While Homoeopathy has no one specific remedy for heart disease, it is rich in many remedies whose provings indicate their use and applicability to all the various types of cardiac disease classified.
We will take up some of the more important phases of prophylaxis first, which after all is a superior form of cure.
After nearly fifty years of observation and work with the sick in the broad field of general medicine, the writer is convinced that the injudicious and almost universal use of and addiction to the numerous coal-tar drugs, the barbitals, aspirin, anacin, midols and numerous others that have come down through the years, the more drastic types being those following World War One such as Acetanilid. Pyramidon, Phenacetin, etc., constitute one of the important factors in the widespread increase of heart disease, as well as cancer and other degenerative diseases such as leukemia and anemia. These drugs literally wiped out thousands during the great “flu” epidemic of that war period.
The greatest harm comes from the ease and cheapness with which these agents of destruction can be obtained. Without guidance or the advice of physician any layman can go to the nearest drug store or restaurant and get a supply. In fact he need not do that if he has a lady friend along, for most of the women nowadays carry a supply of aspirin or anacin with them to use for any slight distress or pain. Many are addicts and need no excuse to take the drug, often putting it in coke or beer or other alcoholic beverages.
It is true that many of these addicts live many years and carry on with the help of the drugs before the ravages of disease show up in the form of a drastic blood change or a gastric ulcer, a damaged kidney or heart, to say nothing of impaired mentality and memory.
These drugs are known by all medical men to be depressants and suppressants, as well as destroyers of certain blood elements producing the conditions of destroyed blood platelets. They also pervert and weaken the nerve function of the organism by inhibiting the sensibility to pain, as well as affecting adversely the thermal centers in the brain, suppressing fevers and preventing the natural advantage high temperature brings to the organism in its against toxemias and infections; in fewer words, they interfere in the natural reactions and processes of body function against disease.
If the organization for the study and prevention of heart disease financed by the American public would but stress this one evil of coal-tar drugs, their easy distribution and ready use b the gullible multitudes guided by radio announcers and advertising agents of the manufacturing chemists, whose only interest is profit regardless of the harm produced, they would accomplish more results in the prevention of heart disease and other degenerative states than a century of present day research and laboratory procedure could.
Perhaps the fear of offending the tremendously large and powerful commercial interests of these manufactures and vendors of universal ill health may be the reason the public is deprived of so much valuable knowledge.
In the early and functional stage of disease, such as the numerous types of headache, neuralgia, beginning arthritic pain, as well as febrile and infectious diseases, if, instead of taking any of these numerous suppressive coal-tar drugs, a simple homoeopathic remedy could be taken, the conditions of sickness would be more permanently eradicated with no sequellae remaining.
It is common knowledge that any heart lesions follow acute of infections, especially those of a rheumatic nature. It is common practice outside of homoeopathic procedure to use some one of these numerous coal-tar derivatives for the relief of pain and fever.
The sufferers from insomnia and frayed-one nerves often become addicts of the above-mentioned drugs and wind up mental and nervous wrecks, if not victims of heart, cancer or blood disease.
If enough physicians of all schools of medicine would impress on their patents the inherent danger the use of these subtle yet drastic drugs engenders, it would not be long before an organized educational program would bring to the public the necessity for the control and use of these agents only with a physicians advice.
Such a program would prevent much heart and other degenerative disease and prove to be a prophylactic factor of great value.
Needless to add, correct habits of living pertaining to diet, ventilation, hygiene (both mental and physical), the avoidance of excesses with sufficient rest and recreation (all of which is endorsed by all schools of medical thought) well be included as prophylactic factors.
The third and most important prophylactic factor in the prevention of heart and all other degenerative forms of disease is the application of the constitutional homoeopathic remedy. The sooner in the life of the individual this application is made the better the results obtained.
The homoeopathic remedy is the only force capable of neutralizing in the organism inherited toxins of disease and normalizing the physiologic processes of spirit, mind and body to produce harmony, which is health and vital resistance. All this enables the individual to exist in comfort and adjust to his changing environment without friction and to live out his full life span.
The homoeopathic treatment of functional heart conditions is comparatively easy for the physician and highly satisfactory for the patient because results are one hundred per cent good.
In the organic forms of heart disease the treatment is more difficult and complex and the results in cure from a pathological standpoint are practically nil. But from the point of palliation, comfort and prolongation of life, often with a splendid ability to carry on in lifes affairs, the results are most gratifying. No system of treatment removes serious heart pathology but the homoeopathic remedy brings comfort and longer life than any other treatment known to man.
To enumerate the numerous remedies and their specific symptoms for the treatment of various forms of heart disease would require a book of large volume. For that reason we will submit to you for study some of the valuable remedies that the many years of practice of many homoeopathic physicians have given the world for the relief and even cure of patients suffering from this increasing malady.
In this day of drug-slugging and drastic medication with an ever increasing array of new experimental chemical specifics, the condition of many patients are made worse by these means.
With the added burden of vitiated blood stream the victim of a heart disease has greatly lessened chances for help or recovery as his ability to react to curative remedies is much impaired. For this type of patient with few or no therapeutic symptoms for the selection of a remedy and where natural manifestations of sickness have been suppressed and an overwhelmed vital force is barely struggling to exist, a potency of Carbo veg. will bring outstanding results.
Carbo veg. is the best single antidote to coal-tar drugs and all fumes and gases which reduce the power of the blood cells to perform their function in the exchange of carbonic acid gas (Co2) and oxygen.
The Carbo veg. patient suffers from great air hunger and his general body weakness is accentuated in the weakness of his lungs and their respiratory function.
Carbo veg. has cured dilation of the heart. If affects muscle tone through the blood stream, bringing improved nourishment to the weakened cells.
Carbo. veg is one of the remedies to revive the flagging vital force which fails to react to remedies that are seemingly indicated but fail to arouse curative reaction. Lack of vital reaction is a key note and fits the general picture of the provings.
Clarke in his Dictionary of Materia medica lists this remedy high in its clinical application in the cure of heart disease. Volumes could be written about the power and symptoms of this wonderful remedy, but the object of this paper is to call attention of physicians to it for study which can be profitably pursued in our rich homoeopathic literature.
Crataegus Oxyacantha is remedy with a very fragmentary homoeopathic proving, but it has been extensively used by homoeopathic physicians with marked successes in many forms of heart disease such a angina pectoris, failing heart muscles with hypertrophy, etc.
The mental state is one of irritability, crossness and melancholy. “Weak, rapid pulse, dyspnoea, dropsy dependent on failure of heart whether from valvular affection or from anemia. (Clarke.).
The slightest exertion aggravates or brings on the symptoms.
The drug may cause nausea when given in the tincture unless given during or immediately after a meal; thus nausea with weakness may well be a leading indication.
Clarke says: “Crataegus is the nearest approach to a positive heart tonic that I know of.”.
This remedy has mostly been used in five to ten drop dose of the tincture. But Dr. Wilbur Bond of Greensfork, Indiana, some years ago reported a number of nice cures with this remedy in high potency and the writer has ad cases cured with it in potencies, thus confirming its power in potency when applicable.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.