Case I – Master Morris M., aged 8, of Richmond, Indiana, suddenly became ill with high fever of 105* during the terrible epidemic of polio last August. He had a stiff neck, headaches, weakness, vomiting and was unable to walk. Lathyrus sativa 1M was given.
Then the case unexpectedly passed out of my hands and the local doctor made much ado about the whole set-up, hospitalized the child, quarantined the family, and did a spinal tap. Cell count showed 800 lymphocytes. The child was kept under observation, and nothing was done. Much to the dismay of the doctor, the case was cleared up on the second day. The child crawled out of bed and walked down the hall. He was discharged in 1 week (they had to keep him that long to “save face”).
Case II – Tommy M., aged 7, brother of the above patient. Two days after the first case got home, he developed the same symptoms. Lathyrus sativa was given and the child was kept quiet. This time the mother did not become embroiled in much a serious muddle with the local doctor and hospital. The child was able to play the next day. He was cleared up and out of doors three days later.
Case III – Marion S., aged 6. High fever (104), vomiting, pain in cervical spine and occiput, bloodshot eyes, and incoherent talking. Lathyrus sat., 1M had been given two weeks prior as a preventive. Case aborted next day. His little brother had the same experience at the same time. Three other children not affected. All had received Lathyrus two weeks prior as a preventive. Mind you, this all took place in one of the worst epidemics the country has seen last August in Richmond, Indiana.
Case IV – A child of a Mrs. E., one afternoon, received Lathyrus as a preventive because he complained of a stiff neck, high fever, leg cramps, and a headache in the presence of a severe epidemic. He went home and promptly proceeded to grow worse. Alarmed as they were, the neighborhood doctor was called in and the child was immediately hospitalized. Spinal fluid showed Polio. Again befuddled by the mysterious working powers of the potency, they were compelled to discharge the patient within a couple of days. He walked out of the hospital well. Now the younger brother had fever, but nothing developed. The interesting contrast here is that on the same street, there was another severe case of Polio who had not had the services of a homoeopath. I heard indirectly from the mother of my case that this other case had to stay in the hospital for six weeks and then came out a partial cripple. A man and his wife on the same street were non-protected; they both died.
I have always used Lathyrus as a preventive in hundreds of families and during bad epidemics too; and as yet, I have my first case of Polio to see progress to a dangerous stage. Ive had 100 percent recovery and that many aborted cases.
DISCUSSION
DR. ROGER A. SCHMIDT (San Francisco. Calif.]: Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate Dr. Bond on those very illustrative cases and on the results he got with Lathyrus.
We have had some cases of polio on the Pacific Coast. I dont believe that they were, by far, as extensive and as serious as they were in the Middle West. We have had a number of cases, incipient cases, lets call them that, that were probably aborted but not confirmed, as far as diagnosis is concerned, except for the pain in the neck and the other features, fever and so on. although I never used Lathyrus in those cases, they have cleared up pretty nicely and quickly with Gelsemium in the very early stage of the disease.
But this brings me back to the very early days of my practice, maybe twenty-five or twenty-eight years ago, when, as a young doctor in Geneva, Switzerland, I took care of a case of polio which had at that time been a rather rare affair, a man of thirty years of age who got a very severe case of it, in fact going to the point of unconsciousness. I called in consultation the other homoeopathic doctor that was there at that time, Duprez (my brother wasnt there at the time). who advised me to give him Muriatic acid.
I think the indication was, and I never forgot it, that you get terrifically dizzy as he was turning on the right side in the bed, and he had all the other features, of course, of profound prostration; in fact, he was a very, very sick man, but he pulled out of it. We didnt give any Lathyrus at that time. He pulled out of it, in fact, quite rapidly, with only a moderate degree of residual paralysis in the left leg.
And the interesting feature is, at the same time when that man became sick, another one in the town got sick also and was treated by the professor of medicine, the head of the medical faculty of the Geneva Medical School. That man had the privilege to have not only that doctor to attend to him but many others called in consultation.
