[ Read before the Bureau of Materia Medica, I.H.A., June 27, 1947.]. [+ This is the second of two articles on Thuja. The first appeared in the April 1948 issue.].
Thuja is one of the most useful and far reaching remedies of the Materia Medica whose therapeutic worth was discovered and developed by Hahnemann.
He placed it at the head of the antisycotic group.
Boenninghausen found it curative in an epidemic of smallpox and Burnett, because of the fact of that curative action, applied it successfully as the best antidote against the ravages of vaccinosis, the disease resulting from the poison of small-pox vaccine introduced directly into the blood.
From Burnetts time to the present Thuja has been a benediction and at times a life saver, especially for the evil effects following small-pox vaccination.
Truly the beautiful “tree of life”, endowed by the Creators fiat with the twin properties of the force of destruction and degeneration on the one hand and the benign power of regeneration and healthfulness on the other, the manner in which this inherent force is applied determines the end that is obtained.
By the intelligent use of the Law of Similars, together with the employment of the homoeopathic technique of preparing and prescribing the similar remedy, can the force of destruction and disintegration be changed and transmuted, as if by magic, into healing streams of energy, to dissipate disease and restore the bloom of health.
When the medical world learns these simple facts, humanity can then be freed from the innumerable sufferings attendant upon the abuse and misuse of drastic experimental drugs, of crude vaccines and serums introduced directly into the blood stream acting as foreign materials and proteins, to fester and poison the fountain of life and pile up added evil in the human economy.
As we look around throughout the realm of nature, we behold everywhere the double aspects of action and re-action, of negative and positive forces of good and evil, at work to promote the progress of growth and evolution toward the goal of better things.
Hence all objects — minerals, plants and animals — contain within themselves these same dual qualities.
Every human being has the possibility of disease or health, of evil or good, inherent in his life-process operating in relation to environment.
Every plant and mineral has the dual power of producing good or evil in its nature when applied to the economy of man.
Divine Providence has vouchsafed to man the power to choose and has endowed him with intelligence and discrimination to mold his life in accordance with the laws and order of the Universe.
Thus man may use the destructive powers in drugs to dissipate the destructive processes inherent in his organism by employing the Law of Similars and the unique technique of its application.
From these observation we learn that crude drugs bring out the inherent evils of disease in man, as evidenced by provings, and potentized drugs dissipate those evils and restore the harmony and power of life-processes in their relation to environment.
Now to proceed with the story of Thuja; We are told that this tree loves to abide in wet, swampy places, and its habitual extends from Pennsylvania northward to Canada; and it is not by accident that the symptoms and conditions produced by this drug are brought on or made worse by exposure to wet and dampness.
Grauvogl listed it high in his hydrogenoid group which contains such remedies as Calc., Dulc., Nat. sul. and Rhus tox., all having aggravations from cold, wet weather and from exposure to the same.
Thuja is not only an antisycotic, that is, a constitutional gonorrheal remedy, manifesting excrescences, warts, especially fig warts, dark-colored spots, cauliflower-like growths which are soft, fetid and emitting an odor like herring brine, sometimes a sweetish odor is noted, growths tending to bleed easily; but also marked and extensive catarrhal states, both chronic and acute, are produced and cured with this medicine. Besides these manifestations of sycosis, many symptoms and states relating to syphilis are found.
Also in the pathogenesis may be noted many chronic skin eruptions that are psoric in nature.
Thus we behold in this unique remedy a blending of all the miasms described by Hahnemann in his chronic diseases, together with the added evils resulting from the universal poisoning of humanity by vaccination.
From this general outline it is likely that many prescribers have failed to get the most in the way of cure by neglecting a full and complete study of this remedys proving, together with its clinical confirmations in the field of cure at the hands of the old masters, Hahnemann, Boenninghausen, Burnett and Clarke, whose observation and use of the curative action of Thuja presents a volume of brilliant cures of a great number of disease-conditions embracing both acute and chronic manifestations.
