The following was found in The Journal of American Institute of Homeopathy, July 1946.
The article was written by the Editor, E. Wallace MacAdam, MD
Some years ago Dr. Paul Allen, the son of our distinguished Timothy Field Allen, was good enough to send me a little wooden box made by Dr. B. Fincke whose name has come down to us as the maker of the famous Fincke potencies. It was a hobby of the good doctor to make these cases, fill them with remedies and send them to his patients as gifts. The well-made midget chest has a lock nicely mortised in, but no key, so for several months it was on my desk unopened. At last a locksmith opened it and I was delighted to find inside twenty tiny bottles filled with remedies all in the 900th potency. This is the list:
1. Acon., 2. Arn., 3. Ars. a., 4. Bell., 5. Bry. 6. Camph., 7. Cham., 8. China, 9. Cuprum, 10. Hyos. 11. Ign., 12. Ipecac, 13. Lac can., 14. Merc., 15. Nux Vom. 16. Op., 17. Puls., 18. Rhus tox., 19. Spong., 20. Verat. a.
Also in the box was a booklet describing in the simplest language how to use the various medicines.
As these remedies were for domestic use, I was puzzled as to why certain ones had been selected, particularly Cuprum, Hyoscyamus and Lac caninum. I figured Cuprum was included because of the prevalence of cholera at that time (around 1882). He thus describes the use of the second of the puzzlers:
"Hyoscyamus Niger. Sea sickness; Talkativeness; Ill effects from jealousy; Indecency; Muttering and picking at bedclothes in low fever; Hydrophobia in connection with vapor-or hot-bath; Nightly spasmodic cough."
Of Lac caninum he simply says:
"Diphtheria; for prevention, take a dose for three nights in succession."
I slipped the little case in my bag and have carried it ever since. Sometimes I get the notion that a higher potency will stimulate a patient's reaction and then I unlock the box and roll out a few precious granules from the appropriate vial. I have been well pleased with the results. The medicines are still potent.
In those days there were many homeopathic physicians available, yet Dr. Fincke thought it wise to teach his patients how to use the medicines, not in competition, but in cooperation with the homeopathic physician.
We may well follow his example and teach our patients how to use remedies homeopathically and thus tie them to our special method of practice for as long as they live.
INTRODUCTION
"A stitch in time saves ninety-nine."
This is the point of view according to which this little box is to be used. You are not expected to make brilliant cures, though you may, but you will have help at hand when you need it, and often prevent serious disease by intercepting its development at the start.
People are not afraid, in emergencies, to use the common drugs in large doses, and by mistake or overdosing, their effects not seldom have been injurious. Then, you will not be afraid to use these remedies, especially if you know what they are, and that they are not of an injurious nature. These remedies have been developed from the crude drug substances by means of a process peculiar to homeopathy, in order to obtain from them the curative effect, which is all that is needed in a remedy. They are what, technically, are termed nine hundredth centesimal potencies, which means that the drug substances have been acted on by an inert vehicle in the ratio of one part (medicine) to one hundred parts (vehicle) nine hundred times. You will say: it is incomprehensible that anything of the original substance should be left, and so it is. And so it is with many other things which nevertheless exist. Fortunately, God has not made our art of healing dependent upon the knowledge of final causes, and upon the unveiling of his mysteries, but upon the discovery of facts which go to prove that the healing power in a remedy does not reside in its material particles, as such, but in the curative properties which the Creator has everything material endowed with. Thus, you see, that even the nine hundredth potency is not a nonentity, but a powerful medicine, and Homoeopathicians use this and much higher remedial powers called High Potencies, because they have found them more efficient and safer than the crude drugs and Low Potencies. These nine hundredths, however, will suffice for the common need in every day's cases, such as you may be called upon to deal with.