Following the course of his disease, he didnt die but he was very severely crippled, and for years later had to use crutches to walk, whereas the patient I attended, married just a year after he had contracted the disease and was able to dance the day of his marriage, with his bride.
DR. LAURA B. HURD [San Francisco, Calif.]: I would like to ask Dr. Bond what potency he gave the lathyrus and how he administered it.
DR. BOND; In the 1M.
DR. CARL H. ENSTAM [Los Angeles, Calif.]: Where there any characteristic symptoms of the epidemic in Indiana at that time?
DR. BOND: That looked like the characteristic epidemic remedy, as far as I could determine.
DR. R.S. FARIS [Richmond, Va.]: Did you use the 1M as the preventive?
DR. BOND: Yes.
DR. FARIS: Give it more than once? Did you repeat it as a preventive?
DR. BOND: As a rule, I just gave one powder. Sometimes I gave three or four powders, with instructions during an epidemic to take a repeat on it in a couple of weeks, if the epidemic was still raging.
DR. A.W. HOLCOMBE [Kokomo, Ind.]: It seems to me that I am monopolizing a good deal of time here. I have seen but two cases of polio, one a young fellow about fourteen years old, and I have forgotten now what I gave him because that was fifty years ago, but he still has a little limp.
But what I want to tell you more about is a homoeopathic doctor over at Monticello, a town about forty-five miles northwest of me. He is a very busy man. I had a patient from there that came over about every three or four weeks, a lady optometrist.
One time she came over and I said, “How is Doctor So-and-so?”
She said, “Doctor is paralyzed.”
I said, “How long ago has that been?”
“He has been in bed for weeks. He had polio. He cant move, cant get out of bed.
“Well,” I said, “you have his wife call me up and let me find out about it. Homoeopaths are too scarce in Indiana to have them laid up. They have to get out and do their business.”
She called me up. I went over and I said, “Have you any Lathyrus?”
She said, “No. What is it?”
I said, “It is my prescription for you husband.”
I sent her the thirtieth. I think I sent five powders to take night and morning. Always give an odd number of doses.
I said, “You report to me in about two weeks.”
Well, in two weeks she called me up and said the doctor was resting better and he could move his limbs a little bit in bed; he couldnt get out of bed, however. So I sent him five powders of Lathyrus 200th, and that got him out of bed.
Then a little later I gave him 1000th and, later, the 10,000th. The last time I heard he was out doing his work just as well as he ever did.
It is wonderful what Lathyrus will do in the case of polio. Gelsemium is good in polio, if it covers the condition.
DR. ALLAN D. SUTHERLAND [Brattleboro, Vt.]: Mr. Chairman, I have had two cases of polio, and my record is extremely poor.
The first case was a married woman with five children, who developed the disease and became completely paralyzed from her waist down. At the same time she began to miscarry, being about five months pregnant. Nux vomica helped her through that rather trying time. She is still paralyzed; has had two pregnancies since, which have had to be terminated by caesarean section, because she has absolutely no abdominal muscles at all. We felt she wouldnt be able to carry through the second stage of labor successfully with no abdominal muscles since she has a little difficulty even in delivering a stool. But she is cheerful and relatively happy and thinks she is lucky to be alive, because she was really quite sick.
The second case was a fourteen-year-old girl who developed, first, paralysis in the limbs and eventually a paralysis of the diaphragm and chest muscle, and expired. The homoeopathic remedy seemed not to help. It was probably the fault of her homoeopathic physician rather than of the system under which he practised, and he felt pretty badly about that.
DR. BOND [closing]: I have nothing much more to say except there are, of course, other good remedies. Lathyrus has just been my champion remedy most of the time.
I did have one case that came in with very high, burning fever and responded very nicely to Belladonna, and no further remedy was needed. I am still waiting for that Curare case when we get a bulbar type of polio.
