Hahnemann proceeded from observations he had made, and he has said expressly in the “Organon” that, should experience prove “opposite” remedies to be successful, such should be chosen but if it should justify “similar” remedies to be successful, then they should be selected. Not before he had made such experiments did this great physician lay down his principles, and we can say, through his consultation of Nature and his therapeutics based purely on natural phenomena light was thrown on the science of healing. No one will ever blow out the torch he raised; on the contrary, several movements of medical scholars unite to-day to raise it even higher; it will one day receive its central place, since it is this light that excludes uncertainty and that leads us to successes in the range of the possible. On the whole, we may understand, with medical therapeutics and especially with homoeopathic therapeutics, that by these remedies the biological production of protective matter is stimulated.
We have seen, however, that there are also other therapeutical methods. Even amongst the medicinal influences there are other conceptions that are noteworthy. But I shall now only make mention of the X-ray treatment. One sought therewith to kill the cancer, but others have adopted the opinion that the rays call forth a biological counteraction. Thus there might be also some medicines that directly bind the cancer poison and neutralize it, whilst we with our homoeopathic views believe in a biological counteraction, in the sense that the medicine is poisonous in itself, in a strong analogy as poisonous as the cancer itself, but that by virtue of its superior dynamic forces, which Hahnemann gave it in the diluting process, it volatilizes again after stimulating the organism. And just with ray treatment we can carry through this opinion, as it is an accepted fact that radium as well as Rontgen rays act as poisons; they are genuine poisons which do their damage by chemical irritation., And as regards the analogy, their effect is not infrequently a complete carcinoma, particularly on the skin. They injure all the tissues, cause, for example a clouding over of the lenses, and destroy the germinal tissues the ulcers they produce have often been recognized as genuine cancer and have killed the patient.
The ray treatment has therefore to be included in the range of out homoeopathic considerations. And so we are also fully justified in working with minimal doses of ray treatment by way of experiment., In 1911 Dr. Still man Bailey gave an address here at the Congress on this method of therapeutics, and I was exceedingly anxious to hear of the further development of this affair. I have made some experiments in this direction myself, which were very successful in the cases of angioma and lupus unhappily I was not in a position to proceed with them sufficiently in the case of cancer. It would be very desirable to hear something about the subject and how far experiments have developed, which I did not succeed in doing in spite of all my endeavours.
But to return to the properly homoeopathic medicines, you will have noticed already that their analogy-as regards their effects-with cancerous diseases is not such a very obvious one. Apart from radium and Rontgen rays, perhaps no medicinal remedy directly produces cancer, except arsenic. But a great many of them do so indirectly, especially the so-called carburets (carbon compounds). Even the tar on rabbits’ ears takes a long time and demands repeated irritations before the cancerous degeneration sets in; occupationally-produced can cancer frequently take decades are the injuries take effect. These effect in themselves lead us to the conclusion that chronic influences prevail chiefly in the generation of this disease, and that the analogy, which first becomes apparent, between a cancerous formation and any effects of a medicine, does not suffice to let us find the remedy which will really help. It is true, if the forces of conservation are still very good and the whole constitution little taxed, then a reference to such an analogy may lead to rapid success but with most diseases of his kind we shall have to look for the more deeply-rooted analogy, revealed in preliminary symptoms that have themselves for years already in the state of the patient’s health, and so we shall gradually discover signs, say of gout, tuberculosis, sycosis, symptoms which correspond with such medicines as lycopodium, arsenicum iodatum, thuja, nitric acid, and other which are in any case necessary for the carrying out of the cure.
At the same time and in between we may again make use of directly ulcer-creating medicines, such as phytolacca and others, and experience a good and rapid success; tuberculin, however, syphilinum, hepar sulphuris, sepia, and similar constitutional remedies will be mostly indispensable, because the connections between the cancer disease and the constitutional basic disposition must be loosened. To put these constitutional bases in motion, m and to pave the way for the working of Nature’s remedies, those toxins will be necessary in strong dilutions which go back, as it were, to earlier times, and which examine, if necessary, the organism right down to an inherited or inoculated disposition to the disease.
