WHEN a Homoeopathic physician is consulted as to the treatment of any ailment of the human frame, the presupposition on both sides is that Homoeopathy is the ever present help in time of trouble. As vagueness of conviction often remains, it is assumed that not only in this particular instance, but in other and similar cases, were the enquiry followed up in other and similar cases, were the enquiry followed up in detail, facts and figures would be forthcoming to warrant this presupposition. Is the assumption justifiable? And have we such facts and figures to be brought to the light of day?.
Facts, quite probably: but why bring in such dubious allies as figures> Is it not the commonest, and often the most justifiable of gibes, that one can prove anything by figures? But, gently, you who sit in the sat of the scornful. In this metropolis of the world, every day, millions of money are invested on the basis of what is called the expectation of life-of human life, notoriously the most uncertain thing under the sun.
And every Insurance Society dealing with this question, works with a huge array of figures, without which it could not exist for a day. And the great banking concerns of the city, whose daily variations in the values of their stocks and shares are published every four and twenty hours; are not these concerns amenable to all the influences affecting the continuance of human life?.
Have figures aught that is reliable to tell us about Homoeopathy? In the historic structure of Homoeopathy figures are as fundamental as fact: figures and facts taken together from a wide area of different times and places.
I. HAHNEMANNS RESULTS IN THE TREATMENT OF TYPHUS.
In the beginning of the last century, when the Napoleonic wars devastated Europe from Moscow to Lisbon, typhus followed in their train-as after all great wars. Hahnemann was located at Leipzig, and served his country as a physician practising Homoeopathy. Epidemic typhus is, or rather was, one of the most deadly of maladies affecting human kind. Hahnemann treated successfully no fewer than 183 cases of this dire scourge with the Homoeopathic remedies, Rhus and Bryonia: Hahnemann calls these “two antagonistic sister remedies” each in its place. Every case recovered.
II. TEST INVESTIGATION INTO THE RESULTS OF HOMOEOPATHIC TREATMENT IN 100 CONSECUTIVE CASES OF ACUTE RHEUMATISM TREATED IN THE LONDON HOMOEOPATHIC HOSPITAL.
The notes of these cases were primarily taken from the Hospital Records up to the year 1900. Of 100 such cases the static was a follows:
Average duration of stay in hospital 33 days
Percentage of relapses.. 23 percent
Percentage of heart complications .. 15.32 percent.
At the period these records were taken, the ordinary medical treatment in the larger London Hospitals was with Salicylates. Here are the results given by one of the senior physicians in a large London Hospital about that time:.
(Under Salicylate treatment)
Average duration of stay in Hospital 34 days
Average number of relapses .. 33 percent
Percentage of heart complications 33 percent-58 percent
Records of two series.
In comparing these records note that.
(a) The duration of stay in hospital was practically the same.
(b) The relapse of case under Homoeopathic treatment were 10 per cent. fewer.
(c) But the marked difference was in the relative incidence of heart complications. In the Homoeopathic Hospital cases these complications occurred in 15.3 per cent. of the cases. In the non-Homoeopathic records from another hospital the average of heart complications ranged from 33 per cent. in one series to 58 per cent. in another series.
It surely is a great gain both to the State and the individual that chronic disablement in heart affections should be reduced from 33 to 58 per cent. under one from of treatment, to 15 per cent. under another. The foregoing figures appertained to the years preceding 1900.
For comparison up to date the following citations are given from other authorities.
The Health Ministry figures (1927) were:.
In cases of acute rheumatism, 50 per cent. recover wholly.
No wonder that Sir William Osler wrote in 1925: “The drug treatment of this malady is still far from satisfactory.” The Homoeopathic Hospital figures lead very considerably in freedom from heart complications.
III. BRONCHO-PNEUMONIA IN CHILDREN
Take another malady as a definite test: a malady as devastating in children as acute rheumatism in adults-pneumonia and broncho- pneumonia in children. The results of treatment in 396 consecutive cases of pneumonia and broncho-pneumonia if children under 12 admitted into the wards of the London Homoeopathic Hospital during the ten years ending 1910 was a follows:.
Number of cases admitted from 2 to 12 years old: 396. Mortality: 12.3 percent.
Many of these were very severe cases. Some of them died the day after admission. The complications included diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, empyema, etc.
The Annual Reports of five special Childrens Hospitals for the year 1909 were examined, and the cases added together, as tending to eliminate sources of error.
The average mortality in cases of pneumonia and broncho- pneumonia in such single year in other childrens Hospitals was 23 per cent. The mortality in the above cited cases under Homoeopathic supervision was thus nearly half. The figures given by Sir William Osler in his classical work on the subject are much less satisfactory. “In children,” he says, :broncho- pneumonia is one of the most frequent and most fatal of diseases in infants; homes and asylums. In these the death-rate in children under five years amounted to from 30 to 50 per cent. of such cases”.
THE BRISTOL RESULTS IN PNEUMONIA AND BRONCHO
PNEUMONIA IN CHILDREN
But by far the most spectacular results in this disease in children under Homoeopathic auspices were obtained at the well- known Millers Orphanages at Bristol, then (1910) under the care of a distinguished Homoeopathic physician. There were fifty consecutive cases of pneumonia and broncho-pneumonia in children (fourteen of whom were over 12 years of age) during twelve years of institutional life.
The mortality in these fifty consecutive cases of pneumonia and broncho-pneumonia during this period was NIL.
I know no parallel to this in medical literature anywhere.
The natural criticism on these figures is that they are not those of the present day. That is so: but what Homoeopathy has done once, Homoeopathy can do again.
Such are extracts from the Annals of the Homoeopathic School of Medicine developed at various time in various countries and by different personalities. They may be verified by any competent enquirer having access to the originals, or who can refer to any one-time participant who still has sundry of the detail inscribed on the tablets of his memory. That is the case in more than one of the contributors.
All over the world somewhat similar experiences are daily being compiled in various countries by different personalities, and will ultimately come to the light of day when completed. For the whole world and the entire science and art of medicine are now the province of Homoeopathy.
“At the present day the homoeopathic physician who is not capable of taking eye symptoms as well as lung symptoms and symptoms of any part of the body is not competent to practise medicine. Eye cases can be prescribed for by the physician. In Homoeopathy there is not such thing as treating the eye and other organs of the body, but the patient with all his organs, not the patient with one or two organs.” DR. J.T. KENT.