In the following pages, under the heads of the various medicines, partly the names of diseases, and partly the symptoms and some characteristics are given according to which you can apply the remedies with advantage. For you know already that the fundamental rule of the Homeopathic practice is "Like cures Like." If, therefore, you know what symptoms a remedy will produce upon the human system in health, you have the remedy at hand which will be curative in a case of sickness presenting similar symptoms. The collection of all these symptoms of the remedies constitutes the Homeopathic Materia Medica Pura. Of course you see at a glance that this rule does not apply in poisoning cases, which require the removal or neutralization of the poison by mechanical, chemical or physical means, and it does not apply to surgery, because there mechanical co-adaptation and technical operation is required which follow the Laws of Mechanics and Technics. But the symptoms in both of these cases, arising and constituting a certain kind of sickness, will again be under the control of the Homoeopathic remedy. Only an ignoramus would say: if a person is poisoned by Opium or Arsenic, you, according to Homoeopathic law, must give him still more Opium or Arsenic, which is absurd. For adding the same and identical substance in the same form and increasing quantity will only aggravate the evil and never cure it. And Homoeopathy never pretends to cure by sameness of remedy but only by likeness, by similitude. Thus in poisoning cases with Opium, Belladonna, even in large doses, has been found beneficial, showing that the Homoeopathic law of similitude holds good even in that extremity. But often the symptoms remaining after poisoning are mitigated and cured by High Potencies of the poison which caused them.
This appears to be strange, and yet it cannot be otherwise. For diseases originally consist of insensible spirit-like changes of the system, which can only be reached successfully by similar insensible spirit-like remedies such as our high potencies are. If material doses prove successful it is in virtue of their similar action which mediates the elimination of their material and the susception of their curative properties.
For a dose you may give or take about nine pellets, repeated once a day, if necessary, or you may dissolve about nine pellets in about one gill of water and give or take a teaspoonful or a little swallow once in three hours, or at shorter intervals if the case requires it. If the medicine cannot be taken by the mouth the open vial must be held under the nostrils for a few moments for inhalation.
I advise you to abstain from the common domestic practice to use two remedies in alternation, as being bad practice. Either the remedy is right and does not need another one to assist it; or it is wrong, then the other one won't better it, but you have to select another remedy. One remedy at a time is a good rule to go by.
Keep the vials and the box always closed if not in use, and be careful to expose the vials to the light as little as possible. It is also desirable that the vials are not handled by many.
In your diet everything should be avoided which is apt to set up a medicinal action, and for this reason a plain simple non-stimulating fare is recommended. Still, the Potencies act in the given case whatever may have been the previous diet.
By a little practice you will be able to handle this handful of remedies to great advantage, and you will feel a comforting security in the use of them, because they are capable of doing a great deal of good in well-meaning hands and in case they should not be well applied they are perfectly harmless.
1. Aconitum napellus.
Frequently the first remedy to be thought of. Complaints after exposure to cold, dry air; inflammations and inflammatory fevers with dry hot skin, full, hard, frequent pulse, thirst, restlessness; eruptive fevers in first stage; measles; chickenpox; scarlatina miliaris; flying heat; congestions; fainting; sleeplessness with tossing about; inclination to uncover; excessive pains; excitement; restlessness; lamentation; fear and prediction of death; rush of blood to head; sore eyes from dust and smoke; nosebleed; toothache from cold dry air; griping about navel; worms; incarcerated hernia, also with green vomit; suppression of menses after fright or anger; hemorrhage from womb or chest; pleurisy and pneumonia, first stage; palpitation of heart; stitches about the heart; dry tickling cough; croupy cough from cold, dry air; croup, first stage.
2. Arnica montana.
Pains as from hurts. Mechanical injuries of all kinds, one dose immediately dry, especially to children after a fall, and then continued in solution as long as necessary. At the same time apply a dose dissolved in water (one gill) externally to the injured part by moistening it with the fingers, or putting on a linen rag moistened with the solution; heat in upper, coldness in lower body; fear of being touched; everything he lies on feels too hard; internal chilliness with external heat; chill in evening with much thirst; eructations like rotten eggs; involuntary stool in night; retention of urine; false pleurisy; stinging in intercostal muscles; sprained feeling in joints; gout; podagra; chilblains; bedsore (externally).
3. Arsenicum album.
Burning pains; extreme prostration with hippocratic face; cold sweat; better from moving the suffering part, from walking, from external heat; cures most cases of intermittent fever especially where chill without thirst and heat with excessive thirst though drinking little; burning thirst with drinking little at a time, but frequently; agony; anguish with restlessness, tossing and exhaustion; desire to be covered; loss of hope; rose cold; running cold in head; ill effects from fruit, acids, cold water, ice, climbing; water is vomited immediately after drinking; deadly vomit; burning in stomach; cures most cases of watery diarrhoea, especially if discolored and offensive; burning piles; strangury; choking attacks; asthma; intermittent pulse threatening paralysis of heart.
