To the Editor of the Homoeopathic Recorder:
After much experience in the treatment of malarial fevers, intermitting and remitting, and having suffered myself severely from both in former years, I can endorse everything Dr. E. Fornias says in his excellent article in your November issue. Years ago army dedicos in India demonstrated that, as far as quinine goes, the smaller dose (2 grs.) was more efficacious than the large as a prophylactic. Large doses of quinine will in many cases suppress the chills but induce disorders of the liver and the spleen and “cinchonism.” In my own case I was treated by an eminent army surgeon for intermittent fever with quinine sulph., and acidum v. aa. 10 grs., in repeated doses. The chills were arrested but jaundice ensued with impaired vision, etc. Then I was put upon Fowler’s solution, gtts. Ter die, but I remained jaundiced and miserably weak until cured and converted by a homoeopath with a few doses of Gelsemium semper, in the 6th dil. Subsequently I returned to a malarious part of Texas, and was successful in the treatment of all cases I tried with homoeopatic remedies.
Quinine is absolutely unnecessary in the treatment of malaria if Homoeopathy is correctly applied. If indicated at all China off. In the 30, say, is much more efficient, and can, of course, be given during the paroxysms. Last year, I think, a man calling himself a homoeopath, was quoted in the critic and Quide as advocating doses of 20 grs. I once saw 60 gr. Doses given in a case of congestive fever with unconsciousness, by an army medico, U.S.A. The man did not recover. The pernicious effects of quinine are met with everywhere in thee malarious districts, where enlargement of the spleen is common, and we are continually called on to treat cinchonism.
I cannot understand how any doctor with any pretensions to a knowledge of Homoeopathy can advocate quinine treatment. I once had a case in Texas which baffled me until I got the case properly and then the keynote, “I feel as if lying on a board,” directed me to Arnica, and the totality of the symptoms I found indicated. I was a neophyte at that time, but I gave it in the 6th dil. Its effect was marvelous, both to myself and thee patient. Any genuine homoeopath can testify to the efficacy of the homoeopathich remedy when introduced by the totality of the symptoms.
Dr. J. FITZ-MATHEW.
