The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 308 of 653experimental dose was taken. At the same time the respiration isextremely accelerated, the temperature is increased, a feeling ofsickness is experienced, and all the symptoms of a more or less csiderable cerebral hypcraemia set in. The pulse is hard and stronThe pain in the cardiac region is not a constant symptom, but wasoften felt. In the further course of the proving the beats of theheart become slower, sometimes to a great extent; or else theyremain quick and grow feeble, irregular, they seldom remain vehement. On the contrary, the pulse changes to a feeble and smallpulse, not synchronous with the beats of the heart, intermittingunequal ; the temperature is lower while the number of respiratioincreases rather than decreases. This last circumstance alone woube sufficient to stamp Aconite as a cardiac remedy, for slownessthe pulse and a simultaneous and considerable decrease of the number of respirations are phenomena that only occur in diseases ofheart. As to the symptoms developed in the organism generally,we do not mention them in this place; they embrace all those thatalways accompany cardiac iniiammation. These physiologicalresults have been confirmed by practice in a most striking mannerIn every pericarditis and endocarditis, whether primary or secondAconite is the first and most important remedy whenever the inflammation sets in with febrile phenomena. We consider thisremedy indicated even if the fever is moderate or is altogetherwanting. Aconite is not only indicated at the commencement ofthe disease, but in many cases during its whole course, more especially in rheumatic cardiac inflammations, as long as the organicalterations do not result in paralytic or cyanotic symptoms. Wewould rather treat a case of cardiac inflammation with nothingbut Aconite, than a case of pneumonia. Of course, we must not,as is the custom with homoeopathic routine-practitioners, limit oselves to synochal fever as a paramount indication, but keep thewhole series elicited by a thoroughly-penetrating proving iu viewIt is in this manner only that the full therapeutic range of thisgreat remedy can be determined.Digitalis purpurea has been and still is regarded by many as inappropriate in acute diseases and more especially in acute cardiainflammations. We cannot sufficiently protest against this viewCarditis, 861which has a tendency to restrict the usefulness of a drug that maexert such a beneficent influence over disease. If Digitalis weremore frequently and more rationally used in acute heartweshould be much less frequently called upon to employ it inchronic heart-disease. Since I have devoted, for yeare past, specattention to the use of this drug, I have found it much more frequently applicable in the treatment of disease than in former timand I am now prepared to assert most positively what I was thenonly able to announce in rather dubious language, that Digitalisan excellent remedy in acute affections of the heart, more particlarly in pericarditis. Digitalis is not so much adapted to inflamtions setting in with very violent symptoms, but to inflammationsapproaching in an insidious and scarcely observable manner, moreespecially without any local pain, but with a rapidly increasingembarrassment of the respiration. We should take a very oneview of the action of this drug, if we were to regard the irregularity and slowness of the pulse as the chief criterium for its ahttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt