much courage. We thank you for it and ask that you will again share your success with us and perchance if you ever have a failure comfort us by telling us about it.
Tell us about your experience with infantile paralysis. I have had quite a little experience with it–more than I wish I had. In my experience with the disease all case are left with some indelible impress, lapses, megalomania or some pernicious effect. DR. PULFORD: When I received Dr. Hutchinsons most excellent paper I took it home. Dr. DT came with me. He picked up the paper and read it, and said, “Dad, that reminds me of your gall- stone colic cure in ten minutes with a single dose of Aconite 30x., which still holds good after six years.”.
The more I delve into the matter of cause and cure of disease the more I have come to the conclusion that the commercial doctor (allopath) knows as much about disease, its cause and cure, as the proverbial “hog knows about Latin.” The commercial group known as “regular” doctors is made up of a lot of guessers masquerading under the high sounding title of diagnosticians. It is doubtful if any profession on earth has less raison detre than has the commercialized allopathic. After 2500 years of existence it knows nothing at all about disease, its cause or cure, and even less about drugs.
Cures cannot possibly be made other than by a strict observance of the homoeopathic law. The drug is like the plug, the more closely the plug fits the smaller the leak and the longer it will take the resultant leak to show on the surface; but if the plug fits perfectly the leak cannot possibly occur again without a specific cause. The homoeopathic law furnishes us the only true guide to the selection of that perfect plug.
I had just finished reading a splendid article in the 1894 I.H.A. Transactions by the late lamented Dr. W. A. Yingling on Keynote Prescribing, in which is he stated: “As a general thing the rest of the symptoms would be found to fit around that key- note.” That is absolutely true, but only on one ground, and that is, if the key-note is the true characteristic of the drug. Agonized tossing about is the true key-note and characteristic of Aconite. it was so in my gall-stone colic case, and the selection of Aconite by Dr. Hutchinson sheds much lustre on his high knowledge of our materia medica.
Every drug has its own individual characteristic that distinguishes that particular drug from all others, together with a small individual primary direct pathogenesis, without which no disease can possibly be cured by that particular drug.
The nearer we come to those two, the nearer we come to the correct drug, and the need for fewer doses of that drug, and the more lasting and perfect the cure will be.
We are at work now (1934) on a Key to the Materia Medica based on that plan, having already gotten out about thirty remedies containing the essence of the drug, and have already had some single remedy single dose cures that have been most gratifying.
This Key starts out with (as near as we can possibly learn) the grand characteristic that distinguishes that particular drug from all others. Then follows, as near as we can possibly learn, the direct primary pathogenesis or the essential symptoms that must be present in all cases if the drug is to be truly and perfectly homoeopathic to the case and a perfect cure expected, as no drug can remove a pathogenesis foreign to it.
Then follows, under the title of Important, the cream of the materia medica, divided into three groups, as follows: Those preceded by this () are important symptoms found under no other drug, to date. Those preceded by this (L) are important symptoms for which that particular drugs is the leading drug; and the rest are undetermined.
As to poliomyelitis, I have had but one case, therefore my testimony is nil.
DR. DAYTON T. PULFORD: As with all of Dr. Hutchinsons papers, precision stands out all over. No wonder he can pick the essential symptoms of a case with such accuracy.
One would infer from this paper that it is other than the patients power to react that cause determines cure. There can be very little doubt in this respect. while the remedy may not be said to treat the cause directly, i.e., we cannot say that Aconite combatted the fear itself, we can say that it corresponds to the immediate reaction of the body set up by the fear, thus coming into immediate contact with the cause and putting a stop to the entire trouble.
The great difficulty in ascertaining the cause is due to the poor memory of patients, inability to get detailed history of complaints that might be hereditary and perhaps above all, being able to find out the impressive array of therapeutic measures poked into the patient by Men of Science. Added to this, the patients reticence to let others look into his most private chamber, the mind.
If people could only be convinced that the physician has something else to do than to sit and meditate upon the patients sins other than to use them as a means to ward his cure, we might progress farther in our work. A girl who had been a patient of ours for many years came in, confessed to gonorrhoea, received a prescription and never returned. We do not condemn her to her sin but for her lack of judgment in going elsewhere to have the condition suppressed.
Back of all troubles is one chief cause. It produces a reaction that may be enlarged, one might say in a fan-shaped manner, by the dynamics of the body. It may be modified by any extraneous factor and its character thereby apparently changed but the only hope of radical cure lies in finding the remedy fitting that first reaction after the cause took effect.
Dr. Hutchinson seems to have an uncanny ability to hit the nail on the head.
DR. MACFARLAN: I was much interested in Dr. Hutchinsons splendid cure by Aconite. Old Dr. Constantine Hering used to tell my father that Dr. C. J. Hempel, a very voluminous writer on homoeopathic literature, used to use Aconite for everything! And he laughingly used to say to him that it was surprising how many cases he cured.
Of course if you can remove fear from a human being you are going to do him an awful lot of good. In the higher potencies it cures inconsolable anxieties which are a chronic form of fear. It seems to do its work so very, very thoroughly when properly used. I have found in my provings in the 3rd that aggravation from motion is very characteristic.
In the 3rd aggravation after sleep is also very, characteristic. Thirst is very important in considering Aconite 3.
DR. FARRINGTON: Dr. Hutchinsons masterly prescription confirms four important facts regarding homoeopathic practice, viz.:.
1. That mental characteristics are not only most important but also most dependable as guides to remedy selection.
2. That frequently they are the key to the whole case.
3. That the similimum as a rule will relieve the effects of fear, grief, worry, etc., even while the causes are still acting. (I have witnessed this many times during the recent depression.).
4. Aconite is more often useful in supposedly chronic ailments than many believe.
I received my first conception of this remedy from a lecture by Kent at the Post-Graduate School in Philadelphia, in 1896. Later I read the same lecture in print. He gives a vivid and admirable picture, but with this and Belladonna and some others he leaves the student with the impression that what he terms the short acting remedies are not indicated in disease of long standing. It took me some years to realize that when the remedy fits the case it should be given irrespective of the length of time it acted in the provings. As suggested by Dr. Hayes, the patient probably needed Aconite in the beginning. The essential features of the case had not changed.