In fact the wide extent of the proving and cured confirmations are too vast to present in a brief medical paper so that only the high lights of the therapeutics will be given with the hope that sufficient interest may be awakened to stimulate a more detailed study by physicians everywhere.
A remedy well-proven and clinically developed presents a great array of mental, emotional and nervous symptoms and states. Thuja is rich in many strange, rare and peculiar symptoms. Such symptoms are the joy of the homoeopathic prescriber.
Those having fixed ideas, especially of an unusual nature such as: as if the soul were separated from the body, or that the limbs were brittle like glass and would break easily. Or the sensation of a living animal in the abdomen. Sensation as if the whole body is very thin and delicate and could not resist the least violence. As if the body would be dissolved. The insane will not be touched or approached. Imbecility after vaccination, mental depression and anxious apprehensions regarding the future; everything appears troublesome and repugnant.
The merest trifle occasions pensiveness; music causes him to weep, with trembling of the feet. Hurried with ill humor, talks hastily. Averse to any kind of mental labor. Mental depression after child birth.
Very depressed, sad and irritable. Scrupulous about small things. Feels she can not exist any longer; shunning everybody. Aversion to life. Moroseness and peevishness, perversions of the will, the love of life is gone. Over-excited, quarrelsome; easily angered about trifles.
The child is excessively obstinate. In reading and writing the patient uses wrong expressions. Talks hastily and swallows words. Thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, slowness of speech and reflection, seeking for words when in conversation. Incapacity for reflection. Cretinism, an indication of profound effects on the endocrine chain.
Sense of intoxication and much vertigo, especially on closing the eyes. Head: suffering of many kinds. Pains are congestive compressive, as if a hoop or band encircled the head, or sharp pains as if a nail were driven into the vertex. Head pain relieved from looking upwards or sideways or turning head backwards. Headaches brought on or aggravated from sexual excesses, or from over heating or overlifting.
Headaches relieved exercising in the open air, aggravated stooping, relieved bending backward. Dull stupefying headaches. Pressive headaches with shocks in the forehead and temples. Headache worse afternoon and at 3:00 a.m., worse at rest, better after perspiration. Neuralgic types of headache; nervous, sycotic or syphilitic headaches. Meningitis of sycotic children may require Thuja. Headaches with sun stroke, especially with the sycotic constitution.
Hair becomes hard, dry and lusterless and falls; extremely sensitive scalp even the hair at night when lying in bed is painful in the neuralgia of the head. Wants the head and face wrapped up warm. Scalp itching and very tender to even the pressure of the hat. Dry, herpetic eruptions of scalp with dandruff extending to the eyebrows. Perspiration smelling like honey on uncovered parts of the head, face and hands with dryness of the covered parts. Pityriasis affecting forehead, face and ears and neck.
Thuja has paralytic weakness of the eyelids and lower limbs. Many eye symptoms are cured with this remedy. Stitches through left eye to brain, malignant balanorrhoea; wart-like excrescence on iris. Inflammation of cornea; vascular tumor of the cornea. Episcleritis, sclerochoroiditis, staphyloma, ophthalmia neonatorum, phlyctenular conjunctivitis.
Conjunctivitis of left eye with violent pain across forehead and outer side of eyeball constantly recurring from childhood and following the suppression of a skin eruption. Fungus tumor in the orbit. Inflammatory swelling of the lids with induration. Granular lids with wart- like granulations. Epithelioma of left lower lid. Ptosis, lids fall down several times a day. Eyelids feel heavy as lead. Styes, tarsal tumors, chalazia; red painful nodosities on margins of the lids.
Purulent and itching pimples between the eyebrows, condylomata in eyebrows. Nocturnal agglutination of the lids; weakness of the eyes, obscure sight, dim sight, as if through a cloud or veil. Diplopia, myopia, black dancing specks before eyes; floating stripes; see green stripes which frighten her. Flames of light, mostly yellow and many other perversions of sight.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.