As a young locum tenens I was left with an armamentarium of 30th potencies of the efficacy of which I had little or not knowledge.
I can never forget my first patient-a little, thin old maid about thirty-five years of age who did not weigh over one hundred pounds. Her skin was the colour of the brown paper in which the grocers of that time wrapped up lard, etc. I looked at her hands and the finger-nails were bluish and her hands were cold. She complained of obstinate constipation, headache, great prostration and pain in the region of the liver and she was always cold.
I made the best examination I could and detected a slight enlargement of the liver and thought I could find some splenic enlargements. On further questioning I found that the patient had at one time had malarial fever-that her present condition was of long standing and that while she always felt cold she had special attacks of chilliness every morning between ten and eleven oclock.
I thought here is a case with an old malarial cachexia and I have nothing but these 30ths to treat it with, for I don;t know what there may be in the closet, and anyhow if there is nay virtue in potencies I should think that Nat. mur. might help her. I told her to take the medicine and report in a week, but I never expected to see her again.
To my surprise, about ten days afterward she came into jaundiced hue was gone, her headache and other pains hand disappeared-she had a good appetite and (strangest thing of all-to her) her bowels were moving regularly. Her manner was no longer depressed, but she felt buoyant and that life was worth living. In all my subsequent years in the practice of medicine I have never had a case in which results were more marked in so short a time.
