Sinusitis is quite common and often acute in the region of the Great Lakes and even in Cincinnati. I shall only adduce a few cases with their homoeopathic treatment. Sinusitis is a painful and distressing condition which usually responds to the indicated remedy when it can be discovered. One of the main difficulties in treating sinusitis is to get the patient to describe his affliction rather than the various treatments and nostrums he had used.
CASE I.-R. W., aged 39, had “flu” severely in 1943 while in the navy which left him weak and weary for a long time. During this time he developed sinusitis with much postnasal yellow-green discharged which caused burning in the stomach. There is a heaviness over the eyes, and the right nostril is obstructed, but no severe headaches. He is nervous, irritable, loquacious. His father died at 35 from tuberculosis of the hip. Due to his father history and the sinusitis originating following the “flu”, on March 12, 1949 I gave him Tuberculinum 200.
March 19, 1949-He continued to improve steadily until this date with no further medicine but placebo. He reports an acute cold for two days with slight sore throat and ache in maxillary sinuses. Rx. Tuberculinum 200., 3 doses.
May 21, 1949-Reports cold cleared two days after Tuberculinum. Sinusitis continuing to improve, less discharge. Polypus smaller. He feels greatly better in all respects.
Case II.-H. M., aged 52, has had frequent head colds all his life. Sinusitis for past seventeen years, left nasal polypus removed in 1930. With colds he has thin, fluent discharge and suffers pain over his eyes which is relieved by heat and lying. Headaches are worse in winter, from dampness, east wind, and thick discharged.
December 22, 1947-Rx. Nux vomica 200.
December 30, 1947-Much improved. Less pain and backache since Nux vomica. He reports that he has had stomach trouble for years with bloating and distress from many fools, worse when he eats too much or if he fasts. Sac. lac.
January 6, 1948-Much better generally.
March 15, 1948-Another “cold” with sore throat and sinusitis, worse over right eye, worse after 4 p.m. Headache this time is not relieved by heat as formerly. Rx. Lycopodium 200.
November 13, 1948-Comes in because of dark, watery diarrhea with aching all over the body. Reports no sinusitis since last seen.
March 19, 1949-Fluent, burning coryza with frontal ache worse after 4 p.m. He says, “always gets down in the spring”. No sinusitis since last March. Rx. Lycopodium 200.
March 24, 1949-Sinusitis soon better after Lycopodium.
Now complains of lumbago with aching extending into groins and testes. For years had lumbago every spring since he overworked his back as a boy on a farm with heavy lifting. Rx. Rhus tox. 200.
CASE III.-H. H., aged 29, on January 7, 1947 developed frontal sinusitis worse right, following acute coryza. Pains extend from sinciput to occiput. Worse from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., ameliorated lying, after asleep, indoors; aggravated stooping, outdoors or in wind. Rx. Lycopodium 200.
February 27, 1947-Frontal headache over eyes worse right. Dizzy from stooping. Pains worse in evening after 6 p.m. Rx. Lycopodium. 1M.
October 13, 1947-Frontal sinusitis worse wind. Reports pains subside quickly after medicine. Rx Lycopodium 1M.
November 20, 1947-Recurrence of sinusitis with pains extending to occiput. Comes on late in after noon or in evening. Rx. Lycopodium 10M.
December 26, 1947-Laryngitis following chill and fever. No face pains. Rx. Lycopodium 10M.
April 1, 1948-Sinus headache above and behind eyes for three days. Nausea and vertigo with the severe pains. Rx. Lycopodium 10M.
August 17, 1948-Sinusitis and right sore throat, as if a lump there. Sinus aches aggravated in the wind, in afternoon and evening. Frequent right sided nosebleeds. Rx. Lycopodium 50M.
November 11, 1948-Pain especially over left eye aggravated after rising, ameliorated lying or sleeping until arises. Ameliorated evening and from damp weather. Rx. Lachesis 200.
January 20, 1949-Reports is fine.
June 6, 1949-Sinusitis recurred for past two weeks. Fluent coryza with sneezing on rising in morning. Headache over eyes starts about noon, ameliorated 7 p.m., aggravated wind. Nervous and anxious when has headache. Rx. Lycopodium 50M. GLENVIEW, ILL.
