Beginning in childhood to the present date, a painful drawing sensation in the occipital region extending into the neck comes when she is tired or when excited.
As long as she can remember she has had “Rose Fever.” Every June there is a copious, watery discharge from the nose and eyes. The eyes are swollen and red. All the symptoms are worse at night. However, this periodic attack of coryza did not come during this year, 1945, of her mental disorder.
Another and last symptom, she is always smothered in artificial and in summer heat.
Rather than for me to flounder around in the therapeutic field, I submitted the case to the BGS (Boyd-Grimmer-Stearns) method of selecting the similimum. Sending a blood specimen, together with the symptoms, to Dr. Grimmer, he prescribed Di-Calcium phos. plus Calcium gluconate plus Vitamin D, the 200th. This was given on May 8, 1946. On the second day the patient came to me with her eyes red and swollen, with profuse coryza of eyes and nose. This continued for forty-eight hours and ceased as suddenly as it had started.
June 17, 1946. During the past ten days the patient says she feels entirely like a different woman. She has her natural mother love for her daughter. The sense of unreality is not frustrating her.
June 22, 1946. during the past week there has been daily an exchange of love letters between patient and husband. On this date the remedy was repeated in the 200th before the patient was released from the hospital for a trial visit to her home.
June 22, 1946. During the past week there has been daily an exchange of live letters between patient and husband. On this date the remedy was repeated in the 200th before the patient was released from the hospital for a trial visit to her home.
August 7, 1946. Patient has been having a ravenous appetite. Progress is at a standstill. Now Natrum-hexa-meta-phos. 1M was prescribed by BGS method.
September 25, 1946. “I just do things because I am here. I feel heavy, draggy and slow in motion. I have a very severe pain in chest going through to the back beneath the shoulder blades. It comes and goes,” Sac. LAc. given.
October 24, 1946. Patient writes she has had a attack of the “flu” reminding her of a similar attack during World War I. Influenzin Hispanica 10M was given. The menstrual flow was dark, scanty and offensive with cramping pains. Aching of the neck at base of the brain and aching in stomach region was present.
November 1, 1946. She had aversion for sweets; now desires them. during past few weeks nausea in the mornings, while moving around. It also occurs suddenly during the daytime. She had a sensation as though the stomach turns over. Natrum hexa-meta- phos. 1M.
January 23, 1947. The old symptom “feeling that life is unreal; having to make myself do things; crying and depression in the morning-all have disappeared.”.
Sample of blood, as of all previous prescriptions, was forwarded to Dr. Grimmer. Natrum hexa-meta-phos. 10M prescribed.
REMARKS: The patient reported about every month. She was normally adjusted in her home life, active in church and social life. a letter was received May 7, 1947 in which she stated that after examination by her family physician she was declared a member of the “stork club.” “I am just fine. Everyway just perfect. I certainly have a different outlook on life than a year ago.” ATHENS, OHIO.
DISCUSSION.
DR. A.H. GRIMMER: These papers are extremely interesting because they show the possibility we have in our homoeopathic materia medica to cope with these situations. Some of these case that had the traditional treatment, considered the scientific treatment, had very poor or indifferent results. The way we homoeopaths will have to cope with these cases is to take the case as Dr. Carr did, going back to the beginnings of things.
When you meet just the immediate condition of the patients, you have just the more acute manifestations of the disease or disorder, and while sometimes you will have to prescribe on that, too, you will eventually, before you cure them, have to give a deeper remedy to meet the long line of constitutional symptoms that have led to the patients mental illnesses; for, after all, the mental and emotional parts of the individual are the real parts of the individual. The physical is merely an expression of these other things, and those are the things we have to put in order before the physical can come in order. Even our old school friends now are beginning to recognize that. They are beginning to know- psychiatrists and psychologists are beginning to know-the effect of mental and emotional disturbances on physical health.
Of course, Hahnemann was the first one to discover that thing and to give it to the world, and that is why he stressed the importance of mental symptoms in our prescribing.
