He returned one month later feeling very well, blood pressure 140/90. Because of recurrence of a chronic condition of bronchial asthma, other remedies have to be given from now on. Half a year later the blood pressure showed a new rise. Again Natrum mur. 200., one dose, with the same effect as before. Recently, five years since, the patient was reported as being very well.
Female patient, 58 years old, came to the office complaining about daily attacks of dizziness and congestions to the head. Blood pressure 220/110. Glonoin 200., one dose, brought the systolic pressure to 180 in two weeks. The pressure went up again to 190/105.
Inquiries about her life and her emotional attitude finally furnished the information: All her life basically that life is not worth living. Aurum met. 200., one dose, brought the blood pressure immediately to 150/90 with disappearance of all symptoms, and for months it has stayed this way.
Female patient, 60 years of age, complained about dizziness. Blood pressure 205/110. Worried about a young niece for whom she felt responsible. Frequently suppressed anger. Disliked salt but had to eat rather salty food during a vacation of two months. Natrum mur. 200., one dose. Blood pressure came down to 150 and has remained that way for half a year.
Woman, 82 years old, had suffered from high blood pressure with very obstinate occipital headaches, for a number of years. Both cleared up after Carbo an. A sudden shock, provoked by bad news, made the systolic pressure climb to 200. Gelsemium 1M, one dose, brought blood pressure down within 24 hours to 150, with general calming effect, and relieved a situation potentially dangerous at this age, instantly.
A female patient, 70 years old, developed a cold with nightly attacks of cough and mild wheezing, persisting and reminding one of cardiac asthma in the initial stage. Kali carb. relieved but not permanently. The blood pressure stayed at 200/100. After quite some time of treatment of the bronchial condition, the patient reluctantly revealed a deep emotional involvement in a love affair which made her particularly unhappy because of her age. Ignatia 200., one dose. The next time I saw her, two weeks later, the blood pressure was 130, and the patient felt better in every respect, including her mental distress.
A female patient, nearing her eighties, was greatly worried about her blood pressure, which was around 170. She was in the habit of letting things drop. She had constant fear of a stroke. Apis 200., single dose. The blood pressure came down to 140, and after the one dose of Apis, stayed normal for the past five years.
All these examples are commonplace to those who are familiar with Homoeopathy. They merely demonstrate that the correct remedy chosen according to the law of similars will be truly curative-as in so many other conditions-in arterial hypertension.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK.
DISCUSSION.
DR. ROGER A. SCHMIDT [San Francisco, Calif.]: I should like to think Dr. Gutman for this outstanding paper and make a few remarks about high blood pressure, at least as I have experimented with it in my own practice. I think it is an element that is very difficult to evaluate as to the action of the homoeopathic remedy because there are so many factors influencing this very thing. I the first place, I am sure that over 90 per cent, perhaps 95 per cent of my patients, have a higher blood pressure the first time they come to my office than they have at the second visit, which shows the emotional tension, and for the last year or two, especially inpatients who come to be treated for high blood pressure, because that is their main symptom, I have tried a test that has proved very valuable also in prognosis.
After I have taken the tension and, lets say, it is 240/150, I ask the patient to make some hyperventilation, and within 30 seconds in some instances, the pressure will fail between 20, 30, to 40 points, within 30 seconds, and when it does. I notice that those patients respond very quickly, and you get very agreeable and quick results with them. But, if, after hyperventilation, there is no fall in the blood pressure, those patients will prove very resistant and difficult to help on that particular score.
I always take the trouble to take pressure on both sides, because there are sometimes very important discrepancies, and if you take the pressure sometimes on the right side, where it is always high, without thinking about it, next time you may take in on the left side, and find it is 5 points lower, and you think you have gotten great results, and will not realize that the pressure on the left side has always been very low, so I think those points have to be taken into consideration.
DR. ARTHUR WELLER [Orange, N.J.]: If Dr. Rabe were here, he would say he has been using the posterior pituitary, and I wonder if Dr. Gutman has used it. I have not tied it, but Dr. Rabe, I am sure, would have talked about it if he had been here today. I think it is well worth looking into the posterior pituitary. I think Dr. Boerickes pharmacy has put it up, and it has given good results in the Montclairs.
Dr. GUTMAN (closing): I have not used the posterior pituitary and on the whole I am not prone to prescribe on one symptom, particularly a physiological one because, as Dr. Schmidt has stressed, we have to consider the great complexity of factors involved always in hypertension and therefore we can see how important it is to try, if possible, to get the true picture, to base our picture on the totality of symptoms, and then really relieving the cause, but I would agree that these remedies which physiologically raise the blood pressure, and which I enumerated, might serve, so to speak, as a sort of nosode in the cases where we are suck or do not find clear-cut indications.
