In that new days, a grateful world will place the hallowed name of Samuel Hahnemann on the highest pinnacles of everlasting fame, and hail his matchless discovery of the Law of Similars as a merciful manifestation of providential goodness to restore the weak, the halt and the blind, to a state of health and harmonious order.
CHICAGO, ILL.
DISCUSSION
DR. PARKIN : I have been familiar with the care and treatment of the insane for quite a long time. I was in the State Hospital at Patton be homoeopathic, but homoeopathy was not given really a fair trail in the State Hospital at Patton. I am sure of that. When I was in that institution they had between 1,000 and 3,000 patients, and there were only six, I believe, so it was a very difficult matter to prescribe homoeopathically.
Then we got mostly those cases that were pretty well advanced.
They were cases that had become so far disordered in their minds as to be a menace to health, person and property, and were therefore adjudicated insane and committed to the institution. The cases that are more amenable to treatment seldom come under our case.
I do know that what Dr. Grimmer just said is true, and I would emphasize the remark he made, that it is only high-grade prescribing that will bring results, and high-grade prescribing is not at all common, not only in Patton but outside.
Take a case of dementia praecox that has undergone definite deterioration; I dont feel at all optimistic about getting results with homoeopathic remedies or in any other way, and I dont know of any other method o;f successfully treating mental disease by the use of the homoeopathic remedy.
I feel absolutely hopeless in treating a case of general paresis with a homoeopathic remedy. I may be voicing my own inability in the matter. I am frank to admit I have never been successful treatment than the so-called constitutional or degenerative psychosis, like the various groups under the heading of dementia praecox,. They do respond to careful prescribing.
When you are dealing with a case of dementia praecox, where the fundamental mechanisms of the mind are involved, where the will, the emotions and the intellect have become weakened themselves and among themselves, so that you get what is sometimes termed intrapsychic ataxia, the problem of finding the remedy is just to much for the ordinary, everyday, common garden variety of homoeopathic physician, like myself. I do not say theoretically it is not so, that it isnt possible, but when I mention that it isnt done it is because I havent been able to do it, which doesnt mean very much after all.
I didnt intend to discuss the paper, but since Dr. Sherwood and Dr. Smith pushed me up in front, the blood is on their heads and not mine. I dont know that I can contribute much, except that I do endorse what Dr. Grimmer has said, with certain limitation. I think Hahnemann himself to distinguish between those conditions which are curable from those conditions which which are not curable, and thereby we save ourselves a lot of trouble.
Among the case that are well developed psychoses, I think of dementia praecox mostly and general paresis. I think they are conditions that are not susceptible to successful treatment.
Of course, you are all aware of the methods now used, shock treatments of various kinds, such as metrazol and insulin. Insulin is gradually getting shoved aside and metrazol is taking its place. The result, of course, are like the results in all these other methods of therapy that come on the stage and then blow up in a blaze of glory, and are heard no more about after a little while. I think that is what is going to happen to these present methods that are being used. There is something to the shock treatment, but you dont have to depend upon metrazol or insulin, or any of those substances. Shock does help an individual to get over a psychotic state.
If the old school will not see the light and learn something about homoeopathy, they will have to learn some more humane way of producing shock rather than by injecting metrazol or insulin, or any of those things, to produce that violent shock.
To get back to homoeopathy, I am in entire agreement with what Dr. Grimmer says, that it is the only thing I know of that it likely to get results in mental cases.
About two weeks ago a woman about forty-five or fifty developed very definite delusion that she was being put into a hypnotic state by a sort of remote control by some man she had known many years and for whom she had apparently had a great admiration. At any rate, she told me there was a great love between them, and them existed for twenty years. He visited her every night and several times during the day. She didnt mind his visiting her in spirit, and to her it was just as real as though it actually occurred physically. She didnt mind his his visits if he just would not hypnotize her and put her in a trance. Every time he visited her they had sexual relation, and to her it was just as though it actually occurred.
