Secale 226. Treatment of Complicated Syphilis.
One of those complications, that is most frequently met with when patients come to us out of allopathic hands, is the complication with mercurial symptoms, which it is of the utmost importance not to overlook, since we might otherwise be induced to continue the Mercury, and to cause great injury to the patient. We have stated before that mercurial symptoms have the peculiarity of disappearing in one place, under the effects of repeated doses of Mercury, in order to break out again at a subsequent period in some other part, and perhaps with more violence. A misapprehension on the part of the physician might lead him to continue the use of Mercury, in the supposition that he symptoms, before him are syphilitic symptoms, until finally, completely bewildered, be no longer knows what course he ought to pursue. If a patient comes to us out of allopathic hands, the first thing the homoeopathic physician has to do is, to inquire what remedies the patient has used. If the still existing chancres, exanthems, or other ulcers are accompanied by itching; or, as was the case with Hofrichter’s patients (see Allium hom. Zeit., vol. 35), if the symptoms manifest themselves in places where we are wont to see the effects of Mercury located instead of syphilitic phenomena, for instance on the margin of the tongue; or if the ulcers exhibit the milky-white color of Mercury, instead of the copper color of syphilis, we may rest assured that we have a combination of syphilis and mercurial disease to deal with, and that we have to resort to other drugs than mercurial preparations. At this moment, I am treating a boy who has hereditary syphilis, and who, when he came to me from his allopathic attendant, was affected with a distinctly marked syphilitic ecthyma. The violent itching of which he complained, led me to doubt the nature of the case. In order to obtain light on the subject. I have the boy Sacch lact., requesting the mother, when she called again, to bring all the boy’s former receipts along. These showed me that the boy had not only been treated with large doses of the Iodide of Mercury, but had likewise taken strong baths of Corrosive Sublimate. I now prescribed ten grains of the Iodide of Potassium in four ounces of water, a dessertspoonful every four hours, and for the last ten days the case has visibly improved.
Beside the combination with mercurial symptoms, syphilis can likewise appear combined, or rather associated, with other diseases (See No.204 and 111-114) in which case the following rules are to be observed.
(1) If, in the course of an acute or chronic syphilis, some other acute malady supervenes, such as typhus, small pox, measles, scarlatina, etc., the course of the syphilitic disease is usually suspended for the time, and for third reason, the other supervening disease has to be treated first, until it is either cured, or convalescence is, at any rate, far advanced. The same remark applies to non-miasmatic, acute inflammatory diseases, such as pneumonia, hepatitis, angina faucium, and other acute inflammations; these, too, have first to be removed before the treatment of syphilis can be continued. The supervension of syphilis, while an acute disease is running its course, could only take place, provided such a thing is at all possible, if an infection that had been caught shortly previous to the acute disease, should break out during the course of the latter; but even in such a case the intervening acute disease had to be seen to first, before we institute any special treatment for the syphilitic malady.
(2) If an attack of acute or recently-acquired syphilis should take place during the course of a chronic malady, such as itch, herpes, scrofula, tubercles, etc., we first attend to the syphilis, without troubling ourselves about the chronic malady until the syphilis is cured. The same course is to be pursued, if, while we are treating some other chronic malady, a syphilitic infection that had been acquired years ago, and had remained in a masked condition, should suddenly break out into an active disease; in such a case we first attend to the syphilis, and, after this is cured, resume the treatment of the chronic affection.
(3) If, during the presence of acute and recently-caught syphilis, a new chronic disease, like the itch for example, supervenes, we leave this latter disease unattended to, until the syphilis is cured. If the itch should e caught while we are managing and old, chronic, or constitutional syphilis, the itch is to be cured first, after which we again direct our attention to the syphilitic disease.
THIRD CHAPTER.
PHARMACO-DYNAMIC OBSERVATIONS.
1. REMEDIES AGAINST THE DESTRUCTIVE CHANCRE-VIRUS.
Secale 227. Precursory Remark.
