It will give a short survey of some serious cases. Of course there is no need to tell you that it is possible to help such patient with homoeopathy. I will not tell you the 14 cases 1 have prepared. It is too long.
It was in the best university in America may be the best in the world the California University where they had decided to have a chair for Homoeopathy and the professor elected to the Chair was a German who was very intelligent. He came before his conferers. He told them, I do not wish that you should send me the case you think you will be able to help. I will like to send me those cases that you can do nothing about, the cases that you cannot help or that you have treated for months or may be years and are still there chronic, and there are chronic infirmities. So if you could send those I will see what I can do” And he received three cases.
The first was from a professor of Dermatology who told him, “That is very nice I can send you a case of verruca obstinata. It is a case of warts that I have treated now for one year and this man has 26 horny very large warts. He is 20 years of age, and since one year I have tried caustics acid, X-ray, etc. I have even tried surgery but when I take plus one out another comes in its place to laugh at me”. So, he was very cross. “I do not want to see this man when he comes. Now, I have told my assistant that I have had enough of him”. Thereupon, the homoeopath studied the case. It was a case of Thuja. He gave the patient Thuja 200 and you know, the disease which had lasted for one to one and half years disappeared in two weeks, beautifully and quickly, and it never came again.(Applause).
The second one was a funny case. It was the case of a surgeon. This surgeon was very skilful and he was getting a little old at 65 years, and whenever he was stitching, every time he was stitching up the intestine, suddenly his middle finger would bend down like that, down like a spring, and he had to push it up. When he continued the stitching, promptly it would go down like that again. It is very amusing but in the pathology what are you doing with this? Go to your Pharmacist and ask him what he will give for a spring finger. So one day, there was a handful of blood coming out on the operation table and he was saying,”Now, I must abandon my profession because, this makes me so furious, but I do not know what to do.”
And his assistants were just crying with him and they were telling him, “We do not know what to tell you”. At that moment, my brother who was my first pupil, who is now in California, san Francisco, was passing there and one of them jokingly said,”Ha! here is a homoeopath. Let us ask him what he can do”. It was a joke, you know but it was challenge too. My brother came in and said, “What is the matter? Oh, I see! Very simple”. Although there were no symptoms, you know, only this, my brother studied the case and he gave one dose of Ruta 200 and since that time the finger was very obedient and never came down again. (Cheers)
Now, the third case, the whole hospital came to know of this case of the professor and they were very cross, and there was one, the Professor of Opthalmology, who said, “I have a case for you. This, you will not be able to cure”. It is a disease of the gland. I do not know whether you know of this disease, a disease with a very complicated name. It was a man of Spain who discovered this disease of the gland. It is a disease affecting the gland, of the eye that secrete the tears for ladies, you know and of men too, which are coming regularly into the eye, to wash the dirt, to clean the eye, and to keep the cornea always in good vitality. Now, this gland dries up. No more tears and the patient’s eyes begin to become very painful. Inflammation begins, gangrene sometimes supervenes. It is sometimes very serious, threatening his life. They do not know what to do. They try vitamins. They try many things, all in vain.
Now, this patient was very funny, she had very funny symptoms. She had trouble first on the left side. Second, generally she desired all the time to take oysters. She was very fond and had a craving for oysters. She liked pickles very much. Now she could not support the odour of tobacco. That is, when somebody was smoking she cannot remain in the same room, it was unbearable. Now when she had perspiration, the linen was becoming always yellow. Funny, yellow when she perspired.
Besides these, it was impossible for her to find the nourishment which was enough cold or enough hot. She could not support anything either too cold or too hot. She was always eating something tepid. But too hot or too cold was embarrassing and it was absolutely impossible for her to eat salad with vinegar. So all those symptoms everybody knows, are typical of Lachesis, Lachesis trigonocephalus or Lachesis mutus, you all know. Now for this patient, my brother gave her one dose of the 10,000th dynamisation.
And what was funny, you know, she had a little aggravation after being better for three days. She began to be aggravated. On the 12th day, he repeated, which we don not do frequently, because we wait longer but he gave her a second dose. After the second week, the patient became better and better and after a few weeks, she was completely cured. The tears came back again, redness, dryness everything disappeared. She went to the clinic and she was shown to the professor. He was spell-bound and did not know what to say.
