HOMOEOPATHY INTRODUCTORY LECTURES
YOU will find work here far more interesting if you start with some idea of what remedies we use, and why, and how we use them.
Most of out remedies are entirely unknown to the ordinary doctor.
We all go through the same schools take the same examinations and become “qualified in medicine”‘ and then those of us who come across Homoeopathy learn to use a new power.
All the rest is absolutely the same for all doctors, viz. pathology, diagnosis, anatomy, chemistry, etc. But we homoeopaths “specialize in drugs”.
Homoeopaths are alone among doctors in HAVING A LAW by which to choose their medicines.
In the Compton Burnett lecture the other day, you were told the Law : “Let Likes be treated by Likes.”
Old School, for diarrhoea, prescribes an astringent, or perhaps something to paralyse the action of the bowels. For diarrhoea WE prescribe the most like purgative – and, provided that there is not some deep, old-standing condition, with perhaps change, or even destruction of tissue (chronic colitis – tuberculosis) behind it, we cure almost with the first dose; provided, always, that our purgative is the most like this case of diarrhoea.
For instance, the CHINA (Cinchona) DIARRHOEA is generally painless; and flood, undigested, is passed in the stools. During the children’s work here, during the War, one remembers a summer- diarrhoea epidemic, where most of the case needed, and cured up promptly with CHINA.
The COLOCYNTH DIARRHOEA (i.e. the diarrhoea caused and cured by Colocynth) is not painless. It doubles up its victim in agonies of pain, and makes him press hard into the abdomen for relief. A few years ago one of the missionaries was so doubled up on a chair in the out-patient department. I was asked to help her, and Colocynth DID.
Colocynth is of the cucumber family. I remember we used to grow custard marrows (of the same family), and one lot had a very bitter taste, and those who ate them had this Colocynth cramping diarrhoea, and were very sorry for themselves.
That dreadful poison, corrosive sublimate, out MERCURIUS COR., again, has diarrhoea in which the evacuations are chiefly slime and flood. Here the agony is the fearful straining to pass the stools, not even relieved by stool-the “never-get-done sensation” as it is called. The more the straining, and the more the blood, the more certainly is Mercurius cor. indicated. And Mercurius cor is almost a specific for DYSENTERY. Some of the missionaries trained here have told us of wonderful work during epidemics of dysentery in hot climates, with Mercurius cor.
So, first get this into your heads, WHAT A DRUG CAN CAUSE, THAT IT CAN CURE. And, if you want to know what a drug can cure, you have only to find out what it can cause.
“Always, drugs are sick-making, and sick-curing, and the sickness is the same.”
The angry giant in the fairy story annihilated his poor little guest, because he blew hot and cold with the same mouth. He was breathing on his chilly fingers. “What was that for? ” -” To warm them.” And then he blew on his porridge! ” Why that?” “Please, sir, to cool it.” And that was too much for the intelligence of that big bully-and others since.!
Ask an Old School doctor, ” Why are you giving ipecacuanha wine to this child?” ” To make it vomit.” ” Then why on earth do you give it to this woman, in misery from the vomiting of pregnancy?” ” Why, to stop her vomiting.” That is just a familiar instance of ” What a drug causes, it can cure.”
Dr. Compton Burnett, a great prescriber, used to say that, if he were marooned on a lonely island without any medicines he would soon have all he wanted for work on that island. He found observe the effects of bites and stings; he would note the symptoms to poisonous plants. He would prepare these “sick makers” according to Hahnemann’s safe method, would test them on himself, and give them to any healthy persons who would help him to ” prove ” them. He would carefully record the exact symptoms they produced, and then use them with confidence to cure persons whose sickness presented the same symptom-picture. He would probably do even better work there than with his beloved chest, because the Almighty seems to have provided remedies where they are needed; and every time produce the medicines to heal its own peculiar sickness.
