The dictionary defines a nosode as 'a disease product used as a remedy'. Many of our homoeopathic doctors would describe nosodes in oppro- brious terms: some prescribes give nosodes where the miasmatic history is clear and the symptoms are mixed or obscure: others put them in as 'intercurrents': the French school combine or alternate the suitable miasmatic nosode with the most similar remedy for the top layer, or recent symptoms, in cases where no remedy stands out. after patient questioning and repertorizing, some give the nosode of the main miasm in order to stir up the depths and throw out indications for a curative prescription. We hear much of the role of the nosode when seemingly well chosen remedies fail to act or hold, and in the clearing up of recalcitrant relapses. The strict homoeopath uses the exanthem nosodes for immunization often, although Merc. Cy.. Belladonna and Drosera prevail, too.
The list of nosodes in current usage in homoeopathy is sizable. In Clarke's Clinical Repertory we find mention of twenty-two. including such a well-known remedy as Secale. Bach in Great Britain developed a new group, mostly of the intestinal variety. Certain ones from the exanthemata have been added, such as Scarlatinum and Pertussin. Some are rare to many, as Melitagrinum. Skinner's nosode from eczema capitis, or Nectrianinum. the tree cancer remedy. The big three, corresponding to Hahnemann's miasms - Psorinum. Medorrhinum and Svphilinum - are well known to all. as is Tuberculinum or Bacillinum. H. C. Allen's book. The Nosodes. is a classic on these: but an adequate knowledge of them must be built up by study of J. H. Allen's books on two of the three miasms, as well as modern sources such as H. A. Roberts' masterly lectures to the American Foundation for Homoeo- pathy Summer School.
The best practice, I believe, gives the nosodes by their definite symptomatology, like any other remedy; and this truism has led me to make some brilliant results in acute cases. While driving on your rounds, ask yourselves the acute uses of Svphilinum or Psorinum.
As an example, let us take the case of Miss X. who was beside herself with agony at receiving an enema from a skilful nurse. Sensation of
unbearable constriction at rectum, with pushing down pain and actual prolapse of anus, clusters of hard tender piles with fissures and burning; history of obstinate constipation for years: habitually took an enema twice a week and dreaded the ordeal to the point of hysteria. Luetic family history. Fears the night, when she is worse, and the exhaustion of waking, and insanity. Such remedies as Aesculus and even Lachesis had been given without relief. Syphilinum 1M. one dose; relaxation of the rectal spasm in a few minutes, followed by almost normal bowel action for the first time in her memory, with relief of depression, etc.
Or again. Mrs M.. in the knee-chest position, cyanosed. gasping and wheezing, her coarse unruly hair standing out in all directions, muttering, 'If I could get to the seashore - if 1 only could.' Medorrhinum KIM. one dose, with relief in five minutes while I watched. Previous adrenalin in other attacks had given no help.
An eleven-year-old boy in bed with fever of 39°C, room stifling but a woolly muffler wrapped around his head. pale, dirty skin, drenched in foetid sweat, slight thin discharge from ear which could be smelled on entering the room. No pain whatever unless his head was raised on a pillow, as I discovered on asking why the pillow was on the floor. History of running ear on and off since scarlet fever at four years of age. Psorinum 10M, one dose. Fever dropped in two hours, ear discharged violently for a week; chilliness, sweat and odour gone. Three weeks later his mother said he had never been so well: no ear discharge for ten months, at which point it became necessary to repeat dose.
DISCUSSION
Dr Baker: 1 agree that you get your best results using the nosodes where you can prescribe them as a regular homoeopathic remedy on the symptoms, only you cannot always gel the symptoms. Then you have to use them until you do gel the symptoms - especially lhal case of the knee-chest position and the Medorrhinum. 1 have seen that work like a charm.
Dr Grimmer: I agree that the most logical thing to do in using nosodes is to get their symptoms and history. There are cases with a very great paucity of symptoms where, with a family history and the personal history of the specific miasm to which they are related, you will sometimes get a brilliant unlocking of the case, if not a cure.
1 can remember very few real cures by the nosodes. My experience has been that they have helped, but 1 know of only one case 1 really cured.
which was a case with Tuberculinum. a very bad case of migratory pneumonia in a child six years old. I went two thousand miles to put a powder of Tuberculinum on this child's tongue when he was just about moribund. He had had three well-regarded doctors in the city, and they said there was no hope. The child had a few symptoms when I got there. He had had about two weeks of this, with a very high temperature and violent chills. Every time there would be a new area of infection and he would have a chill followed by high temperature, little spots all through the lungs, pneumonic spots, a chain of the glands of the neck swollen and hard, bird-like claws, extreme weakness.
I got into the case with the doctors' consent. They removed their medication. (They were giving him expectorants.) I gave him Tuber- culinum 10M. and in twelve hours that case ended by crisis, not by lysis. He had a coughing spell and spat up about a pint of pus. and then went down from a temperature of 41°C to about 36°C. He had a drenching, very profuse sweat. The other doctors came in at the family's solicitation, and said he was dying. 1 said. 'No, he is not dying."
He had a good pulse in spite of all this. I said. It is merely reaction. He will be all right in a short time.' He made a brilliant cure and a perfect recovery without any further medication.
Dr Lewandowski: The totality of symptoms, as we all understand, is the deciding factor in the selection of the remedy. However, in the repertorizaton of any case it is very rare that a nosode comes out. When you do recognize a nosode. use it with caution, since we all understand that it is a very powerful missile.
Dr Waffensmith: One point that has been very valuable in my experience is the euthanasia power of Tuberculinum. Very often after prescribing for an incurable acute condition one will find that the remedies, as indicated in series, fail to hold. That of course is a positive diagnosis of incurability. As the patient progresses toward the linal stage the family is restless, and something is expected to be done to neutralize the ultimate agony of death.
If you find that there are symptoms in the case pointing to Tuber- culinum. or a family history of tuberculosis, it is here that you will often get a remarkable pre-death improvement. The patient, where previously he had been unable even to swallow the medicine you have given, or liquids, may for a very limited period of time ask for nourishment and be able to swallow it. But do not allow that to deceive you. as it is the pre- death euthanasia which comes from any simillimum. but particularly from the nosode Tuberculinum.
Dr Farrington: It is true that we seldom get a nosode in repertory work, but that may be because the knowledge of the particular symptoms of these diseased products is deficient and the repertories contain com- paratively few of them.
If you look deeply at H. C. Allen's Nosodes you will see that there is a wealth of symptoms, especially for Psorinum and Medorrhinum. and some of them which cannot be found under any other remedy. That is especially true of Medorrhinum. If you have ever used his slip repertory you will have nosodes coming out more frequently. Many of the symptoms that are recorded in the other repertories are marked in his in high degree.
Dr Allen has been accused of abusing the nosodes. but I do not believe it. He knew more than any other person about them, and like Guernsey with his keynotes and others who have had some special method of prescribing, they knew so much that with one or two symptoms they saw other things, and perhaps without realizing it themselves they really did prescribe on the totality.
I have seen a number of cures with nosodes. especially with Tuberculinum. where it was the only remedy in the case. However, as a rule the nosodes carried the case to a certain point and other remedies had to be given to complete the cure.
Have you had many aggravations from nosodes? - 1 have never had any. In Dr Grimmer's case, where he gave Tuberculinum. he said the patient got well by crisis. Is it not possibly true that although under good homoeopathic prescribing lobar pneumonia gets well by lysis, if there is a hyperpyrexia that is not possible. I can think of one case of "blue' pneumonia (which is not supposed to be pneumonia. 1 understand), where a temperature of 41*C came tumbling down in two hours to 38°C after a dose of Phosphorus, and the patient got cold and sweaty and almost collapsed. It was a young woman of twenty-six who had just recovered from tuberculosis after a long period of homoeopathic prescribing. I do not know in this case whether it was galloping consumption or pneumonia. She recovered, but her hair fell out and she became bald as an egg. Then the hair came in curly and my oldest son fell in love with her and married her.
Dr John Panos: Recently the wife of one of the best homoeopaths in Dayton suffered from what was termed colitis and, as usual, one went to the symptoms. For two years he prescribed to the best of his ability and finally asked me if I would help in taking care of her. He told me he had been giving Arsenic. Lachesis. Carbo Veg. and a few others.