4. Belladonna.
Brain-remedy; sunstroke; dizziness; delirium; apoplexy, with dilated pupils and red face; convulsions, cramps and spasms; oversensitiveness to pain; extreme tenderness on touch; very good for children, especially of fair complexion; ill effects from draught of air, hair cutting; scarlet fever, take a dose for three successive nights as Preventive; starting out of sleep in a fright; headache in forehead with red face and brilliant eyes; sore eyes; dilated pupils; toothache with swelling and red face, worse at the least touch; grinding teeth; lockjaw; sore throat dark red with scraping, swelling, and difficult deglutition, violent thirst with aversion to drink; hydrophobia (opium will never cure it, because not homoeopathic, and makes matters worse) in connection with vapor or hot bath; extreme tenderness of abdomen; pain in bowels with protrusion of colon; incontinence of urine; bearing down pain as if everything should came out; bright red hemorrhage from womb; spasmodic cough.
5. Bryonia alba.
Stitching pains; pains worse by motion; for choleric temperaments; ill effects from overlifting; inflammatory rheumatism, and rheumatism worse by motion; bilious, gastric, and typhoid fevers; recalls suppressed eruptions; chills and fever with much thirst, and drinking large quantities of water, in all stages; sleeplessness and derangement from business-cares; toothache from warm things, and chewing, also with faceache; liver complaint; jaundice; bronchitis; cough with stitches in chest especially at the sides, with yellow expectoration; pleurisy; pneumonia in second stage; sore nipples; swelling of breast, with stinging when weaning.
6. Chamomilla vulgaris.
Children's remedy; convulsions and spasms in children and hysterics; great sensibility to pain; great irritability of mind and body with restlessness; agonizing despair with tossing about; child wants to be carried; snappishness; inclination to be angry; intertrigo; hot perspiration at head and face; earache; one cheek red, one pale; difficult dentition; toothache with swollen face, worse from warm drink, especially coffee; bilious vomiting; ill effects from suppressed perspiration or eating during a fit of anger; wind colic; diarrhoea, green, watery, slimy, acrid with colic, like rotten eggs; dark clotted hemorrhage from womb.
7. China officinalis.
Weakness from loss of blood or other vital fluids in excess; malaria; sleeplessness from crowding ideas; exceedingly nervous and sensitive to pain; chills and fever with thirst between chill and heat; tenderness of hair on head; sallow face with hollow eyes and pointed nose; excessive bleeding from nose; weak digestion especially for milk; gall stones; flatulence and colic; painless diarrhoea; diarrhoea with undigested food; hemorrhage from womb to fainting.
8. Crotalus horridus.
Yellow fever.
9. Hyoscyamus niger.
Sea sickness; talkativeness; ill effects from jealousy; indecency; muttering and picking at bedclothes in low fever; hydrophobia in connection with vapor or hot bath; nightly spasmodic cough.
10. Ignatia amara.
Better to take in fore part of day; lasting ill effects of fright and secret grief (whatever they may be), and from smoking; great variability of mind; hysterical spasms; St. Vitus' dance; fainting; restless sleep from care; chills and fever with thirst during chill, but not during heat, chill relieved by external heat; hysterical halfsided headache like a nail in brain; sore throat with pain when not swallowing; empty feeling in stomach; sinking in stomach; pin worms; prolapsus ani.
11. Ipecacuanha.
Nausea and vomiting remedy; Ophistho- and Emprosthotonus; convulsions of face and legs; bleedings from all orifices of body; chills and fever with slight chill with thirst and nausea, vomiting and much heat; nausea and vomiting; diarrhoea like fermented, grass green and watery; bloody urine; bright red clotted hemorrhage from womb; threatened abortion; rattling in the air passages from phlegm; suffocative cough, getting blue and stiff especially in children; asthma with blue face; spitting blood from slightest exertion.
12. Lac caninum.
Diphtheria, for prevention take a dose for -three nights in succession.
