I have cured cases of flatulent dyspepsia with excessive accumulation of gas in both the stomach and intestines after the failure of Arg. nit., Asafoetida., Carbo veg., Lycopodium, Magnesium mur., Momordica.
This simple basic acid has a very broad field of action in the gastro-intestinal tract which I have verified over and over again.
Another case of segmented enteritis, or ileitis, with a ruptured ulcer that was operated on in the Womens Homoeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia, and had all the modern postoperative treatments and some homoeopathy was finally completely benefited while under the care of Dr. Robert H. Farley by Butyric acid which I suggested he might try in this case as it was a very serious one and at the time hope was well-nigh abandoned.
The only dramatic cure that I have been able to observe with Butyric acid, and I believe I am the first to use it in this dreadful disease, was in typhoid fever. To me this has been a real find. It was a case of advanced abdominal type of typhoid fever where Rhus tox and Baptisia had been prescribed. The patient had been ill for approximately three weeks and the case was going bad. The mouth and intestinal symptoms appeared to me to look like Butyric acid, which I prescribed with the result that in 48 hours the mouth symptoms had almost disappeared.
The patients temperature was absolutely normal in nine days, and the patient made a perfect and uninterrupted recovery. The second case was a very serious one with marked sordes on the teeth, the mouth was foul, abdomen distended with much gas, extreme tenderness over the ileocaecal region, and the attending physician feared haemorrhage might be coming on. Butyric acid here, within 72 hours, relieved the abdominal tenderness, relieved the gas symptoms, and in less than a week cleared up the symptoms pertaining to the buccal cavity. The patients temperature came to normal, and recovery was uneventful.
These are facts and show the possibilities of this neglected basic fatty acid. I have prescribed this remedy in the 30x and 1000th potency almost exclusively. when indicated it has been a prompt acting remedy.
The provers have been thanked years ago for their grace of perseverance and personal sacrifice. Only those of us who have conducted a systematic proving can appreciate the amount of labor demanded in such work. I hope it will prove to be of some particular value of the profession and new symptoms added through experience.
Please accept my humble effort in developing another working tool in the materia media. The profession is asked to put it to the test in suitable cases and report the results. Only in this way can we make our materia medica a practical and useful working instrument.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
DISCUSSION.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON: Dr. Griggs has given us a remarkable paper. Certainly he is working in a good cause. I do not wonder that many of our physicians dont care to have new provings made. There are only a few of our materia medicists that have the capacity to learn the characteristics of and to prescribe these new remedies.
DR. LAURA B. HURD: May I ask where you obtained the Butyric acid?.
DR. WILLIAM B GRIGGS.: The original I imported from Damschatt Germany and I gave it to Boericke & Tafel who ran it to the 1M and 10M potency, which I have used.
DR. HURD: What is it made from?.
DR. GRIGGS: Butyric acid is the acid from the rancid fat of butter.
DR. HURD: I thought so, but I wasnt sure.
DR. MARION BELLE ROOD: Dr. Griggs mentioned Butyric acid in 1944 in Atlantic City, I believe, the last time he was here.
I obtained the 10M that he had, and one case came in, six months or a year later, a very severe gallbladder attack in a case where she had had many gall bladder attacks, each one more severe than the last, and she was jaundiced, and she also had diabetes; but she has never had a gallbladder attack since. I think I gave her three doses in an hour at that time.
DR. GRIGGS: It is prompt-acting remedy.
DR. EUGENE UNDERHILL, JR.: The acids – all the acids – are greatly neglected. I am sure they all need more attention than we give them, one reason being that the total acidity of our system is too great. Seventy-five per cent of all the food we eat is acid, and we should be eating 80 per cent alkaline foods.
DR. DAYTON T. PULFORD: I dont know enough about Butyric acid to discuss this, but I think we should offer Dr. Griggs a rising vote of thanks for this first honest-to-God piece of research.
DR. WILLIAM B GRIGGS. [closing]: I havent anything to say in closing but I would like to make a remark that we ought to have a proving of Lactic acid. When a baby comes into the world, he gets Lactic acid. That is the beginning; and old age is the age of fermentation and they need Lactic acid in old age, and I have helped some old arthritic joints with Lactic acid.
