PYROGEN


PYROGEN symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Homeopathic Drug Pictures by M.L. Tyler. What are the symptoms of PYROGEN? Keynote indications and personality traits of PYROGEN…


Introduction

      ANOTHER great FEVER remedy! —but not the remedy of simple acute fevers, like Aconite, but the remedy of septic conditions– typhoid conditions–typhoid.

Pyrogen is a weird medicine–weird in origin–weird in symptoms; and it belongs to Homoeopathy alone.

We owe this remedy to Dr. Drysdale, who published his pamphlet “On Pyrexin or Pyrogen, as a Therapeutic Agent”, in 1880.

Dr. Drysdale had been greatly struck by a remark made by Dr. Burdon Saunderson in a British Medical Journal in 1875. It runs thus: “Let me draw your attention to the fact that no therapeutical agent, no synthetical product of the laboratory, no poison, no drug is known which possesses the property of producing fever. The only liquids which have this endowment are liquids which either contain Bacteria, or have marked proneness to their production.” Drysdale says that: “this last clause is qualified by statements elsewhere, and from other sources, that the fever-producing agent is a chemical non-living substance formed by living bacteria, but acting independently of any further influence from them; and formed not only by the bacteria but also by living pus-corpuscles, or the living blood or tissue- protoplasm from which these corpuscles spring. This substance when produced by Bacteria is the sepsin of Panum and others, but in view of its origin also from pus, and of its fever-producing power. Dr. B. Saunderson names it Pyrogen.”

The above may not be the last word in bacteriology–or in Homoeopathy–but one records it in toto, because to its inspiration we owe a unique and very useful remedy, as will be seen.

But Dr. Drysdale, of course, cannot admit that no other drug or poison can produce fever, because “Aconite, Belladonna, Arsenic, Quinine, Baptisia, Gelsemium and a host of other drugs do produce more or less of the febrile state, among other effects. But they produce it only after repeated doses and contingently on the predisposition of the subject of the experiment–or they produce it as a part of a variety of complex local and general morbid states. Therefore, ” he says, “it is practically true that no other known substance induces idiopathic pyrexia, certainly, directly, and after a given dose. This directness of action ought to make it a remedy of the highest value, if it can ever be used therapeutically, and if the Law of Similars is applicable here also, we ought to find it curative in certain states of pyrexia and certain blood disorders to which its action corresponds pathologically.”

Drysdale gives Burdon Saunderson’s experiments on animals which show that Sepsin or Pyrogen, given in lethal doses, kills– having produced changes in blood and tissues analogous to those of septicaemia after wounds: while in non-lethal doses, after severe symptoms, “the animal, in a few hours, recovered its normal appetite and liveliness with wonderful rapidity showing that this septic poison has not the slightest tendency to multiply in the organism.”

So, pondering these things, Drysdale set out to prepare his remedy for fevers of the worst type–from sterilized putridity.

He chopped up half-a-pound of lean beef into a pint of tap- water, and set it in a sunny place for three weeks.

The maceration fluid was reddish, thick and fetid; and the stench can be imagined when he set to work to render his material absolutely sterile and safe.

It was strained; filtered; evaporated to dryness at boiling heat; rubbed up in a mortar with spirits of wine; boiled; again filtered; again dried to form a brownish mass; rubbed up now with distilled water, and again filtered. The clear amber-coloured resulting fluid was a watery extract, or solution of Sepsin. This, mixed with an equal volume of glycerine, was labelled Pyrexin O.

(But Burnett, when it was prepared for him some eight years later, had it run up with spirits of wine to the sixth potency, which he used curatively in cases of typhoid fevers; and some of Burnett’s preparation went on to Dr. Swan, on high-potency fame, who prepared from this the very highest potencies of Pyrogen; much used in U.S.A.)

To be absolutely sure that his “Pyrexin” or Pyrogen was pure poison–sterile–and incapable of carrying or breeding disease, it was tested, by injection, on white mice. And Drysdale was able to state that “Sepsin or Pyrogen is only a chemical poison, whose action is definite and limited by the dose: it is incapable of inducing an indefinitely reproducible disease in minimal dose, after the manner of the special poisons of the specific fevers.”

He says: “The most summary indication for Pyrogen, would be to term it the Aconite of the typhus, or typhoid quality of pyrexia.”