I dont know they that you would find that in the repertory of symptoms, but there was something on the side, a certain volubility. She just liked to talk. There was a certain suspiciousness in her attitude. I didnt know what to do. I dont know how to find the remedy in the repertory, but in the back of my noodle I had the thought that may be Lachesis would be the remedy. Mind you, I am just the common, garden variety of prescriber, and I am right about one time out of twenty, depending on whether it is my lucky day. This was my lucky day. I prescribe Lachesis and much to my surprise she got well and went home. Lachesis did the work.
I dont know what the old school has to say about it. At the sanatorium where she, was, all she got was harmless little sugar pills, and the conclusion at the sanatorium is that she got well, and would have gotten well anyway. However, I have my own opinion.
DR. STEVENS : I would just like to ask. Dr. Grimmer what success he has had in restoring memory to elderly people, and if he finds that is feasible.
DR. DIXON : We have the history of homoeopathy in public institutions dating back to the time of Talcott, I think about 1880, when he was put in charge of the Middletown institution in New York, and established a record for cure that has never been approached since. Yet in the state New York today, I think the seven state institutions are supposed to be under homoeopathic control.
Simply from the records Talcott established in Middletown back in 1800-I think I am right about the thing, but I may be wrong because I am in that state where I forget, too- the precedent established then would be an incentive for some of the homoeopathic men, who have contacts with institutions, to better study their homoeopathy, because that has been a growing record for homoeopathy for nigh on to sixty years.
DR. SHERWOOD : In your opinion, Dr. Grimmer, why is it that mental conditions and insanities are on the increase?.
DR. GRIMMER :First of all, I want to thank the gracious doctor for his comments on the paper and for his expression of faith in what he believes homoeopathy can do. Also, I want to acknowledge to him that the kind of cases he spoke of, at least if they are at all advanced, are among the incurable cases that Hahnemann tells us about.
When I spoke about curing eighty percent I should have modified it that way; at least eighty percent of those cases that had not advanced too far. When there is destruction of nerve tissue, we know there is no regeneration of the same under any condition. Only new nerves may be educated to take up the function of some of the destroyed nerve fibers.
I have seen some cases of dementia praecox cured, however. I saw one case that Dr. Kent cured. I have cured one or two myself, but very late, hard cases, where I had every opportunity over a long period of time, I did fail to cure. Those are some of the cases we cannot cure.
DR. MOORE : Did you ever see any Parkinsons cured?.
DR. GRIMMER :I have seen some early cases of Parkinsons cured.
DR. MOORE :Where there are leukaemic lesions, the pathologists say they cant be cured. There have been a number of Parkinsons cured.
DR. GRIMMER : They can be cured if you get them before too much destruction of tissue takes places.
The doctor has told me of a case I have been treating for two years. I didnt know really how bad the case was until the doctor told me some of the sidelights on it. Although he had had a negative Wassermann, Dr. Sherwood tells me that same had syphilis to his knowledge. A little over a year ago he began to have delusion of persecution, with a great deal of restlessness and unreasoning fears, and he really was in a serious way mentally. Three of us in Chicago undertook to treats his case, and eventually they left me holding the bag. I was alone on the case. He came out here on the Coast, and Dr. Sherwood shipped him back because he realized it was one of those difficult things.
However, the remedy that cured that man -I am satisfied that he had a brain lesion-was one of my newer developments, which has been used somewhat experimentally, Kali bicyanatum. That remedy in potency from 10 to 50M. has completely restored this man. He is now seeing a few of his patients at his home. I have advised him not to go back to practice too soon. He is perfectly well physically and mentally; in fact, he is in better health than he has ever been. It is one illustration of what homoeopathic remedies can do. While we could see some of the symptoms, this man had other remedies. He had Kali cyanatum and Kali bromatum for the fears, the things that were bothering him, and they helped him for a little while, but they didnt hold and he would revert to his former state.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.