But there is still another special support given to homoeopathic therapeutics in cases of cancer, about which I have still a few words to say, viz., the one coming from isopathy. Some have already tried to create a preventive influence on the further growth of tumours with the cancerous mass itself; and in the same way a proceeding has come up by which one seeks to act favourably on cancer patients with blood, saliva, and other secretions, and even in homoeopathic preparations (Collet).
To Burnett also we owe the remedies of scirrhin and carcinosin, as used in high potencies. It is but during the last decades that more systematic experiments have been made on our side, viz., by A. Nebel, who gained separate results for carcinomata and sarcomata. Nebel proceeded from the viewpoint that cancer was an infectious disease with a very widely prevalent living virus, but which only sticks and grows where there is a constitutional predisposition, whether this be a predisposition in the sense in which Freund and Kaminer take it, namely, that abnormal acids in the intestines and the tissues deprive us of our natural protection, or in the sense of the tarrings, the continuous connection with carbohydrates, which finally make too great a demand on the protective forces.
Such unfavourable constitutional conditions must first exist, therefore the ground must be prepared. Now a biological viewpoint makes similar claims for all infectious diseases, except such cases where the microbes are inoculated straight into the blood. Then of course practically everybody is liable to infection. Now it is pretty much the same whether we take a living virus for granted in the case of carcinoma, or not. In any case it is the question of alien elements of irritation that operate as poisons, chemically or physiologically, whether they proceed from microbes or from some other definable matter. In many cases carcinoma has given rise to the suspicion that it is contagious.
Infectionists and non-infectionists could easily agree on a conditional infection, if one were to discover that a bacterial cause does exist after all. Our highly esteemed colleague, Nebel has identified and accepted the Micrococcus doyen as the infective cause of cancer. he says that the morbific agent exists in greatly diverse forms, and that it has been seen by many observers, but that the very diversity in the forms has deceived earlier observers. Nebel has now made an isopathic compound of the carcinomatous tumours, and given it the name of “onkolysin.” If we use any sort of serum of an infectious disease for healing purposes, as an isopathical remedy, we shall always find in it two opposite substances, viz., the expression of the poison as toxin, and the representative of the counteraction of the organism, the antitoxin. If one were to operate alone with the former, it would have the effect of the pure morbific agent, just as it is the case with the homoeopathic remedy.
If, on the contrary, one were to start by giving the antitoxin, one would be proceeding analogously to the serum of diphtheria and providing the diseased organism with the ready counter-poison, which it really ought to create itself, biologically. Both ways are open to cancer therapeutics, and as far as I know, Nebel is occupied with working out the antitoxin too as a serum. At present we have in onkolysin a toxin which is as pure as it can possibly be made, and which can be given and injected as a homoeopathic preparation. And so one rightly says of this remedy that it is isopathic, and yet, as a toxin, at the same time may be considered a homoeopathic one.
In any case, a preparation very closely connected with the cancer process! Nebel is conscious of mobilizing thereby the cancer toxins in the diseased organism, and he is therefore intent on assisting by so- called canalizatiors, means of secretion, as he considers it, the separating process, of rendering it harmless; many vegetable medicines are here in place, as, for example, chelidonium, hydrastis, phytolacca. It is not possible, in my opinion, theoretically to differentiate completely between the function of canalization and that of mobilization, for those vegetable medicines are also in themselves effective remedies against cancer, which in some cases may alone meet all requirements. But anyhow, it is a most important point of view that we are not to give onkolysin, as it is such a very active principle in the carcinoma, without having first provided for its reception by raising the vital activities. But as it is with onkolysin, so it is with other radical remedies too, which me may choose according to the exact indications in the sense of Kent. The organism will soon prove whether it is capable of overcoming the shock; else we may not hesitate to help on the process with, say, belladonna, china, ferrum, and other medicines in less high potencies.
