Every great idea goes through three stages:
In the first it is ridiculed,
In the second it is opposed,
And in the third it becomes self-evident
Schopenhauer 

Homeopathy is the brainchild of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. He created it towards the end of the 18^th Century, meaning that it has been with us for over two centuries now.

Instead of chasing diseases one by one, as Allopathic Physicians do, Dr. Hahnemann studied each Whole disease-bearing patient individually. By doing so he realized that every disease is invariably associated with imbalance of the Whole patient. Then, and instead of treating each disease individually, Dr. Hahnemann devised a method that consists in restoring each Whole patient’s balance according to the principle of “like cures like” and discovered that, once the patient’s overall balance is restored, most diseases simply vanish. To boot, Homeopathy has virtually no side effects, no toxicity and no allergy-inducing capacity.

Homeopathy, then, is devoted to restoring the overall balance in each Whole disease-bearing patient according to the principle of “like cures like”. The means to achieve balance, and the principle on which those means are based, haven’t changed since their creation. Sure, some new remedies have been added and some new Repertories (*) and methods of succussion (**) have been devised since then. But results have been so uniformly good that Dr. Hahnemann’s successors have found no need to modify an iota of the set of principles and methods the Great Master brought into being. In fact, were Dr. Hahnemann to resuscitate today, all he would have to do before hanging his shingle again would be to come up to speed with the new remedies, the newer Repertories and the methods of succussion that came about after his death.

Compare this record with that of Allopathy.

At the time of Dr. Hahnemann’s great discovery, at the end of the 18 th Century, and practically along the whole of the 19 th Century, Allopathy consisted of a potpourri of the most outlandish treatments. Among others, Allopathy favored setons, smoke enemas, Egyptian mummy and Spanish fly preparations plus cyanide, strychnine and mercury in pretty high doses. An example of the latter was calomel, an almost pure mercury compound (a.k.a. “Mercury chloride, mild”). It was a popular laxative and was administered at high doses by mouth. When patients were exhausted by diarrhea and so intoxicated that their gums would bleed and swell and their teeth would loosen in their sockets, Doctors would rejoice because they considered that these changes meant that the drug was working.  In all fairness, though, I must add that there were also in use many substances that have survived to this day, either au naturel or else as their chemical derivatives, such as ipecacuanha, opium, digitalis, aloes, salicylic acid and others, as well as procedures such as bloodlettings and enemas. But, all in all, therapeutic results were dismal.

Things started to change in time, and changes were radical. The first timid efforts were done late in the 19 th Century and become stronger well into the 20 th. First the vaccines, then antibiotics and a host of anti-inflammatory drugs made their triumphal appearance, followed by hormones galore, anticancer preparations and drugs for the treatment of almost any malady. So fundamental were these changes that any 19 th Century Allopathic Physician who resuscitated in mid-20 th Century would have had to study Medicine again from scratch in order to continue practicing his profession.

With this modern therapeutic arsenal Allopaths were obtaining more consistent results than Homeopaths. This is so because, in Homeopathy, there are no routine or repetitive cases. Each new patient is unique. Thus, one first has to evaluate each particular Whole disease-bearing patient individually, which is usually far from easy and takes a long time; and then has to find the correct remedy for that Whole patient, which can also be quite tricky, subtle and complex. Here an excellent Homeopath with well-developed acumen and shrewdness can consistently obtain excellent results, while a mediocre or inexperienced one will very rarely be able to help his or her patients. Thus the disparity of therapeutic results one observes among Homeopathically treated patients. In Allopathy, on the other hand, all one has to worry about is the diagnosis of diseases and then how to treat them. Being disease-syndromes limited in number, and being routine problems relatively frequent, it is not all that hard with a little practice to identify them. And, since the 1940’s or thereabouts, there are plenty drugs around to treat practically any pathological condition. Thus the spectacular crop of consistently positive and even sometimes life saving results.

It was indeed Allopathy’s finest hour.

This apogee was followed by a slow decline. Toward the end of the 20 th Century most antibiotics were loosing their edge due to the appearance of more and more resistant strains of microorganisms. Antibiotics were also found to have very little effect on virus-induced illnesses. This while most drugs, so promising some 40 or 50 years before, were found to be brimming with side effects and toxicities, adverse effects on embryos and fetuses and also a capacity to elicit sometimes serious allergic reactions. What’s more, quite a few of the formerly considered as wonder drugs have been quietly or clamorously removed from the shelves of pharmacies and confined to oblivion.

