Cases


CASE OF UNILATERAL ARREST OF DEVELOPMENT, CASE OF CONSTITUTIONAL BLIGHT DUE TO VACCINATION; ECZEMA AND ASTHMA. GLUMNESS; SPINAL CURVATURE; STUNTED GROWTH. TOOTHLESS, RICKETS, RINGWORM. PUNY GROWTH, AND UGLINESS. MEDICINAL TREATMENT. versus SPECTACLES IN THE EYE DEFECTS OF CHILDREN….


ON A CASE OF UNILATERAL ARREST OF DEVELOPMENT-LOPSIDEDNESS ONE BREASTEDNESS : Illustrating Post-natural Growth.

On the 16th May 1883, a young lady, 16 years of age, was brought to me by her father, a clergyman, then residing in Kent. He did so because I had been mentioning to him some interesting curative work I had done in the medicinal treatment of backwardness.

The most salient point in the case was the fact that while the right half of her trunk was very nicely developed and the right breast normal and perfect in form, the left breast was only rudimentary, like a boy’s, the left arm not much more than half its proper size. The roof of her mouth was very much arched, the left side of her face drawn to one side, so that her mouth was awry. Her speech very imperfect indeed, she being unable to articulate, and her sense of hearing bad, being clearly in a similar state of arrested development. She began to menstruate at 15, and is regular; suffers from frontal headaches, her tongue deeply cracked (chopped, fissured). On going over this case very carefully, nothing seemed to offer any therapeutic cue: her parents are well and normal, so are her brothers and sisters, and, more over, all well and well-bred. Vaccinated? Yes; she was vaccinated at three months of age, but it did not take well, and hence she was done again. At this point I must refer to my little book entitled “Vaccinosis and its Cure by Thuja,” which I beg my readers to peruse, and then return to this narration.

Rx Thuja 30.

June 13.-On the whole very much better; can certainly articulate better, and the head is not so much out of the perpendicular. Rx Rep.

July 11.-The pain in the left side is better; she has thread-worms; frontal headache gone seems very weak.

Rx Ceanothus Am. 1x 3ss., five drops in water night and morning.

Ceanothus is a left-sided medicine, i.e., it acts electively more on the left side of the body, and specifically on the spleen.

August 22.-Pain in the side (a dull sensation really) is gone; she is said to pass shreds from the bowels. All agree that she articulates distinctly better.

Rx Rep.

September 7.-Thuja occid. C.

October 17.-Although her side continues comfortable, she seems to have been ailing more generally in herself, AND HAS HAD SOME BOIL Speaks and articulates decidedly better. The lopsidedness is much less apparent, the left side having grown. Hears very much better.

Rx Psoricum 30.

November 23.-Left side feels comfortable; further great improvement in her articulation; less lopsidedness; breathing very rough; tonsils are of enormous size; small polypus in the left nostril.

Rx Euonymin 3x.

January 9, 1884.-Has run down; a crack in left angle of mouth; piles, and has passed thread-worms in great numbers.

Rx Tc. Sanguinaria 1x, and a Teucrium snuff.

February 8.-Lopsidedness still noticeable; many seat-worms.

Rx Vaccinin 30.

March 7.-Much backache; the medicine seems to have completely upset her; hands and feet very cold.

Rx Ceanothus 1 and Hepar 3x.

April 16.-Side better; hands and feet no warmer. HAS HAD SEVERAL LITTLE BOILS. Still some frontal headache; sick in the “back”; breathing is better; hearing a little better.

Rs Psoricum 30 and Thuja 30.

May 16.-On the whole better; complains again much of frontal headache; is not so straight as she was; in the night complains of a lump in the side, and the side is said to swell in the posterior aspect of the spleen region. Talks and hears better.

Rx Lueticum CC.

July 11.-Better than ever before; the nocturnal swelling gone; tonsils still very large; is again very deaf; her breathing is quite changed, and is now almost normal; she talks away, and evinces an interest in everything; the polypus is smaller.

Rx Rep.

October 17.-Complains of pain in the left breast, and on examining I find shingles just developing in the left side, involving the left mamma.

Rx Variolin C.

29.-Cured the pain in the left mamma and blighted the shingles straightway, and she has been wonderfully well altogether.

Rx Rep.

November 28, 1884.-Is like one of the rest for all practical purposes: her left breast has grown, is well formed, and fit for its natural function.

TEN YEARS LATER.

The cure holds good. I had not seen the patient during the past ten years until a few days since. It cannot be maintained that patient is absolutely normal, because there is some hesitancy and splutter in her speech, and she holds her head a little on one side, but that is all. Very close inspection shows that the left breast is a very little smaller than the right one, but so very slight that no one would notice it unless attention were specially called to the matter, and the less so as the two breast are very rarely of exactly the same size in anybody.

I call the attention of my readers to the breaking out of boils, and to the shingles, both of which phenomena I regard as constitutional strivings, due to the actions of the remedies administered.

Let us remember that cow-pox is a vesiculo-pustular disease. The arrest of development in this case was due, I believe, to vaccinosic blight, latent, pent-up vaccinosis.

When I speak of constitutional strivings, I mean that cutaneous eruptions are very commonly curative in their tendency.

PARALYSIS OF LOWER EXTREMITIES.

On August 15, 1881, a little bundle of yelling humanity was brought to me on a pillow, and I was told that her father was very ill of locomotor ataxy (whereof he sometime thereafter died), and that she was paralysed of her lower extremities, she being then nine months old. Her gums were livid and were greatly swelled. There was a history of a fall three months before. The child was said to have fallen on the lower part of her spine, where one sees a considerable swelling, bulging in appearance and very red. The special feature of the case lay in the fact that whenever the lower limbs were moved, even in the slightest degree, the poor wee mite yelled terribly. I ordered Thuja 3x and Arsenicum 3 internally, gave the third trituration of Heclae lava with its food, and applied very weak Arnica to the swelling.

September 16.-Cries and yells as much as ever; takes her food well; ankles are puffy and swelled; gums purple, fleshy, and swelled; the dorsal swelling is clearly bone; perspires much in her head; very restless at night.

Rx Calcarea carbonica 30 and Mercurius 30 internally in alternation, and Liquor Calcis P.B. to be applied locally.

September 29.-Continues to cry very much; the gums where the new teeth should be are bluish, and look like bags; the sternal ends of the clavicles are very much swelled, as big as large walnuts,-in fact, all her epiphyses are more or less swelled.

Rx Thuja 30 and Calcarea sul. 3.

October 10.-Mending decidedly Rx Rep., and to be taught to eat one ripe pear every day, and to be taken to the seaside, and this because I regarded the case partly as one of land scurvy.

October 26.-Very great amelioration. No longer cries when moved; she stretches herself comfortably; the swelling at the bottom of her back is diminishing, and also that of the epiphyses; the deep purple aspect of the gums has gone.

Rx Rep.

November 26.-The back is nearly well, so are the clavicles, and she has grown five teeth.

Rx Pulsatilla 1, and go on also with the Calcarea sulph.

December 30.-The child is well, ruddy and healthy, but its legs are still very weak. Has now seven teeth. She had during the next four months Silicca 30, Nux 6, Psorin. 30, and Lathyrus sativus 3, which last was prescribed on May 8, 1882. I saw her no more for ten years.

TEN YEARS LATER.

On October 24, 1892.-On this day a nicely-grown, normal girl, seemingly about twelve years of age, was brought to me by her mother to be treated for stuttering. It was my former paralysed baby patient!

I ought to mention that, on my advice, this child spent the ten years during which I did not see her at a very healthy seaside resort. She is now at school in London, and bears the climate quite well.

PUNY GROWTH; MESENTERIC DISEASE -HYDROCEPHALISM.

A puny little boy of 9 years of age was brought to me on February 24, 1891, by his parents, who were in a very anxious frame of mind on account of their little son, inasmuch as his next brother had just died of tuberculosis of the brain coverings.

Patient was puny, old-mannish, pot-bellied, sick, sicky; bad headaches, worse of the frontal region; head swelled, face too small-looking, teeth dirty; glands everywhere feel alike nuts; he feels most sick on awakening, better as the day wears on; sleeps badly, dreams of falling.

Rx Bacill. C.

March 24.-Has not been actually sick since, but still feels sicky; appetite better, yet still variable; sleeps much better, but he starts. He had then in succession Calcarea phos. 3x, Trifolium pratense 0, Bacill. 1000, Chelid. 1, Pulsatilla 1, etc., till the end of the first year of treatment, when, after Levico and Calcarea hypophos., he is noted in my case-book as doing well.

During the year 1892 the treatment was steadily continued on the same lines, with very slow, gradual, and yet steady improvement.

Likewise during the year 1893, in the autumn of which he had a gastric attack when he was a month under Baptisia, and after that he was very weakly in his abdomen; notably were the testicles noticed to be very small, and the boy had no go; a month under Aurum metallicum in the third centesimal trituration gave his whole economy a wonderful start.

James Compton Burnett
James Compton Burnett was born on July 10, 1840 and died April 2, 1901. Dr. Burnett attended medical school in Vienna, Austria in 1865. Alfred Hawkes converted him to homeopathy in 1872 (in Glasgow). In 1876 he took his MD degree.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.