ABSCESSES AND CARBUNCLES


The antiseptics which you have been using have prevented healing and have brought about this terrible condition. Your finger will be all right in a week or a fortnight.” I have seen many similar misadventures happening to doctors who treated themselves.


THE treatment of abscesses and carbuncles is well illustrated by a recent case in which I myself was the patient. On Sunday, February 24th, I felt not at all well. My bowel, which normally is absolutely regular, had not been acting at all, I had a sensation of obstruction, and there was pain and swelling near the anus which made the cause obvious. This was clearly surgical emergency, but, instead of going to one of my numerous orthodox surgeon friends. I consulted Dr. B., a well-known homoeopath, who, like Hippocrates, is a surgeon and a physician.

The orthodox surgeon is usually nothing but a surgeon and this is the curse of surgery. The surgeon should have the physicians knowledge, instinct and ability. Dr. B. is one of the great all-round healers, a surgeon who has imbibed the spirit of Hippocrates and of Hahnemann, who is interested in the scientific and practical side of medicine, and who is an excellent homoeopathic physician. He told me, as I had expected, that I had an abscess in the rectum a short distance from the exit, that it was a large as a mans fist, and he thought the position serious because of the possibility of Septicaemia or Pyaemia developing, especially as I looked all and had a temperature of over 103 degree.

Readers may be surprised that I did not treat myself, but there is an old and excellent saying: “A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.” Twenty-five years ago I had a friend, a very able allopathic doctor, practising in the neighbourhood of Harley Street. He had hurt his finger badly and the finger became septic. He treated it himself and became worse. Steadily the condition became worse and worse, he could no longer sleep at night because of the pain, and at last he sought out one of his friends, an eminent surgeon, and asked for his advice.

Sir John unrolled the bandage surrounding the finger, looked angrily at my doctor friend and asked: “Who was the idiot who has been treating you?” “I was the idiot, Sir John.” “If you had gone on dosing your finger with antiseptics much longer you would have lost your finger and possibly your hand and your arm as well. Bathe your finger in water as often as you can and apply to it cold water compresses night and morning, and nothing else. No more antiseptics.

The antiseptics which you have been using have prevented healing and have brought about this terrible condition. Your finger will be all right in a week or a fortnight.” I have seen many similar misadventures happening to doctors who treated themselves.

In order to prevent blood poisoning Dr. B. gave me immediately a dose of Pyrogen in the 10,000th potency. Pyrogen is putrid meat, and, on the principle that like cures like, Pyrogen, which also is called Sepsin, prevents and cures sepsis. I went to the London Clinic and Nursing Home in Harley Street and had a beautifully airy and sunny room on the fifth floor. I was then given Pyrogen 6, a dose night and morning, and Hepar sulphuris 3x a dose every two hours or so.

Hepar sulphuris is used by homoeopaths to open abscesses non-surgically. The abscess promptly opened towards the outside of the leg, where there was a painful swelling, and towards the bowel, and discharged an enormous quantity of pus. The bowel itself was disinfected, not by one of the usual poisonous disinfectants containing Mercury, Carbolic Acid or some other chemical, but with water in which a teaspoonful of Calendula tincture was put. The nurse, who was only used to the orthodox treatment, was amazed at the fact that the abscess had not been lanced and that no orthodox disinfectants were applied.

She shook her head, but carried out the directions carefully. She was a good nurse of the orthodox type, and she told me that there were quite a number of similar cases at that huge institution, which has, I believe, two hundred beds, that these cases usually were very protracted, that one case had been in the Home for five months, and that probably I should have to stay for three to six months. I was in despair, and felt a strong inclination to jump out of the window. In a weeks time I felt able to leave the Nursing Home because of the vast improvement which had taken place, but, on Dr. B.s advice, I stayed for two weeks and improved splendidly.

Of course, I was terribly weakened by the absorption of large quantities of pus into the blood stream. My heart was very jaundiced and was desperately weak. My heart was poisoned and was seriously out of order. During the third week of my illness when I was away from the Nursing Home, I had to lie on my back all the time, standing exhausting me. After shaving I had to lie down because I felt completely prostrated. I made a most wonderful recovery.

On March 19th, eight days after I had left the Nursing Home, I gave to a lecture at Cardiff, during which I had to walk, every day I increased the length of my walk; on Saturday, March 30th, I went for a twelve mile walk, on Sunday, March 31st, I went for an eighteen mile walk, while on Sunday, April 7th, I went for a twenty-eight mile walk, which involved a climb of 2,500 feet. Of course my heart remained relatively weak for some time.

As I have said before, I had absorbed into the blood stream a large quantity of very poisonous pus which, of course, had to be eliminated from the system. Nature came to the rescue and produced, soon after my leaving the Nursing Home, a large ad excruciatingly painful carbuncle on the back. The orthodox treatment of carbuncles, which are very dangerous things, consists in complete excision of this is possible, or, if this is impossible in making a number of deep cross-cuts, draining the carbuncle and promoting its development by hot poultices and other outward applications.

These operations usually leave huge and nasty scars. Dr. B. gave me Septicaeminum in the 200th potency in occasional doses and once more Hepar sulphuris 3x to promote the opening of the carbuncle and the expulsion of the pus and cores. Later on Septicaeminum was changed for Anthracinum 6th centesimal potency and a single dose of Anthracinum 200th potency. Anthracinum is the poison of Anthrax. Anthrax produces a boil similar to a carbuncle, and it is very deadly. Frequently, people attacked by Anthrax die in a day or two. Anthracinum is a favourite medicine used for carbuncles.

The carbuncle opened quickly, and smoothly, discharged pus and a number of cores and then closed. Unfortunately, there were still quantities of pus in my body. Hence, there came a number of carbuncles and boils in the vicinity of the original carbuncle. One opened after the other and then healed without incident. Carbuncles treated in the homoeopathic way heal quickly, smoothly and painlessly, and leave no scar.

As a rule, people who have carbuncles look and are desperately ill. A carbuncle patient looks like a traveller who has just arrived at Dover after an unusually rough crossing. I looked the picture of health, felt energetic, and went for long walks with a number of carbuncles and boils on my body.

Very likely the prompt healing of both the abscess and the carbuncles was greatly promoted by my being in a good condition. My bowels had always been regular and the blood stream had not been fouled with quantities of flesh, fish and fowl. Probably, the fact that I had been a vegetarian for a considerable number of years stood me in good stead. In any case, my reaction would have been exceptional in any young man. Being in my sixty-sixth year, the cure can only be considered as marvellous, and I owe Homoeopathy and Dr. B. a great debt of gratitude for my prompt and miraculous recovery.

J. Ellis Barker
James Ellis Barker 1870 – 1948 was a Jewish German lay homeopath, born in Cologne in Germany. He settled in Britain to become the editor of The Homeopathic World in 1931 (which he later renamed as Heal Thyself) for sixteen years, and he wrote a great deal about homeopathy during this time.

James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.