Arnica should be kept in mind in patients who have been subjected to heavy work and who, in consequence, have hypertrophied hearts which may undergo fatty degeneration or dilatation. Soreness of affected parts and fear of being touched are characteristic symptoms. It has a definite place in the treatment of arteriosclerotic manifestations.
Aurum metallicum or Aurum muriaticum are of value in heart diseases, especially where a syphilitic history can be obtained or when inherited lues can be established. Palpitation and stitches in the heart area, precordial anxiety, cardiac asthma, angina pectoris and arteriosclerosis and mental gloom, at times with suicidal thoughts and inclinations, may be accompaniments.
Spigelia is more often needed in acute endocarditis, following upon acute rheumatic fever, when the pains are sharp and stabbing. The patient cannot lie on the left side, but must lie on the right side with the head high and the body propped up. Motion and touch both aggravate. Audible palpitation is often a prominent symptom.
Lachesis is to be thought of in cardiac patients, especially in women during the climacteric and post-climacteric periods, with hot flashes and sweats, aggravation on waking from sleep, loquacious women, jealous women with sadness and mental depression in the morning.
As all Hahnemannians are well aware, in the treatment of heart disease of any type it is the patient who must be considered as an individual; hence almost any remedy may be of service if the general symptoms of the patient are well marked. It can be said without fear of contradiction that those patients who have received homoeopathic treatment are likely to live longer than those who have been subjected to the customary, powerful drugs employed by the orthodox school of medicine. That school is more spectacular in its methods and indulges in all the theatrical practices and props. Homoeopathy is devoid of these and therefore its very simplicity is its own worst enemy.
We do not play to the gallery in our methods. The large number of untimely deaths of which we read and hear daily is to a very large extent the direct result of over-stimulating therapy. Action and reaction are equal and opposite and too frequently the cure of heart diseases is worse than the diseases themselves. Regrettably, our own Homoeopathic school follows the methods of orthodox medicine and this slavish obedience to so-called scientific medicine is more and more destroying us. Our only salvation is the foreseeable future lies in the possibility of obtaining large endowments which will enable us to establish post-graduate schools of Homoeopathy, allied to hospitals with ample clinical material and manned by Hahnemannian physicians and surgeons. Such a happy contingency seems at the present time very remote.
MADISON, NEW JERSEY.
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.
Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.