As far as selecting remedies by the blood, where we have only a paucity of symptoms to guide us, and where therapeutic symptoms have been obscured by bad treatment, treatment that only makes and suppresses, then sometimes these “blood” remedies can come in in a remarkable way. We need provings of some of the remedies that we developed over the blood.
We have no provings of either one of the remedies the doctor mentioned. One is the combination vitamin that is put up by some of the pharmacopoeia of the old school be proven as a valuable remedy. It has come in in a number of other very chronic cases and relieved them, where other remedies could not be seen or could not be given, and where some that were given on broad homoeopathic lines failed to act.
The Natrum hexa, meta, phos. is another very valuable remedy, a combination chemical remedy, sodium and phosphorus, given by a California engineer and chemist who is an ardent homoeopath. This remedy was given to me to test electronically and see what possibilities is had. Well, it has very wide and powerful possibilities for the cure of all kinds of deep acting, degenerative disease, and clinically it had proven to be efficacious in some very difficult conditions.
I want to thank Dr. Carr for bringing this to our attention. It is a very enlightening paper indeed.
DR. THOMAS K. MOORE: Mr. Chairman, I simply wish rise in appreciation of what I have seen here today. Simply looking at Dr. Carr was an expression of homoeopathy, because we have been seeing him here among us through the years and he has appeared a testimonial to the action of homoeopathy in a severe case of aluminum poisoning; so looking at him was fine. And I have certainly enjoined this presentation and will look forward to seeing it published where it can be gone over carefully.
These mental cases, which Dr. hahnemann seemed to feel were very simple, are really very difficult, and here we had to resort to the “B.S.G.” technic, which is certainly very interesting.
DR. EDWARD WHITMONT: I should to ask one question here for consideration, which is question of case management. I remember in the first case the Influenzin Hispanica mentioned for recurrence of a “flu” resembling an old previous condition, a retracing of a symptom. Shall we give the remedy at all for an old condition of this kind that possibly may be just an old symptom, or may not?.
I am right now up against this very problem in a case of PSYCHONEUROSIS which, under Lachesis, is developing, I think, three weeks after the remedy has been given, a very severe attack of “flu.” I have given a remedy-whether right or wrong, I dont know yet-and I should like to put this question: How long, for instance, after the curative remedy has been given, would you consider that an acute current condition is an old symptom? How long would you abstain from giving a remedy, and when would you give one? I should also like to know whether even Influenzin had any appreciable action or not.
DR. P. C.PAUL: I should like to ask Dr. Carr in regard to his very interesting paper, whether the Influenzin is what is prescribed in Phosphorus. I think it would act well and probably it is guess work, because he mentioned the Influenzin, that since the “flu” that the patient got, she has never been well. On that basis I think Influenzin is the similimum in that case, and it was given last, and so he got results. I think if he gave it first, he would not bother too much about Phosphorus and other things; and that is my solution.
DR. WILBUR K. BOND: I should like to ask Dr. Carr if he concentrates his attention more on the mentals of an insane case than the physicals and generals. For instance, many of these case give symptoms, we will say, of Belladonna, of Hyoscyamus or Stramonium. Would he accent those qualities in prescribing for the patient, or would he pick out some more characteristic physical general?.
DR. V. TABER CARR: Well, I think we have something to talk about! There is one thing I might emphasize, and that is about sending blood specimens. This method of the “B.G.S.,” as I call it, for diagnosis, while the remedy which we are driving for is in abeyance-this entails a great amount of time and even mental energy. It is very taxing on the system. I was out in nineteen- twenty-something Dr. Underhill and Dr. Stearns were there at the time-to learn all we could from Dr. Abrams work. It consumes a great deal of time to run a blood through these reactions, and especially when you come to selecting the remedy. It is very helpful to give the operator as fully as possible your case in anamnesis, for we, as homoeopaths, realize that it is the symptoms that steer us towards our objective goal, and this will help the operator to select remedies that are within the scope that cover those symptoms. It is an immense saving.
