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

by Unknown

(The following, from Rademacher, is quoted and translated by Dr. J. C. Burnett in his Diseases of the Spleen).

I became acquainted with this remedy in a wonderful way. Many years ago (I do not remember the exact time) a working carpenter, who had previously lived at Crefeld, came to seek my advice for his bellyache, which was of long standing. According to his own statement, he had long been under Sanitary Councillor Schneider in Crefeld, who was not able to help him, and so sent him to Professor Günther in Duisberg. Ten journeys thither were likewise in vain.

I tried my usual remedies for seemingly such cases, but to no good; and as I noticed he was a good cabinetmaker, and dabbled a bit in upholstery, I told him it would be a good plan if he were to hire himself out to a country squire as joiner, thinking that the food of the servants' hall would suit his sick stomach better than the beans, black bread, and potatoes of the master carpenter. The good fellow followed my advice, and lived with a squire for many years; and I heard nothing more about him. Finally, he married the parlormaid, and settled here in this town as a joiner. One day when visiting his sick wife I remembered the old story of his bellyache, and wanted to know how it then was. "All right," said he, "I have not had it for years." It seems that a local surgeon, being one day at the squire's, told him to get some acorns, and scrape them with a knife, and then put the scrapings into brandy and leave them to draw for a day, and then to drink a small glass of this spirit several times a day. He did as he was advised, and was forthwith relieved, and very soon entirely freed from his old trouble.

From what I knew of the surgeon, I was very sure he could not give me any intelligent reason for his prescription. I should only have heard that acorn scrapings in brandy were good for the bellyache, or, at the most, I may have ascertained from what doctor, or peasant, or old wife he had got the tip.

But this would have done me but poor service; and as I had in the meantime become much more cunning, I questioned the joiner himself afresh as to the kind of his old pain, particularly as to the part of the belly where the pain was last felt when he had had a bad attack. He was in no doubt about it, but at once pointed to the part of the belly nearest the left hypochondrium. So I very shrewdly suspected that the abdominal pains were really owing to a primary affection of the spleen, in which notion I was strengthened by remembering that the best pain-killing hepatic and enteric remedies had done him no good.

To get as soon as possible to the bottom of the thing, I set about preparing a tincture of acorns, and gave a teaspoonful five times a day in water to an old brandy drunkard, who was sick unto death, and of whom I knew that he had suffered from the spleen for a very long time, the spleen being from time to time painful. He had likewise ascites, and his legs were dropsical as far as the knees. It occurred to me that if the acorn tincture were to act curatively on the spleen the consensual kidney affection and its dependent dropsy would mend. I soon saw that I had reckoned rightly. The urinary secretion was at once augmented, but the patient complained that each time after taking the medicine he felt a constriction of the chest. I ascribed this to the astringent matter of the acorns, and thinking the really curative principle thereof would most likely be volatile I caused the tincture to be distilled. This acorn spirit caused no further constriction, and the urinary secretion was still more markedly increased, the tension in the præcordia became less and less, and this hopelessly incurable drunkard got quite well, much to the surprise of all who knew him, and, honestly speaking, much to my own surprise also.

Having thus put the spirit of acorns to such a severe test, and that in a case that I already knew so well, in which it was impossible to make a mistake as to the primary affection, I went further, and used it by degrees in all sorts of spleen affections, and that not only in painful ones, but in painless ones, in the evident ones, and in those of a more problematical kind. Gradually I became convinced that it is a remedy, the place of which no other can take. More particularly is it of great, nay, of inestimable value in spleen-dropsy. Later on, I found that the volatile curative principle of acorns may be still better extracted with water with the addition of alcohol. [The aqua glandium is thus prepared:—One pound of peeled and crushed acorns to the pound of distillate.] Perhaps water alone might extract the healing principle, but it would not keep thus, and so the cures would be uncertain, not to mention the fact that such-like decaying medicines are a great trouble to the chemists. The dose of the spirituous acorn-water (the only preparation I have used of late years) is half a tablespoonful in water four times a day. It has not much taste; some would even say it has none, but the doubter may make a solution of alcohol and water in the same proportions, and he will soon find that it has quite a taste of its own.

I must make mention of two of its peculiar effects. Certain people feel, as soon as they have taken it, a peculiar sensation in the head, lasting hardly a minute or two, which they say is like being drunk.

With a few people, particularly with those who have suffered from old spleen engorgements, diarrhœa sets in after using it for two or three weeks that makes them feel better. It seldom lasts more than a day, and is not weakening, but moderate. Hence it is not needful either to stop the acorn water or to lessen the dose.

I could add many instructive cases of spleen-dropsies and other spleen affections in which the volatile principle of acorns proved curative, but as I have so much more to say on other subjects I dare not be too discursive on this one point; besides, what I have already said will suffice for common-sense physicians. Still I cannot forbear noticing a few bagatelles. For instance, I have found that the acute spleen fevers that occur intercurrently with epidemic liver fevers are best cured with aqua glandium—at least that is my experience.