An old saying may severe a new purpose here. Our new target is the much-lauded PENICILLIN. It is universally vaunted by the so-called scientific school all the world around. It is the panacea of the age, a wonder-drug that is capable of taking away a good deal of power and credit even from Almighty Death. The drum they beat is an international one. Millions of dollars, pounds and rupees are being spent for its cultivation, manufacture and disposal. Really, PENICILLIN is enshrined in an unprecedented glory. But the humour is that mankind, which is expected to see with its own eyes, has been blinded by the glamour of propaganda, has lost its natural power of reasoning in the thundering drum-beat announcing PENICILLIN.
Can there be any panacea? Can there be any large scale treatment of human sickness? Human constitution differs; it differs in sickness as in health. Difference is the law in nature, since Nature takes every chance to vary. Children of the same parents differ from each other in stature, appearance, complexion, demeanour, talents, loves and hates. Flowers of the same species, of the same shrub are never uniform in size, shape, colour or smell. Despite all harmony and congruity, variety is the basic principle in Nature–nay, it is its spontaneous expression. Bacilli, bacteria or viruses of the same group or of the same disease differ in virulence, character and cycle.
Therefore, their actions and reactions upon the human organism differ from subject to subject, epidemic to epidemic, country to country. So, far from inventing or discovering a panacea, we can not even dream of finding out a suitable specific for a particular disease infesting a particular groups of patients of the same place.
Human constitution in its antagonism to a certain species of bacteria varies its symptoms from man to man, age to age, country to country, and is to be studied in its own peculiar context to set a suitable remedial agent against the malady. This plain truth has been neglected from time immemorial. Hahnemann resolved to fight against it, and out of that battle was born Homoeopathy. But the banner of Truth is yet to be kept upright, the legacy of fight devolves upon us, since prejudice, ignorance, and bigotry encircle us even today as in the days of Hahnemann.
PENICILLIN is much-lauded for its specific action upon gonococci and pneumococci.
Even such an outstanding homoeopath as Dr. Henry Duprat of Geneva is led to praise it in inimitable terms in his article entitled “On the New Bactericidal Treatments,” published in The British Homoeopathic Journal of July, 1948. He says: “I have, my-self, seen its brilliant success in a case of pulmonary abscess which had developed some months after a broncho-pneumonia at the same site . . . what seemed to me to be the best indicated homoeopathic remedy caused very little improvement, and that was not maintained.”
By the unimpassioned treatment of his subject Dr. Duprat compels us to attach credence to his testimonies for PENICILLIN. But can any one guarantee similar results in all similar cases? If so, all that Homoeopathy has thought, done, and propagated for 150 years is futile, and the Law of Similars irrevocably goes down. We are to see with our eyes and not with our ears. And we should have courage enough to publish our failures, as we have pleasure to announce our successes. Else man is a mere beggar living by flattery, sweet tongue and camouflage, debasing himself at the altar of Truth. To my observation,
PENICILLIN is not a panacea, is not even an infallible specific in some particular infections. Like our time-old malaria specific, quinine, it is at best infallible on its own proper indications. But the reliable indications have not yet come out, as a thorough proving of the drug on Hahnemannian lines has never been resorted to. Hundreds of grains of quinine fail to cure permanently in many malarial cases, whereas a few grains succeed in many others.
Quinine acts curatively on its own peculiar indications alone, e.g., regularity of paroxysm, clear intermission, thirst during all stages, and the compulsory apyrexial sweat; and it fails on its contraindication, e.g., malaria. PENICILLIN, in the same way, owes its success to proper indications and its failure to improper ones, which, ofcourse, we can not evaluate properly at this stage, as the requisite data, proved and clinical, are not on hand. A few cases will illustrate the point.
In January, 1949, a gentleman woke me up at 2 A.M., to see his brother’s wife, supposed to be dying of suffocation. I entered the sick room and found at a glance an apparently robust, fair, 19-year-old lady in extreme dyspnoea, with a hard racking cough, flapping alae nasi, anxious look and cold, clammy extremities, cold fore-head despite wanting to be covered, and fearing death from suffocation. I lost no moment. It was a clear case of lobar pneumonia, where resolution had not yet set in and the patient was about to die.
