New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers

by Unknown

After decomposition had gone on for three or four weeks it was ascetic and simply fetid to a fearful degree, and no results except nausea were apparent in any one exposed to it in less than three or four days. The first was extreme lassitude and loss of appetite, and apparently a continued fever, with an unlimited amount of pains and aches and a lassitude that limited locomotion.

Three vials of the watery tincture were saved, one each from the various stages of decomposition, and from these an attempt was made to make provings and find out what were the reliable antidotes to them, and thus be able to cope with my invisible foe in my daily avocation. Their provings were not carried far enough, or continued long enough to be justified in placing them in our Materia Medica, but are ample to aid and guide the future steps that ought to be taken. Its discontinuance was rendered rather necessary by my enthusiasm that led too far in a few cases, but the antidotal effects of certain remedies amply compensated me for my financial and reputational loss.

Bilious colic, nausea, cramps, diarrhœa and headaches were readily secured from a few drops of the first vial, in many cases, while the second vial gave me a large number of cases where the liver, spleen, stomach and kidneys were apparently seriously involved, and not them alone, but fair types of intermittent fever with its attendant shakes, some daily, some tertian.

With the third vial trouble came, as it did reduce many that had been able to be up and around to their beds, and unmistakably cause them to get worse, and cause them to degenerate into a typhoidal or semi-paralytic condition. In a few cases I was deprived the liberty of finding my antidotes and helping them out of the dilemma.

(Among the experiments made with these strange tinctures, if they may be so called, was the following, which is strangely confirmatory of a speculation advanced by several old physicians that consumptives are benefited, or even cured, by being exposed to malaria):

It was a lady, the last of a family of five, all others had died of consumption, and three in her preceding generation of the same disease. I doubted the probability of saving her, yet theoretically decided that as the primitive action of malaria was, first, the spleen, next the liver and stomach, that I would develop an artificial or drug disease there, in hopes that her chest would be relieved and doubtless be benefited. She was given the tincture from second vial, and on the fifth day she had a fairly perceptible chill, and a harder one the sixth and seventh. On the eighth I saw her shake for one hour, and her fever lasted over six hours. Out of pity my drug was neutralized and her health was restored, with no more cough distress in her lungs or heart. She was cured of her tendency and certainty of dying with consumption. She remained well for twelve years when she was lost to my call.

(In his search for remedies, or antidotes, for the malarial poisons, Dr. Bowen was disappointed in Eupatorium perf. In his experience the following remedies are best):

For the first or primitive effects, the remedies that did act most promptly and effectually were Nux vomica and Bryonia, thus calling to mind the effect of those remedies that experience had led me to use in the attacks that come in the summer, that are usually designated as of a bilious nature.

In the secondary form, or where my malaria seemed to be the result of the decomposition of the material or vegetable fiber, its effects were more permeating, as different symptoms were developed by it. Then a change of remedies (or chemical antidotes, if you please), became necessary, and far the best results were secured by the use of Bryonia and Arsenicum. China did not act well or give any reasonable satisfaction.

Prior and later experience give ample satisfactory proof of the utility of the use of Arsenicum in all types of an intermittent nature, yet not to discredit the fact that other remedies can and will cure this form. But that a pernicious case can, or will, be as readily restored by any other remedy, I reserve to myself the liberty to doubt. Opportunities and time have demonstrated that these two remedies are able to restore the system and remedy a majority of the diseases that are wont to make their advent in the early autumn or late in the spring.