INTERESTING CASES AND QUOTES

Julian Winston - In discussing the irrational blindness that people, especially allopaths, have towards the indisputable success of homeopathy in his book, The Faces of Homœopathy, Winston had the following to say:
"We show it to them and they don't see. A patient, given up as 'terminal,' comes back alive. 'I used homœopathy,' she says. 'Spontaneous remission,' says the physician. Another patient, cured of her allopathically 'untreatable' illness, returns to the specialist. Re-doing the tests and x-rays, the previous illness is gone. Says the specialist, 'It must have been a mis-diagnosis. What you had was not curable.'
In discussing this phenomenon with Harris Coulter, Harris re-stated what he clearly says in his Volume IV of Divided Legacy; The piece of homœopathy that is most threatening to the conventional model is neither the idea of similars nor the idea of infinitesimal but, rather, the idea that the therapy must be individualized for each case and the homœopaths have a methodology for doing this. 'The idea that there are not a finite number of illnesses makes them crazy,' said Coulter.
A physician once told me there are two kinds of folks in the world- those who experience and draw conclusions from the experiences, and those who draw conclusions and only experience that which supports those conclusions.
The rejection of homœopathy and the principle of similars is as old as homœopathy itself."
How sad, but true, are these observations! When you consider the hundreds of millions of people that have been aided with homeopathy over the last two centuries versus the millions of people injured and killed with allopathy every year, it is obvious that the tendency towards willing ignorance over genuine science is not confined to allopaths, but also applies to their patients.

Stuart M. Close- Close was called to attend a 45-year-old woman who was confined to her bed and had become progressively weaker to the point of being pronounced as dying. He had been called when no hope of recovery remained. Upon his arrival, the family told him it was too late; she had already died. When he examined her, he found her limbs had gone cold, but her body was still warm. There was no detectable pulse or respiration. Her eyes were fixed and the face had the expression of death. Close administered a homeopathic remedy, and then proceeded to talk to her and rub her stiffened arms and legs. Then she opened her eyes and whispered, "I'm coming back." After ten minutes, the woman told Close that even though she was unconscious of her surroundings, she was still "alive in her mind." As she drifted away, she had heard Close calling to her, and awoke to see him talking. She went on to make an uneventful recovery and lived a healthy life for more than 20 additional years.

Alfred Pulford- "It is my steadfast opinion that the real raison d'être of medicine is the restoration of health or normal state to the sick. But most of us, especially our allopathic brethren seem to feel that the field of medicine is a mere playground; the sense of sacredness of human life seems to have been lost, or as if life was at such low ebb as to be of little value. The profession seems to be more concerned with theorization and dangerous experimentation even in some instances to the extent of satisfying a morbid or idle curiosity than either the restoration of health or in the perfecting of a definite plan to gain that end. To date homœopathy is the only method so far discovered that would lead us to that goal."

James Compton Burnett- Like most homeopaths of his day, Burnett was trained as an allopath before becoming a homeopath. The following is the first time he used homeopathy. Ironically, he tried homeopathy in an attempt to discredit it, but ended up being converted to homeopathy. Burnett would not be the first or last homeopath to be converted in this way! Burnett decided to test a homeopathic remedy on his children's fever ward, dosing all of the patients on one side of the ward with the remedy, while giving the other patients the usual allopathic treatment. Within twenty-four hours, all of the homeopathically treated children were cured, while the others languished. He repeated the experiment with other children and had the same results, until his nurse, impatient of Burnett's cold-heartedness, "dosed all the patients indiscriminately from 'Dr. Burnett's Fever Bottle' and emptied the ward." Literally dumbfounded by the results, Burnett "suffered a conversion which he afterwards compared to St. Paul's on the road to Damascus, instantly resolved 'to fight the good fight of homœopathy with all the power I possess; were I to do less I should be afraid to die.'"

Alfred Pulford- "In truth only intelligent men should practice homœopathy; all others drift naturally into allopathy where brains and the ability to think, and think deeply, are not so much needed."

Samuel Lilienthal and Edward Bayard - At Constantine Hering's funeral, Lilienthal said, "Dr. Hering died in harness. At six o'clock on the evening of his death he made his last prescription." Bayard observed, "He ceased to exist, by the withdrawal of his life by the Giver of life, like some locomotive running smoothly upon the track, after exhausting her fuel, slows down and stops- not thrown from the rails by broken machinery and rushing to ruin with terrible violence."