Her sufferings were for sixteen days. Immediately, I administered a dose of Ars. alb. 30., and began to look upon the prescriptions of the previous physician, an eminent allopath of the locality: intravenous glucose injections 50 cc daily, many M & B 693 tablets (a sulpha drug), cough mixture and 1,600,000 units of PENICILLIN distributed over five days with the aforesaid result.
Anyway Arsenicum won the laurel and not PENICILLIN in this case. Two more doses of Ars. alb. 30. tided over the crisis and carried the patient to a safe foot stay, where Sulphur 200. took over the case and helped gradual resolution till recovery was complete. But why? The answer is simple since every homoeopathic remedy is a wonder-drug, if administered on proper indications, and we are on a fruitless search for a panacea and a wonder-drug elsewhere.
One morning in July, 1948, a thirty-year-old gentleman drove to me from the local allopathic hospital. He had been suffering from gonorrhoea for about three months and had been mal-treated; a suspected case of stricture, he was immediately admitted to the hospital and given PENICILLIN in 1,500,000 units, with absolutely no effect. He had frequent scanty burning micturition, discharge of sanguineous matter, and great discomfort day night.
After considerable care on their part, the hospital authorities passed a sound which drew out a copious stream of blood to frighten the patient. He left the hospital and resorted to my treatment. A few doses of Thuja 1M, followed by a few doses of Medorrhinum 10M, cured the poor sufferer out right, and the laurel went to Homoeopathy again, as Medorrhinum was the wonder-drug in this instance.
A sixty-year-old, gray-haired man was admitted to the local hospital for enlarged prostate and complete retention of urine. Hot baths, diathermy and ultimately PENICILLIN in 1,800,000 units proved of no use. Repeated use of rubber catheter provoked urethritis, purulent discharge, copious bleeding and intense burning in urethra with frequent ineffectual urgency to urination. The surgeon’s lancet was to intervene, if the patient’s life was to be saved. This was the calculated verdict of the hospital.
One fine morning at 6 A.M., the eldest son of the patient rang me up and took me to his hired quarters to see his dying father. The moment I entered the room a full picture of Mercurius flashed before my eyes; I prescribed Merc. sol. 1M, one dose at an interval of eight days, and to the surprise of all the patient recovered completely in three weeks’ time. The laurel went to the well-selected homoeopathic remedy again, not to any panacea or specific of the microscope-minded dominant school of modern pathology.
One could pile up illustration after illustration, but that will be only superfluous, since a few can well define our proposition.
One more point deserves our careful consideration. It is loudly given out that PENICILLIN has no reaction. This seems to us to be a violation of Nature’s laws. Whatever has action, must have a reaction. Excitation is followed by depression, wrath by repentance and peace, joy by gloom, sorrow by joy, heat by cold, cold by heat, darkness by light and day by night. If PENICILLIN has no reaction, probably it has no action. But if it has any action, it must have its reactions, too. I myself have observed many ill-effects follow PENICILLIN. Dermatitis, eczema, itches and scabies developed after PENICILLIN administered for something else.
Insanity and collapse were other complications after PENICILLIN. The eldest son of my next door neighbour received PENICILLIN for typho-pneumonia in the fourth week of the disease. But, as soon as the pneumonia went off and the temperature subsided, the patient became insane and came under my care to receive a few doses of Ars. alb. 200. as an antidote to PENICILLIN, and for complete restoration of health. I was called to see a case in the general female ward of the local allopathic hospital, which, of course, I did not undertake for reasons obvious.
The case was of a thirty-two-year-old lady, multipara, having a hard mass in her uterine region that collapsed when under-going PENICILLIN treatment. The attending physician showed his true colors under fire and an outsider was to be called, which being disallowed by hospital rules, the case went to another physician of the hospital staff, who strove hard with intravenous glucose, coramine, external heat and what not for more than five days to revive the ebbing vitality of the patient who was otherwise in perfect health before PENICILLIN was started.
