In this connection I wish to mention that the old physicians knew a “haemorrhoidal diathesis.” According to their description they frequently found inpatients with piles a chronic pharyngeal catarrh. The proving pictures of Aesculus in the symptoms totality corresponds to the “haemorrhoidal type,” and it is here especially helpful. But this also means that it is not a panacea for haemorrhoids.
When a patient suffers from piles, is nervous, overworked, filling up with coffee and alcohol, is a gastro-intestinal neurotic with constipation and ineffectual pressure to stool, then Aesculus is not his remedy, be needs Nux vomica 4x to 6x, which helps the haemorrhoidal condition, but also the stool, the gastro-intestinal sleep better, can accomplish his mental tasks, does not need the stimulants, in short the entire person feels better. We do not treat the haemorrhoids as such, but the entire patient who also has haemorrhoids, which perhaps are his most prominent complaint.
Patients with haemorrhoids who incline to diseases of skin itching of skin, where constipation or diarrhea alternate, should have Sulphur 3x to 6x. haemorrhoids during pregnancy yield well to Sepia 4c to 6c potency and Collinsonia canadensis 2x. Patients suffering from varicose veins and haemorrhoids, and report such conditions to be, “a family affair,” should have Fluoric acid 6x (this should be dispensed in a gutta percha bottle), and they possibly need Calcarea fluorica 4c to 6c potency in trituration, which improves the constitutionally weak walls of veins.
Aloe also is an important remedy for haemorrhoids, especially when they are worse during diarrhea. This symptom seems paradox, but I have seen a number of just such cases, and Aloe helped promptly.
Where haemorrhoids are external, inflamed and extremely painful, Muriatic acid 3x or Ammonium carbonicum 3c are helpful, but the latter should be freshly prepared.
You might say that your old school therapy in haemorrhoids is much simpler. That is sure. It consist (if I may exaggerate a little) aside from dietetic and hygienic directions, in reality in placing in the patients left hand a bottle with some lubricating oil, and in his right hand a box of suppositories, after a digital examination has ruled out an ulcerated tumor or other intestinal affection which resembled a haemorrhoid. Homoeopathic therapy in comparison is more tedious, and demands a much greater knowledge of pharmacology. However, one who is painstaking in treating individual patients suffering from haemorrhoids, using suitable homoeopathic medicaments, including constitutional remedies, will be fully recompensed by happy results, for he cures many whom the schematic old school treatment did not even relieve.
The question might be asked how we came to our constitutional remedies. Bier was right when he said that they were not the result of our proving in the healthy. In fact, they are the conclusion of our practice.
It is an old experience that certain human types, due to bodily conformation, incline to particular pathology constitutionally. In course of tie it devolved that in our remedy treasury we have agents of such deep action and far-reaching power, that with their aid we can straighten out such constitutionally caused disturbed health. In this sense such remedies as chalk, iron, phosphorus, arsenic, sulphur, graphite, barium, nux vomica, etc. can be considered constitutional remedies.
BERLIN, GERMANY.
