A few thousand years ago the Prophet wrote that the sins of the parents were observed in the children even unto the fourth generation. Most physicians in recent years in examining a new patient inquire concerning evidences of tuberculosis, tumors, cancer, etc., that may have appeared in the two preceding generations. But what do they do about it? Such inquiry has generally been made to obtain information which might assist in the diagnosis and the prognosis of the case in hand rather than for therapeutic purposes.
This paper is written for the purpose of urging the younger members of the profession to realize more fully what preventive medicine means to him who has mastered a therapeutic principle of nearly universal application.
Preventive medication of today means an attempt to prevent as far as is possible the appearance of certain acute sicknesses. The method I wish to bring before you is I believe capable of preventing chronic diseases as well as modifying acute diseases. If I am right in my conclusions, it will in time bring about a race better not only physically but both mentally and morally.
Sixty years ago Raue told us that “to improve the teeth of Americans we must look to the periods of conception, gestation and lactation, as types of teeth, sound or unsound, are transmitted from both parents to the child, therefore the teeth of both parents should be put in a healthy condition before marriage”.
If this is necessary with the teeth, is it not just as necessary to correct other conditions and especially the underlying constitutional deficiencies?.
In the British Medical Journal, April 25, 1931, page 713, the Editor says: “The modern trend of medicine seems almost to have ignored the constitution or inborn factors in the production of disease”.
A. T. Tood, M.B., M.R.C.P., in The Lancet of August 23, 1930, page 389, says: “We know the cause of tuberculosis now, and can reproduce the disease; but most of us have stopped trying to treat the disease; we treat the patient instead, to his benefit”.
Let us at the very beginning make a distinction between “cure” and “recovery”. By way of illustration, cutting out a cancer or a thyroid gland never cured the patient. One needs to treat the underlying constitutional abnormality which has been inherited from ones ancestors and which has increased in viciousness by wrong methods of living. Surgery only removes the end products of disease, except in a few instances where local irritation gives rise to local disease. The patient is not cured by these methods and only recovers from the operation and the results of the deformity or the pressure symptoms which these end results produced. The only way to reach the cause and bring about a cure is by constitutional medication. One needs to correct the viciousness resulting from wrong methods of living.
A few years years ago I read a paper on The Constitutional Treatment of Diseases of the Nose, Throat and Ear. After reading the paper, a prominent surgeon in the southern part of the State (Ohio) said that he “could now understand why in a number of his cases he was unable to get the desired results by surgery alone” and was good enough to request me to write a paper on the same subject, but covering general conditions. For a surgeon, this man was of unusual mentality, as not one out of a hundred of his clan would have given it serious thought.
In that paper I gave the record of a lad who was submitted to an operation for the removal of tonsils and adenoids every two years. He had had three operations, all done by good surgeons; yet for the fourth time his tonsils were very large and the adenoids blocked nasal breathing. He was dull mentally and could not memorize anything, yet under the action of the indicated homoeopathic remedy his tonsils returned to normal size, he again breathed through his nose, and of his own accord resumed his studies with both pleasure and profit.
In short, medication did what the knife had not done, yet the specialist who performed the second of the three operations, criticized my paper as not being of scientific value and not having proved anything.
A great many times when considering the condition of a child I have been compelled to go into the history of the mother and especially the history of the prenatal conditions preceding the pregnancy. I have in this manner been able to find the constitutional remedy that restored the child to health.
The treatment of deafness is today going through a tumultuous period. Some of the more progressive specialists have come to the conclusion that the routine local treatment of deafness is unable to bring about the desired results. A very prominent Eastern specialist has recently stated that he has been able to obtain satisfactory results only by constitutional treatment. This is what the homoeopathic profession has been stressing for years.
A boy nine years old was brought to me twelve years ago. He was totally deaf and had been so for a number of years. It was almost impossible to understand anything he tried to say. Two specialists had said that he was too young to do anything for. A homoeopathic physician and surgeon had removed his tonsils and adenoids without improvement. I found one leg covered with eczema. Sulphur was his remedy and was given in the 30. and 200. potencies and soon the leg began to clear and he was able to hear with his right ear.
When the leg was completely healed the hearing in the right ear was perfect. The left ear did not begin to improve until a year later. The boy had been so deaf for so long that when he first heard thunder he wanted to know what it was. Cases have come to me frequently that have received local treatment with gradual increase of deafness. In many of these cases the internal administration of a carefully selected remedy brings back their hearing to a remarkable degree.
The many cases of deafness in children are causing the school authorities much anxiety and thought. I am certain that the greater percent of these cases could have been obviated by preventive medicine.
Preventive medicine, as I am presenting it to you, means the administration of remedies to the expectant mother for the express purpose of producing healthier children.
Of course, all of us treat our acute cases successfully. Perhaps most of us treat the rest of our cases with one aim in view, that of relieving distress, whether the means be surgical, electrical or mechanical. In older people these methods may be, in many cases, all that can be done. In cases among younger people, those who may yet become fathers and mothers, especially mothers, if surgical work is necessary, do not let that be your ultimatum, as such a course does not lead to a cure.
Today in the larger centers of population ninety percent of young people twenty years of age have or have had tuberculosis, but only from three to five percent of this number do not over- come it while it is in the acute stage. They generally do not have either fever nor cough but usually do have a nasal discharge that does not respond to treatment and the tonsils are in most cases involved. One distinguishing symptom is a languid, sluggish, tired feeling. The radiograph will show you the lung involvement but a careful physical examination does not disclose it.
Along the great lakes we have to combat the serious effect of dampness and soot, which interfere with the calcium balance, making the selection of proper food very important.
If you have never used a repertory, do not try to use one without first finding out how to correctly employ it.
There are three Nosodes with which you should be very familiar: Medorrhinum, Syphilinum and Tuberculinum or Bacillinum.
Then become master of Calc. carb., Nux vom., Lycop., Merc., Sil., and Sulph. You will then have an armamentarium that will help you to fight decrepit constitutions in a way you have never thought possible.
If you have trouble in getting your young married couples interested, you may be able to do so by telling the young wife the advantage of a medication during the early months of pregnancy that she may have a more healthy child. If you can get them at this period and then follow it up by giving the child an occasional dose of the mothers constitutional remedy, or any other that may be needed, combined with proper food, you will have a child that will more easily throw off acute illness; tonsil and adenoid operations will be unnecessary; and the period of acute tuberculosis, if this disease should be contracted, will be much shortened. If children thus born will live correctly from this period on, you will find them escaping asthma, hay fever, carcinoma, sarcoma, diabetes and Brights disease.
Is not this a worthy aim?.
It is within our power to achieve.
CLEVELAND, OHIO.
