1. Ringworms on both hands. Because infected from flour sweepings used for making paste. Had been treated by iodine and mercury ointment for several weeks without effect. Tub. 40M, one dose cured in three weeks, the last eruption to come disappearing first.
2. Sees faces, flowers, etc., on closing eyes after crisis of pneumonia. Imagines someone is waking in front of him., epilepsy. Calc. carb. cured.
3. Right foot swollen, burning, itching and painful. Puts foot out of bed to cool it. Aggravation before a storm, lying in bed, motion and heat. Knees stiff. Lyc. 200 cured in a woman of 80.
4. Erythema nodosum. Has had two previous attacks which confined her to bed for about three weeks each time. Now has two haemorrhagic areas below the left knee which are very sensitive to the touch. Knees stiff, better from continued motion. Rhus tox. 200.
A new area developed the day after taking Rhus tox. She continued to attend school and made a complete recovery within a week.
5. Asthma only at night. Old chronic case. Syph. 45M relieved for weeks.
6. Warts in a bogy of five. Thuja 200 cured after failure of the CM.
7 Paralysis agitans. Even thinking of doing anything greatly increases the tremor. Oxalic acid 1M and 70M greatly relieved.
8. Chronic arthritis, particularly of knees in an old man of 83. Various remedies gave little relief until he mentioned that when a young man he used to pump cold water on the knees which gave him great relief. Ledum 1M gave as great relief as I ever saw from a remedy.
9. Haemorrhoids protrude during stool, very sensitive. Urging to stool every time she urinates. Mur. acid 200. Marked relief in a terminal case of the uterus.
10. scrawny neck, very fond of salt. Eats well but has not gained weight for a month. Nat. mur. 1M, one dose, caused a boy of three to gain three pounds in three weeks.
SOUTH MANCHESTER, CONN.
DISCUSSION.
DR. C.L.OLDS: In giving that Thuja how long did you wait after the high potency before you gave the 200th?.
DR. T.G. SLOAN: Several months.
DR. A.H.GRIMMER: The doctor brought out some nice points in the paper which we all like to hear. The observation of seeing the last symptom disappear first in his ringworm case is something that a good many of our homoeopaths forgotten, and it often helps when we really have the similimum to watch those things.
PRESIDENT G.STEVENS: In connection with that case that was cured by Syphilinum, were there definite symptoms of syphilis?.
DR. T.G.SLOAN: No, simply the night aggravation. DR. C.DIXON: Speaking of ringworms, I had a funny experience that I would like to relate to get the reaction of the Society on it.
A man who has been under observation and a high potency dose of Rhus. tox. for perhaps three months developed ringworm. Was it something that my Rhus tox. brought out on the man, or was the Rhus tox. so far from a similimum that he developed a ringworm while under the treatment? I would like to have a little discussion on that. Perhaps it doesnt fit in the with Dr. Solans paper, but it is along the line of verifications. The man appears to be well. The ringworm developed on the upper part of the left shoulder around the left nipple.
DR. T.G.SLOAN: Had he ever had anything of the sort?.
DR. G. DIXON: Not far as I could find from his history. He was a man about fifty-five years old.
CHAIRMAN J. HUTCHINSON: I feel that many times we see new or different symptoms of the remedy we give for a condition which is improved; new symptoms come out and often they are very perplexing. Rhus tox. to me is a very precarious remedy and the individual case is always precarious. We have no means of estimating just what its reaction is giving to be, except as we have reason to believe that a good prescription moderately applied or skilfully applied is going to bring about betterment. So far as Rhus tox. goes I think it has immensely numerous deviltries in it.
DR. C.M. BOGER: Of course, I think a case should be approached from every possible angle. If the man had ringworm he had susceptibility to ringworm. We cannot throw aside pathology entirely and true ringworm cannot exist without the presence of what we all know as the cause of ringworm pathologically, and he had susceptibility to ringworm or he wouldnt have hand it.
The organism present in ringworm it zoophyte. It would not have found lodgement and frown there without something to grow upon. And of course the man isnt cured as long as that susceptibility is there. I think if the doctor will look at it and think about it form that standpoint he will cure his case.
CHAIRMAN J. HUTCHINSON: In other words, it is difficult to estimate personal idiosyncrasies except by what happens.
DR. C.M. BOGER: Yes. You cant grow a grain of wheat on a rock. You must have some soil for it and as long as that soil is a soil upon which the ringworm will grow, the man will have it.
You have to change the soil, and to do this you will have to give an antipsoric remedy. Rhus is not an antipsoric.
DR. A. PULFORD: Burnett related ringworm to tuberculosis and Rhus tox. bears some relation to tuberculosis. In the exhibition of Rhus tox. he relieved some of the superficial symptoms and allowed the deeper symptoms to come to the surface. That is why I think Rhus tox. was not related to the case. It simply brought about a condition that I am going to discuss in a paper which I am to present today. Lack of study leads of difficulty, and it seems to me a sad one. I refer to the disregarding or belittling of the work done by old masters in homoeopathy. In these modern days the tearing down of pedestals with all that is no them is exceedingly popular.
This destructive agent as regards homoeopathy is doubly vicious in that we are given nothing to take its place. There is real help in the older writings, the transactions of the I.H.A. and in many older editions of homoeopathic journals. It is at least inspiring to read what older men, less influenced my modern tendencies, were able to accomplish. The contribution of men who spent a lifetime in real homoeopathic prescribing is too valuable to be thrown into the discard. It has hurt our school; as a policy is decay at the root, and insidiously undermines confidence in general.- RAY W. SPALDING, M.D., before the Eastern Homoeopathic Medical Association, October 1929.
Lack of materia medica study is a barrier or obstacle to effective curative work. Provings alone should not limit the action of a remedy for they have not been carried far enough to have actually produced lesions and perhaps only to disturbance of functions except in accidental poisoning cases. Few of us remember as much materia medica as would be good for out patients.
Yet many rely on memory alone and then question the efficacy of remedies. Lack of study becomes an obstacle only in proportion to the reviewing a doctor is willing to make of the vast field. The habit of reading one remedy a day is wonderfully educational. Personally the use of the Guiding Symptoms with further references to either Kent or some other materia medica is most helpful to me.- RAY W. SPALDING, M.D., before the Eastern convention, 1929.