Not only that, it also slowly began to dawn that these treatments can do nothing to prevent the slow deterioration of patients who receive them because Allopathy lacks the ability to control, let alone reverse, the progressive imbalance that is at the core of every pathological manifestation.

The Allopathic Establishment’s abhorrence toward Homeopathy was understandable in the late 18 th, the whole of the 19 th and early in the 20 th Century.

Dr. Hahnemann wasn’t precisely a paragon of public relations when it came to dealing with his Allopathic colleagues, something that inevitably brought about lots of friction, ill feelings and general unpleasantness.

It is also understandable that Allopaths were distressed when comparing the negligible effects of their services with those of their Homeopathic colleagues. In effect, ministrations provided by Allopaths often left sufferers worse off after treatment than what they had been before, that when said ministrations didn’t provide the necessary shove to impel their hapless patients into the hereafter. This, while watching askance how much better patients fared in the hands of Homeopaths. Being Human nature what it is, the accumulating feelings of impotence, perplexity, envy, hatred and resentment inevitably exploded into a Stygian abhorrence towards Homeopathy and its practitioners.

This, I believe, suffices to explain the rage of Allopaths toward Homeopathy prior to the 1940’s or thereabouts.

But then, how can the persistence of aversion towards Homeopathy be explained or justified in the optimistic and enthusiastic post-1940’s scenario?

Because from the 1940’s to the 1980’s Allopaths were on top of the world and obtaining positive results more consistently than their Homeopathic colleagues. There was nothing to envy Homeopaths about and no further need for recycling resentment and meanness towards them any longer. Allopathic treatments were leading to dependable therapeutic successes even in the hands of the most mediocre Physicians, something that could hardly be claimed by Homeopaths.

Furthermore, Allopaths as a rule are compassionate people, and nothing is farther from compassion that rancor. Yet, with very few exceptions, their animosity toward Homeopathy has prevailed to this day.

Why?

I believe that there are two main reasons for the persistence of this state of affairs.

Let me start with the first, that is an absolute unwillingness to even consider the possibility of exploring something new, while remaining content with whatever one has.

Carl Jung once stated that “there is no effort a Human Being will not undertake to avoid the effort of thinking”, or words to that effect.

This obstinate stolidness tends to worsen with age. Remember the adage that says that you can’t teach new tricks to an old dog.

Let me illustrate this problem with one example from History and another from my own experience.

The first example has to do with the famous Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), his Parisian professor Jacques Dubois (1478-1555) and the renowned Roman physician Claudius Galenus or Galen, as we call him today (c.130-c.200 AD). Galen wrote many books that were held as Holy Writ by European Physicians during the following 15 centuries or thereabouts. Problem is, Galen imagined much of what he wrote, so many of his writings have been proven wrong by observation—that after a lot of bickering by the champions of the status quo. Professor Dubois was one of those die-hards and Vesalius, after having been a devotee of Galen for many years, finally decided to believe in what he saw instead. One of the things he discovered was that thighbones were straight instead of curved, as Galen had pontificated. When confronted with this indisputable evidence Professor Dubois said that Human anatomy had undoubtedly changed since Galen’s days, and that the straightening out of thighbones was the consequence of using the narrow trousers fancied by Renaissance Europeans (Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, vol. 6, Simon & Schuster, NY 1957, page 871).

As to the example from my own experience. In the Post-graduate School of the Argentine Medical Homeopathic Association, where I studied Homeopathy, there was a Professor who once printed a brochure briefly describing what Homeopathy was all about. I am sorry, but I can’t remember his name.

Once he met an Allopathic colleague, a former Medical School classmate.

“What is Homeopathy?” wanted to know the classmate.

“Well” my Professor responded, proffering a copy of his brochure “it’s all here. Look it over when you have time”.

Then they parted ways to meet again a couple of years later in a Congress of some kind.

“Did you have a chance to read the brochure I gave you?” asked my Professor.

“Frankly, no”

“But why?”

“Well, what if you’re right?…”

As to the second reason.

