1. OPENING ADDRESS


Homoeopathy provides a method of approach, and a method of dealing with cancer which no other system known to me does provide. And I have not found any other system which gives proportionate results….


THE THERAPEUTICS OF CANCER By J.H. CLARKE

In opening this section of the activities of the Congress we are entering upon what is, perhaps, the most important of its functions. For the problem of cancer and its cure is the most serious problem confronting every practitioner of medicine at the present day. At the outset there are one or two points which I should like to make clear. Cancer itself, as I see it, is not a simple entity, but is the end-product of a great variety of different causes, of which “blood-poisoning” of many different kinds is one of the most important.

The next point is that cancer, when it appears, is a very bad enemy to run away from or to be scared of. Certainly it is a form of death; but it has been and may be arrested and the process revered. And this is a cure. Cures of undoubted cancer have been wrought by many methods. Numbers of cases have “cured themselves”- that is to say, have got well without anyone being able to say just how the cure took place. Nothing happens without a cause, though we may not be able trace it, but the agent of the cure being unknown, it is the custom to call such cures “spontaneous.”

But of all the methods by which cures of cancer cases have taken place secundum artem, homoeopathy has been by far the most prolific. Homoeopathy provides a method of approach, and a method of dealing with the diseased condition which no other system known to me does provide. And I have not found any other system which gives proportionate results.

The futility of present-day methods of “research” is amply borne out by the Cancer research Report published in the daily press of July 12. After expending 125,000, a veritable ridiculous must has emerged. Here is the “discovery”:-

“When a tumour of one animal, such as a rat, is inoculated into an animal of a different species, such as a rabbit, the serum of this second animal becomes highly poisonous to the rat- tumour cells, so that if a rat has two tumours, one of these can, under special conditions, be cured by injecting the rabbit’s serum into it, and after this the second (the untreated tumour) always disappears.”

The trouble with the “researchers” is that they are looking for a specific which will cure all cases or any case of cancer which may crop up. They might just as well look for a patent boot that will fit any and every foot. Cancer in one person, or one animal, as their own “discovery” shows-is a totally different thing from the disease called by the same name in another person.

This is all I have to say on the general topic. I will now relate briefly two cases which have occured recently in my practice.

Case 1.-In December, 1924, I was called to see a married lady, 52, mother of eight children, all living, the youngest being aged 9. The periods had ceased twelve months before. When I was asked to see her in consultation with her ordinary medical attendant she was in a nursing home recovering from an exploratory operation. She had had for some time a vaginal discharge, for which she was curetted a month before her admission to the home. Nothing specific was found in the curetted matter; only the uterus was enlarged.

The doctor who had had charge of the case from the beginning gave me this account of the findings when the abdomen was opened: There was a tumour the size of a tangerine orange springing from the root of the left ovary. There were nodules of new growth affecting the sacral bone, and a ring of new growth encircled the sigmoid flexure of the intestine without narrowing it. The surgeon, in the face of all this, very wisely decided to do nothing more than stitch up the opening which he had made. The suggestion made was that the patient should undergo a long course of X-ray treatment, with the prospect that later on a colotomy would have to be performed. My view was different, and the patient returned to her home and was put under my care.

The patient was fair, naturally very strong and active and cheerful, but sensitive and highly strung, and at times passionate. All her life she had been subject to rheumatism, especially of the joints, but was not at all crippled by it. For nine weeks she had had pelvic pains and pressing down in the hypogastric region, and occasional pains in the rectum and vagina.

As the patient had been a great meat eater I put her on an exclusively vegetarian diet, which she adopted without any trouble and loyally adhered to. The medicine I prescribed was Hydrastis 1, 3ij in 3vj, a dessertspoonful every four hours. This was on December 9, 1924. She improved steadily in all respects. On December 22, as she was sleeping badly and troubled with climacteric flushes, Lachesis 30, a dose at bedtime, was given in addition to Hydrastis. On January 13 she returned to take charge of her business, which is a very large concern, and she has been in charge ever since. There have been a number of ups and downs in the case since then, and a number of other medicines have been required, but to-day, so far as either she or I can tell, she is in perfect health and strength.

