HOW I CURED MY COUSIN


Irene is a charming girl, with a lovely character and she is sweetness and kindness personified. One day I could not stand her suffering any longer, I fell on my knees and entreated her to let me help her. I am rather emotional myself and somewhat like Irene. Anyway, she consented to let me treat her with my “ridiculous little sugar pills” and I was resolved to do my best for her.


(This article received the prize of one guinea).

I HAVE a very charming cousin who is twenty-three years old. She is a very beautiful girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, somewhat stout and a little flabby and she and I are the best of pals. She is interested in literature, music and art, just as I am. She loves Beethoven just as much as I do, and she feels deeply. A few bars of tragic music will bring tears to her eyes. I have seen her weep bitterly at concerts or when reading the tragedy and sufferings of a sad life, such as Beethovens.

As I have said before, she is a great friend of mine. She is only interested in beautiful things and cannot bear hearing about illness, death, etc., and she had loudly condemned my interest in medicine and in the art of healing. She always sneered at Homoeopathy, which I have been studying now for several years. That was really the only point of difference between us and it grieved me greatly because homoeopathy has become a passion with me.

About six months ago Irene became pale, she began to fall off, her face became spotty and blotchy and she was distinctly weakening. She had crying fits, not only when there was adequate reason for tears, but would cry at odd times without any obvious reasons.

Her parents and I became greatly worried about her. Of course, she was sent to the doctor and the doctor diagnosed her trouble as anaemia, partly caused through nose-bleeds, and he prescribed Blauds Pills, which did not suit her at all. The poor girl became worse while taking iron in that form. She became badly constipated, her appetite disappeared and her crying fits became more numerous and more violent.

Irene is a charming girl, with a lovely character and she is sweetness and kindness personified. One day I could not stand her suffering any longer, I fell on my knees and entreated her to let me help her. I am rather emotional myself and somewhat like Irene. Anyway, she consented to let me treat her with my “ridiculous little sugar pills” and I was resolved to do my best for her.

I told her that I could not take her case on at once, but I required a little investigation which might take a few days. I took down my Boerickes Materia Medica and Clarkes Prescriber and a few other books which I had bought from the Homoeopathic Publishing Company on their advice.

I came to the conclusion that my cousin needed Pulsatilla. She was distinctly of the Pulsatilla type, fat, flabby, fair-haired, blue-eyed; chilly, yet could not stand great heat; she was sensitive, wept easily, could cry one moment and laugh the next and she had a dry mouth and no thirst. All these are Pulsatilla symptoms, and besides she had a great deal of catarrh and her mother informed me that her periods were irregular, very scanty and usually delayed and occasionally she did not have a period for two or three months.

Of course, that meant blood poisoning, or something like it. Then there was the question of nose-bleeds. They occurred very frequently and were largely responsible for her anaemia. I felt her pulse, which was distinctly weak and watery, which seemed to indicate Ferrum Phosphoricum, an excellent remedy for anaemia and especially when accompanied by nose-bleeds.

A few days after our tearful interview, I handed her with trembling hands two little boxes, one contained Pulsatilla 3x and told her to take a dose of two pilules first and last thing. The other box contained Ferrum phosphoricum 3x, three or four tablets to be taken three times a day after meals.

I thought that was a very good prescription and felt sure that the two medicines in combination would do her an amazing amount of good. I must say I spent hours and hours studying her case which, to a busy practitioner, would not have involved more than five minutes consideration.

I am faithfully reader of “HEAL THYSELF” and I have some of Mr. Ellis Barkers books and he is very strong on diet. Irenes mother had told me that the girl had difficulty with her bowels, so I insisted upon a change of diet. She was to take an abundance of bran three times a day and was to keep her bowels open with liquid paraffin, as recommended in Mr. Ellis Barkers books, and I advised her to take dark vegetables, which are rich in iron, such as spinach, watercress, etc.

I tried to look as professional as possible when treating Irene and I begged her to alter her diet. To my surprise, she did not raise serious difficulties and with tears in her eyes said she felt too unwell to refuse or to argue with me although she did not think I could do her any good. She was in a very pessimistic mood and I was getting extremely anxious about her.

Three days after I saw Irene again. I found she looked vastly better, the roses were coming back in her cheeks, her eyes were brighter and her hair looked more glossy. She gave me a happy smile and said, “Anthony, you are a marvellous doctor. I am going to save all my pennies to enable you to take rooms in Harley Street.”.

To cut a long story short, the girl improved from day to day and it was absolutely miraculous. Her mother told me that her periods had become more normal; her nose-bleeds ceased after four or five days and she hardly ever had tears in her eyes unless deeply moved. I felt the happiest man alive to have performed this miracle.

Of course, I was not satisfied a although her condition was so much improved and I resolved to build her up for life and I urged her to let me treat her seriously, not amateurishly. I spent two or three hours asking her questions, as taught by Hahnemann in his Organon. I discovered that there was a touch of tuberculosis in her family; that she had had measles very badly when small; that she had been vaccinated as a baby and had been badly upset by it and that she had severe pain in the region of the left ovary.

I knew that vaccination affects the left side of the body badly and that it is apt to cause trouble in the region of the left ovary. Among the symptoms indicated in Thuja, which is one of the specifics for vaccinial poisoning, the patient has dreams of falling and of flying and there is jerking of the body when in bed, and Irene frequently had the feeling that she was falling through the bed into space, but she had no dreams of flying but her body jerked when going to sleep or when being asleep and she awoke with a start.

I made up my mind to give her Bacillinum 200, last thing Monday night, and Thuja 200, as a vaccination antidote, last thing Thursday night. The effect was most interesting, Bacillinum produced night-sweats, which indicated that it was badly needed, and after taking a dose or two her catarrh got much better. Her catarrh was obviously of a tuberculous nature.

The first dose of Thuja 200 caused her to complain that she had the most terrible night with incessant jerks of the body and she felt badly upset the next day. However, both medicines were rightly chosen and she improved constitutionally from week to week and now she looks a totally different woman, a picture of health and happiness, and she is now as keen on homoeopathy as I am. We are studying it together and we have become parents in the treatment of our friends and their animals.

Anthony Barclay