Some five years ago I had under my care a boy about fifteen years of age, who was taken with pleurisy on the left side. The pulse was about 120 and temperature about 104. He was doing as well as could be expected under the remedies used, as the pulse had come down to about 90 and temperature 100, when he had a relapse from some cause, probably from a drought. His temperature then went to 103 and he commenced to show symptoms in a different form, such as night sweats, diarrhoea, cough, rapid emaciation and loss of appetite. In the next two or three weeks his temperature fell to 102 and it stayed there until I was beginning to think that a change must be made soon or I would not have any patient to treat. I think I was more discouraged than the family, and they had nothing to encourage them. Finally the mother of the boy came down to my office and told me that he was coughing until he was completely exhausted. I hardly knew what to tell her or what to say after using all the remedies I had and none of them doing any good. I gave her eight pellets of Bacillinum and told her to try them, and I would see the boy again, but also said to her that if that did not help him, I did not know anything more to do. When I saw him I was greatly surprised; he had never had a hard coughing spell after using the pellets. The fever, night sweats and diarrhoea had left him; his appetite had returned and he now seems to be as healthy as any boy in Newark. This same family lost a child previous to this, and would have lost a second, one younger than the boy, but the physician who attended it just stopped of his own accord, and I was called and gave it Bacillinum. I did not think much about it then, until about six months afterward I had the case which I have just described.
Another case I wish to mention is that of a child 18 months old who had been treated by two different physicians, one of them attending it three times a day, the other twice; finally the parents were advised to try me, as I was of a different school of medicine. I did think when I saw this child that it was a good test case for Bacillinum, as it had some of the most striking symptoms of that drug. As near as I can remember its temperature was about 101, some cough, diarrhoea, night sweats and no appetite and the most emaciated child I ever saw but one. It was too sick and weak to even look at one and did not seem to notice anything. It had those indolent, angry-looking pimples on its face and to make matters worse, had developed about eight teeth all at once and had a very sore mouth and greatly swollen gums. I gave this child Bacillinum and in less than a week when its father came home from work it reached out its little thin arms for him to take it – something it had not done for a month. I did not need to tell them the child was better – they knew it. One peculiarity I have found in Bacillinum is that when you have used it in a family once, if there are any of the rest of the family affected in a similar way, it seems to be the only remedy to make a cure. Now I could give you several more such cases, but I just want to show what there is in Bacillinum by giving a few cases from actual treatment. The most gratifying thing to me is to know that I have cured my patients with this wonderful remedy, when no other remedy that I could find was of any account. I have used it in a great many cases of cough and if it had not relieved them at once, I would have had cases similar to those I have described.
S.D. McCure, M.D., Newark
