I therefore ordered Apis in the 30th potency, and this rapidly cleared up the case. There was no further trouble with the cough.
I have given this case in some little detail in order to show that the nosodes cannot be used in a lazy, penny-in-the-slot method, with any hope of great success. Nosodes are an enormous help, and the knowledge of their power and use saves a very great amount of labour and trouble in symptom-matching; but the Law of Similars demands the most devoted service of its adherents, and refuses to give its best results to anything like slipshod practice. Nosodes are subject to the Law, like any other homoeopathic remedy, and it is necessary for the prescriber to know when and to supplement their action at any moment. Labour- saving devices and generalisations are of much value to the homoeopath, and are eagerly welcomed; but it must never be forgotten that “eternal vigilance” alone is the price of success in homoeopathy. This is the real reason why there are not more homoeopathic doctors. It is so much easier for teachers of established medicine to denounce Homoeopathy ex cathedra than it- is to master it; and it is so much easier for their students to accept this judgment as sufficient than to investigate the matter for themselves, that there is no immediate likelihood of a great accession to our numbers.
CASE VIII.
Master R., aged 6, a very delicate, nervous boy, with a bad family history behind him, including lupus and cancer in his paternal grandparents, was under me for constitutional treatment, and was brought to me periodically when each prescribed course of treatment was finished. His mother brought him in the usual way on December 18, 1905. This time there was something new. He had what his mother described as a “fearful cough and cold” for a week. He had also had headache, and had vomited. There was much expectoration with the cough, and I found wheezing all over the body’s chest. He had a suffused and puffy look about the face.
I asked the mother if there had been any cases of whooping- cough in her neighbourhood. She did not know of any; but she had her suspicious, and she had always had a dread if whooping- cough for her boy, as her husband’s only brother had died of it. I told her I believed it was the beginning of whooping- cough, but I did not think she need be at all alarmed. I told her to keep the boy quiet. He was to have no fatiguing walks, but he might walk out in the forenoon when the weather was fine.
Rx Coqueluchin 30, gl. x.; aq. 3viii.; a dessert spoonful every four hours.
December 29th.-Eleven days later the boy was brought to me again. There was a great change in his condition, and this is what had happened. The characteristic “whoop” appeared after a few days, generally in the early morning. He retched twice in the street after he had the medicine two days, and he brought up a great quantity of glue-like expectoration. The attacks in the street were so characteristic, that careful mothers of families who happened to be in the street at the same time prudently passed by on the other side, to avoid carrying the infection to their own children.
The whooping only lasted a day or two; the sickness only occurred a few times. The expectoration had ceased three days before his second visit, and now he hardly coughed at all. I examined his chest, and found that the signs of catarrh had completely cleared up.
Repeat, night and morning only.
In this case the remedy had acted by developing at once the crisis of the disease, and then wiping it out. The same thing happened in Case IV., but the cure was longer in being effected, as it had been longer in developing. In Case VII. the cure was brought about in a little over a week.
The patient was able to return to school when the holidays came to an end.
CASE IX.
On February 20th, 1908, I was asked about a boy of 10 by some relatives of his who are patients of mine. The boy was and is exceedingly delicate. He lives in the country and is under the care of a local medical man who treats him in conjunction with a London specialist, who had diagnosed the child’s condition as being catarrh of the duodenum. He has a large abdomen and is always constipated. For this he takes Cascara and malt, and he passes stringy mucus with the stools. His mother, who is herself delicate, having a spinal trouble, has always had terror of whooping-cough for her boy, as she was convinced he would never survive it. And now the dreaded event has apparently arrived!
A week before he was noticed to cough for the first time. The next day the cough was quite troublesome, and the local doctor called it bronchitis or catarrh. It was impossible for the boy to be brought to me just then, and I was asked if I could do anything on the verbal information received. I said I had no doubt I could, and prescribed Coquel. 30 every two hours.
February 24th.-Cough not quite so incessant, but the fits are longer when they come. No whoop. Sometimes there is expectoration but no sickness.
Repeat.
February 29th.-“Cough certainly lessened. Fits neither so long nor so frequent. The doctor says his chest is quite clear. The only development has been an indrawing of the breath between the fits of coughing, which gave the impression that a `whoop’ was coming.”–It was thus evident that the remedy had assumed complete control of the disease. The report continued :-“The patient has a white tongue and has come out all over spots, apparently as a result of his chronic stomach weakness.”
Repeat.
March 3rd.-Better. Coughs still less. He now developed one of his throat attacks, and Belladonna 30 was given as well as Coquel.
March 13th.-The mother wrote to tell me her boy was almost well. “I have felt so grateful that the cough was cured without getting worse, as my boy is very delicate.”
If Coqueluchin had ever done anything else besides piloting this delicate boy- tuto, cito et jucunde through what might otherwise have been a very critical illness, it would have established its claim to the gratitude of two persons at least- that of his mother and myself. I have never seen the boy; but he was under the supervision of his ordinary allopathic attendant, though he was taking my remedies.
CASE X.
Miss X., 28, a rather delicate young lady who had been under my care for some time for indigestion and other troubles, complained on October 18th, 1907, of a cough which had come on after a sore throat. She had been very much disturbed by the cough, which started with a tickling in the hollow of the throat, which nearly choked her. There was expectoration in the morning. The cough was worse in the evening, worse by talking and by lying down. At times she has a fight to get her breath, and once she did actually whoop. I ascertained that she had been in contact with children who had whooping-cough and had no difficulty in diagnosing the trouble-or the remedy.
Rx Coquel. 30, discs, I every two hours.
October 28th, 1907.-Cough very much better. None at all except in the morning, and then only very slightly choking.
Very soon after this the cough was completely cured.
CASE XI.
Mrs. N., a lady bordering on 80, wrote to me from the country on May 31st, 1907, to say that she had a cough for five weeks. There was choking with the cough, and after a fit she felt as if she couldn’t get her breath. There was a good deal of whooping-cough in the village-which to me sufficiently accounted for the cough of Mrs. N.
Rx Coquel.30m every four hours.
June 4th.-Cough very much better.
June 7th.-Cough less troublesome, but still has choking fits when she does cough.
Rx Coquel. 200, three times a day.
June 24th.-Much better. Rarely coughs now. Chest all right.
CASE XII.
A delicate lady, about 40, who used to be croupy as a child, took a severe cold on April 17th, which kept her confined to bed for a week. This was doubtless influenza. On April 30th I saw her, and she was then suffering from a violent choking cough, very deep-sounding- a cough of the kind commonly started and left by influenza. The resemblance to the whooping-cough type was close enough to make me think of Coquel., which was accordingly given in the 30th potency, a dose every two hours.
May 2nd.-Cough much better, but still noisy.
Repeat.
May 5th.-Cough very much better.
Repeat.
May 9th.-Cough quite gone.
CASE XIII.
This is another case of cough after influenza. Mr. B., after a slight attack, was left with a trouble-some cough of no great severity, but enough to be annoying.
At one time it developed a curious feature-each cough ending in a sort of sob, with a sensation as if he might vomit. A single dose of Coquel. 30 put an end to that feature of the cough, and the cough itself rapidly subsided.
CASE XIV.
October 23rd, 1906.-I was consulted about Master D., who had a severe cough, very loose, complaining of tickling and uncomfortable feeling in the throat after coughing.
Rx Corallium 30, one dose every two hours.
October 29th.-He was brought to see me. The cough wakes him early in the morning from 4 to 7 a.m. The cough is loose, hacking, and with the cough there is much cold in the head and sneezing.
