TEDDY, my faithful friend and companion, a magnificent Irish Setter, the jolliest of dogs, was very ill with distemper. The vet. had called twice a day, his temperature had been rising steadily, he had been given the usual mixtures, but he got worse and worse. His temperature had risen to 108, pneumonia had set in, the dog looked very ill, all the mucous membranes were swollen and inflamed, thick mucus ran from his eyes, nose and mouth, breathing was laboured, the position was desperate. I was keeping the dog in a well heated bathroom and wanted to put him into woollen underclothing of mine to keep him warm.
The dog, the most playful and the most lively of animals, could no longer stand up, he did not wag his tail, he refused the most tempting dainties. He showed clearly that he had given up the fight against the insidious disease, that in his opinion all was over.
I telephoned to my friend Dr. Clarke, who recommended Aconite. I gave him a dose of Aconite IX and then rushed fish with which to tempt him, but I thought that he would never again be able to eat. Two hours after I looked into the bathroom. To my amazement Teddy got up, wagged his tail, started frisking about and asked for something to eat. The situation had been saved. The pneumonia cleared up, but the dog showed that he was very uncomfortable and in pain.
He constantly changed his position. Restlessness would have indicated Rhus toxicodendron, but I imagined that the restlessness came from bone-ache and as the symptoms of throat, mouth, nose and eyes greatly resembled that form of human influenza which calls for Eupatorium perfoliatum, I gave him a few doses of that medicines IX with great benefit. In record time Teddy completely recovered and practically no sign of his completely recovered and practically no sign of his desperate disease was left, a triumph for Homoeopathy.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.