INSANITY, BRAIN DISEASE AND CONSTIPATION


Dr. Hopewell-Ash recommends for sleeplessness “heroic doses of narcotic drugs”. I do not know why unduly large doses are called “heroic”. If there is is any heroism, it is not shown by the doctor, who injures his patient, put by the unfortunate patient who blindly swallows large doses of poisonous drugs, believing that his doctor knows his business.


THE treatment of insanity and brain disease is always been pitiful. In the olden days, the insane were chained to the wall, were beaten and whipped by their attendants, and were exhibited to the curious who visited madhouses for entertainment as they now visit menageries and circuses. More than a century ago, Hahnemann proclaimed that the orthodox treatment of insanity was absolutely faulty, and he proved his contention that a cure could be effected by gentle means in the case of Councillor Klockenbring, who came to him bearing deep and permanent marks on his poor body due to the physical ill-treatment which he had received, and who left Hahnemanns care as a happy, healthy, normal man.

Lunatics are no longer kept in chains, and whipped and beaten. They are now kept under control by benumbing drugs which enchain them as surely as the iron bonds of the past.

During recent years, a number of books have been published by medical men and others, criticising the management of the insane in public institutions, giving instances of callous or cruel treatment, disregard of their individual wishes etc. But this is comparatively a trivial matter. The most serious charge is to be bound in the medicinal and dietetic treatment given to these unfortunate beings.

Two thousand three hundred years ago Hippocrates pointed out that many cases of insanity were due to chronic constipation and auto-intoxication, and that many of the insane could be cured by strong purgatives. Indeed, Hippocrates and his successors treated the insane largely by regulating their bowels, and it can scarcely be doubted that the method had numerous successes.

By far the largest section of brain cases is furnished by melancholia. In the advertisements of the various constipation or liver pills, we usually read that they are good for a furred tongue, indigestion, constipation, headaches, depression etc. If chronic constipation becomes aggravated by the poisoning of the blood stream, by auto-intoxication, the headaches and depression of the pill-vendors advertisements become greatly intensified, and depression deepens into melancholia, into insanity.

I have no hesitation in asserting that between 90 and 95 per cent. of the melancholics now confined in lunatic asylums could have been restored to physical and mental health if bowel regulation had been undertaken in time. Unfortunately, if the poisoning of the brain from the bowel has continued too long, permanent destruction is wrought among the cells of the brain.

Thus depression is converted first into melancholia and then into incurable insanity, through the absence of commonsense treatment concentrated upon the bowel. The fact that much of the so-called brain disease is in reality bowel disease is known to every enlightened doctor and to every visitor to mental institutions. Constipation is general among the insane, and the wards of the institutions are filled with odours which tell their own tale.

Modern medicine glories in diagnosis, which indeed has been greatly advanced. Unfortunately, while diagnosis is thorough and more or less scientific, treatment is perfunctory and inefficient. I have before me a book, Melancholia in Everyday Practice by Dr. Edwin L. Hopewell-Ash of Harley Street (published by John Bale, Sons, and Danielsson, Ltd., at 7s. 6d.). The reading matter fills 129 pages. Of these only 20 pages are devoted to treatment.

The bulk of the book is dedicated to diagnosis and to the classification of the different types of the disease. Unfortunately, the insane are little benefited if they or their relatives are told that they suffer from Schizophrenic- Paranoidal Psychoses etc. This diagnostic tomfoolery is mistaken for science by those who indulge in it.

In the brief chapter superscribed “Treatment” there are a few casual references to aperients. The fact that bowels should be regulated not by aperients but by a wisely chosen natural diet is completely disregarded. The poor patients who have become insane by way of constipation, induced by a devitaminized and demineralized diet, are given the identical devitaminized and demineralized diet are given in the institutions where they are kept herded together, and they are not treated individually.

To keep the bowels of the insane in order, the writer recommends “adequate doses of vegetable extracts (which presumably means Cascara), aided by occasional doses of saline or other more drastic cathartics. I certainly do not advocate the habitual use of Calomel”.

Naturally, the insane frequently suffer from sleeplessness. Dr. Hopewell-Ash recommends for sleeplessness “heroic doses of narcotic drugs”. I do not know why unduly large doses are called “heroic”. If there is is any heroism, it is not shown by the doctor, who injures his patient, put by the unfortunate patient who blindly swallows large doses of poisonous drugs, believing that his doctor knows his business. Dr. Hopewell Ash then comes to the treatment proper of insomnia of the melancholics:

“I have known a melancholic patient who resisted 10 or 12 grains of Medinal, followed by a draught of Chloral and Bromide three or four hours later, to have an excellent nights rest when two tablets of Sedormid were given an hour to an hour-and-a-half before Medinal. Similarly, I have often found that 20 or 30 grains of Sulphonal given about 5 oclock in the evening will prepare the way to the successful action of Barbituric or other sedatives given 5 or 6 hours later. Opium preparations act like a charm in some patients”.

Dr. Hopewell-Ash is merely the exponent of current practice in treating the mentally deranged, and it is difficult to qualify the treatment with an adequate adjective. The patients who enter the mental institution, poisoned from the bowel, more or less violent or depressed, and whose disease was in most cases produced by a totally unsuitable diet and the poisoning of the blood stream by way of the bowel, are given the identical diet which produced their disease and are given in addition the most poisonous benumbing dopes to keep them quiet, nominally to produce sleep.

Opium, which, according to the writer, “acts like a charm”, is one of the most constipating medicines known. Naturally, the use of Opium has to be followed by violent purgatives. Such is modern scientific treatment of the deranged and the insane. It is a pitiful story.

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.