SOME years ago I read in the leading American medical journal the following joke: “A newly fledged medical man asked his experienced uncle: I think I ought to embrace some speciality. What would you recommend me to do? Become a skin specialist, my boy, become a skin specialist. Skin diseases are not very appetizing, but you can make money in comfort.
You will never be disturbed at your meals by an urgent case, you will never be called up in your sleep, your patients will never die and, best of all, they will never get well.” There was much truth in that joke. Doctors talk glibly about the disorders of the internal organs which they cannot satisfactorily examine, but the disorders of the skin are a mystery.
Orthodox medicine has produced bulky text-books of skin diseases. They are duly classified, labelled and named. They are described in full detail, but their treatment is unsatisfactory. In nineteen cases out of twenty the sufferer is given an ointment or a wash for his complaint. Now a skin disease is not merely a disease of the skin, but is a constitutional disease, the manifestations of which appear in the skin.
The skin is an important organ of elimination which works in partnership with the other eliminating organs, particularly the kidneys. Diseases are thrown out by way of the skin. If a child has measles or scarlet fever and develops a poor rash, the doctor looks grave. If the child develops a horrible rash the doctor is delighted. Many a dying man has been saved at the last moment by his skin, by profuse perspiration.
The treatment of skin diseases by outward applications is faulty. The old doctors warned of the danger of “driving in” a skin disorder. Nature tries to save the body by eliminating dangerous impurities through the skin or depositing them close to the skin, far away from the vitally important inner organs.
The organism deposits gouty accretions in the farthest recesses, in the joint of toes and fingers where they cannot do much harm. If that process is prevented the morbid matter is driven back into the blood and is often deposited in that heart valves.
The “cure” of skin complaints by outward applications frequently causes the disease to be projected upon an important organ. Every experienced practitioner has seen cases in which the disappearance of a skin disease was followed by asthma, heart disease, etc.
Twenty years ago Mrs. H., living in a small town in South Wales, had a magnificent girl baby, who weighed 12 lbs, at birth. After vaccination a skin disease developed, doctors could not cure it, the child was taken to a consultant who cured it in a few weeks. Immediately after the poor little thing developed asthma and heart disease and the struggle for breath was so terrible that her spine became curved. In 1932 the girl, was brought to me. She was then 18, she had a beautiful face but was totally distorted. Every good homoeopath has seen scores of such cases.
Syphilis produces an eruption which is immediately repressed with Mercury and other poisons. Nowadays syphilitic skin disease is rarely seen, but syphilitic degeneration of nerves and brain, which formerly was rare, occurs with alarming frequency. According to many syphilologists these developments are due to the disease being prevented finding an outlet by way of the skin.
I have treated a large number of skin cases, incurable to doctors and specialists. I have cured many of them, but I have never used outward applications. As a skin disease from the inside, it should be cured also from the inside, unless it is purely local.
On March 13th, 1928, Mr. E. C., a young man, living in Coventry, wrote:.
” I suffer from a skin disease, diagnosed as psoriasis. It is hereditary in my family. My grandfather and my father have had it. I am twenty two years old, and have been under doctors treatment since I was eight years. Ugly patches appear on my legs, arms, chest, back and scalp. and they never disappear, despite the efforts of countless doctors and treatment at skin hospitals. The doctors themselves tell me I am incurable and can only compromise with the complaint.”.
I saw him on April 27th and discovered that he did not perspire, took little liquid, but enormous quantities of sugar and sweets. I advised him to get a Turkish bath cabinet and gave him a fleshless diet and Sulphur 3x. He looked a very poor specimen, dark, sallow, thin, weak.
3.
He improved rapidly. On June 14th he wrote: “My condition has amazingly improved.” On July 10th he wrote: “The disease has certainly diminished by half.” On July 31st he wrote:.
“My condition at the present is vastly better than at any time during treatment from skin specialists which I have been under in the past. What is more, this miracle has been brought about by methods which are entirely in accordance with nature. No pernicious drugs, poisons, ointments, or lotions have been employed, which tend to drive the disease underground instead of eradicating it. All this has been brought about within the space of a few short months”.
The young man had no medicines except Sulphur 3x and Thyroid 2x. Sulphur 3x means a thousandth of a grain per dose, a quantity which will arouse the derision of skin specialists, for a single grain would last a whole year if taken at the rate of three doses a day.
As happens so often the treatment produced not a cure but only a remission. Treatment was made difficult because the disease had been a century in the family. There was a hereditary factor which I tried to eradicate. I sent him Psorinum, Tuberculinum and other nosodes, but groped ion the dark in vain.
Then I thought that resistance to the disease was due largely to the wretched condition of the young man, which was largely caused by the enormous quantities of Arsenic and other poisons with which skin specialists had fed him. I started building him up by an appropriate diet and medicine and when Sulphur no longer was helpful I tried at least twenty remedies, but none of them had any permanent effect.
I went on patiently. His body improved magnificently, and the skin condition was vastly improved but did not get completely well. In obscure cases it is always advisable to examine the body as a whole.
When he stood stripped I noticed a terrible odour from his feet. “How long have you had this ?” “All my life.” Silica was called for by the foot condition. It improved the skin for some time, improved vastly his general health and eliminated the evil smell from the feet, but the eruption returned. As he was weak I gave him Tuberculinum in small and rare doses. Then I gave him the potentized scales of his own skin, but auto-therapy proved unavailing.
I had tried on him in vain Mercury and Antimony in infinitely small doses, thinking of hereditary syphilis. At last it occurred to me that, although Mercury and Antimony, when given singly, had failed, the two drugs, given in combination, might succeed. I sent him Aethiops antimonialis, a combination of Mercury and Antimony, in the 3rd decimal potency on May 25th, 1933, and he benefited greatly.
If the right medicine has been found, the experienced homoeopath gives the same medicine in a higher potency. I told him to make higher potencies by dissolving a few tablets in a medicine bottle of water, and take occasional sips, diluting the mixture further and further and shaking it thoroughly. On September 6th he wrote: “Although I am only taking an occasional dilute dose, improvement continues. Improvement is so marked that I can now wear my sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
The medicine has been of immense help.” His letter dated November 7th said: “The higher potencies obtained with very minute doses are best suited to my case. It is really wonderful how the medicine taken in this way has prevented a general recrudescence, usually experienced at this time of the year.” On December 21st he wrote: ” I am very thankful that my trouble since childhood is now kept within limits, thanks to homoeopathy”.
If, as I hope, the young man is permanently cured, it will be very wonderful, because during fourteen or fifteen years continuous treatment with official medicines had failed. It will be noticed that Mr. E. C. was given continuous treatment during five weary years, until striking success was obtained. It may be that a more fortunate prescriber could have obtained a success more rapidly giving Aethiops antimonialis in 1928 instead of in 1933.
Cases of inherited disease, take long to cure. Hahnemann considered two years the minimum of time for the curing of a chronic disease.
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.