Of course, Thacher's case, wherein the "abdomen was remarkably tumefied and tense," came into memory at once. The old volume was taken down, and that case re-read. Then followed the Encyclopædia, and then the English Symptomen Codex. No pathogenetic light or corroboration there. Then Curie's "Jahr." Ah! "Inflation and tension in the abdomen." Only a straw, but a pathogenetic, and I grasped it thankfully. I found also, "aching in the temples with violent arterial pulsation."
It was an open winter; my son dug some skunk cabbage roots in a swamp; a tincture was made; ten-drop doses, four times daily, were taken until six ounces had been consumed.
No "fit" up to date; no epistaxis; only once a slight headache.
I never made a diagnosis in this case; have not reached one yet, nor am I grieving over that omission. I did rashly declare that it was not epilepsy, because Sauvages tympanites intestinalis is a feature of hysteria, but not of epilepsy. But not a word of this was said to the patient. It was not a "mind cure," for I have no "mind" to spare; nor was it "Christian science," for I am not up to that. I had an amnesis in which grand-mother and grand-daughter participated. Nature had put the "key-note" in italics, not only in the patient but also in the drug. Thacher stumbled upon it empirically; Hering found it pathogenetically, and that led to its application under the guidance of the only approximation to a law in therapeutics that has yet been discovered by any of woman born: similia similibus curantur!
(Anent the foregoing paper Dr. W. C. Campbell sent the following to the same journal:)
Pothos Fœtida, Hysteria.
November 6, 1889, was called in haste to see Miss N——, aged 19 years. Found her lying upon the floor, exhibiting all the phenomena of epilepsy, clenched hands, frothing at the mouth, clonic spasm, etc.
On questioning the family, I learned that she had been subject to such seizures for about two years, and that they were increasing in frequency. She had been dismissed from the various cotton mills in which she had been employed because of them. The father had been informed that she had epilepsy, and she had been treated accordingly by three old school physicians.
The sister informed me that although she had frequently fallen near the stove she had never struck it. Further questioning elicited the fact of her never having injured herself more seriously than to bite her tongue. It was then I became suspicious, and later felt convinced that it was hysteria and not epilepsy with which I had to deal.