The efficacy of the best indicated homoeopathic remedy will be reduced or annulled with the administration of anaesthesia. The deprive then the woman giving birth of the benefits of the administration of the similimum is by all means reproachable and immoral.
Yingling says:.
I do not believe in the use of chloroform in labor except in extreme cases where the similimum cannot be found or where instruments are necessary. It precludes the proper administration of the homoeopathic remedy, which we deem so essential and efficient.
And Kent wisely says, in regard to anaesthesia during labor:.
It seems merciful to relieve it in the only right way by the homoeopathic remedy when it is possible, because the relief is a real one and beneficial in its effect o1 the whole case, instead of merely palliating the pain.
It is also advisable to hear the authorized voice of DR. H.C. Allen:.
A woman is more susceptible during labor and pregnancy to he action of remedies than at any other time….An anaesthetic masks symptoms, prolongs suffering in the end, increase the liability to haemorrhage, to mastitis, and other troubles of the mammary glands…Keep to the indicated remedy; it does as much for both mother and child during labor as it does during the dynamics of gestation.
“Keep to the indicated remedy,” says Allen, and this is wise advice.
But the beginner may be tempted to administer a palliative, when the remedies not chosen carefully or with calmness do not act rapidly. They must be pardoned, as Nash says, if we wish our errors to be pardoned. The homoeopathic materia medica is so extensive that without the aid of adequate repertories it is frequently impossible to know what the indicated remedy should be. Materia medica and repertory are complementary, Yinglings work being highly recommendable, because among other features to the materia medica section he add a magnificent repertory divided into sections relating in order to Labor, Abortion, Haemorrhage, Retailed Placenta, Convulsions, After-Pains and The Baby.
To determine with exactness what remedies are required more frequently in the case of labor pains of exaggerated intensity, I made a repertorial computation of the remedies which appear in the rubrics such as: She cannot endure the pains; Excitement; Exhaust, her pains; etc. I chose forty paragraphs and obtained the following results:.
Action. ——– 12/16 Gels. ——— 6/10.
Bell. ——– 5/7 Nux v.——— 5/7.
Cham. ——– 18/27 Plat. ——— 7/19.
Cimic. ——– 10/14 Puls. ——— 7/19.
Coff. ——– 9/11 Sec. ——— 5/9.
So we see that the five principal remedies which are to help us modify pain are, in order of decreasing importance: Cham., in an undisputed first place, and afterward Acon., Cimic., Coff. and Puls. It would be useless upon the advisability of these remedies as all of you know them perfectly. Attention is called, however, to the fact that Hep., Lach., Med., Nit. ac., Psor., Sil. and Staph., remedies which Kent writes in black type in the rubric Sensitiveness to pain, under Generalities, are not mentioned by Yingling a single time. Nothwithstanding, these may be indicated and one must always be on the alert to discover the symptoms which will guide us to their use.
I wish to make special mention of Belladonna, excellent remedy for the first childbirth, above all in the case of woman advanced in age, when lobar is slow, tedious sand fruitless.
Some physicians try to justify their conduct when they apply an anaesthetic to a woman in childbirth, when truthfully it is dispensable, arguing that the patient herself asks for it. But in the practice of a science such as homoeopathy, the suggestions of the patient as to the course to be followed should not have such liberal access. Homoeopathy as a science has laws and rules derived from them and the physician who considers himself a true homoeopath-according to Hahnemann-must subject himself to those principles, otherwise he will see his professional prestige and efficiency of his work shamefully lessened. Generally speaking, the patient does not reason and he is incapacitated to know what is truly the best for her. Exasperated by her pains, the woman asks and many times demands that they be mitigated, but it is wise to abstain from the sue of anaesthetics, for one until now applied, lack wholly of some inconvenience.
Many times it is preferable to recur to the homoeopathic remedy. Analyze the case, repertorize it if it is necessary, taking all the time that the circumstances may allow and then administer the remedy, without any mixture, preferably high dilutions. The reward for such procedure will not make one wait long. the similimum, administered correctly, not only will modify the pains insofar as their abnormality is concerned, but it will go a long way towards directing the childbirth in the open of normality.
Parturition and puerperium will then be given that peaceful rhythm which characterizes all normal functions and hence the normal development of the case.
