New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies Part 24

My pulse rate is 68. 8:15. Temperature, 97 only.

1 P.M. What fearful aching in my body! Arctic feeling throughout my body, except my head and face, and oh! so tired. A feeling as if it were almost impossible to keep my eyes open. While out on my professional rounds a feeling came over me as if it would be far easier to lie down in the snowy streets than to keep trying to get along. The trembling is very persistent.

9 P.M. Oh! this bad feeling in my head, the aching, aching in my bones, in every part of my body, head to feet; no part entirely free from pain, my body so cold; a feeling as if I had holes in my garments, and cold, frosty winds were blowing through and freezing my flesh; cold p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, no feeling but coldness. A slight gluey discharge; a fluent discharge from nose, with great sneezing. * * *

January 9th, 8 A.M. Pulse rate 68; is not so full or jerky, but it is some. Temperature under the tip of the tongue, 96; deeper in, 97. This morning awoke at 3 A.M. and got up to urinate, but I could not stand without I had hold of something. Oh, such a weak, giddy feeling! I never fainted but once, from loss of blood, and these sensations are similar.

Plenty of strength to hold me up, but unable to balance myself, and when I put forth an effort I staggered about like a man trying to walk with paralysis or locomotor ataxy. This idea was the most prominent in my mind, but I have a patient recovering from paralysis who has to swing his body as he walks, to get his feet forward, and is very weak and shaky about his knees, and these sensations very strongly reminded me of his efforts. His weakness is in his knees, but mine was from the base of my skull--cerebrum--where the pains have been so persistent near the atlas extending downward. When I arose, at 7 A.M., it was very hard work for me to balance myself enough to complete dressing myself, and very hard work to carry my head. If I bent forward, then it required great effort to keep from falling on my face or backward. This lack of balancing power was accompanied by a sensation of nausea, as if I were going to vomit. I persisted in my efforts to work, in hopes of shaking off these very alarming sensations, and by effort got through my morning work. Whilst shaving a severe jerk of my right arm caused me to gash my face; very strange, but I ought not to have tried to do this. I have now some numbness in my right hand and arm, and a good deal of trembling.

Arctic feeling in my feet and in various parts of my body. This feeling of want of balancing power does not entirely leave me; a full, pressing feeling in all parts of my head. And when I walk I notice I lift my feet higher than usual, or than is necessary, and I put my heel down hard, as if I was not sure of holding on to the ground. I notice some twitching, as if my feet would spring up, making me walk as if I had the c.o.c.k's gait, as it is described. * * *

7 A.M., January 10, 1893. Thank G.o.d I began this day with more comfort and more control of myself; my limbs are easier to manage; a little giddiness and staggering, and stiff, bruised sensation in my back and lower limbs. My cervical vertebra is less sore and have little pain; and altogether feel very much better. My pulse rate is 80 this A.M.; full and round; no jerks perceptible. Temperature 98 under the tongue, by the root. Mercury very slow in rising; had to keep the thermometer in a long time. I have a flushed, hot feeling in my face and head; no trembling, less staggering, and can manage my limbs fairly well. I feel as I dared not trifle with myself any further, for I am very weak. A very little exertion would make me feel very ill. I am feeling like a man who had just come from under a deadly risk; am very weak and prostrated, with every nerve on the jump. Oh, so very weak! A sinking feeling. A parched thirstiness in my throat and mouth. My tongue is clean; bowels regular; a good deal of flatus, very fetid; pale yellow, greenish urine (specific gravity 1008), smelling very fetid; same smell as the flatus; more like the smell of rotting sweet fruit or vegetables. * * *

