Now, the history of that medicine is exceedingly interesting. You will find it recorded in Anshutz New, Old and forgotten Remedies. sixty or more years ago there was an Englishman living in India who had an asthma which nobody could cure. Finally he gave up and went out into the wilds and lived alone there with his servant, reading and just passing the time and suffering with his asthma. As all Englishmen do, he drank his tea.
One day he drank it and, strangely, had great relief, and all through the evening he improved. He slept all night – something he hadnt done for years. Next day he began to swill tea and he drank cup after cup. About that time an Indian whom he knew came in to visit him. This man was rather intelligent. He got the story of the wonderful relief from tea, and he said, “I would like to see that tea. How was it brewed?”.
He went to the cook and she said she had made it in the usual way. He said, “Have you thrown the grounds out?” She had not. He looked in there and saw a brown bug about an inch and a half or an inch and three-quarters long, a cockroach! So he made a concoction of the nice little cockroaches and began curing asthma all over the country!.
Now, I said this disease is rather difficult to cure. There are many cases that are on a tubercular basis.
Long ago I ceased to ask the mother whether the child had had eczema. I say, “When?”.
I remember one case where the mother said, “This child has not had difficulties in breathing as far as I know. Oh, yes, the way, she did. When she was two she had eczema and we cured it with ointments”.
Strange to say, the mother offered this information herself: “Since then she has had asthma”.
The remedy in that case was Ipecac, and after two or three prescriptions of the 200th, in a period of a month or so, a slight rash came back, and the girl made a perfect recovery.
Now, just one more point: I believe I should tell you I never at all pay any attention to allergies. Almost all these cases have some kind of external influence that causes or brings on attacks or that increases the attacks. I have heard of people sensitive to cats, dogs, horse danders – I was gong to say horse feathers – all kinds of foods, and I can tell you a number of stories along that line. I will not weary you now. Wait until somebody else writes a paper on asthma as short as this.
DR. ANTHONY SHUPIS: What do you do, what do some of you older, more experienced homoeopaths do, when you see an acute case in the evening? Do you give epinephrine to suppress the attack?.
Apparently these cases that are brought up as cured dont have too much evil result from previous suppression by, say, epinephrine given for alleviation of that acute attack. I should like to know someones opinion on that.
DR. FRED B. MORGAN: May I say a word? Every case of “asthma,” is not asthma. One of new troubles is histoplasmosis. If you want to find out all about it, write to the Bureau of Health in Washington, and you will get a very small pamphlet, not much in it, but it does contain about all that is really known about it.
It is due to a mold being located in the trachea and bronchi, a mold that is similar to penicillin, and those cases never get complete relief. They are the cases that are a little bit asthmatic or else very asthmatic. They give up their business and they are shut up, and they go on for year after year. Some of them cough terrifically.
Now, I got a culture from Duke University, and I worked out the vibratory rates of this culture of histoplasmosis, or rather of Histoplasma capsulatum, and made a study of it in our homoeopathic armamentarium, and Sabina has the same, exactly the same , vibratory rates as histoplasmosis, and it doesnt make any difference what potency you give it in, so far as I can see. But those cases have hope, and those cases that have gone on for years and years are curable by using the proper homoeopathic remedy, and it is usually Sabina.
DR. WILBUR K BOND.: May I add my two cents to this discussion?.
Having lived with an asthmatic for some eighteen years, and having fought the disease tooth and nail since my postgraduate course in Boston, I think I can contribute a little. I also wish to gain a little from some members in doing so.
The so-called asthma remedies have proved disappointing: Ipecac, Blatta orientalis, Arsenicum, Senega. The usual remedies we think of for the disease of asthma are disappointing. The more I study it, the more I have decided that we have to get the totality of the case, including the mentals, as well as the difficult breathing.
Kents Repertory has a lot of nice things pertaining to the particular type of asthmatic cough and difficult breathing, especially the one “difficult breathing with cough, asthmatic cough.” The patient may be worse lying on the left side; get his reactions to heat and cold, whether he is thirsty or not thirsty, what his cravings are.
One case I have in mind has a strong craving for sweets; so the treating of asthma is not the treating of asthma; it is the treating of the patient, in my experience; the grand totality must be considered.
I find Sulphur is a very fine remedy and one that comes out in a great many cases, where you dont get the typical picture of Arsenicum. However, if you do get an asthma case that is worse at midnight or after, you dont need to look any farther than Arsenicum.
If it comes on at three oclock, or four oclock, or two-thirty in the morning, you dont need to look any farther than Kali carbonicum; but you are not going to get those textbook pictures and cases arent as easy as all that. But what if you get an asthma that begins in the evening and last on through the night until morning, or what if the asthma is comparatively free in the morning and begins to set in at eleven or twelve noon and rages in the afternoon on through the night, and then if free when the morning comes? Those are things to think about.
I have that particular type of case, asthma beginning in the evening, worse until morning; and also the one that begins at noon, or eleven oclock in the morning. I find, together with the craving for sweets and any of the other symptoms, Sulphur is a very fine remedy; but what if your Sulphur does not hold? You might have to look around for other Sulphur compounds. If the individual is a person inclined to hurry, you might look to your Sulphuric acid as an inter-current.
I wish to mention a very fine remedy that is so often overlooked, and you overlook it in the Repertory, since it has the abbreviation of “Sulph. acid,” and that is Sulphuric acid, because this individual is markedly aggravated from the inhaling of sulphur dioxide fumes from soldering or from a locomotive in a railroad station which produces all the symptoms, tight cough better by expectoration.
Look it up, Sulphuric acid, as a suggestion.
Now, occasionally your Arsenicum fails. I have been reading some accounts in the journals where they have suggested Thuja as the alternative for our symptoms. The authors in some of the journals have gotten some very fine results from the use of Thuja as an alternative to Arsenicum.
I once consulted Dr. Charles N. Cooper in cincinnati, as you all know a very fine prescriber. He said, “The doctors around Cincinnati are using Antimonium ars. for their asthma cases.” So it might be that Antimonium sulph. could come in there as well as the Antimonium ars., in some of the stubborn cases.
Then the nosodes are very valuable. Medorrhinum has been mentioned, as you have just heard. The nosode, Pneumococcin, has been mentioned. Many of these cases are mixed with pansinusitis, and, to my notion, pansinusitis ought to be very closely related to a condition of suppuration of the lungs, except in this instance it is confined to the cells of the head, so Pneumococcin might be a good nosode to remember in connection with asthmatic cases due to pansinusitis.
I have had very fine success in asthma in children with Natrum sulph. as the starting remedy.
Now, I wish to emphasize again that it is necessary to get the whole history of the case and battle that thing tooth and nail from the start, thinking only of the individual and not so much of the asthmatic symptoms.
In giving these symptoms this morning and contributing what little I have discovered, I, in return, hope to receive some suggestions from you.
DR. DIVAN HARISH CHAND [New Delhi, India]: I was very much interested in the remarks of the doctor in regard to the subject of Lac caninum, but I have never seen it being used in England, though I have seen some good prescribers in Indian use it, but never saw it used in the high potency, but only in 3x or 6x as a palliative and sometimes either given in acute catarrh or given along with the indicated constitutional, Kali carbonicum in 200, to use as a standby in case the patient got an acute attack, and then he could use it instead of atropine.
In England the prevalent practice is, if the patient is very bad, he gets the constitutional homoeopathic remedy. then if he does get an attack, use it for the acute attack. Their contention is that it does not affect the body so deeply as to be disturbed by the action of the hypodermic remedy and it is an excuse for using some of the other things.
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.