(IHA Transactions 1892, page 305)
Dr. Buchner, in Munchen, retorted to an unbeliever in homeopathic potencies: "The ox does not believe either, and yet he is cured." As a counterpart to this historical homeopathic ox, the following cases show the unbelief of the homeopathic hen:
(1) A hen six years old, laying three to four eggs a week, began to lay eggs without the hard shell, and ate them. A dose of Calc carb 9c (900) would not remedy the evil in a week. But after another dose of Calc carb cm, the hen laid a hard-shell egg the second day and has continued ever since.
(2) When the hens get the chicken cholera, about ten pellets of Veratrum alb. 9c (900) are dropped in their drink water (three quarts), and in a few hours they are all right again.
(3) The hen sub 1 was at one time so constipated that we feared we would lose her with her fruitless exertions. A dose of Nux vomica 9c (900) relieved her within the hour.
(4) A silver-spangled Hamburg got frightened and ran around in a narrow circle A dose of Belladonna 9c restored her before an hour had passed, and she continued well, and was a capital layer for four years more.
(5) Hens with croup have frequently been saved by a dose of Spongia tosta 9c, often in an incredibly short time.
The dose was given this way: The hen was captured, and held by another person, the bill was opened with the left hand, and with the right hand a few pellets were poured from the bottle down the throat.
DISCUSSION
Dr. Hastings: We have had, for a number of years, a fine cat in our family. About five years ago it was reported that the cat was not eating anything at all. I found that somebody had clipped the smellers off close. The cat refused to eat for three days and gave great signs of drooping. It occurred to me that these smellers were extremely sensitive and probably supplied with nerves, so I gave her Hypericum, and in one hour she took her food.
Dr. Clark: I was asked to see a valuable English Stallion that was troubled with roaring. He trotted about one hundred feet and came up with very loud breathing. I concluded to give him Sulphur but after two weeks he was no better; but Brom. 500 cured him.
Dr. F. Powel: I have a patient who had a horse that had been over-driven. The urine was entirely suppressed, and the horse was in great agony. This condition is considered fatal. I decided that Hyoscyamus was the remedy, and gave him four powders of the 200th. In six hours the urine came and the horse recovered.
Dr. James: I have a mare that has always had very good health. I had made a stipulation at the stable that she was not to be doctored or treated with any medicine of any kind. About a year ago the horse did not come around to the office in the morning as usual, and soon one of the stable hands came to say that the horse was very sick with colic. She had been taken about an hour before, and the stable hands had, contrary to orders, undertaken to threat her themselves with some quack stuff they had. I found her lying on her back, groaning, in great agony, kicking her feet. When I spoke to her she scrambled to her feet, staggered, and fell down again. Her feet were all drawn together, all four feet together. This suggested the remedy Colocynth. I gave her some pellets. In five minutes she stopped groaning, in ten minutes she lay quiet, and in fifteen minutes she got up. The stableman said: "Great Scot! That must be a powerful opiate!" He wanted some of that medicine right away.
Dr. Dever: When I was in Michigan, a man who had a fancy for dogs came to me and said that a dog of his has a swollen throat and was frothing at the mouth. A few doses of medicine cured the dog as readily as if he had been a human being, every bit as easy. No imagination there; neither was faith necessary to the cure.
Dr. Fincke: It is just forty years ago since I was on the ship coming to America. The captain told me there was a fine Newfoundland dog aboard who was suffering from constipation. I gave a dose of Aconite 30, and it cured him.
Dr. Rushmore: I was told by a homeopathic veterinary surgeon that the best remedy for wind colic was Ammonium causticum in the 30th potency.
Dr. Taft: Last summer, before going to Richfield Springs, one of my patients asked me what he should do if his horse had the colic while I was away. I told him that while there was no specific for colic, I would do the best I could and left him with a bottle of Colocynth pellets. The horse did not have the colic at that time, but some time after I returned he did have it, and the Colocynth did not help. I was sent for and watched the animal for some time. I noticed that when a paroxysm came, the horse would rise and kick the stall viciously. I gave Nux vom and cured him quickly. My own horse had the colic twice very severely. The stableman sent for me each time and Colocynth did very rapid work. So much so that the stableman asked for a bottle of the medicine. I knew that there must me something wrong with the horse to have colic twice in succession, and I remembered that for a few days before each attack, instead of walking up to the hitching post, as usual, she would stand out in the middle of the road, and look and act for all the world like a stubborn child. I gave her Nux vom. and she has never had colic since.
Dr. Long: Has any one in the room ever cured a horse of blood or bone spavin?
Dr. Kimball: I cured one in my own mare. When he swelling appeared, the stableman blistered it without my knowledge, and the mare did not improve. I gave her Rhus, which helped, and afterwards Phos acid which cured. The stableman was confident it was a bone spavin.
Dr. Farley: I have used Colchicum in over-fed animals with disgust for food, and also Thuja where the uncovered parts would sweat, both with success.
Dr. Taft: I had a case of a horse that was injured by a nail in the foot. The veterinary surgeon said it would die. I asked for the privilege of giving medicine, and gave it Ledum. A member of the family was taking lessons in Christian Science and treated the horse at the same time. I do not know which of us deserves the credit, but the horse was cured.
Dr. Wesselhoeft: I cured a mare of what is called poll evil. A veterinary told me that it was a disease which is never cured. I found a sore about three inches back of her ears discharging offensive pus. They told me I had better kill the horse. I didn't kill her but I did cure her. I put her into another stable with directions to give her a powder of Silica 200, about one in two weeks. I saw the mare again in six weeks. The men around the stable said, "this mare is getting well." I stopped the medicine and she was entirely well in three months. She died last year at the ripe age of thirty-three. The abscess made no change in position of the head and there was only a small depressed cicatrix on the left side of her neck. The pus was very offensive.
