The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 474 of 653homoeopathic physicians to such an extent that they sometimes arein direct antagonism to each other. We have found the followingrules uniformly substantiated by our own experience. Syphiliticpatients should never be deprived of a sufficient supply of simpland nourishing food ; they should not be allowed to eat to excessnor should they indulge in fat and spiced articles of diet, spiriheavy beer ; light wines do not hurt ; a beverage composed of winand water may safely be permitted. The patient should be allowedto enjoy fresh air, but should avoid violent exertions, long walkdancing, etc., until the chancre is healed. These rules are basedupon the observation that, if the bodily strength is well preservthe syphilitic disease runs through its difierent phases more rapit is moreover a general principle in therapeutic science that threactive energy of the organism should never be voluntarilydepressed in any disease. Mercurial poisoning does not require adeviation from this principle, for it is in debilitated individuaMercury causes the most terrible devastation. Of great importancein protracted cases of syphilis is careful attention to the skinis undoubtedly the most important organ for all critical endeavorof the organism. This is the reason why inveterate secondary andtertiary syphilis improves so rapidly under a rationally and methically conducted cold-water treatment which should always beresorted to in such cases. Sulphur-baths are much less efiectualthey may afford relief, if the patient is attacked with severe rhmatic pains ; otherwise they have no other effect than to increasthe sensitiveness of the skin to atmospheric influences.B. EPIDEMIC AND ENDEMIC INFECTIOUSDISEASES.i. Intermittent Fever, Fever and Ague.Intermittent fever is now almost universally traced to the influence of malaria ; any other origin of this fever is denied. Whatmalaria is, and whence it arises, is either entirely unknown, orour knowledge of malaria is very uncertain. Where a quantity ofvegetable matter is exposed to rapid decay, intermittent fevers aa very common occurrence, and they are the more intense the morerapidly the process of putrefaction takes place, consequently theintensity is greatest in very hot weather. We should be led toofar, if we were to dwell more particularly upon the nature ofmalaria, and we omit this so much more readily as no advantageaccrues to the treatment from such speculations. It is well, however, that our attention should be kept fixed on one point, namelthe decaying vegetation ; for this will remind us of the prophylameasures that it may be necessary to take. Where malaria prevailsintermittent fever is endemic. But this fever likewise breaks outin a more or less epidemic form, when it invades malarious distriwith great violence, or when it visits regions that are generallyfrom intermittent fever, in a mild form, and does not spread overlarge extent of country. Whether epidemics of this kind likewiseowe their origin to malarious miasms that had been wafted overfrom their original locality, is questionable, for, after all, itcult to understand why in one year the infectious matter should bcarried ufion the wings of the wind, and not in another year. Norare such epidemics confined to certain atmospheric relations. Whais remarkable is that such fever-and-ague epidemics are very apthttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt