I have felt for a long time that, aside from the unpleasantness attendant upon such practice, I should personally rather treat venereal disease than almost any other type of disorder, chiefly by reason of the fact that the proper eradication of the syphilitic miasm and the sycotic miasm would lessen to a large extent the growth and propagation of psora, the arch enemy of all mankind. It was with a good deal of satisfaction, therefore, that, upon the establishment of the Union Rescue Mission Medical Clinic, an opportunity at last presented itself to test this theory.
I had long been of the opinion, and still feel, that the shifting of responsibility in the treatment of venereal diseases to the state or municipal clinics was robbing homoeopathy of one of its greatest opportunities for demonstrating its law of cure, and the loss to suffering humanity was thereby incalculable.
The regular school of practice (the old school of medicine) has, in the meantime made no advanced in treatment, save in the intravenous use of the arsenical preparation, plus the intramuscular injection of mercury, bismuth, etc., in the last one hundred years. The Wassermann reaction has, in a measure, clarified diagnosis, yet there is a large margin of failure in the discovery of deep-seated lues, and unless the patient be treated as a whole his chances of cure, outside of homoeopathy are but meagre indeed.
The late Dr. Wilson of the New York Homoeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital states, in his work on Nervous Diseases, that cases of lues which manifest well on the surface, e.g., in primary and secondary lesions, are much more curable, and much less likely to develop tertiaries. This bears out the wisdom of Hahnemanns teachings regarding the non-suppressive treatment of this disease, and the treatment of sycosis as well. It is undoubtedly true that Hahnemann, like most of the physicians of his time, was not always conscious of the fact that syphilis and gonorrhea are entirely distinct disease.
He did, however, recognize that there is a syphilitic urethritis, and this I feel sure I have noted in my own experience. Regardless of the time at which it was written, Hahnemanns work on the venereal diseases is masterly, and ranks well when compared with any of the treatises of his contemporaries. In addition to this, it has the distinction of being a forecast of what was latter to become a clear-visioned ideal of its eradication by properly chosen remedies.
In reference works on strict homoeopathy, from the days of Hahnemann, local treatment by astringents or other suppressive measures has been inveighed against. It is only within the last decade or more than the followers of the old school, have begun to recognize this fact, as evidenced by the total discard of astringents by some of the most enlightened investigators, with the use merely of hydrotherapy and such methods as diathermy and the like. Hence the modern use of these milder measures in the treatment of gonorrhoeal fluxes. In a letter written to the journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. P.S. Pelouze, of philadelphia, states that:.
The entire idea of astringents, while the gonococcus is present, is so unsound and antagonistic to Natures means of cure that they should find no place in its treatment. When we consider what Nature tries to do, we will see that astringents are directly opposed to her success. Briefly stated, the patient recovers from gonorrhoea by the destruction of the infecting organisms. This is done largely by the tissues themselves, and our treatment are of value only so far ad they aid these tissue processes. (J.A.M.A., Feb. 28, 1925).
This letter, and its condemnation of the use of astringent injections in gonorrhoea is indeed a classic. It is undoubtedly such sentiments as herein expressed that have modified the thought and practice of the regular school. Had the medical world as a whole but turned the pages of homoeopathic publications it would have there found confirmation not only of the non- suppressive treatment of this disorder, but a superior understanding of its curative therapy. What the writer of the letter mentioned recognizes is not only the dangers of suppressive treatment, but its entire inefficacy. What this writer needs to complete his Neisserian education is the knowledge of what homoeopathy has contributed to its curative therapy. Hahnemanns study of the venereal diseases is a classic for all time.
In the compilation of this brief series of venereal cases treated homoeopathically, I have merely the list of patient whose disease was diagnosed by microscopic examination. The usual mode of procedure was that the case was observed (if gonorrhoea) clinically until the discharge was apparently about to disappear, when another slide was made which prepared the way for its dismissal as cured. In this examination which might vary much as to its duration, it was generally found that the Gram negative or intracellular organisms had disappeared. Some pus and extracellular organisms still remained. When, finally the case was ready for discharge all pus would have disappeared, and but little cellular detritus remained.
If the case became chronic, then a gleety discharge requiring a different type of remedy had to be treated until it was entirely cured. This procedure carried out to its ultimates resulted in cures so definite and complete that repeatedly men patients have married, and in due time healthy children have been born without contamination of their wives. Two very interesting cases illustration this point recur to mind, the records of which might be printed here, were sufficient space at our command.
Before making a summary of the cases included in this report, let me call your attention to two papers on the homoeopathic management of syphilis: first one of the most remarkable citations of case I have ever encountered, namely, a paper by Dr. J.H. Payne, of Boston, in an early number of Dr. William B. Griggs of Philadelphias on his observations in the treatment of lues in its different manifestations, based upon a large clinical experience at the Hahnemann Hospital of Philadelphia. Further- more, the Transactions of the I.H.A. have many contributions to the homoeopathic management of gonorrhoea, as reported by the late Dr. Olin M. Drake of Boston, and other clinicians of equal note. In all these papers opportunity is taken by the essayists to set forth the treatment of the individual expression of the disease, as prior to the disease itself. Thereby is championed the treatment of these conditions just as any other similar disorders are treated-by the law of similars, and in no other way.
In the report that follows a few cases have been selected from the files of the Mission Clinic, and I am greatly indebted to DR. J.N. Hazra, whose loyalty to homoeopathy is unbounded, for the scheme; likewise to Mrs. Horadan, who has taken the time to go through the clinic records, in search of the necessary data.
Hahnemann, in the treatise aforementioned speaks of the contagium of gonorrhoea as “venereal matter”, or as an “irritating poison”, not knowing of course its bacterial identity, as has since his time been found to be associated with the gonococcus. His prevision in respect to the contagion of Asiatic cholera, however, remains one of the most striking examples of its kind ever recorded, for he actually states that, “the cause of this is undoubtedly the invisible cloud.. of probably millions of those miasmatic animated beings.. which, on board ships,” he states, “finds a favourable element for their multiplication, and grow into an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible, living creatures, so inimical to human life, of which the contagious matter of cholera most probably consists”.
Such fore-vision as this is possessed only by what Dr. Dudgeon has so well ascribed to Hahnemann-that of the master mind. It is not to be wondered at that HAHNEMANN did not foresee every recent discovery of medicine. Especially is this true when we consider that the gonococcus was not isolated by Neisser until the year 1897; and the spirocheta pallida was not isolated until 1905 by Schaudinn.
In fact Lydston, eminent as a syphilologist, speaks as recently as 1899 of syphilis as “due to the infection of the human organism with a peculiar morbific principle, probably a germ of peculiar pathogenic properties, unknown as an entity, but plainly manifest in its pathologic results”.
As long ago as the year 1872, Dr. Bushrod W. James, in his Notabilia written for the Hahnemannian Monthly, states that:.
Small shining bodies are claimed to have been found in patients afflicted with syphilis. Over the surface of the small microscopic particles is sometimes seen projections; and as new bodies are formed by sprouting off from the parent body and thus becoming finally independent ones, it is supposed that these roughened points are the new bodies forming.
No doubt most of the contagious diseases will in time be found to depend upon the prolific multiplication of some microscopic growth of animal or vegetable origin. From Notabilia, by Bushrod W. James, M.D., Philadelphia.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.