The sexual desire in both sexes is much increased under the influence of this remedy. This remedy produces bag-like swelling above the eyes and below the brow like Kali carb.
The spider poisons gives us some effective heart remedies, the most often indicated being Latrodectus mactans, the Black Widow, whose symptomatology and clinical application place it among the valuable remedies in angina pectoris. It causes extreme anxiety, screams fearfully exclaiming that she would lose her breath and die.
Violent precordial pain extending to axilla and down left arm and forearm to fingers with numbness of the extremity and apnoea. The left arm almost paralyzed with the pain. Pulse so fast it could not be counted and so feeble it could scarcely be felt. Expression of deep anxiety on face. Nausea followed by severe abdominal pain. Vomited black vomit copiously. With the nausea and severe pain there was a sinking sensation at the epigastrium.
The profound effect on the blood was shown. When cupped the blood flowed like water and would not coagulate, not even with the addition of tannin.
In thirty-six hours from the time he was bitten he drank three and a half quart bottles of the best rectified whiskey without the least sign of intoxication. A moribund state set in with the skin cold as marble.
It would be remiss not to mention Aconitum nap. among our valuable remedies in the treatment of patients suffering from disturbances of the heart, and not all of these troubles are acute and functional. Many chronic conditions of the glands, the blood, and the nerves, as well as the heart, will yield to the magic power of this medicine.
The restlessness, anxiety and awful fear of death, with the sudden violent onset of the disease with severe unbearable pain often associated with tingling or numbness of the painful parts occurring in full blood plethoric individuals furnish a picture needing Aconite.
Extreme sensitiveness to noise, light or jar. A condition of clairvoyance sometimes occurs predicting the day and hour of death. The heart palpitates with great anxiety with heat of body chiefly in the face and great weariness of limbs. Sensation of compression and blows in region of the heart. Inflammation of the heart, chronic diseases of the heart with continued pressure in the left side of chest. Oppressed breathing when moving fast and ascending stairs. Stitches in the region of the heart, attacks of fainting and tingling in the fingers, pulse full, strong, hard or slow, feeble, threadlike with anxiety. This is the banner remedy for the bad effects of fright.
We have only scratched the surface of the Materia Medica of the remedies used in the homoeopathic treatment of heart ailments. If we were asked to complete a repertory of heart remedies, we would have to include every remedy in the whole Materia Medica to avoid leaving something of use out of the list. Any remedy fitting the constitutional history and symptoms of the patient would be the needed one to bring about curative conditions.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
DISCUSSION.
DR. HARRY R. SACKETT [St. Petersburg, Fla]: I agree Dr. Grimmer 100 per cent, and I will have a chance to watch these cases as I have over these many years, and they are so individualized that you cant lay down a program except that they should get a special amount of rest. You agree with me on that. That is why I am going up right now and lie down for an hour, taking my own advice. (Applause and laughter) That is more than some folks here will do. I know that.
Individualizing your case not only is important, but also you should individualize your diet-and you are getting there that much faster, because more than half of these old birds that we have on our hands, like Sackett and a few others, are very prone to eat what they shouldnt but also, they eat at the wrong time, when they are overtired, and they wonder why they cant breathe.
I have had a case of that type in my neighborhood. I didnt see the case, but it was very much to the point, where the old fellow complained an hour or two after eating that he didnt feel well, so he went and lay down on the couch, and when his wife got to him, he was dead. That was a heart condition, of course, but his demise was caused by his eating what he should not have eaten, when he was tired. He had been moving from one place to another and doing what he shouldnt be doing at his age, and, on top of it, he ate what he shouldnt when he was tired, and that is what he got for it.
That is the one point I want to make, in addition to what Dr. Grimmer has already said, that rest is extremely important, and diet is also important.
DR. C. SEAVER SMITH [New Haven, Conn.]: Well, he learned his lesson. He wont do it again!.
DR. WILBUR K. BOND [Greensfork, Ind.]: In cases of angina pectoris, where the pains are referred down the left arm, I have used Latrodectus mactans. Less often we get the type of pain referred down the right arm, and we know that is very characteristic of Lilium tigrinum.
What I am interested in is the case that comes up every once in a while, not as often as another, in angina pectoris, but hits with a heavy, dull choking across the entire chest and is referred to the neck and down both arms. I should like to know the remedy.
DR. F.K. BELLOKOSSY [Denver, Colo.]: Dr. Grimmer gave a very fine summary of heart remedies, but one remedy we need much more often than we think in our cases is Aurum metallicum, which is always needed when there is hypertrophy in the heart or some accompaniment of high blood pressure and when people are easily made angry. It is not necessary for them to have an aversion to life; just angry is enough. Here Aurum is very often indicated. This anger comes from a defective liver that accompanies such heart cases-and maybe that is Dr. Sacketts case.
DR. ARTHUR WELLER [Orange, N.J.]: Coal tar derivatives are all doing a lot of harm, but in my humble opinion (and I am not alone) it is the cigarette consumption that is producing so many deaths from coronary infarction.
At the Long Island Hospital, five years ago, they made a careful resting of cigarettes on the peripheral circulation and found the surface temperature taken between the toes, and then let the candidate smoke one cigarette, and in fifteen minutes the temperature dropped one degree, and we could not get that published. You couldnt publish that in the lay press, not a bit of it, and they know it is a fact-constriction of the peripheral blood vessels-and what is your trouble in coronary infarction, and why are the cases mostly men and not women?
There are two reasons for that. The intima of the coronary artery is thicker in the male than in the female, and they thought perhaps the way the men lived, and they commenced with a lot of little newborn babies, and consequently it blocks easier, and that is an explanation for why we have so many more dying of this coronary infarction. If I lose one woman with coronary infarction, I lose ten men with it.
Now the women are smoking cigarettes. They didnt before the First World War to any extent, and I am wondering if we will have many women in the next ten or fifteen years with coronary infarction, as many as we have men today.
Cigarette smoking should not be left out of the etiology or coal tar derivatives, which are bad, but I think we should also have in mind the cigarettes, and you even have carbon monoxide in cigarettes.
DR. GARTH W. BOERICKE [Philadelphia,.]: In answer to the question that the doctor raised about pain in the chest going down both arms, my first thought in angina cases is Secale 12 X. You will find it very satisfactory.
DR. GRIMMER (closing): I agree with Dr. Weller 100 per cent. I did omit cigarette smoking but in a paper of this scope we were afraid of getting too much. We got plenty, in fact, I think too much, as it was, but I couldnt very well shorten it any more.
I do agree the doctor is right. There is no doubt, from tests that have been made carefully and scientifically, that the cigarette is one of the factors and it should have been mentioned in the paper under etiology; but there are other factors, too, that should have been mentioned, such as the speed of life, which are in a way heavier than before, but nevertheless, our pioneer forebears had many tensions in hewing out a new land and fighting nature and savage men and beasts, but their tensions were somewhat different from the modern day, so that although things are different, all those things together must enter in.
I think that there can be no question but that Aurum, too, is a remedy, but any remedy in the whole Materia Medica may come in. It I selected any, it would be Aurum mur. I think it is far more valuable than Aurum metallicum. Aurum mur. has cured a number of cases of heart disease that were organic in character.
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.