Brainwashing is a procedure whereby one first induces a state of altered consciousness or else one of extreme stress in a Human Being, to then toss ideas or commands at him or her. The subject’s conscious mind is in no condition to analyze or critizise ideas or commands under such extreme circumstances, so those ideas or commands pass intact, whole, uncriticized and unfiltered through the conscious mind to then go straight into the subconscious. Once there they become part of the most intimate makeup of the subject as well as a compelling and irrational force that guide that person’s feelings and behavior from then on.

Many millennia ago, when our earliest ancestors were completely at the mercy of the elements, it arose in them the need of finding something extraordinarily good and powerful that would protect them and also of something extremely bad to avoid at all costs. These needs carved niches in their subconscious, niches that have persisted more or less intact to the present day because, as Edgar Rice Burroughs put in Tarzan’s mouth “modern man is but a savage covered by just a thin layer of civilization”.

Anthropologists and Dr. Carl Jung called “totem” the substance that fills the niche reserved for the good stuff, and “taboo” the filling of the niche of the bad, Anthropologists to better understand the minds of our ancestors and Dr. Jung to study these extremely powerful irrational forces that command our everyday behavior.

Soon primitive tribes found that it was very advantageous to fill the totem and taboo niches with commands that were convenient for the survival of the tribe and to maintain its structure and pecking order. Primitive tribes also learnt that the most successful way to implant the filling of those niches was to first create in neophytes a situation of altered consciousness through the ceremony of Initiation. Once so initiated, members of the tribe would respond with extreme awe at totems and with equally extreme fear and aversion to taboos, if those taboos were distant enough. If they got closer, taboos would elicit restlessness, nervousness, clumping together of the whole group and eventually hostility and aggression.

It was more recently found that extreme stress is as good as a state of altered consciousness to implant totems and taboos. Situations of extreme stress are created with evil purposes in totalitarian regimes. They are also an inevitable by-product of Medical training.

Medical Schools are formidable pressure cookers. In four short years, Medical students have to stuff their minds with an overwhelming amount of data, and then learn how to interconnect and to use it—all peppered with sundry tough eliminatory exams. This ordeal is followed by several years of brutal and intensive hands-on loosely supervised work, much of which consists on the performance of delicate tasks that require lots of thought and extreme concentration and attention, tasks that are accomplished by sleep-deprived and overworked young adults. This period is crowned by dreadful Licensing and Board Certifying exams. The associated stress is enormous. So much so that anything hurled at Medical students or recent graduates is bound to pierce through their conscious minds like a bullet that afterwards immerses and lodges intact deep into the core of their subconscious. Once there it will remain forever as Dogma.

Let me now create the scenario of a Medical School of the 1840’s or thereabouts. In it, let me place a Professor and his retinue of overstressed, sleep-deprived and brainwashed Medical students. Those students will readily accept that Egyptian mummy preparations are good and will consequently become an acceptable totem (as taught with smiles and repeated nods by the Professor), and that Homeopathy is evil and thus a repugnant taboo (contemptuously grumbled with a frown and some selected epithets by the Professor).

Several of those Medical students will eventually become Professors and in turn proffer students their totems and taboos. The same thing will happen when these students in turn become Professors and transmit their knowledge, totems and taboos included, to a new batch of overstressed students. By now, totems and taboos have become so firmly and pervasively implanted in the Medical subconscious that they have acquired a life of their own, so that Professors don’t need to bother verbalizing them any more. Taboos and totems can now be transmitted loud and clear by an opportune frown, a moment of icy silence or an approving smile.

And, unfortunately for all concerned, Homeopathy is still at the top of the list of Allopathic Medicine’s taboos.

(*) Repertories are books and, more recently, computer softwares where symptoms and characteristics are matched against all the Homeopathic remedies that present and/or modify each of those symptoms and characteristics. In the Repertories, Practitioners match their patient’s symptoms and characteristics against the remedies and then choose the remedy that most likely corresponds to the patient.

But first let me briefly describe Hyoscyamus children, because it is here where future calamities are brewed.

