Consider Aconitum for wound pain and any severe pain with distress, worry, feverishness, restlessness, and looking for death. Chamomilla when one must walk the floor, and can scarcely or not at all speak civilly. (Besides, consider the whole case.).
Soporifics.-Sleeplessness is another evil little tolerated by patients and friends. Indeed, it is devitalizing, per se, quite as much as is pain. Two principal kinds of proximate causes, I think, are responsible for it, and by removing these it may be controlled. Firstly, physical discomfort, as from heat or cold, general or local, hunger, thirst, uneasy position, or pain. Careful and minute diagnosis of such causes is preliminary to removal, of course. Unconscious muscular effort, often trivial, is a common condition of insomnia. Holding up in the chin for free breathing is a common form of this; it should always be suspected and eliminated. Elevation of the head from the pillow for hearing or other purposes, if but to the height of a millimeter, suffices to keep one awake. Supporting a knee or even a finger will do the same.
The remedy is to “give way all,” and fall asleep. One who has tried this proceeding testifies that its effect is always instantaneous. Pain, as above discussed, again requires consideration here in the same terms.
Secondly. Mental preoccupation, pleasant as well as unpleasant, is equally inimical to sleep. Hence, monotonous, dry reading, or grave, heavy, muffled, uncertain sounds, as of distant machinery or vehicles, are often soporific, whereas high, short notes tend to the opposite effect. That form which attends nervous alertness and tension and morbid attentiveness is here particularly referred to. Gelsemium and Coffea cruda, also Kali brom., in potency, if no physical or other symptoms are superior in the case, are of the greatest service. If with malignant, fevers, Belladonna or Hyoscyamus may supersede these at times. In insanity, Kali brom., Capsicum, or Arsenicum, or, if with an omnes admirari, or else a very busy mood, Sulphur. In infantile colic, Magnesia phosph. In peritonitis, Arsen, Rhus., etc.
With proper precautions, avoiding conversation and other noises in or near the room (particularly with sensitive infants, little children, and nervous people), and following the foregoing suggestions, there will be little wish to tamper with objectionable drugs. In this connection, be it remembered that fatal brain disease after “summer complaint” in infants usually happens as a sequel to using some from of opiate.
Bathing or sponging the feet, hands, face, head, etc., with water, cold or hot, as most agreeable; brushing the hair; gentle patting or stroking of the surface; any of these may help, if agreeable and desired, in certain cases. Rhythmic movement of one foot in bed, by a friend, has proved very soothing in “brain fever”.
Constipation.-Full meals, full water-drinking, full exercise, and full opportunity for obedience to nature’s calls, in spite of those of business and pleasure, these are the sufficient conditions of a good state of the bowels unless these be the seat of disease. In the latter case, of course, the similar remedy also.
Sick regimen, of course, generally means empty bowels, and they should, therefore, until convalescence, with resumption of eating, be mostly let alone.
In health, or when about the house, there must be sitting down immediately after breakfast particularly not in a rocking chair. A walk, then, of five minutes, with the thoughts concentrated upon the intended evacuation, excluding all other subjects religiously. Then, ten minutes consecrated to the act itself, regardless of engagements of every kind, carefully avoiding reading, smoking, and all other diversions. This daily, with coarse-grained diet and the Homoeopathic remedy, will often suffice.
But sometimes this programme is impracticable, in which case use the so-called “gluten suppositories,” which, really, are made of only cocoa-butter, containing the relies of the pulverulent cocoa itself, an important aid in the aperient effect, as it would seem. These may be repeated every night or nigh and morning, or oftener, until success is attained. In a few cases the straining which follows may demand relief by a hot water enema, one and a half pints retained twenty minutes; repeated several lines in the day, if needed, until regular action is established.
In very feeble persons, especially if stubborn n rejecting these measures, fatal collapse may follow prolonged straining. This must on no account be permitted.
In surgical cases, laxative drugs are not out of place, as prior to herniotomy, etc.
