While there are many scientists, there are few scientific thinkers. In this present day, all medical scientists are engaged in research work, and I should like to believe that the homoeopathist is doing his part in research work, particularly when it comes to the advancement of his therapeutic art in connection with some of the new and basic elements. These usually go deeply into the vital economy and help the more serious and chronic types of disease, more so than the simple vegetable remedies.
My interest in X-Ray was stimulated by the work that Doctor Joseph Post of Philadelphia was doing, namely, to irradiate specimens of alcohol and sugar of milk, and to see if they would be come radioactive. This could only be demonstrated by the Geiger counter. Tests were then made by Mr. Frank Hartman, an expert in the use of the delicate Geiger counter.
It was found that there was no radioactive effect. The same routine was carried out with the test of materials in open vessels, and still there was no effect on the Geiger counter. This, then settled the question of radioactivity. Therefore, we must look for the possibility of other effects showing the reason we get such a close proving of the effects of X-Ray upon the body tissues.
There are certain emanations which we gather in potentizing what we call the X-Ray, which produce positive effects on healthy human tissue. It is my opinion that the term “Potentized X-Ray” is a misnomer and should not be used. There are certain emanations taken up by the alcohol which are being potentized. It is interesting to note also that the therapeutic application of irradiation, so far as dosage and interval of application are concerned, follows very closely the dictates as laid down by Samuel Hahnemann; that is, the more acute the lesion, the smaller the dose and the shorter the interval for application, and vice versa.
My work in searching for basic remedies and proving them for forty-five years has led me to investigate from the homoeopathic viewpoint the potentized X-Ray emanations. I am able to prove the fact that it is one of the deepest acting remedies in our materia medica, if not the deepest.
My sole and whole interest in any substance or drug is in its effect on the living cell. In dealing with the X-Ray, either as a local or constitutional therapeutic agent, it should not be forgotten that we are dealing with a powerful force whose very name implies an unknown quantity, requiring in its crude state great skill and judgment in its use. It should also be remembered that the Roentgen ray is an intense ray from the chemical end of the solar spectrum which exists there in small quantities, and by artificial means it is produced and intensified thousands of times through the present generative processes.
To the follower of Hahnemann, there is a deeper and more profound reason when we take into consideration some of the fundamental principles of this ray covering the cure of any disease. One of the most vital of these principles is that disease must be cured from within outward and from above downward. I believe there can be no other way to reach disease through the action of the medicines but through the life force and governed by this principle; all other means are antagonistic to the law. Therefore, the so-called cures of skin lesions by a persistent use of the X-Ray, locally, must be a suppression but not a cure, and we can safely prophesy that in time the history of such cases must reveal fully that fact.
I have used the potentized X-Ray since 1897 when I laid a flint glass bottle containing absolute alcohol under a tube, which I personally used, and which was activated by my Meyervitz coil. This was given to my old friend, Doctor Samuel Cleveland, and he told me he gave it to Doctor Bernhardt Fincke of Brooklyn to potentize.
Recently, in working with Doctor Post of Philadelphia, I conceived the idea of having the alcohol irradiated in an open vessel and the raw rays pushed right into the alcohol without a glass screen intervening as done with a bottle which I exposed. Doctor Post has very kindly co-operated with me and we have exposed the same alcohol several times to the raw rays. I potentized it immediately in his office.
In this short talk, I cannot go into complete details concerning some important facts, but I found that the originally exposed alcohol lost some of its power days after it was exposed. This preparation of the raw material, which I potentized immediately in Doctor Posts office, was given to Boericke and Tafel and they have run up potencies for me.
I shall include some of the effects on the human skin and glands from continuous exposure to the crude X-Ray, as well as effects from the potencies. There is no doubt that it violently irritates all the tissues of the body and greatly depresses their functions. Ofcourse, more prompt and serious effects of the X-Ray are observed in the skin, and other changes follow exposure to the crude X-Ray. Inflammations produced by direct irradiation, if intense, are followed by sclerotic and necrotic changes, and I have known them to last to the end of the patients life. Clinical observation has proved to me that malignant degeneration often follows too long and too frequent irradiation.
In this talk, I cannot go into all the real symptomatology that I have developed, but it will be published in connection with this paper. While I have seen positive results from the potentized X-Ray in eczema, arthritis, mental aberration, catarrhal conditions and a plastic anaemia, there is no doubt but the X-Ray affects the bone marrow to an extensive degree, and what any drug or substance is capable of producing in the healthy human body, it is, by the law of similars, capable of curing. I have observed over and over again the ability of the potentized X-Ray to arouse reactive vitality and bring to the surface old dormant conditions. I have used it as a nosode when the best constitutional remedy failed to relieve or arouse the overpowered vitality to a sufficient degree to bring about the proper reaction.
I would say that one of the most prominent effects of the X-Ray potency is its tendency to resurrect old symptoms, such as suppressed eruptions. With the Boericke and Tafel potency of the X-Ray, I brought back an old suppressed foot sweat in a patient who had been complaining of rheumatic pains in his feet and ankles for the past ten years. He told me that he believed his pains began after he had stopped the foot sweat with some local applications.
The X-Ray potency brought back this suppressed foot sweat after the failure of Silica, Graphites and Thuja, and since this foot sweat has reappeared he has completely lost the rheumatic pains in his feet and ankles. This case proved to me the power of the X-Ray in potency to resurrect old suppressed conditions.
I present the case of an old lady who worked as a short order cook, who could not keep a position because of cracks and bleeding between the fingers. She had many an ointment prescribed at the hospital dispensary. I failed with Graphites and Petroleum, but a powder of X-Ray in potency, morning and evening, cured her within a week, and she has remained cured up until this moment.
I have placed this remedy, X-Ray, among my nosodes and have found it of great value as an intercurrent in arthritis.
If I may briefly side-step X-Ray as a remedy for a moment, I might add that the modern arthritic remedies have no comparison when it comes to the safety of the patient as compared with our homoeopathic remedies.
One of the greatest results I have had treating degenerative or atrophic arthritis was a lesion in the knee of a school teacher whom I placed in the Womens Homoeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia in 1949. This diagnosis was made in the X-Ray Laboratory by Doctor Wessel. He believed this patient would soon be crippled. She was almost crippled when I put her in the hospital. Doctor Wessel told me that an atrophic type of arthritis was the most stubborn case to treat.
Yet this woman, who is the principal of a large public school, has been completely relieved and is carrying on her duties regularly to this day, running up and down stairs which her position requires of her. She seldom suffers any pain. This is one instance of the use of the X-Ray in potency; and in this case I stand neutral, and if anyone doubts my word they may go to the X-Ray Laboratory of the Womens Homoeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia, and have the facts verified. I have often wondered why there have not been more clinical confirmations published concerning the use of the potentized X-Ray.
I shall now quote some effects produced by the crude X-Ray which have been observed by competent men in the X-Ray Laboratories.
“It violently irritates all the tissues and greatly depresses their function, and its action on the brain causes mental irritability with emotional explosions in the form of quarrels and misanthropy, and a desire to kill”.
“This may be followed by mental depressions and weakening of the mental processes; irritation of the nervous system which produces a general prostration, exhaustion, languor, lameness, swooning, sensitiveness, soreness of the tissues, with trembling and twitching of the whole body”.
