Life seems to be a whole line of paradoxes and Homoeopathy poses one of the greatest paradoxes in medicine. How can a drug which depresses and suppresses be an anti-suppressant? While it is doubtful that we know the exact modus operandi of the situation, innumerable experiences in innumerable hands testify that it is an anti-suppressant.
I wonder if it is thought enough of in some cases of even chronic suppression as it should be.
Bryonia seems to act mostly on the body by disturbing the fluid metabolism. Everywhere is dryness. The skin and mucus membranes dry up and no fluid seems to be able to reach the surface. Thus, suppressed colds and suppressed eruptions. There is dryness of the serous membranes and we have pleurisy, etc. Dryness of the sheaths of muscles and tendons with resulting rheumatic pains. The constipation is due chiefly to this all pervading dryness.
There seems to be a holding in of fluid because the most characteristic thirst is that for large quantities at long intervals. The body seems to hold fluid so long and to get rid of it so slowly that replenishing is not needed for long periods of time.
Naturally this dryness causes pain. A dry membrane does not stretch easily and every little motion hurts.
If poison cannot be eliminated, suppression must ensue. No matter how long this has been going on always think of Bryonia, and not in terms of acute and chronic.
My most dramatic case of suppression happens to be an acute one. I was called by a patient to treat a neighbor. I found her sitting erect, scarcely able to breathe, very irritable. She had had a cold and went to the druggist, demanding immediate relief which she received in some form or other. The result was the thumbnail picture given above. She irritably demanded the same from me.
I explained that I was not as brilliant as the druggist and that I could not work as fast and that I thought she had had too much relief of the immediate kind already. She received Bryonia 30x with instructions as to dosage and I departed, unable to bear her dagger-like looks any longer. I learned from my patient later that the Bryonia loosened her up even quicker than I thought it would, but it was still too slow and she went elsewhere to obtain the magic cure.
Until the public learns that there is no magic in getting sick and in getting well we shall often need the help of such old friends as Bryonia. People still believe that disease is the result of devils and that by some magical hocus-pocus they can be relieved of both disease and responsibility, and most of them would rather be relieved of the latter than of the former.
TOLEDO, OHIO.
