A healthy child does not have diseased tonsils. Only a sick child has diseased tonsils. Therefore strike at the foundation, cure the child, and the tonsils will take care of themselves.
DR. F. K. BELLOKOSSY [Denver, Colo]: In most cases of tonsils it is illogical to operate because the whole throat is inflamed and infected, and one should either cut out the whole throat or nothing, not just the tonsils alone.
There is another reason why it is illogical to cut the tonsils out: in all such cases there is a hypertrophy of all the lymph glands in the neck, in the groin, between the lungs, behind the bowels all those lymph glands are enlarged. Now, if someone wants to make a cure, he has to cut out all those glands or nothing, just as if you had a big house and it is dirty. If you clean a little corner, that wont make the house clean.
It is also necessary to know what makes the tonsils as they are before one operates. In all such cases there is an acidosis of the system. All such children have a dyscrasia on the basis of acids that are formed from foods, that are not assimilated, because they are devitalized, and those foods are sugar and cereals almost all the cereals on the market now are devitalized and as such cannot possibly be assimilated. They simply turn sour in the system and that acid irritates the whole lymph system and irritates all the mucous membranes, therefore causing pharyngitis with tonsillitis and hypertrophy of all the lymph glands.
One should always eliminate sugar and cereals from the diet of such children, and it is very easy to cure the tonsils. I have cured all my tonsil cases up to now within two weeks to three or four months. Every case is curable, and it is not necessary ever to think that one cannot cure a case and one should operate. That is my experience. There may be exceptional cases that should be operated on, but those will be very few and we generally probably wont find them. Those would be the cases for which we would not find any remedy in the Materia Medica to cure them.
DR. GRIGGS: Dr. Bellokossy, you have said something when you said to remove every lymphatic gland. I was greatly criticized because I reported a couple of cures of cancer that were corroborated. The surgeon today must operate early. Well, we know when we find the whole lymphatic system is impregnated with the same blood that goes through the cancerous tissue, my answer is: if you gentle men can think philosophically, you had better amputate the women instead of the breast.
DR. ALLAN D. SUTHERLAND [Brattleboro, Vt.]: Some years ago it is all of ten and probably fifteen I read an article, and I cant remember in what journal nor who the author was, but the author had made a comparative study between and 2500 tonsillectomized children and an approximately equal number of untonsillectomized children, with reference to the incidence of upper respiratory infection, and found that the nontonsillectomized children were freer from upper respiratory infection than those who had had their tonsils removed.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON [Chicago, Ill.]: Some of the worst cases of quinsy I have ever seen were in those with tonsils removed. The pus boils down in behind the muscles and an abscess forms.
DR. GRIGGS: That is right.
DR. FARRINGTON: There are many erroneous ideas about quinsy. Quinsy is not an abscess of the tonsil but of the peritonsillar tissue, and that is where the trouble comes. You are not removing the whole disease.
DR. WILBUR K BOND. [Greensfork, Ind.]: Now a lot of throat men are no longer satisfied with just removing the tonsils; they believe in going down deeper and getting deeper tonsils, claiming the first operation was not a success, and going down far enough to strip the lymphoid glands off the base of the throat, and they claim if the first tonsillectomy done was not satisfactory, the lymphatics around the external carotids are inflamed, and the reason they became inflamed is that the tonsillectomy in the first place was not radical enough, so they are making a “bumper” job out of it and going in for the second time to try to do a worse job.
DR. GRIGGS: They are curetting them all, Doctor.
I am not a heretic, but if I find a child post-nasally entirely blocked up with tissue which has no physiologic action, adenoids, I have had that taken out to give a child room to breathe, and to receive a normal amount of oxygen, but when it comes to tonsils themselves, I have been stubborn and as a rule have helped the child with homoeopathy.
DR. BOND: Did you use Agraphis?.
DR. GRIGGS: I have never had any success with it, but my best success has been with Calcarea phosphorica, and one of the newer remedies which is not used here, yeast, one of the non-lactose bacilli, Sycotin, which has done beautiful work for me.
DR. BELLOKOSSY: There is plenty of dishonesty on the basis of these operations. When there are no tonsils, then they will tell you that they are imbedded. Now, if they are imbedded, they must be somewhere, and I search and search and never can find tonsils when the child is examined who has “imbedded tonsils,” so with such tricks the surgeons treat a patient.
DR. A. H. GRIMMER [Chicago, Ill.]: There is one thing we have been told, and I think it is true: whether we have even homoeopathic remedies enough, as the child passes puberty and develops, many of these tonsils go away themselves, without help.
DR. GRIGGS: With the development of the gonads, they do. Yes, we have that.
DR. MOORE: I dont like you fellows to attack such a remunerative procedure. [Laughter].
DR. GRIGGS: You have seen your best days. You have made your money. Why worry? [Laughter].
