Natrum mur. acts quickly, as well as a long time, and that is another reason why it works in such deep-seated chronic conditions, if given high enough, I dont start the treatment of chronic cases with CC or 1M as they dont go sleep enough. Mostly I start with CM. Only in case I am afraid of the expected reaction or in acute conditions I start with 10M or lower.
According to this, Natrum mur. may now look to you like a “jack of all trades,” Yet it is not. I only wanted to emphasize that it is much oftener indicated than it appears from our text books and repertories. When these books were written, the degenerative diseases were not so widespread as they are today, hence the need for remedies like this one was less urgent and the search for them less intense than today. Natrum mur. fills this need satisfactorily. It is my chronic “sweetheart,” the results it gives me are so good. If you think of it and study it when treating these chronics, you will discover it to be also your most reliable friend.
DENVER, COLORADO.
DISCUSSION.
DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON [Chicago, III.]: Mr. Chairman and Friends: Listening to this paper makes me wish that some one of our officials would appoint me Chairman next year of the Bureau of Materia Medica so I can get the Doctor to write a paper like this on some other remedies.
I have never listened to such a masterly review of mental conditions and general features. We all know this is one of the outstanding examples of how potentization can give us some valuable and far-reaching remedies. Even though it is used in food, even though it is essential to life, its chemical action and its physiological action are absolutely essential.
The Doctor said that its action in the body did not depend entirely on the osmosis, However, it does principally, and I think that this accounts, to a certain extent, for some of the opposite conditions, I was very gland he brought that out, conditions that we entirely opposite. It shows why Natrum mur. is the chronic of Ignatia.
This substance, as you know, was so essential to life that even in the early days, in places in the Orient, for instance, where it was scarce, it became even a medium of currency and exchange, and a little hit of salt was very valuable. It became an emblem of hospitality.
There is a direct relationship between the toxic action of the crude action of the substance and the potency. I dont know whether any of you have realized this or not but, to confirm it, I will give you some examples. Salt is the first one. Salt can cause death. The Chinese, in early years, used to commit suicide with it. A despondent lover who wanted to do away with himself mixed up a quart of concentrated solution of salt and drank it. He did penance, I have no doubt, because it must have been a horrible death.
We all know what the effect of the lack is on animals. The cattle in the barnyard, the deer out in the prairie become emaciated. Their hair becomes dishevelled, and they will go miles to find a salt lick. The farmer, in early days, used to put a great big chunk of rock salt alongside of his horse or his cow. Neither animal took too much of it, but it helped since he didnt find an awful lot of salt in grass and in hay.
Arsenicum (arsenious acid), when applied to the skin, causes horrible burning. In potency it cures ulcers and other manifestations which burn.
Kali bichromicum in its escharotic state causes ulcers and it will cure them. Another our you probably dont know, there is a substance, a proprietary drug, called Formadon that has been used hypodermically and more or less successfully for the relief or cure of arthritis.
An old school physician friend of mine was converted to homoeopathy on that account, because the originator said the homoeopathic preparation was the best to use, showing that his preparation was nothing more than Formic acid and he said “Use the 30x”.
So my friend used the 30x in many cases, and he even cured cases of deafness, much to his surprise, which evidently were due to arthritis of the ossicles in the ear. he told me that sometimes he used the 200x but he did not always, because the burning was horrible. He had used many different preparations in distilled water and no particular pain or burn would result, but when he used Formic acid 30x there was a burning under the skin. When he used the 200x it was very much worse.
This is about all I need to say on this remarkable remedy and this excellent paper. I hope that next year the Doctor gives us another one, not on Natrum mur. for he has treated that exhaustively. [Applause].
DR. A.H. GRIMMER [Chicago, Ill.]: I want to command the Doctor for this excellent paper, especially some of his original observations, and his stressing the peculiarity of the remedy in general, the peculiar phase of presenting a sort of orderly disorder throughout the case. That is characteristic.
Listening to the remedy, with its specific and striking effects on the mentality and emotions, one wonders if the world wouldnt be better off, if everybody in the world wouldnt be benefited by a potency of Natrum mur., because we are in such a state of disorder and confusion and uncertainty. I wouldnt wonder but what a dose of Natrum mur. to every one of us wouldnt help us all get into a better state.
All jokes aside, it is meant in al seriousness because the Doctor has shown the possibilities in this remedy. For juvenile delinquents and a lot of other things we see these days, it probably would be a most valuable asset.
Another feature that the Doctors didnt bring out-he couldnt bring out all the particular features of a remedy so wide and so tremendous as this is-but dont forget Natrum mur. in the most severe types of headaches.
Many different forms stemming from many different causes, will find wonderful relief, I remember when I worked in the mines as a young man. I was just studying homoeopathy. Anybody who has had blinding headaches will know what a headache is, as no other thing makes worse headache.
I dont have any Natrum mur. then but I got salt and I ran it up myself to the thirtieth potency. It was remarkable how quickly Natrum mur. cured the headache. not only my own but those of my fellow miners.
I have since seen it applied in the worst types of migraine. Headaches that are throbbing and beating and terrifically severe, headache accompanied with high blood pressure are relieved frequently by Natrum mur.
This is wonderful remedy and the Doctor has given us a most wonderful description of it.
DR. J.W. WAFFENSMITH [New Haven. Conn.]: I also would like to thank the Doctor for this excellent paper. As President of this worthy organization during the last year, it was my privilege to appoint the chairmen of the different Bureaus and I took great pleasure in appointing Dr. Bellokossy as Chairman of the Bureau of Pediatrics, and I requested him to give one of his usual, desirable papers.
I wish to say something in reference to commencing a case with a CM. potency. It is, of course, more or less idealistic because each and every one of us desire to go into the very innermost coverings of the spirit and hit directly to the center and get quick reactive results. But we must remember that we are living in a different world today in these large cities than those who are practicing more or less upon ranchers, sheepmen, farmers, and men who are out in the open, who are doing hard, physician labor.
They, it has been my experience, are capable of sustaining these extreme potencies. But when you get into the large centers of population, where people are continuously in a jitter, continuously being battered by the effects of this tremendous war of nerves, it has been my experience to move slowly and take a lower form of potency to begin with.
Naturally, we are trying to maintain the confidence of the newer people that are coming to us, those people not acquainted with the philosophy of homoeopathy. They are the people, generally, who want quick results-not saying that we do not get quick results. But if they are allergic, and highly allergic, and get an active reaction, those people, not being grounded in our philosophy, will leave us.
There is another side to that, namely, that if they leave us, we will lose a permanent opportunity of benefitting them, of teaching them homoeopathy, because we are the recipients more than ever today, of the chronic type of disease. These people, if we get them started in a mild way, gradually can become indoctrinated with the philosophy of homoeopathy. We not only retain them but we have the opportunity of curing them.
This is no criticism whatever but it seems to me that sometimes we fail to think of the more and better form of judgment in the application of our remedy. Many times I have found, by following this course, that I have retained patients which otherwise I would not have. We have such a wonderful range of potency, from the tincture on to the MM, and who knows how far it can go or how deep? We have never gone into it. Therefore, I merely want to present this not as a form of criticism but just as a matter of policy.
