Many cases come to me for some soft of trouble completely dissociated from asthma, which they accept because they have been told by other doctors (some of them homoeopaths) that it is incurable.
That is really funny, because I have been curing asthma for many years. Now dont get me wrong; I dont cure every case that comes to me, probably not fifty percent of them, but that is the patients fault, not mine. Some never come back the second time because I have failed to sell them a bill of goods; and some have been cured by that first dose of medicine, perhaps. Dont laugh at that statement! Just recently a lady looked me up after thirty-three years and told me that I did just that for her young daughter.
There is no secret about these cures; it is just pure Hahnemannian Homoeopathy. Lots depend on carefully taken case histories. The Organon tells you how to do it, and Kents Philosophy makes the Organon easier. Dont overlook Kents chapter on the second prescription; many cures are spoiled by that second prescription. Psora, Sycosis, Syphilis: Lots of homoeopaths do not believe in these hereditary causes. I am sorry for them; they are the ones who miss the boat.
I am talking about a lot of things that I never learned in college. Even back as far as my day (the early nineties) the college I attended didnt teach that kind of Homoeopathy. I learned it by independent study of the Organon, Hahnemanns Chronic Diseases, and finally the postgraduate summer school of the American Foundation. A first class knowledge of the Materia Medica is not enough (as many think) to do this kind of work. The repertory is essential, and I doubt if many are competent without postgraduate instruction; at least I didnt know until they taught me.
This is just an outline of what is necessary for you to have or acquire to make it possible to cure the so-called incurable.
AKRON, OHIO.
DISCUSSION.
DR. J.W. WAFFENSMITH: Mr. Chairman, speaking about these short papers that Dr. Dixon writes, recalls to my mind that recently in the course of my studies I came across one of his papers. I dont remember what the title was, but I do remember one particular paragraph in which he very classically and brilliantly referred to predisposing specific causes in the course of his taking of the case-brief, to the point, but highly instructive, and something that will stick with one for a long, long time. I want to congratulate the doctor not only on that paper – and I dont know in what year it was written, – but also upon this paper.
Asthma is associated with lot of other conditions in subjection, as it were; in fact, it is only in the course of an asthmatic treatment that the miasmatic element comes to the surface; the patient, of course, will not be any way at all permanently alleviated unless that does come to the surface and is properly treated.
Hahnemann tells us that these miasms go to quiescence and they remain in quiescence for a considerable time until some exciting cause brings them out at last again; disappointment, business failures, or whatnot, and that when they come to the surface, they again, under the proper treatment, will go into quiescence. I dont recall ever having read in Hahnemanns Organon where he stated that the chronic miasms are definitely cured.
In my many years of experience in the handling of chronic work, I have come to the conclusion that the chronic miasms, on account of the length of their duration in the history of the race, are never definitely cured, but that they can be properly modified by handling with the indicated remedy from time to time until the patient is comparatively comfortable.
Now, remember, whenever you get a case which reacts to your remedy, if you will wait and give that patient proper time to express the symptoms, there will come in cycles during the expression of that reaction, the entire lifetime of cyclical symptoms which are a part of the miasmatic state of that patient; in other words, the sum total of that patients history; therefore, this particular point that made such an impression upon me in the paper of Dr. Dixon, namely, going back and trying to get the exciting specific causes to which the patient dates his particular illness.
DR. EDWARD WHITMONT: This comes to my mind which very well might illustrate a prescribing difficulty in an asthmatic patient. This was a patient, fifty years of age, with chronic asthma over many years, declared incurable. The symptoms were: worse in the fall, worse from heat, and from damp weather – that is all. Oh, yes one more – the attacks came on during sleep. She slept herself into the attacks.
The first remedy was Lachesis, which acted very well for several months. The trouble returned, Lachesis not holding any longer, but with no change of symptoms to a new modality that would give any further lead. Several remedies were tried, as Kali carbonicum because of the early morning modality; but, on a pure guess or hunch method, Medorrhinum. There was absolutely nothing definite to suggest Medorrhinum, but it cleared up the asthma and brought out a vaginal discharge not mentioned before. She complains very much now about this, but the asthma is gone.
We think of Medorrhinum much more in connection with children and there was absolutely no gonorrheic history for that patient, yet the chronic background needed Lachesis and then Medorrhinum, an absolutely sycotic back-ground. The fact is we must keep the miasmatic state in our mind.
DR. A.H. GRIMMER: Dr. Kent says that asthma has a great deal of sycosis in its background, whether inherited or acquired, and naturally, we would think of remedies like Thuja, Natrum sulph., and Sepia. They are, I think, among the leaders, at least in frequency of use.
One thing Dr. Dixon stressed by which we must not fail to profit, and that is that it isnt always the doctors fault that we dont cure our asthma cases; that the patient is to blame many times, not always because he doesnt come back, or we fail to sell a bill of goods, but because he goes afterwards, after taking the homoeopathic remedy and getting the reaction, to a drugstore preparation that somebody tells him about and he thinks he will get relief from his symptoms, when the homoeopathic remedy is working.
This may happen unless you tell them of the philosophy, and that they must not interfere with the rhythm of this remedy by any means; that they must suffer aggravations; that they will have them. Unless you explain that to them, you will fail in a lot of cases, and that is where we have to sell ourselves and tell them that we know they may expect some aggravations; lay the cards on the table and say, “I dont want the case unless you stay with me long enough to do you some good.” If you do that, it will be a big help to you and you will prevent them from breaking into palliatives that will prevent any cure.
DR. T.K. MOORE: I dont know where this fellow got his education but he has it. Sometimes when he goes away he asks me to go over and sit in and watch them file by, and I am surprised at all of the things I see, where others have failed. I am thinking of one right now.
It happens to be asthma, a little fellow six or seven years of age, who had had this asthma all his life, and had been continuously under the care of a child specialist. Finally they went to Dixon and the child was well in no time at all. But the bill had accumulated with the specialist and the mother went back to pay it and told this fellow that the child had been with Dixon and was well, and he said, “It wont last very long.”.
She said, “Yes, it will. His cases get well and stay well,” and she said, “and you seem to have a little trouble with rhinitis. He is good with that also”.
I dont think he went over!.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON: I really did appreciate this paper, as some others have also shown that they did. It is short and to the point.
Asthma is usually a difficult disease, maybe partially because of the causes, but I think I have never failed to cure a case that gave me a real opportunity, except perhaps one or two. One I should like to speak about – one particularly – a man, now ninety-four years old, suffering from asthma as far back as he could remember, so that we might say that he had had asthma at least eighty years. He was prescribed for by the best homoeopathic physicians through all the years, dating back anyway sixty years, with very little benefit.
I think that I prescribed for him myself about forty-five years ago. So, looking over a list of remedies that I knew about, I happened to remember Blatta orientalis. There were no very definite symptoms. He had all the symptoms recorded for Blatta, but they were mostly ordinary pathognomonic symptoms. I started him on the 3x. He had five doses, with very great relief, another series in about two weeks, and another in ten weeks.
Towards the last doses, because the last doses had not held so long, I gave him the 6x. In two weeks more he got the 30th, and, to make a long story short, later we went to the 200th, and the last dose he received was about two weeks ago, 1M of the Blatta.
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.