BETTER PRESCRIBING IN HEART CASES


This is Homoeopathy and it embraces the only curative law thus far known in medicine. Its principals cannot be blotted out ; they may be exploited under another name. Still these same principles constitute the only curative measures known outside of the homoeopathic remedies. I refer to the vaccines, serum and allergic remedies which are homoeopathic in principle whether they go under that name or not.


[ Read before Bureau of Clinical Medicine at the Southern Homoeopathic Medical Association, at St. Louis, Mo., October 13, 1938.]

By J. D. VARNEY, M.D.

Dayton, Ohio.

(From the Journal of the American Institute of Homoeopathy.).

IN the last decade deaths from heart disease (especially coronary) have been increasing with alarming rapidity. This depression with all its headaches and financial difficulties doubtless has something to do with it, as well as our fast living ; use of tobacco, liquors, etc., are all prime factors in this trouble.

In a survey of 2,000 cases by the Mayo Clinic, doctors were found to head the list by two to one, bankers coming second and lawyers and preachers tying for third place and labourers constituting a poor fourth. So it would seem that the long, arduous training and mental strain of a physicians work have something to do with the condition.

A physician;s first duty in treating disease is to remove the cause, but as we cannot control the lives of our patients it is up to us to find the best method of relieving this condition and prolong lifes span as long as possible.

While my subject is entitled “better prescribing” in heart cases, I would like to make it a general plea for better prescribing in all cases of disease. Of course, in a paper of this kind time will not permit of great detail, so I shall attempt only to outline a principle (for those of you here who do not understand Homoeopathy0 and a few of the more common heart ailments which we see in everyday practice.

The longer I live and practice medicine the more I see and feel the fallacy of slipshod ,methods of prescribing, and the seeking for specifics to cure from a pathologic standpoint (there are no specifics). Of course, every system of medicine has its virtues but to my mind all are inferior to Homoeopathy, for they cure only when they are homoeopathic to the case.

Those of you who prefer to use cured methods I would advise to stick to crude Homoeopathy rather than resort to poisonous drugs before their merits have been determined. To convince one of the truth of this statement, we have only to review the literature of the past decade and note the trouble caused by using dangerous drugs.

You remember a few years ago they brought out dinitrophenol and every old-school journal in the country was full of the wonderful treatment they had discovered for obesity, but soon their enthusiasm began to cool when reports of blindness came pouring in from all parts of the country. Then came cinchophen and a like advertisement, and again like reports soon began to come in from deaths of cirrhosis of the liver from its use, and after it was too late came the caution to be careful of its use, for it is dangerous.

Then the last but not least was the late lamented sulfanilamide which, as you remember, has around 117 deaths officially recorded due to its use- and we do not know how many more that were not reported. Now let me ask in all candidness does it pay to fool with such remedies when we know we can save these lives if we take a little time to become more proficient in individual prescribing in a system that has been proven safe and sound ? Now lets see why this statements is true : Homoeopathy teaches us that drugs do not act directly on any pathologic condition, but act through the blood stream, assisting nature in building up anti-bodies which combat the disease.

We also known that about 25 per cent. of the patients consulting doctors do not have any pathologic condition. So if you attempt to prescribe for these patients from a pathologic standpoint, you only poison your patient and create a condition worse than the supposed disease. However, we do know whether it be a a disturbed physiology or some pathology, it will produce some irritation on the organ or tissue affected and that this disturbance will be transmitted through the afferent and efferent nervous and manifest some symptoms.

It may be a nerve pain, a soreness in some muscle or a stiffness in a joint. These are all subjective symptoms and can be noted only in the human, but when recorded become important guides in prescribing a drug which is know (through provings) to produce similar symptoms on the human body.

Knowing this, could there be anything more logical than to believe that this drug would have some action upon this disturbed condition ? But you say what is this action-just how does it do it ? Well, tell me just how or why does bichloride of mercury produce acute nephritis or strychnia cause paralysis of the spinal cord ? If this question could have been answered, the whole question of drug action would have been settled a long time ago.

But just as we know the mercury and strychnia do cause pathologic conditions, just so do know that these same condition. If it is known that we can take these dangerous drugs and render them non-poisonous by trituration and still increase their power to cure disease, any honest unprejudiced mind would have to admit that such a system is superior to one using dangerous poisonous drugs that kill.

This is Homoeopathy and it embraces the only curative law thus far known in medicine. Its principals cannot be blotted out ; they may be exploited under another name. Still these same principles constitute the only curative measures known outside of the homoeopathic remedies. I refer to the vaccines, serum and allergic remedies which are homoeopathic in principle whether they go under that name or not.

Each day the homoeopathic principle is being exploited more and more and some day will become the universal law of medicine regardless of what it is called. Remember there is a great field still to be explored under the similia law.

About four years ago one Dr. Peck of New York City came out with an article in Popular Science lauding the wonderful action of lachesis, that which he had just discovered, by using it in dilution one in 3,000 it would check haemorrhage.

I answered the article and was surprised to have Popular Science give me space enough to tell its readers that Constantine Herring brought the first snake poison into America in 1828, and that the Homoeopaths had been using it ever since. Even the pictures were taken from Boericke and Tafels catalogue which they have used since opening a homoeopathic drug house.

A short time ago Dr. James Small of Philadelphia published an article in which he started by saying that this will sound like Homoeopathy but has nothing to do with it. He had found that by diluting streptococcic serum 1-16 and injecting 5/100 of cc. it would control some forms of arthritis and rheumatoid carditis. He also found that a dose small enough not to cause severe reaction was the best. So I think the trend of all schools is to the small dose. We now put 4 oz. of iodine into a standpipe of water to prevent goitre ; also a small amount of chlorine in a like amount of water to prevent typhoid and it works.

No one would advise large doses of the tincture of iodine to school children to prevent goitre. So I think it is logical to see that the smallest possible dose to bring about reaction is the best treatment. This is as true in heart disease as any other. Why is it that mortality rate is so much higher in coronary troubles under other treatment ?

Simply because the idea of pathologic prescribing will not work work ; their sheet anchor of the xanthine group has been proven by Gold and Otto of New York to be of No therapeutic value, so all that is left is large doses of morphine to kill the pain, and if the already damaged heart can stand the added poison, they are too often followed by a large dose of digitalis, which usually completes the job.

Now do not think that digitalis is not a good remedy for heart condition, for it is one of the best, when indicated ; but it is very seldom, if ever, indicated in coronary conditions, and I very much doubt if ever indicated in physiologic doses for the so-called digitalization ; for as you know it acts profoundly upon the muscular substance of the heart and arteries through the pneumogastric and vasomotor nerves, causing violent systolic contractions which go on to paralysis in poisoning by the drug. In digitalization we get the physiologic action and if the heart muscles is not strong enough to stand the strain it is just too bad.

How many of you have ever used Aconite in coronary conditions? If you have used it or studied its action, you have noticed that it has almost a complete picture of this condition. Your severe agonizing pain often accompanied with numbness, great anguish of mind and fear of death, extreme restlessness, oppressed breathing, tachycardia, sensitiveness to all noise, intermittent pulse, increased desire to urinate, etc. Another symptoms that has been noted by several different prescribers and claimed to be pathognomonic of coronary disease is a “bright redness of the hypothenar eminences”.

All these symptoms come under Aconite, and if you use it early you will not be called upon to use morphine. And while on Aconite dont forget that it is indicated in “peri- and endocarditis” of acute rheumatic origin, and when used early will prevent 90 per cent. of the trouble from ever developing. You know that many writers now believe that acute rheumatic fever is a product of heart disease in place of the heart disease being caused by the fever.

J. D. Varney