Hyoscyamus children typically grow up in homes where they feel abandoned and where they are victims of abuse, violence and/or neglect. Or else in wealthy homes where they receive genuine love from their parents but only for short periods, since most of their time is spent with maids and nannies that may care little for, and even be cruel to them. Consequently, these privileged children perceive their homes, not as an abode of love but rather as one of desperate competitiveness for the attention of their slippery parents, those distant and idealized beloved figures to whom one must approach as often as possible, come what may and no hold barred. The impossibility to getting close to their parents renders these children perplexed, confused, forsaken, frustrated, grieving, angry and resentful. And, above all, suspicious and jealous. Homes—or lack thereof—where Hyoscyamus children grow remind me a lot of the Mundugumors, one of the three Papuan tribes masterly described by Margaret Mead in her book “Sex and Temperament”. Here children are handled roughly and lovelessly since birth and grow up to become bellicose, angry, distrustful, competitive, cold, very jealous, selfish and cruel.

Hyoscyamus children grow up being narcissistic, self-centered, violent, competitive, irritable, nervous, hysterical, manipulative, hostile, haughty, devious, distrustful, cold, cruel and lacking in emotional affect. They have poor control over their impulses and like to fight. They tend to insult their parents. Their self-esteem is poor and fear of failure high. They may have an involuntary stool if excited. They tend to retain urine, have night cough and display a precocious interest in matters regarding sex. They like to go about naked and to engage in salacious conversations. They are racked by guilt. They may also develop and obsession with order and sequence. They can smile when asleep and awake frightened, or sob and weep in their sleep without awakening. They may suffer from insomnia due to nervous excitement.

Also, and usually from the onset of puberty onwards, these children can become painfully shy and introverted.

All that is needed in these unfortunate children is an impulse to arouse their jealousy and disappointment in love. This usually happens at the birth of a sibling or when a pet enters the home.

Hyosciamus’ first reaction is to be cruel to them. This cruelty leads to violence that is exerted in a coldly malicious, detached and dangerous form. These patients can also kill in cold blood. There may also be open rage, but this is not as common. Dr. Morrison rightly warns that Hyoscyamus children must be very carefully supervised when a sibling or a pet arrives to their home.

Hyoscyamus’ second reaction is to develop seizures. Seizures can be choreic (usually elegant and rhythmic involuntary movements) or epileptiform (stiffness followed by jerky movements). The child can become insensitive during seizures, which are usually preceded by a shriek as the face flushes and bloats. Seizures can also be triggered by fright.

Children can grind their teeth during sleep while convulsively jerking single muscles in fingers, face, etc.

Thus endowed, Hyoscyamus eventually reaches adulthood.

These patients can be aggressive, arrogant, violent and quarrelsome, even inhuman; they swear and curse with ease. They fear loneliness and have an intense desire for company, and yet they fear people. They also fear dogs and being bitten by them, being poisoned, water (even to hear it flow), drinking, being poisoned, being sold by friends and syphilis. They startle easily when afraid.

They also like to prattle, though they are bothered when other people talk.

Hyoscyamus are mirthful. They even smile frequently while asleep. This remedy likes to laugh a lot, including during menses, though patients may alternate laughter and tears.

They tend to be very thirsty, but their throat closes convulsively when attempting to swallow liquids.

Hyoscyamus are worse evenings and nights, and also at the onset of and during menses.

They have strong sexual desires, particularly women, particularly during menses, and also changeable moods.

Hyoscyamus has a cough that is worse at night and that may awake the patient. It can be constant since the moment the patient lies down. It improves when the patient sits up.

From childhood on, these patients carry along their obsession with order and sequence and with sexual matters. They like to go around totally naked without any problems.

Irritable and excitable Hyoscyamus patients may suffer insomnia for hours at a time after a prolonged mental effort, or else because of work and business concerns.

Hyoscyamus are as munificent with themselves as they are stingy with their family. It is as if they don’t want to share money (or love) with their dear ones, probably for fear that their family may abandon or betray them.

Hyoscyamus tend to be religious. The combination of feeling forsaken and guilty and having such a low self-esteem makes them prone to feel desolate and thus to frequently implore divine guidance and assistance.

But, above all, Hyoscyamus patients are jealous and suspicious, and have a very marked erotic streak.

Patients of both sexes are extremely vulnerable to jealousy, disappointed love and grief and, in women, to suppression of milk secretion and lochia (the vaginal secretion of the first weeks after giving birth).

