DISEASES of the skin are extremely numerous, varied and intractable. One meets people who have had eruptions for twenty, thirty and forty years. There are old men and women with ulcerated legs from which they have suffered for decades. Skin sufferers go from doctor to doctor, from specialist to specialist, from health resort to health resort, and frequently give up in the end.
I saw a joke in an American medical paper. A young doctor asked his experienced uncle: “Uncle, what speciality ought I to embark upon ?” “Become a skin specialist, my boy, a skin specialist. The work is not very appetizing but it pays well. Your patients will never disturb you in your sleep and they will not even disturb you at a meal, they will never die, and above all they will never get well.”.
If one looks through the standard volumes on gynaecology one finds that these special volumes are filled with practically nothing but operations. If one glances through the standard volumes on dermatology one finds that practically the only treatment described are outward treatments by means of poisonous ointments, washes and other applications.
The skilful homoeopath will rarely advise operations in womens diseases and will still more rarely prescribe poisonous disinfectants outwardly applied in the case of skin troubles. Most skin diseases are not diseases of the skin, but they are constitutional diseases which manifest themselves in the skin and try to produce an outlet for the diseased matter by way of the skin, the skin acting as a kind of safety valve.
It is dangerous to stop the safety valve of an overcharged boiler, it might explode. It is equally dangerous to stop the outlet of a disease which seeks an outlet through the skin by driving the disease back into the body by means of poisonous disinfectant ointments, washes, etc., which produce healing of the skin to the danger of the body as a whole.
The fact that a skin eruption is a healing process of nature is perfectly obvious. A child is down with measles, scarlet fever, or some other eruptive disorder and the experienced doctor, on seeing the little patient, will shake his head and say: “The child is in a dangerous condition because there is not proper eruption.
If on the other hand there is a vigorous eruption which alarms the inexperienced mother the doctor will feel happy and will tell the mother that the child is going on splendidly and that the danger is past. Many people in a dying condition are saved in the last moment by a critical sweat, by a healing sweat which restores them. Ignorant interference with skin disease drives the disease in. That was frequently pointed out by the great doctors of the past, among them Hahnemann himself.
In my experience the vast majority of skin diseases, practically all skin diseases, are not local but systemic. Hence they ought to be treated constitutionally. No skin disease can be cured by giving it a Latin name and prescribing sulphur ointment, mercury ointment etc. In many cases skin diseases are caused by constipation, maldigestion, faulty feeding, etc. Frequently bowel regulation and the adoption of a vegetarian diet suffice to cure a skin disease which has resisted the best attempts of the specialists.
In other instances skin diseases are an expression of some constitutional disorder. Men frequently suffer from skin disease when constipated, while women are plagued with blotches, pimples and other disorders if menstruation is insufficient, irregular or delayed. In many cases skin diseases are due to an old infection, to measles in childhood where there has been an insufficient eruption, to vaccinial poisoning, possibly decades old, to actual or inherited rheumatism, gout, tuberculosis or other disease.
Some years ago a young woman came to me complaining about pimples on the chin. They were very disfiguring and they had resisted the best endeavours of several Harley Street specialists. Enquiry elicited the fact that the young woman suffered seriously at menstrual times, she fainted with the pain, and had to go to bed for a week.
Menstruation was regulated with the indicated homoeopathic remedies, not the slightest attention was given to the pimples on the chin, and these disappeared when menstruation had become regular.
A lady, thirty years old, of magnificent physique, came to me complaining about very disfiguring large bluish lumps on both cheeks which were filled with pus. A large number of doctors and specialists had treated her in vain. Careful enquiry elicited the fact that there was a chest weakness in the family but the patient showed no indication to tuberculosis.
Although orthodox medicine had denied that there was a tubercular basis to the inveterate and most disfiguring lumps, she was given Bacillinum 200 once a week and a few other remedies suitable for tuberculosis and in a relatively short time the trouble cleared up. If the skin specialists previously consulted had succeeded in closing the outlet of the disease by way of the skin, tuberculosis in the lungs might have appeared.
It frequently happens that as soon as an eruption has been driven in the patient begins to complain about serious disorders elsewhere. A driven-in skin disease frequently produces extremely serious consequences in the organs of digestion, in the lungs, the heart and elsewhere.
Twenty years ago a healthy and strong mother in Wale had a magnificent baby who weighed 12 lbs. at birth. The child was vaccinated, an eruption appeared at the place where vaccination had been done and then spread all over the body. Local doctors were unable to cure this skin disease by which the enraged body tried to drive out the vaccinial poison. The little mite was taken to an eminent specialist who prescribed a powerful ointment.
The skin disease disappeared promptly and permanently in a few weeks, but immediately afterwards the poor little thing developed the most atrocious form of asthma which proved incurable. She was taken from specialist to specialist, but all their endeavours were in vain. When I saw the sufferer she was twenty years old, her spine had become deeply curved, her chest had become completely distorted, her heart was in a terrible condition. That was the result of the cure of her skin disease.
Instances like this might be multiplied and infinitum. The outward treatment of internal disease which seeks an outlet by way of the skin is a terrible mistake, and unfortunately the orthodox treatment of skin disease consists of outward treatment to the great harm of the patients.
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.