Every one should be prepared, on short notice, to furnish information to patients, which is often indispensable, and occasionally all sufficient, to cure, from the dietetic standpoint.
Pathological symptomatology having furnished the facts and indications, of diabetes, for instance, it is more important and effective to regulate the diet, excluding starches and sugars, than it is to give medicine, however well chosen.
In diarrhoea, and the like, it is frequently essential to stop the use of all course-grained cereals, as granular oatmeal, all sorts of vegetables or fruits; or at least, to strain out of a desirable vegetable soup, all unreduced lumps, which are indigestible and aggravating.
On the contrary, in constipation, these substances are most salutary, and are to be prescribed. Also, the profuse use of water, especially at night and morning. Bulky meals, not too rich or heavy, and often late at night may be serviceable. Eating fruit at bedtime, and just before breakfast, with the assistance of water drinking, is aperient in effect.
Anti-fat diet, and building-up diet, etc., all are the outcome of discriminating study of this kind of symptomatology; and all should be carefully taught in the medical colleges, and at length. This is now much better done then of old; but there is room for improvement.
7. Curative Symptomatology is that which expresses the amendment of function and of tissue-formation during the treatment of disease. Applying to drug-treatment the light afforded by the foregoing discussion, what signs have we, as Homoeopaths, to guide our judgment of its good effects?.
The first, of course, is diminished tissue and organ-lesion, as to extent and intensity. Secondly, improved psychical state. Thirdly, increased physical strength. Fourthly, correction of functional errors. These, we have, in common with all physicians. The opposites are, a priori, unfavorable.
Again, in paroxysmal disease, as neuralgia, intermittent fever, etc., we have an improved state of secretions, shown by the tongue, the skin, the bowels, which is a sine qua non, in cure, here. Further, the amelioration of the attacks, the shortening of the same, the post-ponement of recurrences, the lengthening of the intermissions, the removal or improvement of complicating ailments, the improvement of the intermissions, as to special symptoms and general well-being.
On the other hand, aggravation of the paroxysm may indicate only the Homoeopathic action of the drug, and require the entire cessation of all medicine except a placebo and a watchful waiting for the ensuing vital reaction to cure.
In constitutional ailments, a gain in flesh, diminished complaints and other familiar signs are at hand to show curative conditions. Normal temperature may be added, in all sorts of cases. .
These are, besides, in Homoeopathic practice, certain subtle indications which experience has proved to be reliable. Thus, susceptibility to environment and to other circumstances, often annoying, disappears. Dr. Lippe used to say of the Natrum carb. patient” He, must carry an umbrella when the sun shines hot; you give him this medicine, and he no longer carries or needs his umbrella”.
Again, in any disease, especially the acute, if the patient falls asleep soon after taking a dose of Homoeopathic medicine, it is pretty good evidence of its curative fitness, and a promise of good to follow.
Once more: if, in all local symptoms, the person is no better, or even worse, yet in the general sphere feels “more like himself,” or, as Dr. H.N. Guernsey phrased it, “not locally better, but ‘all-over better;’ “he is better, and patient waiting under a placebo, will later realize universal improvement. Even in diphtheria, with assurance of proper selection of remedy, and a single does given, high, in consultation; finding, on a second visit, some hours later, that all was in status quo, this great prescriber remarked: “The patient is certainly no worse; therefore, the bad tendencies are arrested, at least, and that means, he is better; continue the placebo;” and the third visit justified this decision.
The same authority told a scared doctor, who had, in a case of broncho-pneumonia in a child, repeated Bryonia, 200, until brain symptoms supervened, “Well, doctor, you’re nothing more to do; give Sac. lac. and wait, and you’ll cure the case; but don’t spoil it by giving any more active medicine.” A few hours demonstrated that he was right. It is easy to :”spoil a case;” let us beware therefore,. of undue officiousness in critical cases.
Thus, pathogenetic symptoms, “read between the lines,” may be most pleasing to the expert; always provided the drug be indeed the similimum.
Further” when the “inmost” of the person, the nobler organs, and the psychic nature, grow better, and when the symptoms of the malady seem to move from within outward, or from above downward, the patient is better. And yet again, if the latest symptoms (especially in chronic diseases) improve first, followed by the others, in the inverse order of their appearance, a true and permanent cure has commenced, and must be let alone.
8. Toxical symptomatology is fairly well taught now in all medical colleges, and we need only to refer, besides, to the standard works on poisons, under this head.
9. Pathogenetic Symptomatology has already been hinted at, above. But in requires distinct elaboration. Diagnostic and prognostic, in part, it may be best studied, in these relations. In drug provings, and in therapeutic medication, it is likely to exercise the medical mind to its full capacity, But that capacity is too often but puerile, even full capacity is too often but puerile, even among well-educated physicians; and hence, the better the teaching and drill, in the college should be.
Lack of faith in drug power, especially in attenuated doses, emasculates the student’s mind at this critical juncture-for such it is. Such a one should first clear his horizon substances, as Silica, Lycopodium, and many more, and of that familiar condiment of our tables, common salt, or Natrum muriaticum, and the Austrian re-proving of the latter, sweep away al of the reasonable doubts of candid Homoeopaths; as witness Dr. Watzke, the superintendent of the last named.
He says, “I am, alas! (I say, alas! for I would much views)-I am compelled to declare myself for the higher dilutions. The physiological experiments made with Natrum muriaticum, as well as the great majority of the clinical results obtained therewith, speak decisively and distinctly for these preparations.” [See Hughes’ Pharmacodynamic, 1876, page 562.].
Pathogenesis goes hand in hand with curative drug-action, Hahnemann’s original reason for attenuation was the diminution of the former, and was impressed that this did not, by any means, abolish, but only refined it.
Yet, more; he claimed that no dose yet known is so mall, that it is inferior in strength to the natural to be cured. Still further, he held that the cure depends upon that fact, and that it produces, always, a disease of like nature, and superior strength, which supplants the original disease, and thereby, alone, can the Homoeopathic cure, so far as we know, for effected. (Organon, 24 to 34; 279 to 283). In 29, he says, “an artificial morbid affection is substituted, as it were, for the weaker similar natural disease.” He also indicates that a drug-disease, being brief and self-limited, provided the doses be not toxic, it is soon afterwards terminated by the vital force, and its own self-limitation.
One of our daily difficulties in Homoeopathic practice is to reduce the morbific drug-action to comfortable limits. Any additional method of limiting and controlling this would be welcomed. One, that promises something, is to give the doses, so far may be, immediately after meals; but this is limited in its applicability. Other timing of doses may help.
Now, in general, what signs can be considered as evidence of drug-pathogenesis, either in a proving, or during its therapeutic administration. Our standard of comparison has been already set up, viz; Physiological Symptomatology; and to that we must refer. Mens sana in corpore sano-the consent of all healthy organs and functions-produces a synaesthesia-a total sense of well-being; and any deviation therefrom means: “I am sick;” and whenever in drug, or other morbid influence has preceded such deviation, it surely has same part, small or great, in its causation.
No one agent, however, can claim the whole of such causation. No physiological error would be possible, of course, without a personal, individual susceptibility, and this individual response. Again, no such effects was ever independent of the existing environment. In a drug-proving, then, “pure drug- symptoms” are an absolute impossibility; and every symptom is the outcome of the three-fold activity, viz; of the individuality; of the environment, after all, however). Now, the symptoms appearing at the apex of these three forces from the so-called drug- pathogenesis; and the three must always be reckoned with.
