He went back to his home town, and I suppose he still remains well. Homoeopathy in the treatment of rheumatic conditions, rheumatic fever, beyond any doubt is the only method of curing them, but I think we have to be positive and not permit them the luxury of any other medication.
DR. WILBUR K. BOND [Greensfork, Ind.]: In those old, chronic, scarred valves, Calc. fluor. 6x gives almost as good results.
DR. A.W. HOLCOMBE [Kokomo, Ind.]: Again I want to impose a little bit on you. Up in Hoosierland, where the poison ivy and Rhus tox. grow around every fence corner, we have an abundance of poison ivy cases, also rheumatism.
It has been my observation in the last sixty years up there, that nine out of ten of those cases of rheumatism will start about two years after they have been cured, by suppressive measures, of the poison ivy.
I can tell, when a man comes in, if he is not too old a man, whether he has been poisoned with poison ivy or not. He might have had gonorrhoea some time in his younger days, and many of them do, even with us! But nobody can prognosticate the ultimate effects of Rhus tax. poisoning.
The skin symptoms can easily be gotten rid of, but it goes deeper and far their and longer, and the longer, the “worser,” as the old man says. They always can prognosticate just about what time it is going to rain.
Two-thirds of the cases of rheumatism I have in Indiana are fine weather prophets, and I trace that back where they had Rhus tox. poisoning, some of them all over their faces, hands and bodies, which has been suppressed first with one thing and then another.
Some of the most intractable cases I have had are those that have had these shots. What do they call it?.
DR. SUTHERLAND: Ivyol.
DR. HOLCOMBE: Ivy-something. Those are some of the most intractable cases to cure that I have found.
DR. SCHMIDT [closing]: Thank you, Doctor, for giving me the opportunity to close.
I would like to thank all the commentators for their comments. The reference by Dr. Holcombe to Rhus tax., ivy poisoning and rheumatic fever, is the first time I have heard of it,. and I think it is something very interesting to consider.
In California we have a great many of those cases because poison oak is very extensively spread all over the state.
An interesting feature is that the consensus of opinion of the allopathic school is that most of those extracts, whether by injection or otherwise, mostly by injection, are no good.
We had a staff meeting at the University of California Medical School attended by about 200 doctors, and there was a symposium on this subject. They all concurred in the idea that it was better to abstain than to use them. It was rather interesting.
Of course, acute rheumatic fever is a specific entity as compared to the multiple manifestation of chronic rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis and those allied diseases, and there is a little difficulty.
I was very much interested in your cases, Dr. Sutherland. I myself had been affected they by that disease when I was about twenty-five years old treated by my brother, who cured me with Lycopodium, I never had a relapse and never had any heart disease as a consequence.
I was looking to an extent, to learn from the experience of other prescribers whether they saw many heart complications in those who never received salicylates, because I remember in my days, back in the 20s, it was almost the rule for those who got heavy doses of salicylates, to get cardiac complications.