Burnett, always on the look-out for curative agents, wrote a small monograph on Pyrogen in Typhoid, giving cases; because Drysdale’s work had been more or less passed over, and he realized and had experienced the importance of the remedy.

Then Dr. H. C. Allen not of the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica, but of Allen’s Keynotes, and Allen’s Materia Medica of the Nosodes), by including Pyrogen among his remedies brought it into practical use.

But by far the most illuminating article on Pyrogen comes from Dr. Sherbino, of Texas, published in the Homoeopathic Physician, in April, 1893; and in the same volume is to be found an article by Dr. Yingling, who “collates the reliable indications of Pyrogen”. Yingling says: “As the larger part of this record is clinical, and as the symptoms cured with a single remedy are reliable between the symptoms of the provings, and the symptoms cured.)

I have not been able to find, so far, a proper and complete proving of Pyrogen on humans. But Clarke used to insist that it was only a case of “what a remedy can cause it can cure”, but the other way about; what it can cure, it can also cause. In the latter case the remedy, according to him, was born by breach presentation: and he was jubilant when, later, his cured symptoms were found to have been also caused by his remedy.

Dr. Sherbino not only gives arresting indications for Pyrogen, but a set of telling cases which show its great power and utility, and also the rapidity of its action; and he stresses the very striking and peculiar symptoms that should suggest its use.

We will give some of his pointers, and then, briefly, some of his cases.

The hard bed–hard pillow sensations–the intolerable aching, compared to lying on a pile of rocks, show the extreme soreness of Pyrogen. (Arnica, Baptisia) The patient may “feel as if a train of cars has run over him”.

Extreme restlessness, better when first beginning to move. This is the great difference between Rhus and Pyrogen. Rhus is worse when beginning to move, but better for continued motion. As the relief from movement in Pyrogen only lasts a few moments, the patient has to keep on moving. Hence its frightful restlessness. Restlessness better sitting up in a chair and rocking hard. Pyrogen has only momentary relief from moving, but must move for that relief. (One thinks of Pyrogen as the dream of scientists–perpetual motion.)

Fan-like motion of the alae nasi (Antim tart., Baptisia, Belladonna, Bromium, Helleborus, Lycopodium, Phosphorus, Rhus tox.)

Vomits water when it becomes warm in stomach (Phosphorus). Sick stomach, better by drinking very hot water (not Phosphorus). Coughs rusty mucus : pain in right lung and shoulder, agg. from coughing or talking.

Throbbing of vessels of neck (Belladonna, Spigelia). Violent heart’s action. Heart beats hard: sensation as if too full of blood: beats very loud, can be heard a foot away from thorax. Can’t sleep for heart whizzing and purring so.

Delirium on closing eyes: sees a man at foot of bed, or in far part of room. Inclined to talk all the time at night during the fever. Talks to herself. Whispers to herself. If asked what she said, does not answer. Cries out in sleep that some one, or a weight is lying on her. Sensation of a cap on head. When she awakens and feels the cap, knows that she is not delirious! Sensation as if she covered the whole bed: or she knew that her head was on the pillow, but could not tell where the rest of her body was. (Comp. Baptisia, Petrol.) Feels when lying on one side that she is one person, and that when she turns to the other side, she is another person. Felt as if existing in a second person, or as if there were two of her. The fever would not run in each alike. (Baptisia the fever wants to run separate.)

Feels crowded with arms and legs.

Can tell when fever is coming on, because he must urinate. Urine clear as spring water. Intolerable tenesmus of bladder.

Coldness and chilliness that no fire would warm. Sits by fire and breathes the heat from the fire. Then later, sensation of lungs on fire, and that he must have fresh air, which relieved.

Knife-like pains in side, go through to back; worse from motion, coughing, and deep breathing; better lying on affected side (Bryonia). Groaning with every breath.

Face and ears red, as if the blood would burst through.

After the fever, the hallucination still persists that he is very wealthy, and has a large sum of money in the bank; this is the last to leave him–this idea that he has the money.

Margaret Lucy Tyler
Margaret Lucy Tyler, 1875 – 1943, was an English homeopath who was a student of James Tyler Kent. She qualified in medicine in 1903 at the age of 44 and served on the staff of the London Homeopathic Hospital until her death forty years later. Margaret Tyler became one of the most influential homeopaths of all time. Margaret Tyler wrote - How Not to Practice Homeopathy, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, Repertorising with Sir John Weir, Pointers to some Hayfever remedies, Pointers to Common Remedies.