Dr. G.C.L., Rhinebeck N.Y.-You enquire the best remedies for Tinea Capitis.

The principal remedies are Sulphur and Calcarea. Ars., Rhus, Sil., and Hepar are often employed with curative effect. Of course, there are many others, which have been known to succeed, when these have failed, but for a majority of cases the drugs named will be sufficient.

To render the cure a permanent and complete one, the remedies should be administered in the 30th dilution, and not oftener than once in 24 or 48 hours. You will very seldom find yourself able to give more than half a dozen doses of the 30th dilution of Sulph. or Cal., without causing other psoric manifestations than these already under treatment in the “tinea.” On the appearance of Sulphur symptoms, if too prominent, I have generally assuaged their violence with a single dose of Nux 30, or perhaps three of Aconite 30. A dose of Psorinum, given once a week, is said to be sufficiently antidotal to the Sulph. when given for six preceding days.

The selection of the remedy for the particular case must be made in view of the temperament and disposition of the child, as well, of course, as of the totality of the physical symptoms. Knowing no other than the cutaneous symptoms, we cannot select, except in the general manner above noted.

We cannot leave this little note, without expressing ourselves very strongly, on the indiscretion of healing up Scald Head (Tinea) too rapidly. The appearance of an eruption is always indicative of a morbid taint in the system, which Nature is seeking to throw off. Here upon the skin, she has, after manifold efforts, succeeded in locating the “bad humor,” which is poisoning her to death. This “humor” is like the poison which the stomach revolts at, and throws off. The local treatment of these cutaneous eruptions, by means of stimulating applications, is most disastrous. To dry up the eruption, and drive it back again into the blood, is but to conceal it from view, through its lodgement on some nobler internal organ.

Six months ago, a little child, with tinea, was brought into the Central Homoeopathic Dispensary, in this City, for treatment. We told the mother the importance of a slow cure, and directed her by no means to apply any of the washes or ointments so common among that class of people. We put the case on the long action of Sulphur, and ordered the child to be brought back once a week. At the end of four weeks, and after four doses of the 30th Sulphur, the eruption had about half disappeared. The mother was impatient, and the week after, commenced the use of a stimulating wash which healed the scalp in a fortnight. In a month more the little child was dead, with chronic inflammation of the meninges of the brain, as I believe, from the too sudden repercussation of the skin eruption.

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