In the introduction to this work we have asked the important question, with what right we adopt a single syphilitic contagium, and yet believe that our patients are cured and protected against all further attacks from the syphilitic virus, even if they never took a single dose of Mercury, which, however, is our chief anti-syphilitic remedy, and were treated with entirely different medicines. Our readers, if they have followed us to our discussion up to this point, must have noticed that, in the third division of this work (No. 194-198), we have shown four periods in the existence of chancre, representing four different conditions or metamorphosis of the chancre-virus, the tow first of which are still possessed of the faculty of transmitting the contagion as embodied in their own forms, whereas the two latter can only perpetuate their existence by sending off shoots in the same tainted organism. We have
FIRST: Contagious period, or Primary Syphilis: 1.The ulcerous or chancre-breeding virus: 2.The fungoid or condylomatous virus, breeding fungoid forms.
SECONDARY: Non contagious syphilis: 1. Development of the new off-shoots.
2. Retrogression into a masked condition, stage of involution.
Inasmuch as the original chancre-virus undergoes, in each of these periods, as we have shown above, a metamorphosis, not only according to its form, but likewise according to its pathological essence, it must seem natural that the remedies which, in the first of these periods, have power to annihilate the virus in its very being, as it were, are no longer adapted to the other period, after the essential nature of the virus has undergone a complete modification, or actual change. Hence, it is exceedingly questionable whether Mercury, which is a true specific for the primary chancres, is equally adapted for the protopathic or consecutive products of the fungoid period, such as mucous tubercles and fig-warts, or even for chancre itself, after it has become correspondingly altered in its essential characteristics, in consequence of the fungoid metamorphosis. For the fungoid chancre, and for all the protopathic or consecutive symptoms that are specially characteristic of this modification, Nitri acidum, Thuja, and such like remedies are specifically curative agents. Hence, it is, that the curative action of the Iodides against the primary and consecutive products of the chancre-virus is exceedingly unreliable, and even without effect whereas they produce distinguished curative results when brought to bear upon almost any product of the secondary, no longer contagious syphilis. We have shown, in No. 224, that the sphere of action of these specifics is not as sharply circumscribed in nature as it seems to be in print. Mercurial preparation will afford help in secondary syphilis, if the secondary period sets in while primary phenomena are still existing; or if, in the secondary period, ulcers or other products break out, that seem to denote a tendency on the part of the organism to return to its primitive or primary condition of existence. This rule apples whenever the signs of the different periods are mixed up together. It would be more correct not to classify remedies in accordance with the different periods, but in accordance with the characteristic phenomena of these periods. Instead of saying : Remedies of the primitive, consecutive, secondary syphilis, we should classify the remedies as follows: Remedies for the destructive syphilis, the fungoid syphilis, the off-shoots of syphilis, and for constitutional syphilis. This is the classification that we shall follow. In this article, we shall first mention the remedies for the destructive or primitive form of primary syphilis; these remedies comprehend all the mercurial preparations, from which, however, we exclude Cinnabaris, as belonging rather among those that are more particularly useful for fungoid vegetations. Mercurius vivus, Mercurius sol., Mercurius precip. rub., Sublimates corrosives, Mercurius precipitatus, Mercurius nitrosus, these being the only mercurial preparations, that are commonly used by homoeopathic physicians, of which we here present a list.
Secale 228. Mercurius Vivus and Mercurius Solubilis Hahnemanni.
Although some practitioners have denounced Mercurius vivus as absolutely useless as a remedy for syphilis, and are only willing to allow the solubilis exceptional rights in this direction in the place of which they have sought to substitute the much more dangerous Mercurius nitrosus too many splendid curative results obtained with these remedies are found recorded in the writings of our School, to justify the contempt with which some of our modern critics have been fit to treat them. It is true that Mercurius vivus, if we mean to obtain thorough results from its use, has to be rubbed up for a long while, for the reason that its curative action is proportionate to the solubility of the preparation; if this rubbing is continued sufficiently long, the vivus is preferable to any other preparation of Mercury. As long as I prepared my own medicines, I have always got along with Mercurius vivus alone; at present, however, when I can no longer spare the time for this kind of work, I likewise use Mercurius solubilis. The following symptoms were cured, with scarcely a single exception, with Mercurius sol., by the following observers: AEgidi, Attomyr, Baudis, Bernstein, Bigel, Buchner, Goullon, Hartlaub, Hartmann, Herrmann, Knorre, Kramer, Kreussler, Liedbeca, Cl. Muller, Rummel, Sommer. Schreter, Schroen, Seidel, Stapf, Tietze, Thorer, Trinks, Vehsemeyer, Wesselhoeft, Wolf. The principal symptoms that have been cured by these practitioners, as well as by myself, with Mercurius sol. are the following.
