HEART DISEASE AND GALL BLADDER TROUBLE


I believe the diagnosis was gall stones followed by serious developments in the gall bladder. He pleaded for medicinal treatment because he feared a grave operation, but he was told that nothing else could be done, and that it was quite useless to go to England and see the leading consultants because the medical profession had agreed that for his trouble there was nothing but radical operation.


ON April 27th, 1933, I was visited by Colonel B. who wished to consult me about his heart. He was a man of magnificent physique, an excellent soldier who naturally had to undergo terrific exertion and strain. During the Great War he was made a prisoner of Germany. He was ill-fed and maltreated for two years, and was then sent to Switzerland to recuperate. He was sent before a medical Board of decide whether he was permanently incapacitated, then he was to be sent home to England.

Colonel B. was a man of determination and a patriot. In order to produce all symptoms of heart disease he took an enormous quantity of poisonously strong coffee before going before the Board, and smoked a huge number of cigarettes. He had lost two stone during the time of his imprisonment. His digestive apparatus and other organs had suffered greatly, and the caffeine and nicotine which he had deliberately absorbed upset his heart so badly that he was sent back to England because his heart seemed to be irretrievably injured.

Arrived in England, he lived carefully, was treated by doctors, and he recovered, but his heart never became normal. He suffered agonies from constriction of the chest which was called Angina Pectoris. Often he had to struggle to take adequate breath. He no longer was able to go to high altitudes. If he did his heart became badly upset and he suffered from agonizing pains in the chest, often followed by high fever. In addition he had had gastric influenza, various tropical diseases, etc. It was doubtful whether he would be able to continue serving his country.

Colonel B. was an extremely powerful man of middle age, the picture of strength, and at first sight one would b have thought that he was a thoroughly healthy man. However, enquiry elicited the fact that he had horribly offensive stools ever since he had had a low fever. It was obvious that the bowel was full of toxins, and the poison generated in the bowel was likely to injure the body as a whole and the heart. He lived on the ordinary mixed diet of civilization.

In order to starve out the organisms of putrefaction I put him on a lacto-vegetarian diet with an abundance of bran, and I gave him Baptisia Ix in frequent doses because this is an excellent remedy for gastric influenza. I gave him Crataegus mother tincture two or three times a day to strengthen his heart, Thuja 30 because he had been vaccinated frequently, and Tuberculinum 100 once a week because his chest trouble might be due to tuberculosis.

People who have lost a great deal of weight and who are very low are apt to be attacked by this disease. There was tobacco poisoning dating from the War, so I forbade the use of tobacco altogether, and later on gave him Tabacum 30 in infrequent doses as an antidote to nicotine poisoning.

He improved steadily, and after a time I gave him Cactus Ix two or three times a day. Cactus in large doses produces constriction of the chest, and in small homoeopathic doses cures constriction. It is an excellent remedy for some forms of Angina Pectoris. Cactus helped him greatly, and after a time I replaced Cactus Ix by Cactus 30.

He adhered faithfully to my diet, reported to me frequently, and in about two months the so-called heart disease which had plagued him for years had disappeared completely.

In 1937, four years after his cure of his long standing heart disease, Colonel B. experienced severe pain in the gall bladder. It became steadily worse, and at last became unbearable. At that time he was stationed overseas. The army doctors and other doctors whom he consulted took a very grave view of his case, and told him that nothing could be done except cutting out the gall bladder.

I believe the diagnosis was gall stones followed by serious developments in the gall bladder. He pleaded for medicinal treatment because he feared a grave operation, but he was told that nothing else could be done, and that it was quite useless to go to England and see the leading consultants because the medical profession had agreed that for his trouble there was nothing but radical operation.

After eight or nine months of suffering he made up his mind that he would consult me once more, and travelled to England. As I had saved him when he had grave trouble, with his heart he hoped that I might save him the second time. I found that he could easily digest fat, consequently it seemed obvious that his gall bladder was functioning fairly well. There was certainly tenderness in the gall bladder region. He had a yellow tongue and had lost much weight, had had paratyphoid badly and had been treated with injections of Emetine.

Without enquiring too closely into the actual condition of the gall bladder I treated him symptomatically. In view of his jaundiced appearance I gave him Hydrastis mother tincture tablets, to be taken before meals, and as there was pain at the stomach exit I gave him Ornithogalum Ix, which is an excellent remedy for cancer at the outlet of the stomach where the pain seemed to be located. I gave him Sulphur as a blood clearing medicine, occasional doses of Thuja 200 to antidote vaccination, and put him once more on a blood clearing, non-putrefactive diet.

Hydrastis has a powerful effect on liver and gall bladder. After a few weeks the severe pain in the abdomen disappeared although medical treatment during many months previously had not been able to cope with that trouble. I kept him steadily on Hydrastis for several months, and he became perfectly normal to the astonishment of the medial men who had told him that his condition was absolutely incurable by medicinal means, and that the excision of the gall bladder was urgently needed.

J. Ellis Barker
James Ellis Barker 1870 – 1948 was a Jewish German lay homeopath, born in Cologne in Germany. He settled in Britain to become the editor of The Homeopathic World in 1931 (which he later renamed as Heal Thyself) for sixteen years, and he wrote a great deal about homeopathy during this time.

James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.