Legatum Homeopathicum

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====== WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW ======
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BY C. M. BOGER, M.D., Parkersburg, W. Va.\\
[Read before I. H. A., Bureau of Clinical Medicine, June 7, 1935]

Obviously the physician needs all the available evidence of disease before attempting to
prescribe. We are very prone to rely more on the finer or subjective symptoms that our
allopathic friends, who lean more upon the coarser or objective one, including the laboratory
findings. The earnest student soon realises that disease is really and primarily internal and
superphysical. If it were not so, it would not show an inherent tendency to externalise itself,
irregularity of evolution being essentially individualistic. Such deviations mar the whole life
current of the individual and vary from complete objectivity to great mental activity; indeed
a careful review of the whole life history may be the only usable method if we wish to
clarify and make workable the disease problem.

In spite of the many artifices and inventions by which we try to peer into the internal
workings of the human economy the results have been fragmentary and meager compared
with the picture which nature herself automatically exhibits for our inspection, the totality or
symptom complex. It is colourful, expressive and individualistic in action or repose, calling
to its simile that harmony may ensue in the expenditure of energy.

It is one thing to assemble all the diverse symptoms of disease, but quite another to be
able to pick out those peculiar ones which also interpenetrate the others. Hahnemann said
that a paucity of symptoms or the presence of an overshadowing one points toward
suppression. Here the life force seems able to show only a faint sign, as it were, of its
distress. We see such things in shock, fulminating diseases, cholera, the passage of calculi,
etc. The test of your homeopathy comes upon you when you contact such conditions. Then,
unless you know your Arnica, Camphor, Cuprum, Veratrum album or Polygonum
sagittatum it will be just too bad. Such outstanding single symptom groups occasionally
have a concomitant of decisive import, such as happened in a case of hip joint disease, with
shortening, in a highly tubercular family. The patient was pale, proud and exacting;
Arsenicum cured and there remains no contraction.

Time allowance does not always permit of consulting books of reference, as happened
recently in the instance of a feeble child with whooping cough; it suddenly developed
generalised pleurisy of a severe type. It was either the similimum given promptly or an early
death. She awoke in anger, breathed with the greatest pain and the [[en:ahr:lippe-ad-a-question-on-characteristic-indications-addressed-to-dr-bayes-158-10551#s20|alae nasi moved in and
out convulsively]]. In four hours after a dose of Lycopodium she started to sweat profusely and
was out of danger by the next day. Most articles on pleurisy fail to even mention this
remedy.

For two weeks a workman tried vainly to pass a kidney stone, whereupon he
showed great debility. He then appealed to me. He was of mediocre intelligence and
was not easily questioned. Two drops of tincture of Polygonum sagittatum taken in
water night and morning enabled him to pass a stone of about half the size of a grain
of corn. He quickly became active and robust looking again.

We are often compelled to choose the remedy from the standpoint of diagnosis, much as
this should be avoided because of the numerous pitfalls sure to be encountered. Hahnemann
did the same thing, however, when he saw the similarity between the effects of cinchona
bark and typical malaria, between the action of Belladonna and the smooth type of scarlet
fever, or later in life when he pointed out the resemblance of the effects of Camphor,
Cuprum and Veratrum album to three different types of cholera. When in 1830 he
recommended the use of Mercurius corrosivus in dysentery he certainly matched up the
main features both of the disease and the drug effects. The finer distinctions upon which other remedies had previously been prescribed were relegated to a secondary place in
favour of the coarser disease as well as drug effects. Even here we must not be too hasty in
concluding that the sublimate is the certain and specific remedy for dysentery, because there
will occur epidemics whose side symptoms will point so clearly to another drug that we dare
not omit its use.

The early treatment of diphtheria shows the use of many remedies, always a sign of
uncertainty from a therapeutic standpoint. Now we know that Lachesis, Lycopodium,
 Phytolacca or Mercury cyanide suffice for most cases. The latter started out from a frankly
pathological effect and its use has been further expanded by empirical experiences, the latest
being its use in Vincent's angina.

We are supposed to prescribe upon the totality of the symptoms, but as a matter of fact
this is not always feasible, mainly because the human mind does not readily act in a
comprehensive way, but is given to observing some detail or other to the neglect of the other
factors. Nor is this an age of growing refinement, but rather of general stress and strain
which reflects itself in the sick, where trauma, nervous distress, suppression, blood pollution
and narcotism are much in evidence. The picture is not a reassuring one and makes our work
harder, but homeopathy here, as often before, is rising to the occasion and proving its merit.

One more thought. Unless acute disease becomes dangerous or throws upon the screen
some individualistic indication it generally should not be interfered with. Ultimately the
constitutional peculiarity is bound to reveal itself in a form pointing clearly to its remedial
counterpart. Nature calls for relief in her own language, which it behoves us to learn, rather
than to distort by our own predilections or too often only educated prejudices.

I might amplify this subject almost interminably, but it would all come to this: that the
significant indication may appear in any sphere whatsoever. Preferably it is contained within
the symptom picture but many times we are forced to look for it elsewhere. Here the finest
discrimination is needful if we wish to attain success.

PARKERSBURG, W. VA.

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Legatum Homeopathicum

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