Trifacial neuralgia (tic douloureux) cannot respond to proper treatment if there has been over-exposure to either the infra-red heat lamp or the ultra-violet, so called sun lump. Alcoholic injections and the x-ray have spoiled more cases than they have ever alleviated.
How foolish to prescribe “the apparently indicated remedy” in a case of beriberi without first removing the cause which is usually an obvious nutritional deficiency. Correct the diet and then prescribe the remedy. Either a food toxemia or a nutritional deficiency is the underlying cause of most cases of either neuralgia or neuritis. Much acute illness is due to a toxic over- load in the body. Much chronic illness is due to mild but multiple and therefore complex nutritional deficiencies, starvation in the midst of an apparent abundance of food.
As soon as an individual arrives at the age of personal responsibility, as soon as he is on his own, in other words, he then proceeds to cause disease through one or more avenues of unhygienic living:
1. Emotional stresses and conflicts.
2. Excesses and depletions.
3. Nutritional deficiencies.
4. Food toxemia.
The kind or type of disease from which he will suffer depends upon the direction of susceptibility in his own constitution. Disease attacks the weakest structures in the constitutional chain. The strong parts of the body are disease resistant.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
DISCUSSION.
DR. WILLIAM GUTMAN: I will never forget a case of acute neuritis because it was the most extreme expression of pain I have ever seen in my life and because it gives us such a good example of the importance of exact case taking.
A patient came to me with an acute neuralgia of both brachial plexi. He was rolling on the floor and crying out from pain. It was a terrific and terrifying picture. I was not able at first to establish a diagnosis, to get even words out of this man, but I found out, to make it short, that it was acute neuralgia of both brachial plexi due etiologically to suppression of sweat. He was standing in a draft in winter, sweating in his armpits just shortly before entrance to a house. I gave this man one dose of Belladonna 200. and the pain subsided in no time.
A couple of weeks later he was brought by car to my office in exactly the same condition, not the slightest difference, a terrific recurrence, maybe more terrific than the first one. Naturally, I gave a dose of Belladonna 200. No result. My office was full of people waiting, so this was one of the very few cases where I finally gave a hypodermic because the patient just begged me to do something in this terrific attack of pain.
I did it with a very bad conscience, feeling I could make a chronic out of such a case, or a suicidal case out of such a condition. After fifteen to twenty minutes the pain subsided and he was brought home; but as I expected, in the late evening I was called again urgently to see the man. Naturally, I had given the man only a hypodermic, no curative remedy, so, seeing the patient again, I established that he was exposed to a situation which had caused a fit of anger which he had suppressed.
I gave him one dose of Chamomile. Within three minutes the pain was gone and never recurred. What the morphine could not do before fifteen or twenty minutes, being only a palliative, Chamomile in high potency did in three minutes and cured him.
It shows it is an example for teaching students how exact case-taking is in homoeopathy, even if you have a perfectly clear picture, and shows the extreme importance which Dr. Underhill stressed of the emotional influence in neuralgia.
DR. J. W. WAFFENSMITH: In reference to neuritis, very often we get typical Rhus toxicodendron symptoms and especially in sciatica, and there is a temporary favorable reaction to the Rhus toxicodendron but it doesnt hold.
I want to call your attention to Calcarea arsenicosa. It has been very beneficial to me in studying these cases. I had one case particularly through the winter, an aged gentleman whom I had treated constitutionally for several years, and he had this terrible case of sciatica, with characteristic Rhus symptoms, and the Calcarea arsenicosa fitted in nicely.
DR. A. H. GRIMMER: Dr. Underhill mentioned the effects of coffee, and it is true that excessive coffee predisposes not only to nerve conditions but extreme sensitivity. Here is a little remedy Clark mentioned, to add to what we know about Nux and Chamomilla and others, Guarana, a South American plant. Clark mentioned it as being a wonderful remedy for those who are prostrated or aggravated nervously or otherwise, from excessive coffee.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.