DR. EDWARD C. WHITMONT [New York, N.Y.]: I think Dr. Grimmers paper should draw our attention to a neglected remedy. Kali cyanatum is one of the most deadly poisons we have, and the strongest poisons are the deepest acting remedies in potency. It has an incomplete proving. It has a few symptoms in Boerickes Materia Medica, and is mentioned for injection in pains of cancer. Apparently it is just a medicine having intractable pains.
I recall only one instance of its use, in a child about to die from a brain tumor, where the child was Tuberculinum child constitutionally, but it was way past its stage. It was also paralyzed in the lower part of the body and bladder, so far as I recall, and Kali cyanatum, in repeated doses, did a great deal to relieve the pain, also a pain that was completely intractable by the ordinary analgesics. The child died, of course. It was taken out of our hands, but I shall certainly take this paper as a reminder to see what we may be able to dig up to help us with a remedy, because all the potassiums deserve a great deal of consideration.
DR. CHARLES A. DIXON [Akron, Ohio]: I think somebody should remark on any physician who can carry a case of prosopalgia for five or six years. I dont know how he hangs on to his patients that way when they are in pain. Wonderful!.
DR. F.K. BELLOKOSSY [Denver, Colo.]: These cases of hemorrhage form the nipples in older women are generally malignant. There is a papilloma that forms inside the milk duct and it can become malignant, and it is possible that this case of Dr. Grimmers is a malignant condition of the breast.
DR. ROYAL E.S. HAYES [Waterbury, Conn.]: I hope the lesson that Dr. Grimmer gave us in that first case that was reported wont be lost on us. I think it is a lesson for the most experienced prescriber. The most critical time is when you think of changing a remedy, and it is a curious thing that symptoms will come out at that time that seem so like a picture of a remedy, and still we should not change. I should like to have that explained. There must be a modus vivendi there that isnt clearly understood, because very often when we do give another remedy on a new totality, apparently it comes out and then we find it is a mistake afterwards.
DR. LUCY SWANTON CLARK [Cleveland, Ohio]: I had a case of a young man this past winter, who complained of headaches all the time, frontal, sometimes coming down on the face, and the symptoms seemed to indicate Sulphur, which I gave, and that would clear up the headache for about a day, and it would come back. He had had the headaches for two years and for three years had been working in a garage.
There wasnt anything in Boerickes Materia Medica on carbon monoxide, but a remedy given for congestive headaches, so I had the blood tested for carbon monoxide poisoning, and it was negative. The blood pressure was low but he had a blood count of five-million something red count, and 95 per cent hemoglobin, and the laboratory analysis indicated that the hyper hemoglobin and increased red count were due to some chronic poisoning, so I sent for the Carbonum oxygenum, I think it is, and that has cleared up the headaches. I had to work from 30. to 200. to the 1M, and he takes a powder of the 1M once every two weeks and has been free of the headaches.
I have wondered if he will need Sulphur, probably, to finish off the other, or how long does that run on the Carbonum oxygenum, on the carbon monoxide. I shall also be interested in seeing what the blood count is perhaps a month hence-if that has been altered. The blood pressure has come up from around 90 to 115. His general feeling is much better. Of course, there is a question in my mind whether he should change jobs or not, but it is a pain around the head that was obviously due to another type of poisoning, which has been helped by a poison.
DR. T.K. MOORE [Sharon Center, Ohio]: Dont you think in this case there was a continuing cause, and we cant do much for that dyscrasia?.
DR. CLARK: Nobody will believe it is carbon monoxide poisoning, though.
DR. MOORE: I have seen the fellows around garages with disturbed conditions; a lot of them come right out and blossom, as soon as the garage fumes are taken off through pipes.
DR. F.K. BELLOKOSSY [Denver, Colo.]: Now, this is not quite true in every case. The poison may continue and the homoeopathic remedy will help just the same. I have had a case of epithelioma on the lower lip. I gave him Silica, while he continued smoking as much as before.
DR. GRIMMER (closing): I want to thank all of you for your comments, and I am especially thankful to Dr. Hayes for bringing out what I hoped would be brought out, a discussion about changing the remedy when we see a patient evolving in a chronic condition such as we have in tic douloureux at its worst. It was a mistake to put in those remedies, though the patient was suffering dreadfully and it seemed urgent, but I am sure had we repeated the remedy in a lower or higher potency, or waited without anything for a few days, we would have seen that patient come through.
Dr. Dixon asked how we keep patients that long under pain. It is obvious, it is after they have been the other rounds, and at last have got relieved, and she was improving, and while the pains were hard, they kept getting lighter and the attacks were getting farther apart. That is the only answer to your question.
Dr. Hayess comment I wanted to bring out.
DR. DIXON: Say something about Dr. Bellokossys insisting that that is malignant.
DR. GRIMMER: He is right so far as I can see. I could find no other evidence of malignancy except the electronic test showed a malignant condition, which the patient never knew and never was told of. Another doctor saw the case in an acute condition, and this doctor sometimes cooperates with me, an old school doctor, but a very good diagnostician, and a little bit surgically inclined and tried to get the patient to go to surgery if she got my consent. Well, of course, she didnt get my consent, because I felt that was a curable case, and it was.
One thing more about this remedy-that is what I wanted to add-Dr. Whitmont brought out the question about its relationship to malignancies. It has cured cancer of the tongue. It is one of the remedies to remember in those very conditions, I think it was Dr. Kent who mentioned it. I had one case I confirm cured one case of cancer of the tongue with Kali cyanatum, so it is a value remedy to study.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.