Even in our country we see this; where each season brings forth the plant remedies that best suit its conditions : and Dulcamara riots over the hedges when both days are succeeded by chilly evenings, and where ailments occur form chills when hot, or from a wetting when hot. I well remember one of Kent’s scholars, newly home form Chicago, and Casualty Officer here. There was a case of diarrhoea in a child, ill for a couple of days. ” Let’s see,” he mused, “What was the weather that day? Oh, yes! it turned suddenly cold and wet”- and the successful prescription was Dulcamara.
The ordinary doctor, marooned on a lonely island, without his purgatives, his emetics, his tonics, his diarrhoea-mixture, his sleeping stuffs, his aspirin – would be hopelessly lost. His knowledge of “medicine” learnt in the schools would be useless, because in his curriculum the Law of Healing had had no place. Not so the homoeopath; he would soon master the situation.
All great poisons are great remedies. The old Latin proverb has it. ” The grater the Poison, the greater the Remedy.” Only, you need Hahnemann’s Low of Similars to know how to apply it. This, only, bridges the chasm that separates knowledge of the action of drugs, from knowledge of how to apply them. Without this Law, all is empiricism; conjecture; the testing of supposed or likely remedies, on the sick, and discarding them, one by one, when they, too often, fail. The Old School studies the action of drugs; and studies, and tabulates, the symptoms of disease (diagnosis), and – that is the end of it, from the scientific point of view. It is only Homoeopathy that solves the puzzle, how to apply the one for the relief of the other.
It is true that centuries of experience of cures, perhaps accidental at the start, have been handed down by natives, savages-herbalists; and in this way curative substances have been found.
It was the discovery that natives of Peru cured their ague by drinking of the bitter waters of a pool into which a Cinchona tree had fallen, that gave us the invaluable, but much abused Quinine. You have heard how Hahnemann “proved” Quinine on himself, and how he produced thereby ague-symptoms, and so made its use not only practical (for some cases), but also scientific; conforming, as it does, to the Law of Similars. But Quinine will not cure all cases of ague; though it will, again and again, suppress most cases. I remember an ague-case, at the end of the War, much treated with Quinine, and constantly recurring. This was the story: “If tired, gets attacks, which intermit, and last for days. Gets very hot, then sweats profusely. Sour taste. Headaches : Head splits with exertion – as singing. Walks about. If out, wants to be in; if in, wants to be out; if doing something, wants to be doing something else. At times, nervous alone. Hates fuss. Feels the cold lately.
All typical Arsenic symptoms, and after a dose of Arsenicum, the next day the report was : “Slept soundly, and wanted to get up after six hours sleep-for the first time for months. Homoeopathically prepared Arsenic (our arsenicum alb.) promptly cured that malaria, where Quinine had failed. Why? Because the symptoms, and especially the mental symptoms, were those of Arsenicum, and not those of Quinine. And Arsenicum DID cure; because there has been no recurrence in all these years.
LACHESIS is a medicine that you will see prescribed here. It is a very rapid and very venomous poison-that of the Lance-headed viper-the Surukuku snake of South America. Clarke says, “It is to the genius of Constantine Hering the world owes this remedy. The doctor was botanizing and geologizing on the Amazon. He was alone with the natives, except for his wife. He had heard so much about this snake, that he offered a big reward for a live specimen. At last one was brought in a bamboo box. the natives fled. Hering stunned it as the box was opened, and holding its head in a forked stick, pressed its venom out on sugar of milk. The effect of handing it, and preparing the lower attenuations, was to throw him into a fever with delirium and mania. At last he slept. On waking, his first question was, `What did I do and say?’ His wife remembered well enough! – and the symptoms were recorded; and that was the first proving of Lachesis. This snake grows seven feet upwards, and its fangs are nearly an inch long.” Hering’s Lachesis has saved many lives. Years later another doctor, who was also to become a great homoeopathic prescriber-Carroll Dunham-desperately ill with blood-poisoning-was cured with Lachesis 12 : t.d.s for five days. So young Dunham went off to study Homoeopathy under Boenninghausen, a friend and disciple of Hahnemann. And Dunham, in his turn, taught the use of high potencies to NASH. Some of you will get Nash’s Leaders, later on, as prizes. It is a delightful book; perhaps the very best to put into the hands of beginners, to teach them to think homoeopathically.