I understand from a colleague of mine, who has happened to come across the lady’s former attendant over another case, that the latter says, “Of course, the diagnosis must have been a mistake.” That may be-though it was clever of them all to make it after looking inside! But there is no mistake about the cure.

Case 2.-The other case is a shorter one and arose out of the first-that is to say, the patient was brought to me by another patient of mine, Mr. W., who was acquainted with the above history. The patient, Mrs. X, 75, had been in former years his nurse. She had always been strong and active. Years ago she had an ulcer on the left leg which healed. Later, the leg was broken in an accident and then the ulcer recurred. This was then “healed up” by external applications. For four months she had a rectal discharge of blood and mucus six times in the course of the day. For this she was sent into Charing Cross Hospital by her local doctor. There she was put through a very elaborate examination by speculum, &c., the result of which was the following verdict: “She has cancer nine inches up the rectum, operation necessary and immediate.” The patient had had quite sufficient suffering in the course of the examination to destroy her desire for further surgical interference, so her friend brought her to me to see if I could suggest anything different.

I failed to see any urgency about operative measures in the case, and told the patient so, to her great relief. As in the former case, I cut off all meat from the dietary and I gave the same medicine, Hydrastis 1, in the form of powders, two drops of the tincture in each, one to be taken night and morning. This was on March 8 of this year. These are subsequent reports:-

March 22.-” Is making great progress; discharge nearly stopped and she is eating much better than before.”

March 29.-This time she visited me. “Haemorrhage ceased. Bowels acted with Cascara. Stools a little at a time and very small. This morning more natural. Tongue rather dirty. Appetite better. Abdomen feeling quite comfortable. Repeat.”

April 26.-“Very well. Getting fatter. Repeat.”

May 24.-This was the last time I saw her. She was then perfectly well as far as I could ascertain. I dismissed her with instructions to let me know at once if in any way she was not a well.

In neither of these cases am I responsible for the diagnosis, and in fact, being of an indolent turn of mind, I am always grateful when any competent person will take that part of the work off my hands. Division of labour is quite fair, and the homoeopathic end of a case is quite enough work for one person.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. BURFORD asked Dr. Clarke if it was his uniform custom to give Hydrastis in every case of malignant disease, no matter of what duration.

Dr. CLARKE replied in the negative. Hydrastis had occurred to him as the most suitable for each of the cases to which he had made reference. In the first case he had given quite a number of things after the Hydrastis: Hydrastis had started the improvement, and the other things followed on. In cancer, and tumours generally, he did not find there was usually very much room for accurate symptomizing. Very often the tumours had not any symptoms at all. One had to go all round the case in order to get anything. He gave the medicines pretty low when the indications were not exceedingly fine. In one case, which he had put on record, he had given Kali’carb. because the symptoms in that case had been exactly those of Kali carb.; he should not have thought of giving Hydrastis in a case of that kind.

Dr. R.M. LE HUNTE COOPER asked if Dr. Clarke had noticed in his cases that the bowels had begun to act more naturally after he had commenced treatment? Dr. Clarke had mentioned Cascara in the second case, but had not stated whether afterwards he had noticed incidentally in the treatment that the constipation had disappeared.

Dr. CLARKE replied that the bowels did act naturally. The patient had been having the sort of perpetual motions he had described (which were really discharges) all day long. The Cascara had not been his prescription. The discharge had ceased, and the Cascara had not been his prescription. The discharge had ceased, and the Cascara had been given to start the ordinary motions. Under Hydrastis things had gone on perfectly comfortably.

John Henry Clarke
John Henry Clarke MD (1853 – November 24, 1931 was a prominent English classical homeopath. Dr. Clarke was a busy practitioner. As a physician he not only had his own clinic in Piccadilly, London, but he also was a consultant at the London Homeopathic Hospital and researched into new remedies — nosodes. For many years, he was the editor of The Homeopathic World. He wrote many books, his best known were Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica and Repertory of Materia Medica