are likewise successfully combated by Apis. The American Provings
contain the following symptomatic indications:
1. No.'s 731, 733, 736, 742, 743, 749, 760: "Hoarseness and difficulty
of breathing, roughness and sensitiveness in the larynx, each time after
he smells of the poison; talking is painful, sensation as if the larynx
were tired by talking; drawing pains in the larynx; cough when starting
during sleep; rough cough during evening; heat; difficult breathing,
every drop of liquid almost suffocates him; labored inspirations as
during croup."
2. 737-740: "Violent paroxysms of cough, occasioned by a titillating
irritation in the lower part of the larynx near the throat-pit, with
increase of headache when coughing, on the left side, superiorly; in
half an hour, some phlegm is detached, after which the coughing ceases;
on the first day, when waked from his sleep before midnight, he had a
violent cough, especially after lying down and sleeping, with
titillation at a very small spot, deep down on the posterior wall of the
thorax, which wakes him; he feels better as soon as the least little
portion of mucous is detached; cough particularly during warmth, during
rest, and rousing him from his first slumber for several evenings."
3. 1081, 746, 790: "Chilly every afternoon at three or four o'clock; she
shudders, especially during warmth; chill across the back, the hands
feel as if dead; in about an hour she felt hot and feverish, with rough
cough, hot cheeks and hands, without thirst; this passes off gradually,
she feels heavy and prostrate; cough and labored breathing as during
croup, after violent feverish heat, with dry skin and full pulse;
disturbed sleep, with muttering, timid and incoherent talk,
whitish-yellow coating of the tongue, and painless, yellow-greenish,
slimy diarrh[oe]a, in four days the breathing become labored, a violent
abdominal respiration, red face, increasingly livid, pulse hard, cough,
with barking resonance--pains in the chest, with labored breathing."
4. 754, 770, 772, 803: "Hurried, labored breathing, with heat and
headache; chest oppressed; difficult labored breathing; sense of
suffocation even when leaning against a thing; general debility; worse
during cold weather, accompanied by asthmatic pains; cough; sense of
suffocation; pains in the chest; coldness and deadness of the
extremities, which looked bluish; sense of soreness; lameness; sense of
bruising in the chest, as after recent contusions by a blow; jamming,
etc."
These observations do not indeed show with characteristic certainty the
diseases to which Apis might correspond. But if they are contrasted with
the total character of Apis; if we consider that Apis develops a
catarrhal irritation throughout the whole intestinal mucous membrane,
affecting most deeply the nervous system and the normal constitution of
the fluids, we have sufficient ground to experiment with Apis in those
respiratory diseases which seem to be inherent in the prevailing genius
of disease, and which are characterized by the very conditions which I
have described. Who is not struck by the fact, that the same individual
morbid process is reflected by different forms of disease, _croup_,
_whooping-cough_, _influenza_, _acute and chronic bronchial catarrh_?
The more essential the resemblance between these forms of disease and
the medicinal power, the more certainly may we expect a cure. The
medicinal power which seems to be most adequate to this end, is
undoubtedly Apis. My observations in this respect are not sufficiently
numerous to enable me to offer positive directions concerning the best
mode of using the medicine in these diseases, or concerning the extent
of the curative process or the complications that may exist. All I can
do is to recommend Apis for further experiments in this range, and to
remind my brethren of the insufficiency of other drugs, which has been a
source of trouble to us in the past ten years. Every body who has
watched the course of these diseases during this period, must have seen
the difference existing between the present and the past character of
the symptoms. It must, therefore, be a source of satisfaction to all of
us, to have found in Apis an agent that is capable of filling up the
gap.
My observations regarding the curative virtues of Apis in urinary,
uterine and ovarian difficulties, and in rheumatism and gout, are not
very extended. In the American Provings, symptoms 634 to 669, seem to
point to urinary difficulties, and 685 to 695, to ovarian troubles;
symptoms 697 to 727 to uterine derangements; and 837, 842, 867, 873,
874, 918, 919, 940, 942, 964, 969, to rheumatism and gout.
What little experience I have had in the employment of Apis in these
diseases, is, however, sufficient to induce me to recommend the use of
it for further and more enlarged knowledge.
I have had abundant opportunities of verifying the warning expressed in
No. 721, "pregnant women should use the drug very cautiously." I am not
acquainted with any drug which seems possessed of such reliable virtues
regarding the prevention of miscarriage, more particularly during the
first half of pregnancy, as Apis. I have often become an involuntary
spectator of the power of Apis to effect miscarriage; for I had given it
to honest women who did not know that they were pregnant, and where the
fact of pregnancy was revealed to them by the subsequent miscarriage,
which took place after one or two doses of Apis had been taken. Ever
since I have made it a rule not to give Apis to females in whom the
existence of pregnancy can be suspected in the remotest degree until the
matter is reduced to a certainty, and the conduct of the physician can
be determined upon in accordance with existing facts.
I am unable to say how far this power inherent in Apis, of producing
miscarriage, may be serviceable to females who are prone to miscarriage.
I beg the privilege of adding a more general warning to this particular
one. The more generally useful a thing is, the more liable is it to
abuse. The most important and useful discoveries of hom[oe]opathy are
abused in this manner by our age given to all sorts of excesses.
Not only are the records of hom[oe]opathy ransacked by speculative
minds, who use her advantages for personal gain without giving due
credit to the source whence the good things are obtained. This species
of egotism may perhaps be excused in consideration of the use which this
kind of plagiarism affords, even if whole volumes should be filled with
it. But if the stolen property is paraded before the world as something
belonging to one's self by right divine; if official influence is abused
for the purpose of dressing up that which rightfully belongs to our
science, as some original discovery, thus caricaturing and disfiguring
the beauty of the genuine blessing; then good is changed to evil, and
the evil is the greater, the more comprehensive the truth that is so
shamefully abused. It is absurd and may entail sad consequences upon the
world, if the rational use of Apis is to be converted to the irrational
proceedings of the so-called specific method, which is often practised
by men who, knowing better, purposely conceal the truth from the world.
For years past, I have been called upon again and again, by patients who
had been in the hands of these men, and who had been drenched with
medicine, and had had all sorts of disastrous complications engendered
in their poor bodies, to afford them some relief from these tortures
inflicted by physicians who do not hesitate to assail the health of
their patients by massive doses of drugs, of which they often know
nothing but the name.
With these facts before me, nobody can find it strange that I should
feel some misgivings in laying before the world a drug endowed with such
extensive virtues. Apis is one of those drugs, the abuse of which may
prove as destructive as the use of it is a source of saving good. It is
no anti-psoric, nor is it capable of antidoting the three miasms, or of
inflicting medicinal diseases for life. Nevertheless, it is a deeply and
speedily-acting drug, for it affects the whole internal mucous membrane,
the nervous system, and the process of sanguification, thus disturbing
the health for a long time. Its primary aggravating action, its deeply
penetrating interference with the existing morbid process, which may
lead to errors in diagnosis, and its power to exhaust the reactive
energies of the organism prematurely, render it a very dangerous agent.
These circumstances go to show that such an agent, in the hands of the
partizans of the Specific School, may be as dangerously and injuriously
abused as other important drugs have been. I cannot sufficiently warn my
readers against such distressing abuses. Only he is protected from the
danger of imitating such shameful absurdities, who listens to the words
of our master:
"Imitate this, but imitate this correctly!"