Hyoscyamus’ characteristic narcissistic, self-centered, competitive, irritable, nervous, hysterical, manipulative, hostile, haughty, devious, distrustful, cold, suspicious and cruel nature, as well as the obsession with order and sequence that they bring from childhood, is what leads them to ruthlessly climb positions and eventually become successful. The image they project is one of determination, firmness and self-assurance. And they end up firmly believing that such self-image is true. They are not even remotely aware of their jealousy and their vulnerability to unrequited love, so poorly are they in touch with themselves.

So they are totally blind-sided when jealousy and unrequited love explode in their faces.

I thought of describing in some detail the profile of Hyoscyamus when these patients are still in this side of the debacle that will be unleashed by jealousy, unrequited love or grief.

To recognize, and thus to treat Hyoscyamus patients at this early stage may very well spare them the catastrophic fall into an imbalance that will make them falter for the rest of their lives, fall ill with sundry diseases or have to undergo episodes of uncontrollable rage. Or else be branded as epileptics, have to undergo prolonged confinements in mental institutions followed by treatment with psychodrugs, or helplessly slide into delirium and exhaustion unto death.

At some point in their life jealousy inevitably strikes, and it usually comes together with the awareness that love is not being returned.

This combination of events suffices to unfurl the full profile of Hyoscyamus in all its appalling might.

First Hyoscyamus is overcome by a feeling of pure devastation. This devastation opens the patients’ Pandora box. All the good things, all of their determination, firmness and self-assurance simply fly away as Hyoscyamus unravels and fall apart.

Then comes a stage of total confusion that is followed by a surge of uncontrollable fury, worse in the evening and night, and that is fueled by unbridled distrust and suspiciousness. The patient can hit wildly at those who surround him or her. This rage can even become murderous.

These episodes of rage, though very dramatic, tend to be short lived.

Unfortunately, though, the shock of the devastation and the confusion, coupled with the exhaustion of the explosion of rage, usually leave these patients listing for the rest of their lives.

Devastation and rage throw these patients completely out of balance, making Hyoscyamus vulnerable to every conceivable manner of pathology a Human Being can suffer.

Perhaps the most dramatic and typical forms of Hyoscyamus’ imbalance are seizures, hallucinations and/or delirium.

The aura before a seizure is felt in the stomach as ravenous appetite, in the ears as noises and auditory complaints, and also as sparks before the eyes.

Convulsions start in the patient’s face that is distorted and blue, or else swollen and brownish red. The seizure frequently begins with twitching of single groups of muscles. Accesses frequently happen in the evening and are triggered by eating, especially in children.

Movements are convulsive and shaking in some of the limbs. Convulsions can also happen in the whole body, from eyes to toes. They often start after making the slightest effort to swallow water. Let me recall here again that Hyoscyamus has dread of water.

In a full epileptic seizure the eyes can be prominent and there can be frothing of the mouth and biting of the tongue. The patient may have a sensation of oppression in the chest. He or she may loss consciousness and display jerking movements of feet and hands, drawing back thumbs and unexpected shrieking, and also developing incontinence of urine and watery diarrhea. The patient may become stiff with tonic muscle contractions and then shake all over with clonic ones. Seizures can alternate with cerebral congestion. They are followed by a profound sleep with loud snoring.

Hyoscyamus is indicated when epileptic convulsions happen in jealous patients who have undergone a serious disappointment in love and when no other remedy appears to be indicated. It is also useful in seizures brought about by delirium tremens.

In chorea, Hyoscyamus patients have a weak and tottering gait. They have an abnormal impression of distance and will attempt to reach something that seems to be just within reach when, in reality, it may be on the other end of the room.

Hyoscyamus suffers from delusions, and from active and passive delirium. It is my impression that these patients slip from the active form of delirium into the passive one.

In both forms obsession with sex is prominent, but more so in the active one.

There are all kinds of delusions. They tend to happen during delirium.

Hyoscyamus patients see animals that are about to bite them, cats, dead people with whom they talk, and ghosts they want to grasp. Patients feel that they are larger than normal, that they have offended people, that they are persecuted or being poisoned, that they have been wounded or are jinxed and possessed. There are all kinds of religious delusions. Patients imagine they are away from home and surrounded by mice and rats.

Active delirium can be furious. The patient’s features can become bluish-pale. Delirium tends to be erotic or religious.

