SOME twenty-five years ago Jesse Burt, son of the late Dr. Wm. H. Burt, was modelling miniature figures for exhibits at the Field Museum of Chicago. A young Indian, about twenty-four years of age, was brought in from the West to act as a model. He was six feet tall and a fine specimen physically. As soon as he got to the big city, he bought a new pair of shoes and started out to see the sights. Walking on concrete pavements in stiff leather was quite different from following trails through the forest in soft moccasins. Before the end of the day he was stiff and lame and had worn an abrasion on the heel of the right foot.
The foot began to swell. In a few hours pains were shooting up the leg to the hip and the inguinal glands swelled and grew exceedingly painful. He was very restless and was running a temperature of 102 when I was called. He said that the only relief he got was from applied heat and keeping the leg in motion. Three doses of Rhus tox. 200th in water, two hours apart cleared up the whole trouble almost overnight. The next day his temperature was normal and all swelling had disappeared from the lymphatic glands.
Rhus is an excellent remedy in carbuncle and will sometimes abort this dread disease if given early enough. Here are two cases in point.
Mr. X., forty-five years of age, had an enormous carbuncle on the back between the shoulder blades. It was five and a half inches in length and two and a half inches wide. The centre was slightly raised, almost purplish in colour and dotted with lighter areas which looked as though pus lay beneath. It was surrounded by a zone of redness two inches in width.
The patient suffered intensely with burning, shooting pains and was unable to lie down, not only because of the exquisite, soreness but because the pains were worse in that position. He was very restless, especially at night. When I saw him, he was sitting in one chair leaning forward over the back of another. Rhus 1,000th potency, a single dose, stopped the pains in two hours; in twelve hours the surrounding redness was gone and the threatened discharge of pus never occurred.
Mr. D.M.F., aged thirty-three, came to the office with his neck swathed in an enormous bandage and his head tilted to the left. Removal of the dressings revealed a carbuncle that had progressed to suppuration and had been lanced. There was a deep crater an inch and a half in diameter, with flaring edges, surrounded by a dark red areola. He had suffered from recurrent attacks of boils for several years and a felon in the palm of his right hand.
These had long since healed when the carbuncle developed. Lancing seemed to have only aggravated it. Sharp cutting pains shot up into occiput and left side of the head; he was unable to lie down and the only relief he had, especially at night, was by hot applications and walking the floor. He received a few doses of Rhus tox. 30th and made a rapid and uneventful recovery. The resultant scar was negligible.