Debility.-Again, our patients, in convalescence or otherwise, often clamor for a tonic. Good food, well digested, is the real, permanent tonic, of course. Tender, rare beef, whole wheat-flour bread, oatmeal, plain maltine, good milk, cream, buttermilk, butter, fresh eggs, and unfermented wine-these are the type.
Sometimes these are declined. If so, the best tonic and appetizer again is the similar remedy; for instance, China, Ignatia, Lycopodium, Natrum muriaticum, Nux vomica, Pulsatilla, Sulphur, etc.
When, however, the debility is the most commanding symptom, this indication becomes a leader. Here several drugs compete, viz., Arsenicum, Ferrum (the acetate), and China in the first rank.
Arsenicum, high, if the debility be out of all proportion to any attendant ill-health or lesion, with fear of solitude, desire for external warmth, < draft of air. One to four doses-all within six to eight hours, or once every six hours, followed by Saccharum lactis-have often transformed the scene speedily.
Ferrum aceticum 2x, one-half grain, three times daily, immediately after meals, as recommended by Dr. Bayes, of London, is exceedingly useful when anaemia with debility seems to account for a stubborn resistance to “similar” remedies. Among the cases in which it has served me well I will specify those children growing tall, full of activity, which exhausts them and keeps them thin, susceptible, weak, and pale.
China.-When exhausting disease or loss of blood has preceded the debility, and perspiration attends the least exertion.
The enthusiastic, practical, and successful cultivation of “the medical idea” implies a certain unfaith in “the surgical idea, and at the same time, a habit of subjective thought. Equally, on the other hand, the surgical idea displaces the medical, and its habit and its faith are almost wholly objective. The two are, at any given moment, psychic incompatibles- exclusive, dogmatic.
Either, however, is but a mental bias, not to be mistaken for absolute and universal wisdom, but understood to be a sharp limitation against it; yet, as being ever complementary, the one to the other, and both as being entitled to mutual respect and mutual sway. As in all other cases, man’s gravest errors herein lie more in lines of denial than in those of affirmation. False affirmations soon correct themselves; but denials are easily maintained, and, however erroneous, are of times incorrigible.
The general subject of Antidotes requires mention her.
Toxicology presents us with a series of chemical poisons, often corrosive or at least irritant, and with each a series of substances having the power to chemically neutralize it, or otherwise render it inert, insoluble, etc. Also, other substances, acting physiologically in antagonism to its after- effects. All are called “antidotes.”.
In Homoeopathy we discover another sort which, on the contrary, antidote each other in consequence of the similarity of their symptoms in pathogenesis or provings. These we call “Homoeopathic antidotes.” Our older authors, as Jahr and Teste, made great account of these, and in the introductory portion of Jahr and Possart’s Repertory, under each remedy are given its known Homoeopathic antidotes; also, those drugs which follow it with most frequent known advantage in therapeutics; and, lastly, those which it follows well; each being, of course, given singly. Such remedies, often completing a curative action already begun, are said to be (borrowing a term from mathematics) “complementary” to each other.
Nowadays, instead of direct efforts to antidote drug- aggravations, we commonly rely on the happy effects of these sequences, which practically accomplish the same end; always determined, as they must be, by the totality of existing symptoms.
After Allopathic medication, Prof. C.G. Raue advises to preface the Homoeopathic treatment with Nux vomica, one or more antidotal doses, as already mentioned.
A strict adherence to Hahnemann’s methods precludes the use of antidotes to Homoeopathic remedies in great measure. Given the “minimum dose” without undue repetition, and the true similimum being selected, drug-aggravation means simply that the similar drug disease is supplanting, and, therefore, curing the original malady, and under a placebo the “secondary vital reaction” will, ere long, prove it. By no means, then, let it be antidoted!.
The employment of antidotes, whilst proving a drug, is a great abuse, and goes far to vitiate the result, besides depriving the world of a full pathogenetic picture, in all stages. Young student provers, with college work to do, often thus destroy their own contributions to medical science. Moderation in dosage, with patient waiting, watching, and recording, is the solution of this difficulty.
