Part 3 (2/2)
are likewise successfully combated by Apis. The American Provings contain the following symptomatic indications:
1. No.'s 731, 733, 736, 742, 743, 749, 760: ”Hoa.r.s.eness and difficulty of breathing, roughness and sensitiveness in the larynx, each time after he smells of the poison; talking is painful, sensation as if the larynx were tired by talking; drawing pains in the larynx; cough when starting during sleep; rough cough during evening; heat; difficult breathing, every drop of liquid almost suffocates him; labored inspirations as during croup.”
2. 737-740: ”Violent paroxysms of cough, occasioned by a t.i.tillating irritation in the lower part of the larynx near the throat-pit, with increase of headache when coughing, on the left side, superiorly; in half an hour, some phlegm is detached, after which the coughing ceases; on the first day, when waked from his sleep before midnight, he had a violent cough, especially after lying down and sleeping, with t.i.tillation at a very small spot, deep down on the posterior wall of the thorax, which wakes him; he feels better as soon as the least little portion of mucous is detached; cough particularly during warmth, during rest, and rousing him from his first slumber for several evenings.”
3. 1081, 746, 790: ”Chilly every afternoon at three or four o'clock; she shudders, especially during warmth; chill across the back, the hands feel as if dead; in about an hour she felt hot and feverish, with rough cough, hot cheeks and hands, without thirst; this pa.s.ses off gradually, she feels heavy and prostrate; cough and labored breathing as during croup, after violent feverish heat, with dry skin and full pulse; disturbed sleep, with muttering, timid and incoherent talk, whitish-yellow coating of the tongue, and painless, yellow-greenish, slimy diarrha, in four days the breathing become labored, a violent abdominal respiration, red face, increasingly livid, pulse hard, cough, with barking resonance--pains in the chest, with labored breathing.”
4. 754, 770, 772, 803: ”Hurried, labored breathing, with heat and headache; chest oppressed; difficult labored breathing; sense of suffocation even when leaning against a thing; general debility; worse during cold weather, accompanied by asthmatic pains; cough; sense of suffocation; pains in the chest; coldness and deadness of the extremities, which looked bluish; sense of soreness; lameness; sense of bruising in the chest, as after recent contusions by a blow; jamming, etc.”
These observations do not indeed show with characteristic certainty the diseases to which Apis might correspond. But if they are contrasted with the total character of Apis; if we consider that Apis develops a catarrhal irritation throughout the whole intestinal mucous membrane, affecting most deeply the nervous system and the normal const.i.tution of the fluids, we have sufficient ground to experiment with Apis in those respiratory diseases which seem to be inherent in the prevailing genius of disease, and which are characterized by the very conditions which I have described. Who is not struck by the fact, that the same individual morbid process is reflected by different forms of disease, _croup_, _whooping-cough_, _influenza_, _acute and chronic bronchial catarrh_?
The more essential the resemblance between these forms of disease and the medicinal power, the more certainly may we expect a cure. The medicinal power which seems to be most adequate to this end, is undoubtedly Apis. My observations in this respect are not sufficiently numerous to enable me to offer positive directions concerning the best mode of using the medicine in these diseases, or concerning the extent of the curative process or the complications that may exist. All I can do is to recommend Apis for further experiments in this range, and to remind my brethren of the insufficiency of other drugs, which has been a source of trouble to us in the past ten years. Every body who has watched the course of these diseases during this period, must have seen the difference existing between the present and the past character of the symptoms. It must, therefore, be a source of satisfaction to all of us, to have found in Apis an agent that is capable of filling up the gap.
My observations regarding the curative virtues of Apis in urinary, uterine and ovarian difficulties, and in rheumatism and gout, are not very extended. In the American Provings, symptoms 634 to 669, seem to point to urinary difficulties, and 685 to 695, to ovarian troubles; symptoms 697 to 727 to uterine derangements; and 837, 842, 867, 873, 874, 918, 919, 940, 942, 964, 969, to rheumatism and gout.
What little experience I have had in the employment of Apis in these diseases, is, however, sufficient to induce me to recommend the use of it for further and more enlarged knowledge.
I have had abundant opportunities of verifying the warning expressed in No. 721, ”pregnant women should use the drug very cautiously.” I am not acquainted with any drug which seems possessed of such reliable virtues regarding the prevention of miscarriage, more particularly during the first half of pregnancy, as Apis. I have often become an involuntary spectator of the power of Apis to effect miscarriage; for I had given it to honest women who did not know that they were pregnant, and where the fact of pregnancy was revealed to them by the subsequent miscarriage, which took place after one or two doses of Apis had been taken. Ever since I have made it a rule not to give Apis to females in whom the existence of pregnancy can be suspected in the remotest degree until the matter is reduced to a certainty, and the conduct of the physician can be determined upon in accordance with existing facts.
I am unable to say how far this power inherent in Apis, of producing miscarriage, may be serviceable to females who are p.r.o.ne to miscarriage.
I beg the privilege of adding a more general warning to this particular one. The more generally useful a thing is, the more liable is it to abuse. The most important and useful discoveries of h.o.m.opathy are abused in this manner by our age given to all sorts of excesses.
Not only are the records of h.o.m.opathy ransacked by speculative minds, who use her advantages for personal gain without giving due credit to the source whence the good things are obtained. This species of egotism may perhaps be excused in consideration of the use which this kind of plagiarism affords, even if whole volumes should be filled with it. But if the stolen property is paraded before the world as something belonging to one's self by right divine; if official influence is abused for the purpose of dressing up that which rightfully belongs to our science, as some original discovery, thus caricaturing and disfiguring the beauty of the genuine blessing; then good is changed to evil, and the evil is the greater, the more comprehensive the truth that is so shamefully abused. It is absurd and may entail sad consequences upon the world, if the rational use of Apis is to be converted to the irrational proceedings of the so-called specific method, which is often practised by men who, knowing better, purposely conceal the truth from the world.
For years past, I have been called upon again and again, by patients who had been in the hands of these men, and who had been drenched with medicine, and had had all sorts of disastrous complications engendered in their poor bodies, to afford them some relief from these tortures inflicted by physicians who do not hesitate to a.s.sail the health of their patients by ma.s.sive doses of drugs, of which they often know nothing but the name.
With these facts before me, n.o.body can find it strange that I should feel some misgivings in laying before the world a drug endowed with such extensive virtues. Apis is one of those drugs, the abuse of which may prove as destructive as the use of it is a source of saving good. It is no anti-psoric, nor is it capable of antidoting the three miasms, or of inflicting medicinal diseases for life. Nevertheless, it is a deeply and speedily-acting drug, for it affects the whole internal mucous membrane, the nervous system, and the process of sanguification, thus disturbing the health for a long time. Its primary aggravating action, its deeply penetrating interference with the existing morbid process, which may lead to errors in diagnosis, and its power to exhaust the reactive energies of the organism prematurely, render it a very dangerous agent.
These circ.u.mstances go to show that such an agent, in the hands of the partizans of the Specific School, may be as dangerously and injuriously abused as other important drugs have been. I cannot sufficiently warn my readers against such distressing abuses. Only he is protected from the danger of imitating such shameful absurdities, who listens to the words of our master:
”Imitate this, but imitate this correctly!”
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