January 14, 1893. Could not get out of bed at my usual time; very severe pain in head and back of neck, going down my back and right leg; twitches, with cold, stinging, ice-needle p.r.i.c.ks. My right hand is feeling as if it were frozen. Pulse rate 64; full, round, but appears to have a pendulum motion or twitch. Temperature 96 3-5. Mind clear, but very weak in my body, and I can not get warm over a hot register or with hot fluids. This constant arctic cold is very hard to bear and makes me this morning feel as if I had a cake of ice on my back. My hands are blue with cold and my feet feel like lumps of ice. Headache and giddiness; could not keep from trembling while some patients were in my consulting room, and had a good deal of difficulty in steadying and controlling my voice; when excited could not get hold of the right words I wanted and dropped some when speaking, from a want of flexibility or a catch in my tongue. Pains in various parts of my body; the same locations and character. Quite a rush of business to-day and very ill-fitted to attend to it. My hands and feet blue and aching with cold, even while I was sitting over a hot register that scorched my boot leather, yet no feeling of warmth in hands or feet. A good deal of throbbing and aching in the upper part of my kidneys, the right one the sorest. Sharp pains in my bowels, near the caec.u.m; some trembling (when asleep it awoke me) in my right arm and left leg, with a sharp pain near the ankle joint. * * *

January 20. Awoke this morning in a s.h.i.+vering fit. Trembling, giddiness and headache, but not very severe. Cold arctic feeling. Pulse 68.

Temperature 97 1-5. My feet, 8 A.M., cold. Severe pain in left t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, extending through to the back to a.n.u.s. Bleed very much from old piles.

An aching at end of p.e.n.i.s, and no s.e.xual desire. A feeling as if the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were swollen and painful, as in orchitis; this is only a transient pain, and comes and goes at infrequent periods, or remittent in their character. I notice my urine is taking on the greenish-yellow again, and my right arm is chilly from the arctic rays. My feet are cold, and the coldness creeps up higher in my legs. A great deal of arctic feeling in and around my heart. My breath is cold. Headache, but mind clear. Cold chills run over me in various parts of my body. My hands tremble very much at times, so that I can not write. Pain in t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and coldness, as if they were frozen. Pa.s.s a large quant.i.ty of urine. * *

January 21. 8 A.M. Did not get up before, owing to the pressure in my skull, as if it were too full; dropsy or some swelling of my brain; giddiness, and a numbness down my left leg, and a jerking upward in both of them. Some trembling and coldness around my heart, and in my lungs and down my arms. My feet were very hot in the night until 5 A.M., when they became cold, numb and jerky, upwards. My pulse rate is very slow this morning, only 56 beats. Temperature is slowly forced up to 98. I have a sensation as if my left cheek were swollen, but it is not so.

Trembling very much in my hands.

2:30 P.M. Have not been warm yet to-day; very intense arctic sensation in my body and heart and lungs. Slight cough. Numbness in my right arm.

Much trembling, and a sensation of inward trembling in all parts of my body. Generative organs frozen cold, and this coldness extends up my back. My feet so cold that I have burned my boots, and yet cannot get them warm. Coldness extends up to my knees. Stiffness and pain in left thigh. Cold arctic band round my head, with fulness in skull. Pulse 60.

Temperature 97 4-5. Good appet.i.te. Mentally clear, although very weak; very tired and discouraged that these feelings last so long. They seem to be all beginning over again; worse now than they were a week ago. I feel more like giving up and going to bed sick, but I cannot afford to do so, so I brace up and resist this temptation to try and find an antidote for these recurring series of feelings. * * *

January 23. Slept well until 5 A.M.; then awoke with pains in head and burning in my feet, with some trembling and stiff feeling in my lungs and heart, as if they were tied or unable to move. As I lay awake I could hear my heart pounding away, but, oh! so slow. Felt very weak and wanted to stay in bed, but after some hard thinking I got up. 7 A.M.

Very weak; staggered about while dressing. Pains in the base of the brain. Pulse 64 and irregular in its beats, some of them failing altogether to declare themselves only by their absence to respond.

Temperature, after being held under my tongue ten minutes, 97 2-5. Very cold in my back and over my shoulders; hands and feet are blue with cold. Itching all over my body, and as if I was bitten with fleas or bugs were crawling over me. Skin of my hands very rough and cracks are in them. My ears have a feeling as if wax were running out of them.* * *

January 26, 10 P.M. It has required a mighty effort to keep up this day.