Dr. Kent: There can be no disputing these cures on the horse, and nothing proves so satisfactorily the genuine action of the potencies as these results on the dumb, unthinking animas. There is a trouble with the horse that is not very infrequent. The farriers call it blind staggers. It seems to be a form of vertigo. When the horse which I treated warmed up a little, he would tremble and stagger and seem perfectly blind. I administered a dose of Sulphur which relieved him for a time only. Another dose was given and it came back. The horse developed a quarter crack which is a sign of defective nutrition. This led me to give a dose of Graphites, which cured both conditions. Not long ago I treated a horse for chills. The chill came on at irregular intervals from one to five in the afternoon. For these irregular chills I gave Arsenic 8m. I had to let the horse have several chills before I ascertained that Arsenic was the remedy. Of course we are compelled to prescribe on very meager information in these cases. In the last year, I have seem a tumor as big as my fist drop off from a single dose of Thuja 73m. It took about four weeks. Of course I am talking of a horse, it was on a horse.
There is a symptom known as pointing in the horse. When the horse stops there seems to be some sort of soreness in the shoulder and the foot will be pointed outward. I have cured that condition a number of times with Ferrum when the left shoulder is the one affected.
Dr. Bell: Almost always horses coming from the country to Boston get a fever, with coughing, profuse catarrh, swelling of the glands of the neck. The remedy is Silicea; it cures them in almost every instance.
Dr. Jameson: I had a little experience in the animal line with a sick cow She had just calved. She had high fever, eyes injected, respiration rapid, and abdomen distended. I gave her Bell. 200 every two hours. The owners came in the next morning and reported a change for the better about midnight, and by morning she was quite well.
Dr. Baylies: Some months ago my horse was brought to the door with a loose shoe; in traveling tore it off, was lamed, and therefore confined to the stable for five days. When I began to use him again I observed for a block a mining gait of the hinder extremities, in a few minutes he was only able to walk and threatened to stop. I had great difficulty getting him back to the stable and sent for a veterinary. Before he arrived the horse was dragging himself about in the stall in great agony, with the hind hoofs flexed; the region of the hips and the sacrum was very much swollen, and this swelling a paraplegia were increasing with wonderful rapidity. He would lie down and raise himself often only upon the forefeet, then drop again. Untrained to study the symptoms of horses except in the most ordinary ailments, I could not attempt treatment. I suspected acute disease of the lumbo-sacral portion of the spinal cord; the veterinary called it azoturia and attributed it to the continuance of the usual quantity of food, especially of oats, while confined to the stall; fever was high and the urine turbid and of dark brownish color with a strong ammoniacal odor. He gave him Aconite tincture every four hours ad an enema of Aloes. The horse steadily improved and recovered after about four weeks in the stale (in a box stall) and nearly two months in pasture, and is himself again. The pathology of this disease appears not fully understood.
Dr. E. E. Case: I was unfortunate enough to have five cases of scarlatina in my house. To destroy the bedding it put it in a wagon, took it away from the house, and burned it. About nine days later the horse was taken sick with all the symptoms of scarlet fever. During her sickness the hair came off ad the cuticle peeled as in the desquamation of scarlatina. Veterinary surgeons declare that horses do not have scarlet fever because they do not find the bacillus of that disease.
Dr. James: The horse of a patient of mine, who was a strong homeopath, as far as himself and wife went, was put in the hands of a veterinary. The horse was taken sick from a cold taken while driving, or rather from standing after driving. He called in a veterinary. He sent for a prominent veterinary physician, who said that as a horse was ten times heavier than a man he required ten times as much medicine. He accordingly gave him two hundred and fifty grains of quinine, and at the third dose the horse fell dead in the stall.
Dr. Sawyer: Somebody asked if there had been any cues of spavin. There have been several cures to my knowledge. A man whose wife I was treating for cancer of mammae told me he thought homeopathy was nothing but faith cure.
I noticed that his horse had some ugly fistulous openings, and asked him if he thought his horse had much faith, and told him I could cure his horse of those fistulous openings. I gave three powders of Silicea, and they got well. His wife also recovered.
Dr. J. H. Allen: We have a number of large horse farms in Indiana, where they raise blooded stock, the majority of the farmers treat them with homeopathic specifics and seldom lose a horse from sickness.
Dr. W. L. Morgan: About four years ago the stableman came after me, early in the morning, saying my horse was very sick. I found the horse's head stuck straight out and under the jaws and forelegs swollen so that he could not get his head to the ground. On inquiry I found that a horse in the same stable was having pinkeye and was under a veterinary. I gave Bell. 200 and put him in a box stall. I the evening I went to the stable again and saw that the horse was beginning to want to eat. We gave him a little green grass and he ate. In two days he was in condition to use.
Dr. Rushmore: A valuable cow in some way got loose in the stable and thus had access to the feed barrel. When my attention was called to her she was lying prostrate on the ground. Eyes dull, tongue stretched out of her mouth, and cold. I placed a few pellets of Carbo veg. 200 on her tongue and she got well rapidly. I would not have risked a dollar on her chances of recovery.
Dr. Kent: I have just one dog story. This dog had become too much interested in a cow that was going through the process of labor. The dog persisted in his attention until the cow turned on him and hooked him through the hind leg. It was a puncture wound and stiffness followed its healing, so he was no longer able to pose as a ten-thousand dollar dog. It seemed to be chronic stiffness and induration. I sent a dose of Ledum which restored him to usefulness and to his proper places as a prize dog.