I have elsewhere mentioned the power of this substance to affect the secretion of uric acid, and then I have seen several cases corroborative of its medicinal virtues in this direction. One, a gentleman, æt. 57, who, in addition to other dyspeptic symptoms, had occasionally large discharges of coarse uric acid, coming away in masses the size of a good big pin's head, but curiously enough without pain. I prescribed Thlaspi, which he said soon stopped the uric acid. Nearly a year after this he called on me for a different affection, and informed me that the uric acid had reappeared several times in his urine, but that a few doses of Thlaspi 1 stopped it, and it never came to the height it attained when I first gave it to him. A lady, nearly eighty years of age, was suffering from the pressure of a calculus in the left ureter, which I knew to be of uric acid, as she had previously passed much 'sand.' The urine showed no sand, and was very scanty. I tried several remedies, among the rest the Borocitrate of magnesia, but it was not till I gave Thlaspi 1 that a great discharge of coarse brick-colored sand took place, with speedy relief to her pain. At the same time, indeed, I made her drink copiously of distilled water, which has a powerfully disintegrating effect on uric acid sometimes, but, as she had already been taking this for several days without effect, I am inclined to give the whole credit of the cure to Thlaspi.
It is not alone in such cases that Thlaspi is useful. Its ancient use as a hæmostatic has been confirmed in modern times and in my own experience, and my friend, Dr. Harper, related to me lately a most interesting cure he had effected by its means of a very prolonged and serious affection. The case was that of an elderly lady who for years had suffered from a large discharge of muco-pus, sometimes mixed with blood, sometimes apparently nearly all blood, which poured from the bowels after each evacuation. She had been many months under the medical treatment of the late Dr. D. Wilson, who at last told her he considered her disease incurable. She then put herself under the treatment of a practitioner who relies chiefly on oxygen gas for his cures; but she was no better—rather worse—after his treatment. She then came to Dr. Harper, who worked away at her with all the ordinary remedies without doing a bit of good. At last he bethought him of Thlaspi, led thereto by my remarks on its anti-hæmorrhagic properties in my "therapeutic notes" in The Monthly Homœopathic Review of October, 1888, and he found that, from the time she commenced using this remedy, the discharge from the bowels gradually declined and ultimately ceased, and there has been no return of it.
No doubt Thlaspi is a great remedy, and until it is satisfactorily proved, we may employ it with advantage in cases similar to those I have mentioned. But it is to be hoped that some of our colleagues endowed with youth, health and zeal, will ere long favor us with a good proving of it, whereby its curative powers may be precisionized. At present we only partially know these from the less satisfactory results of clinical experience.
(The following is from a paper by Dr. Millie J. Chapman in Transactions of American Institute of Homœopathy, 1897:)
The provings are brief and do not furnish very full indications for its use. However, from them we learn of its effectiveness in expelling accumulations of sand and uric-acid crystals from the kidneys and bladder, also in controlling hemorrhage from the nose, kidneys, or uterus.
My attention was first called to this remedy in cases of sub-involution following either abortion or labor at full term, where it many a time induced recovery.
I have since witnessed equal success in hemorrhage from uterine fibroid where the flow was controlled, and the growth was greatly reduced in size before the age of the individual would naturally produce these changes. Also uterine hemorrhage, attended with cramps and expulsion of clots, has been relieved by it after curetting had failed.
A member of the Women's Provers' Association took five drops of the tincture three times a day for ten days. This was followed by a great increase of urine and a menstrual flow lasting fifteen days. She became alarmed and could not be persuaded to continue the proving.
Another took ten drops, three times a day, for five days, when the quantity of urine and brick dust deposit were so unusual that her interest in scientific investigation suddenly ceased.
About a year since, there came for treatment a patient who had suffered long from both disease and treatment of the bladder. Thlaspi 2x and later five drop doses of the tincture expelled great quantities of sand, and was followed by complete relief of the bladder symptoms and the disappearance of rheumatic pains that had been supposed incurable.