Bacillinum (Burnett); Tuberculinum (Kent) Tuberculinum (Koch); Tuberculinum bovinum.
Introduction
Bacillinum (originally called Tuberculinum) was the earlier production: and, glancing through Burnett’s epoch-making New Cure of Consumption, in the light of one’s large experience in the use of, chiefly, Tuberculinum bovinum, probably the infinitely more potent for good of the two.
There have been many preparations from different manifestations of tubercle, and they all act. It is a “nosode” which, in one form or another, one would be sorry to be without. Human nature is strange, and interesting. When Burnett brought out his book, and one started using the “phthisic virus” on his lines, one of our doctors expressed disgust at the very idea of employing such loathsome material for curative purposes. “He would not take it himself, and certainly would not give it to his patients” and then, not very much later, inspired by Koch, he was injecting it! Imagine!–too loathsome in potency, killed and sterile and triturated and, in the 30th potency, merely one part in a decillion, in alcoholic tincture; and of that, only sufficient used to medicate a few tiniest pellets of milk-sugar. Can one imagine anything more disgusting? But, by the methods of Hahnemann, the most terrible poisons and disease-products can be so tamed and roped-in as to affect curatively the strong man, who needs them and is therefore hyper-sensitive to their action, and yet perfectly innocuous “to a healthy infant a day old”. It is a question, perhaps, of making contact? Neither is the delicate preparation, per se, a power, nor is the sick man sensitive all round: but it is only “like to like” that makes contact–and then things happen.
And as to any objections to its use, founded on its unpleasant origin, Burnett says, “If phthisis can be cured by bread and butter or attar of roses, well and good: but if not, then let us have something that will cure it.”
These are some of the preparations of the tubercle disease- poison. Dr. H.C. Allen, who did so much in furthering the use of the nosodes, says in his Keynotes, “The potencies of Fincke and Swan were prepared from a drop of pus obtained from a pulmonary tubercular abscess, or sputa. Those of Heath from a tuberculous lung in which the bacillus tuberculosis had been found microscopically; hence the former was called Tuberculinum and the latter Bacillinum. Both preparations are reliable and effective.”
BURNETT, who introduced the nosode into practical politics by the brilliant little monograph above mentioned, used Health’s preparation, “made especially for him.” Burnett tells us that the Homoeopaths, ever in the van were, years earlier, using the virus of consumption to cure consumption itself but” the leaders of the dominant sect of the medical profession raised a hue and cry against those of the homoeopaths who were so unspeakable as to use the virus of consumption against the disease itself; and for fear of an unbearable amount of opposition and ignorant prejudice, the practice was discountenanced and almost discontinued – a few only publishing here and there a striking case of the cure of consumption by the virus of the process itself”.
Burnett had been steadily using his preparation for five years in his daily practice, when Dr. Koch “breaks in with his great epoch-making discovery of a new cure for consumption and which turns out to be none other than our old homoeopathically- administered virus, against which the hue and cry was long ago raised by the very men who now lie prone at Dr. Koch’s feet in abject adoration.”
Burnett says the difference between our old friend Tuberculinum (which I have ventured to call “Bacillinum” as the bacilli were proved to be in the preparation) and that of Koch lies in the way it is obtained: ours is the virus of the natural disease itself, while Koch’s is the same virus artificially obtained in an incubator from colonies of bacilli thriving in beef jelly: ours is the chick hatched under the hen, Koch’s is the chick hatched in an incubator. The artificial hatching is Koch’s discovery, not “the remedy itself or its use as a cure for consumption”. But “There is one other difference, i.e. the mode of administering it to the patient. I use the remedy in high potency, which is not fraught with the palpable dangers of Koch’s method of injecting material quantities under the skin, or, in other words, straight into the blood.”
A year later, in a second Preface to a new edition, Burnett wrote of Koch’s remedy, “Almost universally voted `useless as a cure, and terribly dangerous’, Koch and his world-famed remedy have come and–gone! But they will return anon and remain! only the dose will get smaller and smaller, until the long-condemned homoeopathic dilutions will acquire rights of citizen-ship in the universities and hospitals of the world. What now bars the way to the further progress of Kochism is the awful admission that will have to be made of the therapeutic efficacy of the infinitesimally small: the little dose is the great barrier to its onward march.”
“Homoeopathy,” says Burnett, “is the winning horse at the Medical Derby of the world, and will presently be hurried past the winning post by Orthodoxy itself as her rider.”
So much for Burnett’s preparation; now for Kent’s preparation of Tuberculin:–“a little different from that generally found on the market. This preparation I procured through a Professor of Veterinary Surgery. In Pennsylvania a handsome herd of cattle had to be slaughtered because of tuberculosis. Through the Veterinary Surgeon of the Pennsylvania University I secured some of the tubercular glands from these slaughtered cattle. I examined and selected the most likely specimen. This was potentized by Boericke & Tafel as far as the 6th, and has since been prepared carefully on the Skinner machine –the 30th, 200th, 1,000th, and the higher potencies. This preparation I have been using for ten years.”
All the preparations do good work, but one has found them of more use, I think, for “consumptiveness”; for the ill-health, or the failure of normal recovery from acute disease of persons with an (even distant) “T.B.” family history, or who may themselves have long ago had tuberculous activities, apparently recovered from. But Burnett’s work seems to go further, and his Bacillinum seems to be able to deal magnificently with pulmonary and cerebral tuberculosis: and he found it of more use in suitable cases of rheumatoid arthritis than we seem to do. It will be interesting, provided that his preparations are still available– one must enquire into this–to test them, and observe whether one gets even better, or wider results, than from our usual preparations of “Tuberculinum”, or “Tuberculinum bov.”
Clarke, in his Dictionary, uses the term “Tuberculinum” for Koch’s preparation, of which we have potencies; and Bacillinum for Burnett’s, prepared by Health, which, as said, was originally called Tuberculinum. The preparation of Swan, probably the originator of the virus as a remedy, was also called Tuberculinum. It is a pity that there should be this confusion, and one should know what one is using.
Besides all these, there are “Bacillinum testium”, and “Aviare” from bird tubercle: and Dr. Nebel, who was for years at Davos Platz, prepared quite a number of different tubercle remedies. He sent over a whole selection: but I am afraid they were allowed to dry up.
Thus far, as regards the origin and preparation of the remedy, now for its uses, and the indications for its use.
Remedies must be proved on the healthy–and this is of the essence of Homoeopathy, in order that they may be used with scientific assurance on the sick. But, as Swan contends, ” Morbillinum, Scarlatinum, Variolinum” (and the rest) “are the fullest proved poisons in existence: they have been proving for hundreds of years by tens of thousands of persons, old and young, male and female. Here we have the provings ready made by nature for us on healthy persons. Collate the symptoms and you will have the pathogenetic effect of that poison, and when you have found such in the sick, administer the potentized” (whichever it may be), “and you will cure the effects of that poison.” Burnett was in the habit of proving likely remedies on himself, and this is his experience with his Bacillinum.
“A severe headache, worse the day after taking the poison, and lasting on till the third day. This headache I felt every time I took it; I fancied the headache from the 30th was much worse than from the 100th. The headache I could only describe as far in, and compelling quite fixedness. The headaches recurred from time to time for many weeks.
“The next constant effect upon me was expectoration of non- viscid, very easily detached, thick phlegm from the air- passages, followed after a day or two by very clear ring of the voice.
“The third effect was not quite so constant, viz. windy dyspepsia and pinching pains under the ribs of the right side in the mammary line.