DISCUSSION.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON [Chicago, Illinois]: Mr. Chairman, I would like to say a word because this paper represent some good prescribing and also presents one or two lessons in homoeopathic technic. You will notice that, especially in that last case, Dr. Gladish gave Lycopodium gradually in ascending potencies; but even from the beginning the intervals of relief were of long duration. It has been my experience that when a remedy acts for so long a time, when it goes six weeks or eight weeks or longer, you are getting very near the mark. But what especially I wanted to call attention to and you may have noticed it yourself is that the symptoms changed. The symptoms were different at different times and there wasnt the four to eight p.m. cut and dried Lycopodium aggravation and yet the doctor gave his Lycopodium.
I cant quite analyze the reason for Lachesis or whether it was indicated just at that time, but it is complimentary to Lycopodium and it is possible that when the sinusitis shifted to the left, it might have helped; but still Lycopodium persisted and acted further.
DR. LEO SAXON [Chicago, Illinois]: I had a very severe case of this which was really acute sinusitis because the patient, a lady of about fifty years, had 103 degrees of fever and the whole left side of the face was swollen. The pharynx was swollen, the cheeks were swollen. It was probably involvement of the frontal and the maxillary sinuses.
The temperature ranged between 103 degree and 104 degree, with chills, a very toxic condition. At the same time another patient was in the same building treated by a different doctor and was also suffering from acute sinusitis, not quite as bad as my case because that patient had no temperature and was not as toxic. The other patient was rushed to the hospital and operated and was in the hospital two weeks and came home feeling better, with a lot of drainage and minus 500. [Laughter] My patient was demanding to be treated with penicillin. I could not very well resist the demand and I gave her penicillin and I also gave her Nux vomica which seemed to be indicated.
She had two injection of penicillin and she had Nux vomica 30. For about a week. She made a very remarkable recovery in six days and now I wonder whether the homoeopathic prescribing or the penicillin did the work. I am always loathe to use penicillin or any other of the allopathic injections with homoeopathic remedies because it is not logical, and you dont know what is doing the work. I want to ask the opinion of the essayist about that.
DR. A. DWIGHT SMITH [Glendale, California]: Mr. chairman, it seems to me that these cases are more chronic than acute. I think there is one, at least, that had a polyp.
In another case, he said he had one taken out surgically a number of years ago, and my experience is, where they have been taken out surgically, they always come back. I know I have a great many cases, so-called hay fever, come to me and I find they have polyps. It is certainly much more difficult to cure than hay fever is.
DR. FRED B. MORGAN [Clinton, Iowa]: The problem of chronic sinusitis, as I see it, usually starts with an acute sinusitis. I remember several years ago I read a paper at the Institute, in which I very learnedly discoursed on sinusitis and gave the traditional bacterial concept of the sinusitis starting in the nose, and all the rest of that with which you are familiar. An exceptionally well dressed fashion plate of a doctor got up immediately afterwards and said, “Dr. Morgan, you are all wet.”.
That is what like to have in a discussion of a paper because it makes you stop and think. He said, “Your sinusitis, your colds start in the colon. They dont start in the nose”.
That was Dr. Shadman. That was the beginning of a warm friendship between us, and it furnished thought for me and since then I have learned that that is just what happens with acute sinusitis. For two or three or four or five days, or even six days, that patient does have colon symptoms.
Now my treatment of acute sinusitis is that of Stearns influenzins-there are six or eight of them -and I choose them according to my method. Sometimes it is one with one patient and another with another.
Dr. McAdam uses a colon mucin in much the same way.
Here is something I should hesitate to say but I am going to say it. I start the first day with about the 1M and may be the second day will use the 500th or the 200th. I am getting down then into one of Dr. Dixons low potencies-a two-hundredth. [Laughter] I end up finally with Bryonia, 6x, which is usually about the third or fourth day, and my patients say they are well.
They are not well. They are not well for a week or two afterwards. They still need their Bryonia but they feel so good that they think they are well. They are so much better than they were. The reason I mention Bryonia is because those preliminary symptoms, those colon symptoms, are Bryonia symptoms to start with.
