This remedy grouping is unfair to at least two important items–Bellis and Symphytum, this is mainly for the reason that these latter are inadequately or incompletely proven. We use them, yes, but in narrow fields, in fields much more restricted than is just, since their widest applications are not known. Hence they cannot be considered in the same category with their companions, Arnica and Ruta, which, on the contrary have come down to us equipped with the unprecedented values of Hahnemanns work, a work that we as an Association have failed to approach, much to our well-earned embarrassment.
The only way in which these facts should be qualified is, perhaps, that if we had been industrious in collecting data concerning Bellis and Symphytum, data which, from time to time, have been contributed to the professional archives, we might at this late hour be in possession for ready practical use of well- rounded information of their widest symptomatology, and that, too, of high rank beyond expectation.
It is now over half a century since Timothy Field Allen published his monumental work, The Encyclopaedia of Materia Medica. In it Symphytum does not appear, for obvious reasons. There is a brief proving of Bellis made by Dr. Thomas and published in the British Journal of Homoeopathy. This was a proving made with the third dilution, and is good as far as it goes. And, in truth, it is about the only proving literature that Bellis has yet acquired. Fortunately, there have been clinical additions made to this record, all of which might furnish substantial material if they were accessible. One of our ex- Presidents, Dr. Franklin Powel, cited an interesting Bellis case last year. All such should be collected.
Symphytum, indispensable as it is, enjoys only a scanty literature. Probably no work of our Association could be more valuable than an exhaustive proving of this remedy in the potencies. I will make but one comment on its present usefulness that is recognized as invaluable, and will hope that further verifications may be forthcoming from others here. That power which Symphytum has of energizing the union of bone fragments after serious fracture, particularly in the aged subject is indispensable in our armament. Obviously, this very item suggests the minor qualities of the remedy, some of which only have been discovered. Such wider utility of application may be determined by thorough investigation.
When we come to Arnica and Ruta the status is different, the conditions are entirely changed in respect to their place in therapy. These two remedies are easily differentiated when one has the picture of each in mind, a picture, visualized by study of the remedy as a whole, which is doubtless the only way in which materia medica can be learned. While with Bellis and Symphytum there is no definitely broad picture that invites a concept essentially unique, a mental grasp that is inescapable on all sides, Ruta and Arnica both provide what the two former lack. With Ruta and Arnica the complete picture exists.
I am not now referring to detailed symptoms but to the remedy individuality. This cannot be expressed in words alone, any more than can some other phases of art be converted into verbal or other terms. Language may begin the description of a remedy, but more than language is necessary to fulfil an understanding of that remedy. Hence, personal knowledge of its proving if possible.
It has been said that Ruta symptoms are difficult to classify in the repertory. If true, so much the worse for the repertory, but not for Ruta. Which is the more important, the repertory or Ruta? It certainly does depend thorough what channel we arrive at the result if that result is to be right. The mental picture we retain of the great polychrests–for all their wonderful comprehensiveness–is the sine qua non of our success.
And so when we come to Arnica alone, what admiration seizes! Here is a remedy that has tradition, the prestige of universally recognized importance and value, and the crowning triumph of some six or seven hundred symptoms of Hahnemanns own observation and provings from the root–Arnica montana radix. Perhaps it is only the homoeopathic medical profession that keeps in mind the danger of employment of the flowers for tinctures, but the British pharmacopoeia has the root as official. The “arnica fly” infesting the flowers renders them unfit for our use, though a separate proving of these flowers is recommended, which might resemble that of Cantharis.
To enumerate the classes of patients to whom Arnica in potency becomes a boon would exhaust Herings thirty pages of its symptoms. It would seem that at some period of life–yes, many periods–the human organism calls for Arnica in no uncertain terms. Far beyond the popular bruise remedy, it is demanded by conditions representing the finer internal disorders of circulation, the vegetative and the nervous systems, functions of the internal organs, no viscus being exempt. In cerebral cases it is sometimes difficult to disregard Opium for Arnica, since the former in highest potency may do marvelous things toward the complete correction of arterial spasm or its threat. However, Arnica cannot be forgotten, particularly if the disorder has culminated in haemorrhage and its accompaniments.
Let us pray for more provings like the one of Arnica. Also let us secure more provings like that of Ruta, a remedy inspiring the physician by its breadth of power veritably assured by one of the best pathogenetic outlines in all materia medica. Even a brief study of its text, and certainly any apt employment of the potency impresses most favorably. The longer one uses the remedy, the greater the reward. It would be difficult to name any organ or region in which it does not excel in harmony with its symptomatology. Experience has favored me with many fine results. The eyes and the nerves in general respond with promptness and with permanence.
Both Ruta and Arnica have great control of the mental sphere. The mind rubrics have been verified in actual cases in numberless instances, as would be expected of the Hahnemann records.
Undoubtedly it should be admitted that the task of securing the correct proving in this age is far from being an easy one, or a simple one. Our life is beset with trivialities, with the superficial things that lead nowhere in particular. Our attention is constantly diverted by the radio, the airplane, and things in general of which jazz is a symbol. In fact, what might be used for benefit is abused intemperately, so that there is no time nor inclination left for the conservative attention entailed by devotion to the intensive study of the healing art. However, the first paragraph in the Organon will never be trite. It is fraught now with meaning that we cannot neglect.
NEW YORK CITY.
DISCUSSION.
DR. I. L. FARR: This is an unusual paper and one which brings home to each homoeopath the fact, that had it not been for the thorough work done by Hahnemann and his immediate followers, there would be no homoeopathy today. And as the doctor says, very little, during recent years, has been added to the materia medica, hence the lesser remedies, because of their scant provings, are little used.
Dr. Hutchinson has grouped Bellis and Symphytum because of their brief literature. How would it do to follow the title and compare Arnica with Bellis? Each is similar to the other in action, and both are called into action following trauma. With this strong resemblance and with the action of each called forth by trauma. our provings of Arnica give the key to what should be expected from Bellis. Bellis may well be considered the chronic or deep acting Arnica.
Achings, lameness, and weakness, of long duration, in joints, conditions reminding one of rheumatism or neuritis, which conditions may be traced to an old injury, as their cause, clear up under Bellis. The writer has seen several such cases, one especially, in which all indicated remedies failed to relieve the pain and lameness, until one day the patient remarked that she had had trouble with the joint in question, ever since she had fallen upon the ice. A few doses of Bellis cleared the case.
An Englishman, Dr. J. Compton Burnett, in his book, Change of Life in Women, page 130-131, in part says, “Bellis is our common daisy; it acts very much like Arnica; it causes pain in the spleen and a feeling of being very tired. It acts on exudates, swellings and stasis, therefore in varicose veins, patients are loud in its praises; it is a grand friend to commercial travelers, for in railway spine, of moderate severity, it has no equal, for stasis lies at the bottom of these ailments. In the higher dilutions it cures the symptom, “wakes too early in the morning.”
Dr. Burnett again speaks of Bellis as useful for the treatment of tumors especially if left sided and of traumatic origin. In his book, Curability of Tumors, pages 85-95, he cites the case of a man with a very large, painful, left sided abdominal tumor, which had been seen by six other physicians, previously. Their diagnosis varied from a tumor of left kidney or spleen or connected to both, or cancer. For treatment they could advise nothing except operation and the tumor was too large and the patient too weak to operate. The history showed that the probable origin was from a fall the patient had sustained eight years before.
