(The following is taken from Schussler’s 24th Edition, published in 1897)
Magnesia phosphorica and Natrum phosphoricum. – The possibility of leucocytes undergoing cheesy metamorphosis is due to the fact that they contain albumen and fat. A conglomeration or mass of leucocytes that has not yet undergone cheesy degeneration constitutes scrofula, while tuberculosis is the state after such generation. Hence scrofula is the first, tuberculosis the second. Much can be accomplished in almost any stage and in all scrofulous diseases by the use of the phosphates, selected according to their characteristic indications.
In regard to tuberculosis, Magnesia phosphorica deserves special attention, and the latest experience endorses it as a remedy for lupus. As long as no cheesy degeneration is present Natrum phos. is able to release the imprisoned leucocytes.
A mass of leucocytes undergoing cheesy degeneration furnishes a nutrient soil for bacilli, and hence must be cast off and eliminated as a foreign body by normal cell action. Every healthy cell possesses the property of recognizing and repelling inimical substances. Perfectly healthy cells are not found in the neighborhood of tubercles. Such must be formed through the action of the indicated phosphates, which bring about their new cell formation and also enter into their composition.
Koch’s Tuberculin cannot effect such results, since it is a substance foreign to the cells and hence is repelled.
The expulsion of a tubercle by means of the normal cell action is the expression of Nature’s power of healing. The possibility of such an natural recovery can readily be conceived by any rational man.
NOTE.
In a former Edition, the 20th, we find the following, which we append as a note to Scrofula and Tuberculosis.]
Tuberculin, form which the tubercular lymph has lately been manufactured, will yet have to undergo many metamorphoses before it is discovered that they who use it are on the wrong track.
“Man dreht sich rechts,
Man dreht sich links,
Doch hangt der Zopf stets hinten.”
There are still to be found, here and there, physicians, who, infactuated with the bacteriological fad, seek to cure by means of tuberculin diseased tuberculous conditions.
They point to their successes, but that these rest upon errors, even in the face of their numerous failures, they are unwilling to doubt.
It is not excluded from possibility that bacilli might be found in the sputum of any one suffering from a simple bronchial catarrh, but otherwise perfectly healthy, which had just been inhaled and retained in the thick secretion.
An enthusiastic follower of Koch affected with the bacillus mania will at once upon the discovery of the bacilli in the sputum conclude that tubercles are present in the lung tissue, and, following this erroneous conclusion, will bring at once tuberculin to the field.
After the cure has been accomplished, which is to say, when the catarrh under favorable influence of external conditions has cured itself, the patient, believing himself to have been affected with tuberculosis, willingly pays the expenses of the hunt for the bacilli.
Bacilli which are found on healthy cells will be cast off and eliminated. Bacilli which, as above mentioned, meet on a catarrhal secretion in the air passages will be expectorated with secretion. Bacilli meeting in a mass of leucocytes, which have undergone cheesy degeneration, adhere and thrive therein, because this mass, being inactive, cannot throw them off. It becomes their breeding place. As no one can with certainty say whether such a pathological condition is present or not in his organism, it is wise to avoid conditions which may lead to such conditions.
and the bacilli act as the cause of disease. However, if this nutrient soil, in consequence of rational means, is cut off and eliminated then the bacilli will go the same path, or be left to the same fate as the cheese mites – when consumed.
If the bacilli did not require this mass of cheesy degenerated leucocytes for breeding ground, if they could breed in healthy places, then they would soon undermine the whole organism and tuberculosis, indeed, would not have time to become chronic and the patient would die before both lungs would have been undermined by the bacilli.
It is different with the germs which cause acute infectious diseases, measles, scarlatina, typhus, small-pox, etc. These germs cannot find a pathological ground whereupon to breed, and they are proportionately quickly cast off and eliminated by healthy cell action.
A wise Daniel may yet prepare a remedy from measles or scarlet fever germs which will be just as worthless and perhaps as harmful as tuberculin, and the antihydrophobic virus of the French Pasteur, with which not only does he seek to cure hydrophobia, but even epilepsy. Pasteur, who was a celebrated chemist, but no physician, was ignorant of pathology and therapeutics, and reminds one of the tailor of Louis XIV, who one day handed to that monarch a memorial on the condition of domestic economy and internal politics.
It is self evident that one must be well grounded in physiology, physiological and pathological chemistry, pathology and pathological anatomy in order to discover rational methods of cure. Chemistry alone is not sufficient, it has other problems to solve.
Tuberculin may, in some cases, effect favorable changes in certain affections of short or long duration, but no cure, and in many cases aggravations are produced, shortening the patient’s life.
Recently in the Berlin Medical Society Dr. Henoch reported his experience in the children’s ward of the “Charite.” He first alluded to the incompetence of statistics and statistical tables, which prove nothing to the practical physician. Here the experience of individuals only can be decisive. Even also the term improvement signifies nothing, since the very meaning of “improvement” is subjective and involuntary. However, it is different with the marked aggravations as he observed them. The 22 sick children of his division which were treated with Koch’s lymph with the utmost care and precaution, not a single case of even a doubtful improvement could be traced, but several cases, on the other hand, were made worse in consequence of new complications brought on by its use.
Improvements or apparent improvements can easily be explained. Tuberculin can, like any other experiment, produce an increase of expectoration, and perhaps a quantity of bacilli will be separated from their soil, and naturally a decrease of expectoration follows the so-called secondary action. If such secondary action lasts for some time then the general health of the patient will improve, and with good appetite and proper care he will gain in weight.
The joy caused by such a favorable turn will last until the secondary action is exhausted and new colonies of bacilli settle in the infected soil.
And this will soon occur, because the nutrient soil of the bacilli cannot be eradicated by tuberculin but still remains present.
The endeavor to eradicate the infected soil by means of tuberculin recalls a proverb of the Poet Haller, who says of mankind:
Unselig Mittelding von Engel und von Vieh,
Du prahlst mit der Vernunft, und du gebrauchst sie nie.
Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Michigan Homeopathic Medical College. Member of American Institute of Homeopathy. In addition to his editoral work he authored or collaborated on: Boericke and Dewey's Twelve Tissue Remedies, Essentials of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Essentials of Homeopathic Therapeutics and Practical Homeopathic Therapeutics.