The comparison that between this metal and the virus, Psorinum is unique. I admit that I had an intense prejudice against the latter remedy, but experience among the poor children at the Five-Points House of Industry, and later on at the Ophthalmic Hospital, overcame it entirely, and one need only study the wretched, puny, prematurely aged, with discharges of a cadaverous odor from the ears, stinking diarrhoea, stench of the very person, which is indescribable, but well recognized by those who have had experience with these cases who present themselves at our institutions, to be profoundly thankful for any remedy that will correct such conditions.
Chenopodium Anthelminticum.-Why should this vegetable select not only the auditory nerve but particular portions of it? Notice these symptoms taken from Allen’s Encyclopaedia:.
“Deafness to the sound of the voice, but exquisite sensitiveness to the sounds of passing vehicles. He remarked as each vehicle rolled by that it sounded like the roaring of immense cannons right into his ear; also annoying buzzing in the ears….During all the time his deafness, as described, was progressive, and became so pronounced as to make it impossible to talk to him. Still, there was the same kind of sensitiveness to other sounds. For example, when the tea bell rang, though he was on the third story, three flights from where the sound came, he, without notice from members of his family, to their utter astonishment, got up and walked as deliberately as ever into the dining-room.”.
Here we have a picture of profound effect upon the auditory nerve, and, more than that, not an abolition of function, but a modification which shows deafness to voice, but sensitiveness to both high tones and low tones. Clinically, it has proved curative for the low tones of the organ, 16- and 32-foot pipe, and should be thought of when there is in the patient the perception of high tones, like those of small bells, whistles, etc., and also a shrinking from low tones, the intermediate tones being either good or absolutely lost.
I have given thus rapidly pictures of remedies acting upon the sensory nerves of the tympanum, not involving the mucous membrane to a degree of inflammation or suppuration; also, remedies affecting the tympanum in such a condition of acute inflammation, and one remedy affecting the auditory nerve entirely independent of conditions of the middle ear.
These statements do not need any argument. They are too well known to those who are interested in this subject. If this be so, the question then arises, why is it that the profession does not use these remedies and similar remedies? Dr. Sterling has referred to one gentleman who does use them, and who has used them for years, to my personal knowledge, but when he offers them to his colleagues in a paper read in their hearing, they simply state that these are the remedies and the methods of Homoeopathy. Let the gentleman take them and go with them to those who practice sectarian medicine.
The simple fact is that we are none of us free from prejudice, and we are not likely to be freed from our prejudices. Here and there peculiar circumstances of association or accidental conviction lead one to the investigation of physiological medicine, which is Homoeopathy, and such persons modify their methods, if not their relations.
Perhaps it is not well to ask more in medical lines than we do in other lines of experience and conviction.
