The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 242 of 653After various ineffectual remedies, the child was finally put onHepar, 3d trituration, with such excellent success that in eightalready the caving in of the chest was considerably less. In aboufour weeks the right lung had almost been restored to its normalcondition, and the curvature of the thorax had entirely disappear80 that the child now looks perfectly straight and thoroughly souand healthy. A second pneumonia, with which the boy was attackedfour years after the former, was radically cured in seven days.Since then we have often made use of Ilepaj and have arrived atthe following results: Hepar is preferable to other remedies aftethe third stage has set in, provided the general symptoms are comparatively mild, a lentescent fever is present and the suppurativprocess does not extend over a large portion of lung. It will actmuch more powerfully the younger and more vigorous the childrenare. In pneumonia complicated with bronchitis there is scarcely abetter remedy after Mercurius than Hepar. The above describedcase shows that chronic pneumonia is the best sphere for the therpeutic action of Hepar. In a case of pulmonary abscess, Ilepareffected a cure as far as the restoration of this patient was posRhus toxicodendron. Miiller's statements regarding this remedyin his Essay on Pneumonia seem to us so appropriate that we feelcalled upon to transcribe his remarks : " Hahnemann's recomniendatiou of Rhus tox. as a remedy for the typhus that devastated thhospitals during the war of 1813, and the consequent employmentof this remedy in nervous and gastric fevers, and in typhus, seemto have secured for it a predetermined part in the treatment of282 Diseases of the Lungs.pneumonia. It seems certain that nothing in the present pathogenesis of Ehus entitles this agent to a place among the remediesin the ordinary pneumonias of a lighter grade, and that the localchest-symptoms of Rhus have scarcely any relationship to this disease. What stamps it a remedy for pneumonia, are its generaltyphoid symptoms arising from a depression of the cerebral functions. These symptoms are undoubtedly very marked, placing thedrug ahead of Belladonna and Bryonia, assigning it even a placeby the side of Phosphorus and Arsenicum. Since these nervoussymptoms occur in all three stages of pneumonia, Rhus need not berigorously assigned to a definite stage, although the typhoid depsion of the sensorium, as manifested by the symptoms of Rhus, ismore particularly a characteristic of the later stages, and may nso nmch result from an obstructed circulation as from a deterioration of the blood in consequence of the purulent dissolution of texudation and other causes ; on which account Rhus may be moreadapted to this stage, whereas Belladonna and perhaps Bryoniacorrespond rather to the cerebral symptoms occasioned by simplestagnations in the circulation and by cerebral congestions. Amongthe symptoms indicating Rhus, the following would, therefore, bethe most characteristic : Loss of strength, sopor, hardness of heing, subsultus tendinum, unconscious discharge of stool and urinedryness and heat of the skin, dry, hard and sooty tongue. (WhyDr. Wurmb does not expect any marked effects from Rhus or anyother remedy in purulent infiltration of the lungs, is difiicultcomprehend ; at any rate, this condition of the lungs does not leimate doubts any more than any other condition ; he seems toregard this stage as more unfavorable and dangerous than it reallis, nor does he seem to consider that in every case of pneumonia,http://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt