A belief in an over-ruling Providence, to have perfect confidence in yourself, to have absolute faith in yourself, to have absolute faith in your remedies is the very foundation of success in the practice of medicine. Without it you will fails as many others have done.
I often have doctors come to study with me. A few moments conversation with them will show me their weak points. I can see just where they need help.
A lack of confidence in oneself, a lack of faith in his remedies are the principal reasons why so many doctors have failed to make a success in their profession.
When I find that a student lacks confidence in himself I make it my business to help him to establish confidence in himself. Before you can make a man believe in himself you have got to make him understand that you believe in him. In this way you can strengthen the mans confidence in himself.
In teaching my students I give them the impression in all my talks of them that I have absolute faith in my remedies. Unless a teacher can do that all his teaching will be in vain.
I have never in thirty years experience teaching physicians used any notes or manuscript. I have the subject matter in my head not in the manuscript. In my talks about the remedies I give them the essential facts, the definite indications for each remedy, just the kind of instruction that they need to know in every-day practice.
By this kind of teaching a student (after he has completed the course) returns to his field of practice with confidence in himself and faith in his remedies, because he knows just exactly what he can do with them.
He knows that he is prepared to meet conditions as they arise in every-day practice.
It is said that “confidence begets confidence.” When the doctors patients find that the doctors has confidence in himself and absolute faith in his remedies they will have more faith in him and in his remedies.
A doctor who changes his diagnosis and his remedies every day is guessing at things; he is not sure of anything.
I had a letter from Dr. G. H. Gibson, Otira, Westland, New Zealand. He writes as follows: “There are at least three drugs that you have taught me how to use, viz., Tr. Aconite, Tr. Belladonna and Tr. Nux Vomica, and it is wonderful how much my results are bettered. The doctor is one of very many doctors in different parts of the world that have been helped by my writings, yet I have never met them personally and it is quite possible that I may never meet them “face to face”.
Did the reader ever stop to realize how much can be accomplished with the three remedies mentioned in the letter he writes when we know the definite indications for each remedy? Then we know definitely just what we can do with them. It is said that “a good mechanic needs only a few tools,” but he must know how to use them.
When I first began to study homoeopathic materia medica many years ago I had a little book I carried in my pocket. It was “The Sixteen Principal Homoeopathic Remedies”-long since out of print-published by Boericke & Tafel.
I studied that book until I knew the indications of the sixteen remedies, just as children know their A B Cs. This was the foundation upon which I built my knowledge of homoeopathic materia medica.
In the years that I was in general practice I can truthfully say that I owed my success in healing the sick to my knowledge of the sixteen remedies mentioned in that book. In the last years of my general practice I carried a dozen vials of medicine in my pocket for daily use in my practice, but I knew just how to use them, when to use them and what they would do. It seemed at times wonderful to me what I could do for the sick with those twelve remedies.
The remedies that I have used since first I began the practice of medicine are old friends of mine, tried and true; they have helped me to “win out” in many a hard-fought battle.
After all these years I should be a most ungrateful man if I should at any time show lack of faith in them.
In prescribing Aconite dont try to think of all the diseases it is “good for,” but look for the symptoms that indicate the remedy. Place your finger on the pulse; if it is full, and quick, then you know it is an Aconite pulse.
This remedy is called for in high grade fever; there is fear of death, fear of the dark, fear that the medicine is not strong enough. There is great restlessness, patient tossing about from side to side, burning up with fever, no sweat under covered parts, great arterial excitement. With the above symptoms the pulse in just the kind of a pulse we should expect. The stage of Aconite is very short; by the time we reach the beside of the patient the pulse may have changed and some other remedy may be indicated.
The stage of Ferri Phos. is much longer than Aconite and the pulse if “full and soft” may indicate that remedy.
Some writers have claimed that the pulse of Aconite is “small and frequent”.
With the above symptoms indicating Aconite it would be a physical impossibility for a human being to have a small, frequent pulse.
Let me impress upon your mind once more as I have many times before with certain symptoms in a sick person we may expect a certain kind of pulse.
When I was a student in the medical college years ago I tested Aconite upon myself in health. I took as much as I dared to take of the Tr. to get the toxic effects. I got the Aconite pulse, “full, hard and quick.” Some students with me confirmed my reading of the pulse.
Many years after this I found that Dr. Constantine Hering, one of the fathers of homoeopathy in the United States, in his writings gave the pulse of Aconite as I had it.
Now, after over fifty years practice I have learned to depend upon that kind of pulse as indicating Aconite. The above remedy and Belladonna are two remedies I have learned to love for the cures they have helped me to make and in general practice I used them more than any other two remedies.
The pulse of Belladonna is full, bounding with a globular feeling to the artery as it strikes against the finger. The pulse of Veratrum Viride is a full, bounding pulse with tension. The pulse of Gelsemium large, full, quick, soft, compressible as an old mans pulse when it is excited will give you a good idea of a Gelsemium pulse.
It is said “there is nothing new under the sun.” A teacher in a chiropractic college has made a discovery. He has discovered the fact that the third stage of syphilis is not the stage of the disease, but is the result of drug medication (arsenic). This fact was published by the Eclectics about sixty years ago.
Dr. Abrams has made the discovery that cancer is grounded on syphilis, a fact that was published in my writings many years ago. The old school physicians have made the discovery that Rhus Tox. will cure poison ivy. This fact has been common knowledge for about one hundred years among the homoeopaths.
I am expecting some smart Aleck will make the starting discovery that the earth is round!.
What a pity it is that they dont tell us something new to add to our stock of knowledge, instead of digging up some “old chestnuts”.