Thus, you know, the trouble began. Since that day, can you imagine, no professor, no specialist ever again sent a case to the homoeopath. This was too dangerous! Of course, it was too dangerous to let them prove that homoeopathy is superior to any other pathy. And in this way, this school which had to conduct a course of materia medica had no patient to present to the class.
Now, I will not tell you all the other cases. But I will also tell you the case of my mother, because it was of someone who was very dear to me, and I think, that it will interest you. I will tell you two cases only.
I will not speak to you of all the cases which are so frequent that at midnight, exactly at midnight, the telephone rings. In a month I may say two or three times the telephone rings at midnight. You take the telephone and a mother tells you,`Oh, Doctor! can you come?” You hear the terrible shrieking on the telephone. Baby was shrieking because the baby had pain in the ear. What is it? It is midnight. The child is restless. His face is red and the mother does not know what to do. The child is shrieking with pain. Now what to do? Every patient who comes to me goes back with a bottle of Aconite napellus 200 in his pocket. I tell the mother, “Have you got Aconite?” Oh yes, because I give this for the cold.
For the beginning of the cold, for everything which comes on suddenly, everything that comes on especially at midnight, any inflammation in appendix, or the ear, eye, anything where it is sudden, like a storm in good weather, coming suddenly. Everything which is sudden, comes suddenly and when there is restlessness, when there is anxiety, when there is thirst, when there is especially redness of the parts, think of Aconite. So I tell them, “You have got Aconite? Yes. Put a few globules in a glass of water. Give a teaspoon every five minutes. And if after 15 minutes, the child still shrieks, will you phone me again?” And since 4 years I was never called a second time after midnight.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and there, I tell you, the pudding is very nice because it comes in nice little globules. And now you see, I come in the morning. Either I see a little blood, if it was haemorrhagic or a little pus, or there is nothing for the inflammation has subsided. The child is quiet. The indication is given of another remedy according to the quality of the pus-if it is red over the ear, if it is of bad odour, colour, consistency etc. Everything is in the repertory. You have only to open the page and look at it and you find your remedy and you can cure the patient very easily.
Now I had a very funny case one morning. I would like to know what the allopaths would have done that morning. I know because they have tried. It was a case, a very curious case, of a man. You know, he was a janitor of the conservatory of music- a very stout man who liked to eat well, always sitting in his chair, taking telephone calls for different plays, piano or anything like that. This man is loved by everybody because he was a very jolly and nice man and this man-he was 40 years or something- he had a friend, a very dear friend.
He was beginning his work only at 9 o’clock. Every morning at 8 o’clock sharp he was going to the lake which is just only ten minutes’ walk, and taking his boat and rowing for half an hour or so with his friend. One was paddling and other telling some story. And the friend was always very punctual. And one morning at 8 o’clock the friend was not there. So he took the phone at 5 minutes after 8, and when he heard his friend’s wife on the telephone he said,”This is terrible, you know. Charles is very lazy, he is a bad boy. I hate him. He was always very regular” and so on and you know, he began quarreling over the phone. Of course, the lady could not answer a word. He was talking himself all the time, but after a while he stopped and said, “What is the matter?” She said,”You know, my dear friend, you will not see him again”. “What? I will not see him! He must come up at once”. “Because he died in the night” she said.
Dr. Schmidt was introduced to the results of homeopathic treatment during the 1918 flu epidemic while living in London. There he met both J. H. Clarke and John Weir.
In 1922 he came to the United States and began his studies with Alonzo Austin and Frederica Gladwin, who had been a pupil of Kent's. He became the first graduate of the American Foundation for Homeopathy course for doctors. Returning to his native land he set up practice in Geneva, Switzerland. He was responsible for reintroducing classical homeopathy into Europe, teaching several generations of physicians, including Elizabeth Wright Hubbard.
Dr. Schmidt helped edit the "Final General Repertory" of Kent, and translated the Organon into French. In 1925, he was one of the main founders of the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathic Internationalis (LIGA).