13. Mercurius vivus.
Sore pains, worse in damp rainy weather and from east wind; nightly aggravation; pains like beaten all over the body; favors suppurations; inclination to perspire without relief; intertrigo; sore flesh; sticking pains in ears; common cold in head; sore mouth; blisters in mouth; toothache in decayed teeth in wet weather; gumboil; glandular swellings and suppurations at throat; mumps; sore throat with much saliva; ulcerated sore throat; jaundice; bloody dysentery with sharp cutting pains in bowels; low down.
14. Nux vomica
For sanguino-choleric temperaments who want to be alone; worse in morning and in open air; hysteria and hypochondria; ill effects from sedentary habits, mental overexertion, self-abuse, overeating, coffee, liquor, tobacco, loss of sleep; chills and fever with slight chill, heat with thirst and sweat, with headache and gastric symptoms, and blue finger-nails; sick headache with pain over root of nose and pain in eyeballs when moving them; snuffles; heartburn; toothache, caused by open air, wine and coffee, worse by drinking cold water, better by warmth; dyspepsia; pressure as of a stone in pit of stomach; feeling very sick at stomach; tightness around short ribs and pit of stomach, desire to loosen clothes; ineffectual straining to stool; constipation; dysentery, bloody, with small faecal particles; prolapse of womb or anus; hernia; piles; lumbago.
15. Opium.
III effects from fright, immediately to be given; after drowning; itching of skin in old people; drowsiness, stupor, loss of consciousness, lethargy; apoplexy with snoring; sleeplessness, thinks she is not at home; continual stertorous breathing; jaw hanging down; lockjaw; chills and fever with stupor, shaking chill without thirst, falling asleep, then heat with thirst and copious perspiration; eyes half open, turned upwards; contracted or dilated pupils; bluish red or pallid face; vomiting of faeces; severe constipation like sheep's dung; retention of urine; puffing expiration.
16. Pulsatilla nigricans.
For quiet good natured dispositions inclined to chilliness, and easily excited to tears; worse toward evening, in warm room; better in open air; weeping despondency with chilliness without thirst; chills and fever without thirst, toward evening; measles; chickenpox; wandering rheumatism; headaches, half-sided as if the brain would burst, from fat food, better from compression; styes; faceache in women; tearing in ears, running from ears; nasal catarrh, thick, yellow; toothache, twitching, worse by warmth, better by cold; things taste bitter; thirstlessness; cramps in stomach, from fat rich food; incontinence of urine with little girls; slimy or bloody urine; delay or suppression of menstruation, also during turn of life; morning sickness; one dose every fortnight, during pregnancy, acts favorably upon it and confinement, corrects false positions in time; leucorrhoea; troubles of the milk breast; gross veins; chilblains.
17. Rhus toxicodendron.
Erysipelas remedy; ill effects from getting wet, also from bathing; poisoning with poison-ivy; worse by rest, better by motion; desire to change position often which gives short relief; Erysipelas, shingles, nettle rash, hives; chills and fever at 7 P.M.; tineacapitis; rheumatism and neuralgia worse by rest; luxation of head of humerus; numbness and asleep feeling in extremities; crick in back; sciatica; sprains.
18. Spongia tosta.
Membranous croup. croupy coughs; very tight and dry coughs; when children sing when having a croupy cough.
19. Variolin.
Smallpox; varioloid; severe pains in head, back and limbs; for prevention of smallpox take for three successive nights one dose. This can be done ad libitum at any time when protection is needed. The symptoms which may follow will pass off without serious effects. If none follow there is no liability of the system to be affected. In case of smallpox or varioloid take the remedy in water one teaspoonful every two or three hours till recovery. Roasting juniper-berries is a good disinfectant for smallpox when prevailing.
20. Veratrum album.
Ill effects from bodily overexertion; sinking of strength, faint from least exertion; cold and bluish skin; cold sweat and hippocratic face; despair; insanity, violent and amorous; chills and fever with prolonged chill; cutting in bowels as with knives; longing for acids and very cold water; vomiting and purging; cholera infantum; cholera morbus and asiatica; roasting coffee is a great disinfectant when cholera is prevailing; profuse watery diarrhoea; incarcerated hernia; whooping cough, with cold blue skin; suffocative attacks, as of spasmodic constriction of larynx and chest; pain in limbs intolerable in bed, better when walking about; cramps in calves.
©2000 Julian Winston