ON NOVEMBER 8th, 1934, I was visited by a Miss T., a Doctor of Medicine, 35 years old, who told me that her father, aged 80, was dying of heart disease. She herself was an orthodox doctor, while her father was treated homoeopathically, and she had no belief in Homoeopathy. The old gentleman had been in bed for weeks, more or less unconscious, the brain had given way, he lay in stupor if not in coma, did not wish to be awakened for meals, could no longer control his bladder, and his physician, a well-known Homoeopath, had declared that the case was hopeless and that the brain could never be restored.
I was told that this “homoeopath” had given him the following incredible medley of homoeopathic and allopathic medicines: Digitaline in large doses, Apocyanum mother tincture, Crataegus, Medinal, Theomenal, Hepar sulphuris, Gunpowder, Passiflora, Coffea, Lycopodium, Sulphur, Arsenicum iodatum. It is really a disgrace that a homoeopath could have given such a mixture. In his lucid moments, the old gentleman complained about the medicines he was given, asked to be treated in the way in which he had been treated by the late Dr. John H. Clarke, refused to take medicines and refused liquids, suspecting that they contained medicines.
I came to the conclusion that he suffered not so much from heart disease as from Digitalis poisoning, which slows the heart until it stops. I ordered the immediate leaving-off of all the medicines, and prescribed Nux vomica and Sulphur to antidote Digitalis and to eliminate it from the system. The old man promptly felt better, but his stupor and coma remained.
Therefore, I gave him the next day Opium 30, producing coma and stupor similar to that of the patient when given in large doses. Very promptly Mr. T. improved. His coma disappeared, he no loner refused medicines, took liquid in adequate quantities, became interested in live, talked rationally, got up in the morning, dressed, put on his collar and tie, came down to breakfast, read the newspaper, and became indignant when he discovered an accumulation of letter weeks old, not realizing that he had been lying in a coma, given up by his doctor, for weeks.
Unfortunately, there were complications. Mr. T. had had prostatic trouble for ten years. The homoeopathic doctor who lived in the neighbourhood and who called in every day prescribed Hexamine etc. The patient collapsed and died, and I much fear that his end was hastened or caused by the incredible treatment he had received before I was consulted by his daughter. This case should be a warning to every homoeopathic doctor to stick to homoeopathy, and to avoid the dangerous benumbing drugs and poisons used by allopaths with disastrous results upon their patients.
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.