Vol. 22 No. 2 April 2002

Dear Editor,

The November issue of Homœopathica inspires me to make several comments:
In his editorial Bruce Barwell bemoans the state of homœopathy today in New Zealand. To cheer him up I would like to say that I think there is a lot of good homœopathy being practised in New Zealand. I hear of cases being prescribed for carefully and successfully on sound principles.

The problem is that very few people write about them and the patients themselves don’t rush into print, and why should they? One of my patients told the Nelson Mail about her wonderful cure of her acne with homœopathy. She even gave my name to the reporter. However, when the article appeared it said that she had consulted a homœopath and been given a herbal remedy. So near and yet so far! I wonder why more cases are not submitted to Homœopathica or NewZ? Is modesty holding them back? We can learn from each other and of course the credit belongs to the therapy not to ourselves.

I was delighted to read the article on Streptococcin. There is so little available on this obviously very useful remedy. There was an article in The Homœopath which appeared some time ago and an account in O.A. Julian’s Materia medica of nosodes with repertory. We do need lots of accounts of cured cases so that we can understand this remedy better. So often it seems to be the remedy of last resort and not prescribed on definite indications but rather as Dr Hayes himself admits, “There were no significant symptoms, perhaps a significant fact in itself.”

Next we come to the piece on shellfish poisoning. It is not signed but it must be by Bruce Barwell. How do I know? Well who else in New Zealand would give Strychninum phosphoricum, Karwinskia humboldtiana and Curare and cure the patient? This is itself a worry. It is imperative that Bruce passes on his knowledge so that it is not lost. Why was Strychninum phos given and not just Strychninum? I found Karwinskia in O.A. Julian’s, Materia medica of new homœopathic remedies. It is a shrub with poisonous seeds which cause paralysis of the limbs, especially on the left side and ascending. Curare is better known and appears in Boericke.

Please tell us more about Withania somniferum which was given to the patient as a tonic. There are other tonic remedies, Avena and Alfalfa for example, and I would like a differentiation.

Then we come to another interesting article, again by the editor, on lactation. My limited experience with the problem of not enough milk or other breast-feeding problems is to give the mother a remedy based on wider indications than those of lactation. When faced with this problem I delve right back into the history and give a remedy which may have little to do with lactation.

Finally we come to, “Remedy shown to lengthen life of mice with cancer”. To summarise: Maliekal P. Thobias read that eminent homœopaths have used Kali muriaticum with success in the treatment of cancer. So he induced cancer in mice to find out if Kali mur is in fact effective in the treatment of cancer.

I am appalled. Why should animals be made to suffer in this way? One of the reasons I love homœopathy so much is that animal experiments are totally unnecessary. Provings are undertaken by human volunteers. As the author points out, clinical experience had already shown that Kali mur is a good remedy in the treatment of cancer so why should mice suffer prolonged agony?

Mary Glaisyer
Nelson

Thank you, Mary, for your interest and encouraging words. I am glad to hear there is a lot of good homœopathy being practised in New Zealand. Perhaps my perception of the situation will change if, as Mary says, more people submit cases for publication. I would prefer to see reports on several patients using the same remedy, or several patients with the same condition treated successfully with a variety of medicines, rather than one-off cases, no matter how spectacular.

The accounts of my experiences appear not through lack of modesty but lack of others’ contributions. Strychninum phosphoricum was chosen because it has more exhaustion of the mind than Strychninum. To quote George Royal’s Textbook of homœopathic theory and practice of medicine: “Strychninum phos . . . acts through the cerebro-spinal system, causing what ‘Grandpa’ Samuel Lilienthal called insanity of the muscles (chorea) and a similar condition of the brain . . . a lack of control of both mind and muscles.” [If you are reading Royal’s book check all the index references to Strych phos.] As for Withiania; it was chosen above Alfalfa, Avena, Kali phos, Lecithin, Phos ac, etc, because as well as being a tonic in the sense of being good for convalescents it is sedative, anti-inflammatory, and an adaptogen (like ginseng). Animal experiments have shown it to have good effect on lung cancer and sarcoma, and make tumours more responsive to radiation. One source of information is Clinical applications of ayurvedic and Chinese herbs by Kerry Bone (Phytotherapy Press, Box 276, Warwick, Queensland 4370).

Which brings us to the emotional topic of animal experiments.
Thobias did not find support for giving Kali muriaticum in potency – it worked best as the crude substance. Which demonstrates that potentising does not always make a better remedy. His table shows that the 3c and 30c potencies were less effective than all other potencies tested; a fact unobtainable from human experience, I think.

His observation that Zincum is a better anti-neoplastic than Hydrastis is very interesting. Old eclectic and homœopathic writers reported good results with crude zinc chloride as an escharotic-paste ingredient. (Escharotics burn like an acid into tumours, affecting malignant cells much more than healthy ones – they are, however, nearly all very painful.)

I, for one, am more in favour of learning from animal experiments than gambling with remedies on human patients.

Bruce Barwell