THE effect of drugs tested called forth most “peculiar symptoms and expression on the part of our “provers”. Such expressions are met with in everyday practice, and they are the expressions of Nature is disease, as affecting you or me, clearly for some of a particular drug in order to get well. The more peculiar such expressions are, the greater the aid to our choice for your service, and there is nothing to laugh about in it.
You will notice the peculiar variations of disease when we come to set forth some drugs for dysentery. The broad diagnosis is the same in all cases, but how the symptoms vary! Not a lay reader can mix any of the remedies up, so it should be quite easy for any orthodox doctor. This matching of drug and disease symptoms is a easy as many a crossword puzzle, and far more useful and interesting.
The numerals given after each homoeopathic drug are suggestive only. Experience has proved that it is better to work toward the higher numerals (potencies). They contain less and less of the actual drug. You must stop all medicine when “curative reaction” is noted. Allow Nature to cure undisturbed.
Review symptoms afresh before again taking medicine. Should any change in symptoms be seen, then match these symptoms with some other drug more nearly like the new symptoms. It may be that it is best to continue the first choice of medicine, in which case lengthen the period between doses, say every four hours apart or even thrice daily (twenty-four hours).
In severe cases the patient had better remain in bed with warmth applied to abdomen, axillae (armpits), and feet, even if the weather be hot. If not rubber bottles are at hand, use any sort of bottle as container. The attendant should wrap all such in a cloth to prevent burning the skin. In severe cases the patient often fails to note the serious degree of heat of hot water bottles, and any resulting burns are quite serious and hard to cure.
The greater the weakness or collapse, the more should the bodily heat be kept up artificially. The hotter the climate, the greater nursing aid must be undertaken. If the patient feels collapsed after stool, then a bedpan or some makeshift must be insisted on. Avoid sudden standing or sitting posture in severe cases. Some hearts have stopped by too rapid movement from lying to sitting or standing. The exertion overtaxes the heart already weakened by disease.
Beware of relapses. Beware of checked perspirations. In dysentery use a cholera belt of roughest flannel, with two thicknesses over abdomen, and one fold over kidneys. Use this precaution if nights are chilly or cold after great day heat, especially if one goes to bed without even a sheet over one.
Cut out meat of every description. Stick to rice mixtures and strained gruels (pap). Avoid fruits, though I have heard that water acidulated with lemon juice has been well borne, especially where craved. Better go on the hungry side. Nature will crave food ultimately. Allow all fluid a patient will drink without causing bad effects, but boil all water. Milk is borne well by some, but this also must be coiled.
Suspect bought ice. Better chill from outside if milk is wanted cold. I have just come back from Mallorca where we found that they had two qualities of ice, being quite unsafe. We did not find this out at first, but nothing happened, fortunately. I just hate to think of the best suited food for dysenteric case, but meat ought to be taboo. The liver is nearly always unbalanced in hot climates where this disease is worst, but I will take up this subject later and remedies therefore. Ailing livers are prevalent enough right in Great Britain.
Now for a comparison of a few homoeopathic remedies suited for dysenteries. “Personal symptoms” take precedence over any consideration of this or that microbe or amoeba and laboratory finding, and such “personal symptoms” become all-important where laboratory aid is impossible to obtain, or too expensive.
SOME HOMOEOPATHIC DRUGS USEFUL IN DYSENTERIES
(DIFFERENTIATED).
(I) IPECACUANHA (3x, 6x to 30).
You may say, “But Emetine is made from this drug.” I admit it, and thus Ipecacuanha is a good drug spoiled by splitting up that which Nature has compounded. It will do everything that “Emetine” will do, and very much more, without any “back-kick”. especially as we employ such minute doses. Our 3x represents but one grain in a thousand grains.