Hyoscyamus want to escape, they may jump out of bed and into the streets. These patients like to clown, to laugh inappropriately and loudly and to prattle rapidly and in a loud voice about religion, business, work or obscene matters, jumping from subject to subject. They answer correctly when questioned, but immediately relapse into delirium. They like to go around naked, often making obscene gestures. It is not unusual for these patients to kick away the bedcovers while lifting their gown up to the chin to expose themselves when someone enters the room. They may watch for hours, immobile, patterns of the paint on the wall and greedily grasp with both hands whatever is proffered to them. They may also pick at bedclothes and at specks of dust in the air.

During passive delirium these patients lie in a semistupor, senselessly mumbling and grunting but also screaming every so often while constantly picking at the bedclothes and exposing themselves. Features can be pale or red. The eyes may be wide open and insensitive. There can be chills with cold in the body and heat in the head. The tongue is dry, as the teeth become covered with a dull gray or brown film. There can be involuntary loss of urine and feces and muscle jerks.

This picture is so similar to that of typhoid fever that Hyoscyamus is indicated in this disease, particularly if the patient has been grieving, or is jealous, or has suffered unrequited love. Dr Nash considers Hyoscyamus to be the best remedy for the treatment of the feared typhoid pneumonia.

Hyoscyamus must also be seriously considered during the first two or three weeks post-partum if the mother develops fever, and/or seizures, and/or hallucinations, and/or delirium; provided that at the same time her lochia (vaginal discharge) and milk secretion have disappeared.

(Data has been obtained from writings of Drs. Vijnovsky, Boericke, Kent, Boedler, Nash, Blackwood, Gunavante, Morrison, Pulford, Vermuelen, Candegabe and Zaren, and from my own experience).
 

Tuberculinics are whimsical because, even though they are aware of what they don’t want, they have no idea about what they actually want and need.

Nevertheless, tuberculinics are constantly in search of that elusive something they don’t know what it is, but that they somehow know will make them happy. Thus their restlessness, dissatisfaction, capriciousness, changeable moods, constant desires to move and travel, and to change everything and everybody around.

Also their episodes of irritability, politely concealed in adults but explosive in children.

Tuberculinic children may have long and terrible temper tantrums, as the child lets him or herself fall down on the floor and bang his or her head against it, howling like a banshee and driving everybody around up the walls.

These temper tantrums, and the chronic irritability that underlay them, bring about a poor appraisal of reality that continues throughout the tuberculinics’ lives.

In children, and aside from the tantrums, their irritability often leads to restlessness. A short attention span may also be present, since these children will often loose interest as soon as they realize that the happiness they seek is not in what they are studying or doing.

All of which leads, in turn, to a slowing down of the process of maturation.

Irritability and changeability bring about confusion. Which helps explain the tuberculinic’s poor mood after awakening and having to face the day that lies ahead.

Irritability and changeability could also be the reason for their pale and haunted features early in the morning.

Music—orderly, harmonious and rhythmical—has a markedly soothing effect in tuberculinic patients.

This could be due to the fact that music constitutes an interval of relaxation in their irritable, incessant and constantly thwarted search of happiness.

Adult tuberculinics feel compelled to travel. They try to live in different places. Perhaps somewhere, somehow, they will find the contentment that constantly eludes them.

If they can’t travel, then they will change, arrange and re-arrange their clothes and the furniture of their abode—anything to alter what they have, anything to make things appear novel and different.

The tuberculinic patient has a weak chest, that typically attracts diseases like a magnet—and that, also like a magnet, finds it hard to let them go.

These disease-syndromes frequently start in the upper respiratory tract (throat, ears, nose, etc.), generally more than one per winter; and usually end up in pneumonia, pneumonitis or bronchitis, that the tuberculinic may drag for weeks or months, and that may end up becoming chronic.

Tuberculinic patients have also a tendency to suffer intermittent fevers, and to feel weak and tired all the time.

They may sweat excessively, particularly at night in bed.

They often have a delicate constitution and an aura of helplessness, which elicits in others a desire to protect them, particularly if the tuberculinics are children.

The complexion may be pale or waxy in Caucasian tuberculinics. They may have fair hair, circles under their eyes, long lashes and little hair on the tail of their eyebrows. Children tend to have lanugo or fine hair on their backs.