We decided on Arsenic, which brought some relief. We waited for two months but there was no further progress. Then she got a cold, and the doctor prescribed, hurriedly. Aconite and Bryonia. Then we decided a dose of Sepia might clear up something. Sepia was given with no results. The sweat and the characteristics of Psorinum were present and we gave a dose of Psorinum. There was an aggravation for a week and then she came back with the previous line and stayed there for four weeks, when Lachesis became very nicely indicated. One dose of 10M cleared the case up beautifully and she is very well today.
Dr Wilson: One interesting aspect of the nosodes is their use against some of the prevailing diseases.
When I was a student at Hahnemann College the seniors had the privilege of going to the municipal hospital and seeing smallpox. I wanted to see smallpox, because I thought I would never see it when 1 got into practice.
We went up to see diphtheria, scarlet fever and then smallpox at two- day intervals. The first day we went in to see either diphtheria or scarlet fever, and the intern asked to see our own vaccinations. I happened to be the oldest person in the class and he looked at them all and passed me by. I finally said. Don't you want to look at mine?' (I had one that was done way back in the 'eighties). He asked how long ago was it done.
I said, 'Twenty or twenty-five years ago', and he replied, i would have one or two scratches made if I were you.'
Some of the other students were vaccinated. Some of them did not go into the wards when the critical time came, but I began taking Variolinum. and took it for a period before I went in, and also after I came from seeing the case of smallpox.
They insist in New Jersey that all children are Schick tested, and there was one little one in my practice. My attitude toward vaccination has always been that the more healthy the child, the less fit he is to be vaccinated. As a consequence I never have vaccinated anyone, and would not be vaccinated myself if I could help it. so 1 sent some powders of a CM of Diphtherinum to the mother of this child in place of having her Schicked by injection.
The health authorities telephoned me and wanted to know about it. I did not tell them what I had done, but simply said that in my estimation the child was thoroughly inoculated against diphtheria.
So I have used Variolinum as well as Typhoid and Diphtherinum in that way. As Dr Hubbard says, we have all used them where we think there lies tuberculosis, some syphilis or some gonorrhoea (and some of
those lie under all of us). We cannot help it. It is somewhere around, and many times an intercurrent of one of those nosodes helps a lot. Dr Van Norden: Dr Allen used to tell us that when people were weak they got tired easily, and where you could not get results with other remedies. Tuberculinum would often do the work. I have followed that out many times in practice and have almost invariably found it to work. Dr McLaren: Variolinum will cure smallpox, and it will prevent you from getting smallpox - I have tried it out. I was called to see a man suffering from smallpox who had three children, and they all lived in a very small house. The three children had never been vaccinated and were exposed to the disease. I gave them all Variolinum. The eldest child had smallpox pustules without any pus in them, and only one day of fever: the second child had one day of fever and one or two fleeting nodules or pink spots, and the third child had nothing at all.
Dr Knerr: I have always used Variolinum to prevent smallpox. I had the peculiar case of a woman of about fifty to whom 1 gave it and she promptly developed a beautiful pustule on her right arm. It was during an epidemic, and she never had any further symptoms.
Separate to this, it is known that the constituents of saliva include the sulphur cyanide of potassium. It was discovered in an epidemic in Philadelphia that where silver plating was done, where they used the cyanide of potassium, no cases of smallpox occurred at all among the workers. This started Dr Hering to investigate the cases in the smallpox hospital in Philadelphia. He examined their saliva, and found that the cyanide had left the saliva, but he found it in the pustules. As soon as the patients got better the cyanide left the pustules and went back to the saliva.
This led him to use the sulphur cyanide of potassium in liquid form. When sprinkled around on the sheets in the sick rooms, it had the effect that there never was another case that did that.
Then Dr Hering wished to find a remedy from a plant. He thought a plant that contained the sulphur cyanide of potassium would yield the remedy, and he found it in the black mustard. Sinapis nigra.
Dr Hubbard: I agree with Dr Lewandowski that the remedies which come out sixth or seventh in the repertory, if they are rare ones that stand high, are extremely important. 1 am more likely to give the one that comes out No. 3 than the one that comes out No. 1.
I personally hope we take every case according to Dr Spalding's wonderful method, in that we should consider which of the nosodes of
the fundamental miasms are most closely related to that case. We know that the remedies are grouped around the miasmatic divisions, and we should have a care to remember that in our selection of the remedy.
Dr Farrington was right when he said that my cases were chronic rather than acute, but they were in the acute stage at the moment. After all. I suppose every case is really chronic, no matter how acute it seems.