Constantine Hering - A favorite case of "kill or cure" was resolved not by administering a homeopathic remedy, but rather by external homeopathic stimulus. As Hering relates, a young man was suffering from intermittent fever, and was in a desperate situation because he wished to marry the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer. The father denied his daughter's hand unless he could hold a job as a fireman in one of his establishments, which was obviously impossible with his fever. The young man said he was suicidal, and demanded of Hering a "kill or cure" prescription. Hering responded with the following advice: "Go to the Schuylkill River when you again feel the attack coming on. Undress. Get some of your friends to tie a rope under your shoulders so that they can suspend you in the water up to your mouth. Jump into the river and force yourself to stay there during the chill. When the fever, which follows the chill, comes on remain there until the sweat appears, then leave the water." Hering's instructions were followed to the letter. The man became blue in the face and his friends feared he would die, but true to his conviction he stayed in the water. Soon the fever came, as did great weakness. After being in the water two hours, the sweating began. He finally consented to being raised from the water, and his friends wrapped him in warm blankets and took him home. From that day forward, his intermittent fever never returned. He married the girl of his choice and supposedly lived happily ever after. I suppose this is a rare instance of "harsh" homeopathic treatment.

Joseph Hypolyte Pulte - After he moved to Cincinnati, Pulte faced hostility from the townspeople because he was a homeopath. This took the form of such adolescent behavior as pelting his house with eggs and driving logs through his carriage wheels. When he became discouraged enough to contemplate leaving, his wife asked him, "Joseph, do you believe in the truth of homeopathy?" After he replied that he did, she said, "Then you will stay in Cincinnati." Shortly thereafter, a cholera epidemic swept through town. Pulte had not lost a single patient, and became accepted in the community. During the 1849 epidemic, people crowded his doorway and lined the street because the waiting room was full.

Constantine Hering - This is not actually a case of homeopathy, but rather a case of murder which was solved thanks to Hering's deductive sleuthing. The wife of one of the first homeopaths in Philadelphia was murdered in her room. Hering found the bloody handprint of the murderer on a nearby post. After examining the imprint under a microscope, Hering discovered particles of shoe-maker's wax. This led to the arrest, trial, and execution of the murderer, who was a shoe-maker. While the murderer was awaiting his execution, Hering requested that his fingerprints be taken and compared to the bloody imprint, but this was denied. After the execution, Hering viewed the corpse with several other physicians, intending to take the fingerprints post-mortem. However, the hands had been mutilated beyond recognition by an ecletic physician who was jealous of a homeopath's triumph in a matter of science. All of this took place at a time when the Bertillion method was rarely practiced, thus serving as another illustration of how homeopaths are often ahead of their time.

Constantine Hering - Hering wrote a few satires about the popular misconceptions of homeopathy in 1860. One of these misconceptions surrounds combinational remedies. In one satire, he wrote of a schoolmaster who dabbled in homeopathy. After ordering a box of remedies, he opened the box, only to discover that all forty bottles had broken in transit. The schoolmaster then decided to sift all of the globules out of the box, and put them into a single jar with some dilute alcohol. He labeled the jar Universalinum, and said it was, "the greatest idea of the century. Here was a remedy for every ill. Goodbye to books and hard study!"

James Compton Burnett - A twelve-year-old girl with a growth in her mouth was brought to Burnett. The growth was in the shape of a cock's comb! It interfered with eating because she would accidentally bite it, stimulating its growth. An allopath administered surgery. The growth was removed twice, only to grow back each time after a six month period. In the second surgery, the surgeon made a deep ligature, leaving a hole in her mouth. He hoped to remove the base of the growth, but it simply reappeared to the side of the hole. Burnett prescribed a series of three remedies, after which the growth finally and permanently disappeared. The surgeon's hole remained.

Adolph Lippe - "People say 'Homoeopathy is all right, only it is slow'. Is it? It can be so strikingly fast like the 'dreaded lightning'. Only, to make it work that fast, you must get the right drug."

James Compton Burnett - A woman in her early thirties was brought to Burnett by her husband for angina pectoris. She suffered severe attacks which were feared to be potentially fatal. Upon taking her health history, Burnett discovered that she had skin crack in the bends of her arms from childhood. These were suppressed at the end of her teenage years by an ointment given by an allopath. Soon afterwards, she developed problems ranging from dyspepsia to the aforementioned angina. She even had a stillborn child! As there were no signs of cardiac lesions or dysfunction, Burnett concluded that the ointment given to suppress her skin problem did not cure her, but merely drove her disease inward. Burnett treated her homeopathically, and within one month the skin problem reappeared, but her angina disappeared and she was able to bear living children.

Constantine Hering - After discovering homeopathy, "My enthusiasm grew. I became a fanatic. I went about the country, visited inns, where I got up on tables and benches to harangue whoever might be present to listen to my enthusiastic speeches on homœopathy. I told the people that they were in the hands of cut-throats and murderers. Success came everywhere. I almost thought I could raise the dead."

Federal Vanderburgh - This was a case Vanderburgh did not personally treat successfully since he was still an allopath at the time, but it converted him to homeopathy. The patient had a problem with a toe set at a right angle because of a contracted tendon. Vanderburgh gave the typically allopathic suggestion of surgery, but the patient went to a homeopath instead. Vanderburgh later met the patient and found out that the homeopathic treatment straightened his toe. Intrigued, Vanderburgh went straight to the homeopath, Hans Burch Gram, and came to the realization that "I had been creeping in a labyrinth while he was walking in the noonday sun".