While the knife removes the cause of the difficulty, the remedies remove many serious effects, and afford relief to the suffering nerves unknown to any other method of treatment. And not only this, but the healing of wounds and convalescence are more rapid and perfect when thus treated than when opiates and poisonous drugs and dressing are used.
Inasmuch as it is becoming ever more evident that the sufferings of women which gynaecologists we called upon to relieve are very largely neurasthenic, or of nervous origin, and that even the removal of pathological conditions, especially by surgical means, does not always give complete and of times little or no relief, we find new and increasing reasons for endeavoring to find Homoeopathic remedies to meet these conditions, and I believe it is because our remedies, rightly applied, act upon and through the nervous system chiefly that their effects, even when intended to act upon a pathological condition, or a certain organ, have been more potent than the cruder methods which shock or numb rather than regulate the nervous forces.
I feel that it would be hardly just on my part not to state that the specialists (or perhaps I need speak only for myself) do not adhere strictly or exclusively to highly attenuated medicaments nor to the more common method of administration per oris. Experience has taught me that in treating the diseases and derangements of the pelvic organs I can get much more decided and speedy effects by applying glyceroles, triturations, cerates, or in some cases crude substances to the mucous or denuded surfaces, the medication being selected to correspond with the symptoms just as in any other class of cases, or for the ordinary manner of administration. And we can maintain with the highest of authority, hahnemann himself, that such medication is no loss Homoeopathic than giving the same remedies for similar conditions by the mouth.
While in our surgical cases, by the use of Calendula, Hypericum, Hamamelis, Arnica, etc., rapid healing is promoted, suffering is greatly lessened, and with the further aid of other indicated remedies before and after operations, opiates are rendered unnecessary in nearly all cases, and convalescence thus promoted and hastened; and while in our office practice we are curing active congestion of the uterine organs, attended by the characteristic symptoms of Belladonna by a local application of glyceroles of that drug, the passive or venous congestions with Hamamelis, syphilitic ulcers with Mercurius corr., indurations or hyperplasia with Iodine, etc., and doing it much more surely and speedily than it can be done otherwise, who shall deny that Homoeopathic gynaecologists are as truly and effectively demonstrating the power of Homoeopathy as they who prescribe these same remedies in attenuated form and by the mouth for more like conditions?
Feeling as we do that we have a right to claim much for Homoeopathy in gynaecology, it must still be admitted that much more might and should be accomplished in this field; and I am granted the privilege of indicating some of the means by which more definite and convincing results may in future be obtained.
First of all, we must have more thorough provings of our remedies by women, and with competent observation of their effects upon the pelvic organs. As it is, we have very few pathogenetic symptoms to guide us in selecting remedies, and hence empiricism plays too large a part in our use of remedies; and while we may claim that the remedy which effects a cure is therefore Homoeopathic, unless we have a proving to correspond to our case we cannot establish our claim before an impartial jury.
We have at present, more than ever before, women who, as members of the profession, must realize the importance of this work, and some measures should be adopted to establish and endow, if necessary, a school of proving to which they might be induced to lend their aid, where thorough work and reliable observations could be secured and recorded. When this has been done, it will enable the general practitioner to cure a still larger proportion of incipient diseases without the aid of the gynaecologist, and at the same time will give to the specialist greatly increased means of successfully treating the more serious diseases of women, and rendering surgical treatment a much less frequent necessity.
Secondly, there should be greater accuracy in the observation and reporting of cases in order to make clinical experience a more reliable guide. Accurate diagnosis by physical examination is essential in every case if we are to pretend to state the pathological condition. Yet so many instances are on record in which cures of definite conditions, as of endometritis, or even tumors, for instance, are claimed, in which it is found upon investigation that no examination was made and hence no knowledge possessed of the pathological changes present, that it not only renders these reports worthless as evidence, but it throws suspicion upon all much claims.
And again, cases in which no records are kept, and which may have occurred some considerable time previous to being reported, are so likely to be smoothed over and rounded out with the lapse of time that they take on a form and appear to have a significance which could not be depended upon and which destroy their value as evidence. It is important, then, that we keep written records of the cases we report, and that we have a definite knowledge of the objective as well as subjective symptoms in each case.
Who can doubt that with these conditions, with the greater knowledge of the Homoeopathic remedies which thorough provings by educated women would afford, a showing could be made of Homoeopathy in gynaecology which would surprise even its most ardent friends. This we may hope for at some future World’s Congress, but at this time I can only ask, in closing, that the army of family physicians here present substantiate my claim that Homoeopathy in their hands cures a large proportion of women’s diseases and renders its adherents much less subject to such ills than those otherwise treated; and by the gynaecologists I hope to be reinforced in my claim that we have in Homoeopathy a means of curing many conditions which baffle all other resources, and that in aid of surgery it has proved itself a reliable and powerful ally.
DISCUSSION.
A.C. COWPERTHWAITE, M.D.: As I heard this most excellent paper read, the thought came to me, what if it were possible to- day to have presented to us a panorama of those silent yet actual witnesses to the benefit that Homoeopathy has been to gynaecology. We ourselves would be astounded at that which has been accomplished without even our own knowledge. At the same time another thought struck me in a little different direction, and that was, that in all that Homoeopathy has done for gynaecology it has not done one-half, or one-tenth, of what it would have been glad to do if it had only been given half a chance.
We must admit that when a man becomes a specialist, his tendency as the first speaker of the afternoon said, is to become intense specialist, and so we find that while not all, a great many gynaecologists become so wedded to their instruments and their mechanical measures that they forget the power of the armamentarium that they have behind them.
I am glad to hear a paper like this, even if our brother does prescribe his remedies in crude doses and apply them locally. I have always been one of the number that believe we had to do that. I remember I had to get out of the hotel at Milwaukee where I was one of the charter members of the International, because I would not subscribe to the doctrine of never using local applications.
But at the same time that does not fill the bill entirely and exclusively. We should not for one moment forget that there is something in the powerful action of potentized, or if you prefer, “attenuated” drugs, that reaches beyond and deeper, and does more than the mere local applications of drugs, no matter how beneficial that may be to certain local conditions that may exist.
I remember reading some years ago a very beautiful account, written by Dr. Mercy B. jackson, of Boston, now deceased, of her own experience of the effects of Sepia upon her own person when suffering from uterine displacements. She said that she could feel that medicine, by its mighty power, raising the uterus into position, and it did it and it stayed there; and there are plenty of Homoeopathic physicians who have had similar experiences in their own practice. I want to ask of you to-day candidly, how many gynaecologists do you suppose carry Sepia around with them as one of their chief anchors in the treatment of diseases of women? I never have known one yet. I do not care how use it, we have in this one remedy, Sepia, one of the grandest remedies of Homoeopathy and yet one of its most neglected ones.
Now to come to the point made in this paper which I consider of far more benefit to us here to-day as being of some assistance in helping us develop something in this line than any other part of this all valuable paper. That is the suggestion that has been made to the ladies. I have often wondered why the lady gynaecologists did not band themselves together for the good of their common sex. Why it was that, knowing as they do know the tortures that are being continually perpetrated upon their sex by gynaecologists, they do not put their heads together and try to see how to modify these measures; yet there is very little tendency in that direction.
