To the Editors of the Homoeopathic Recorder.
Please reproduce this letter in your rubric;: COMMUNICATIONS under the title Curing Scabies-an answer to Drs. Hayes and Pompe.
Dr. Hayes and Dr. Pompe are greatly surprised at my statement that scabies cannot be cured with homoeopathic potencies. I am still more surprised at their objections.
In my article I said; “In the homoeopathic literature post- Hahnemann we find sufficient evidence that true scabies has never been cured with potencies of any homoeopathic remedy.” Before they uttered their objections, they should have searched the homoeopathic literature for such evidence, instead of imposing on my time which I have to waste now in order to answer their objections which cannot be left unanswered by any conscientious homoeopath.
Up to date the homoeopathic similimum for scabies has not been found. As long as this has not been done, scabies cannot be cured homoeopathically. There is no reason why scabies could not be cured homoeopathically in other infestations can be cured except we do not know the similimum.
Scabies has been a very rare disease in countries where soap is used. I have never seen it in America. The last case I saw was ten years ago-on a horse in Europe. We must therefore be suspicious of any diagnosis of scabies at the present time in his country. On the other hand, nutritional skin troubles are very frequent. Since scabies and these skin troubles look very much alike, there is nothing easier then to confuse these two forms of skin manifestations.
Hahnemann could not cure scabies with his potentized remedies. Does it not seem strange that after so much talk about suppression and constitutionally of diseases he advises a local and crude remedy: the lavender oil? With his potencies he cured the accompanying troubles, such as boils, eczema, erythemas, which cleared the way for the action of the ethereal substances of the lavender oil. Constantine Hering could not cure scabies and in his book on Domestic Treatment advises the killing of the acarus by sulphur ointment, saying that it will not injure the patient.
Dr. A.T.Adams in his article, Can Scabies Be Cured with the Similimum? in the Homoeopathic Recorder, 1892, writes:.
From personal knowledge and experience I know that among us exists the greatest dissatisfaction as to the results obtained from the treatment of this disease, and this among men who practice Hahnemannian homoeopathy and successfully in all other curable affections, yet with their best efforts, exercised with are greatest care, they make failures right along, and after months of treatments only find the patient growing worse, still the friends, becoming not only discouraged but disgusted, call in old school aid, when lo! in a few days the scourge of months is conquered and the prisoner liberated-and by the use of external remedies.
I feel strongly on this question, for I have suffered, and in my efforts to practice purely have seen families leave me, and, what is infinitely worse, leave homoeopathy.
Is it not rather strange that men who have good success in the treatment of other affections fail so egregiously in this disease? There must be a cause-a reason-whey physicians who cure the whole list of itching, irritative eruptions-including herpes, eczema, prurigo, etc., etc., should fail entirely over scabies. Truly in this case the question of “whats in a name” is important.
I defer to none in the reverence and honor with which I regard Hahnemann, but many and many a time, when disheartened with the lack of success after months of careful treatment of such cases, I have wondered whether Hahnemann did not regard all itching eruptions as from the same root and designate the whole as “itch”-and it is not always an easy task to correctly diagnose between the pure and spurious-so much is this the case that I have come to regard a very few cases I have cured in the past eight or nine years, as being spurious and not the acarus scabei. Here, I would like to ask what injury would be result to the patient, who, while under constitutional treatment, used sulphur ointment as a germicide?.
…..there comes the question asked before, why other Hahnemannians, successful above the average, should fail with this diseased condition so disastrously?.
Dr. Overton F. Macdonald in the same Recorder describes several cases that the best homoeopaths could not cure with potencies, but cured them with sulphur ointment in a few days. Then he adds:.
A number of years ago,the greatest prescriber Canada has fever had in homoeopathy, had one of Torontos public institutions under his care when scabies broke out. In spite of everything he could do, the contagion ran through the institution until the Board of Management interfered and called in allopathic advice. The allopaths stamped the disease out in a few days, and no homoeopath has ever been allowed to treat a case in that institution since.
It does seem as if scabies were not a case for medical treatment but for a direct poison for the bug.
Does it not look like a queer disharmony to hear that Dr.Hayes has had hundreds of cases and cured them all? But this disharmony is quickly removed when we read the case of the woman which Dr. Hayes cured from scabies. The case is not scabies at all. His description typifies a case of nutritional disease. Cracks in the skin, itching of the soles, headache every other day, occipital, beginning on rising, throbbing, worse working, about the house, taking cold easily, general coldness, hands, feet and shoulders the coldest, dislike for meat and sweets, fondness for sour things, tiredness in the morning, and especially a relapse in the form of a small patch of eczema on the vulva 4 2 years later are no pathognomonic symptoms of scabies at all. On the contrary, some of them thoroughly contraindicate the diagnosis of scabies.
I too have found Rhus toxicodendron to be of wonderful value in cases of nutritional skin troubles, but never for scabies. I too have found Sepia a marvellous remedy for the most stubborn cases of nutritional skin troubles, but never for scabies.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.