The chief indications in dysentery calling for this drug will be very clean tongue and moist mouth, with much saliva secreted. CONSTANT NAUSEA must be present and this is the “keynote” for the use of Ipec. Much vomiting of food, bile or blood and much mucus. Stomach feels relaxed and heavy, as if hanging down. Vomiting DOES NOT RELIEVE NAUSEA. Whilst straining at stool the abdominal pain is so great that it immediately induces nausea and vomiting again.
With the stools there will be a desire to strain (tenesmus) but Mercurius corrosivus (compared next) has this STRAINING in a much greater degree. Ipec. stools vary a great deal from slimy with white flecks, and mucus tinged with blood, to actual haemorrhage of bright blood. Stools are sometimes like fermented molasses, bubbly, or frothy brown, or even like spinach, puree, mucus, to watery. There is much flatulence, cutting colic, worst round the navel, and stools are very offensive.
The stools of amoebic dysentery are generally more profuse in semi-solids and fecal matter than in the bacillary type. Amoebic attacks have a have a vague or insidious onset, and very little or no fever. This is a generalization to be observed when no diagnosis is possible or certain.
(2) MERCURIUS CORROSIVUS (3x to 30, with preference for the 6x (sixth decimal) potency).
For this drug to be most beneficial the stools are incessant, persistent, and with GREAT STRAINING (tenesmus), which straining sensation is NOT RELIEVED WITH THE STOOL PASSING. It has much more tenesmus than the dysentery type as found to be cured by Ipecacuanha, which easily differentiated the two drugs. At times the individual stools here may be very scanty. Nearly all stools will be described by the patient as hot, burning and excoriating the anus.
The straining is incessant. Much blood is found in the stools, which are slimy or filled with shreds of mucous membrane, these being actually shreds of the lining membrane of the intestines. The pains are terrible, cutting and colicky. All stools are offensive. Abdomen is bloated with a bruised feeling, with specially outlined pains worse in caecal (round appendix) region and in the transverse colon (right across abdomen under ribs). The rectum may every (turn inside out) from continuous straining.
Blood passed often pure and bright, showing acute ulceration and fresh haemorrhage from low down in gut. If blood is dark it comes from higher up in the bowel. All evacuations are putrid and corrosive to anus. They may change their colour quickly from green to yellow-frothy, or be mostly followed not and again by small hard lumps. There is nearly an increased desire to stool the moment every evacuation is over. “Must-go-again-one” style. Taste in the mouth either very salty or every bitter.
If vomiting is present it is green, bilious. Very often these cases complain of pains in bladder, with almost suppression of urine. Has to strain to pass water, which burns form bladder to orifice. May urinate in drops; blood in urine, known by there being smoky streaks, and much brown or brick-dust sediment after urine settles.
The old-fashioned doctor could differentiate these two types. amoebic and bacillary dysentery, even if he did not know the names of the “bugs”; now it needs a laboratory, and this is not always certain.
The onset of this Merc. corr. type of dysentery is generally very acute and sudden, and with some fever, and the stools are much more frequent than with the amoebic infection, besides which these stools are more offensive. In this bacillary infection the body has a cadaverous odour, never to be mistaken, once met with. In the late stages these stools, become more fluid (serious) and of a dirty brown opus-like nature, smelling most putrid.
If the patient is thirsty, encourage drinks, as the evacuations are taking pints of fluids from the body; some can take normal saline water well. If you are near the ocean (clear of a river exist), pure ocean water up to a pint a day, divided into three or four doses and well spaced apart, has had some remarkable and beneficial effects. At another time I shall have something to say of the curative effects of “pure sea water” in malaria and dengue fevers.
The employment of Merc. corr. for dysentery has a little history attached which is instructive and very interesting. At one time Homoeopathy was forbidden, by royal edict, from being practised in Austria. A certain general was losing scores of soldiers daily from such a epidemic, and having been brought up on Homoeopathy, he had some private talk with his old family doctor (a homoeopath) who the general that this Merc. corr. would stop the disease and his losses, so the drug was tried surreptitiously, with complete success, no further cases being lost.