Tuberculinics can be very passionate, mercurial and romantic, and are particularly susceptible to catch tuberculosis.

The tuberculinic miasma and its offspring, the disease-syndrome tuberculosis, had their heyday in late 19th Century, during the so-called belle époque .

At that time to be weak, pale and anemic was stylish in European social, cultural and artistic circles. Women would daily consume large quantities of vinegar with the purpose of destroying their red blood cells and thus appear weak, sickly and anemic.

One cut above being pale and anemic was to actually become a tubercular patient. It was considered a most chic and romantic thing. Those unfortunate enough to be healthy would stain their handkerchiefs with red ink. When in company, they would discreetly cough and politely bring the handkerchiefs to their mouths—making certain that the red ink stains were clearly visible.

The choice of remedies is small here.

Of course, the correct thing is to repertorize (*) the symptoms of each individual patient, and then to treat each patient accordingly. But in many instances patients have no access to a properly trained Homeopathic Practitioner, so they have to make do with the very broad indications of the few remedies that will be discussed below.

Burns are divided into three degrees, first, second and third, according to their depth.

First-degree burns are superficial. Second-degree burns go deep enough into the skin as to usually produce blisters. Third-degree burns are deeper, go through the skin and into subjacent tissues and don’t tend to produce blisters.

First-degree and superficial second-degree burns may heal without leaving scars.

Deep second-degree and third-degree burns may heal leaving scars that can be large and ugly and that often retract, leaving deformities.

Third-degree burns can also leave nasty ulcers, which can be very difficult to treat Allopathically, particularly if they are torpid and reject skin grafts.

The future of a burnt patient depends more on the extension of the burn than on its depth.

In other words, a patient with a second-degree burn that covers 70 % of his or her body has a much poorer prognosis than a patient with a third-degree burn that covers only 5 % of his or her body surface.

Burns must always be treated Allopathically. Homeopathy here plays not second, but third or fourth fiddle. With the exception, that is, of the treatment of the ulcers that remain after a deep burn. Here Homeopathy can render a very significant service.

So, if and when you see a burnt patient, immediately extinguish the flames with whatever means you may have at hand without burning yourself, immediately call an ambulance, carefully remove the patient from where the fire is and very gently remove his or her clothing from the smoldering area/s.

The Homeopathic treatment will come later, if the patient asks for it, and can be carried out as suggested below.

First-degree burns

Urtica urens 12 CH in water. One half teaspoon of pellets is to be dropped into a glassful of water. The glass must be made of glass, not of plastic, metal or paper, and the spoon has to be made of plastic (Dr. Hahnemann recommended spoons made of horn, but they are very difficult to come by nowadays, alas!). The water, with the pellets in it, is to be stirred for about one minute. There is no need for the pellets to dissolve, what we want here is that the remedy embedded in the pellets dissolves in the water. Then, one teaspoon of the water is to be given to the patient every 5 minutes or so. The patient will be instructed to swish the mouthful of water for a minute or so before swallowing it. Treatment can be continued for up to 5 days in a row. The sixth day no remedy is to be given. Homeopathic treatment is to be restarted the following day and continued for five days at a time, with one day of rest in between, for as long as needed.

Attending Physicians in charge must be instructed regarding the fact that Homeopathy does not interfere in the least with the treatment they are carrying out in the patient.

Second-degree burns

Cantharis 12 CH, to be administered dissolved in water as described in first-degree burns. Ditto for the instructions to Attending Physicians.

Third-degree burns

Arsenicum album 12 CH if the pain is sticking, stinging, burning, sore, tearing and/or ulcerative, and the patient is extremely restless, anxious and fearful of death (actually restlessness, anxiety and fear of death can be masked by the powerful painkillers the patient will be receiving).

Causticum 12 CH if the pain is sticking, burning, raw and/or ulcerative, and there is marked weakness and muscle wasting; and if the patient states he or she is worse in dry weather and better in damp.

These remedies are to be administered dissolved in water, as indicated for first-degree burns. Ditto for the instructions to Attending Physicians.

In the treatment of burns, as described above, Urtica urens, Cantharis, Arsenicum album and Causticum only can alleviate burn patients.

In the instance of chronic post-burn ulcers, particularly those that don’t heal and that reject skin grafts, Causticum is formally indicated.