My pulse 56, slow and irregular; temperature 98. Headache, yet mind clear; backache. Weakness in all my body; my limbs so weak in walking that it was difficult to keep going, and felt as if I could lay down or drop down anywhere. What heart failure symptoms are I do not know, but fear I came very near it and yet I have resisted this feeling, and kept awake and about. Have felt very ill all the day, and am so now on retiring, 11 P.M. * * *

January 29. 9 A.M. Just after breakfast, pulse 68, temperature 99; slept very heavy, but dreamed of treating many cases of black diphtheria.

Awoke, slept, dreamed the same dream again, and again the same dream, three separate times. How very singular! During these provings, I have done this three separate times. Three dreams in one night--the same dream, the same disease, the same families in my dream. This singularity caused me to lay awake wondering what this can mean. I have not any patients suffering from this disease, and I do not know of any in the town, and nothing that I know of to bring this disease to my mind. Awoke feeling very stiff and sore. * * *

January 30. Head pains again, the same old character. Sensation of swelling in my face and pain in nerves of teeth, molars. Hot feeling.

Pulse, 68. Temperature, 99. Very weak, but my mind clear. Much trembling and the oppression round my heart and chest producing a suffocating feeling that makes me afraid, and I must now seek some means to arrest this difficulty and give me some relief. I know it looks cowardly to give up, but my family compels me to do something to enable me to keep about. I cannot do any more; this heart oppression makes me think of heart failure. Pulse, 56, and temperature 96. Very weak. I hope it will wear away and this trembling improve. They have been caused by this drug, one of the most powerful. I gave up and went to bed very ill. I had to keep it from my family, but I was afraid my heart would stop beating and had a very restless night. I took acetic acid, as vinegar I had in some pickles I thought changed or relieved the first cla.s.s or effort of provings and caused me to stop and begin again. I think it did help me. Next day very prostrated but did not take any note of my pulse or temperature, because I had began to try to find an antidote, and this vinegar and lemon juice has relieved many of them. I fear sometimes that the trembling in my hands may never fully leave me now.

February 12, 1893. Copying my notes has brought so vividly to my memory that I can almost feel the old arctic rays through my body, and the giddiness and staggering gait of the _Heloderma hor._ days. I hope that you may have many others more courageous than I have been, whose provings will compare or improve upon this poor effort of mine.

CLINICAL.

The case of paralysis that I spoke of, whose staggering gait was called to my mind by my feelings, is now taking _Heloderma_.

In the following case, Mrs. Ford, eighty-one years of age, has been my patient several times during the last four years. She suffered from erysipelas and dropsy in the legs. In September I was again called in for the same old trouble; the usual remedies were effectual. In October she caught cold, and had also a bad fall; her symptoms were those of pneumonia, fever, delirium and cough, pain in chest and hard work to breathe, blueness of lips, tongue and cheeks, cold extremities and was very low in appet.i.te, and appeared to be sinking. Pulse, fifty; temperature, ninety, and to all human appearance was rapidly dying; all said so, and I fully believed so, but left _Heloderma horridus_, one powder in water, and ordered her tongue to be moistened with a feather dipped in this every half hour. I did not call the next day until evening. I was waiting to be notified of her death, but no such notice coming called to see, and, to my surprise, found everything changed. I then gave _Helo. hor._ 200, every four hours, with placebos. All the bad symptoms gradually disappeared, breathing became natural, heart gained strength, pulse increased to seventy, temperature to ninety-eight and appet.i.te became better, asking frequently for food. This continued so long as she was taking this medicine. She was so well that I ceased to attend, she having no aches or pains, was eating and sleeping well, bowels moved regularly and night watching was given up. All who saw the recovery were pleasingly surprised, and so was I, and have frequently asked myself could anything else have done this. _Lachesis_ has changed a slate colored tongue, and has aroused those who appeared to be dying for a short time, but to extend the life of one as good as dead for thirty days is a triumph for the _Helo. hor._

(To the foregoing we may add that some have thought that the proving was too sensational, but other evidence that has not appeared in print leads to the conclusion that it is essentially true, and that the proving was made by one peculiarly susceptible to the remedy. We know of one gentleman who laughed at it and in bravado took a number of doses during an afternoon. He felt no immediate effects, but during the night awoke with some very peculiar feelings that he could attribute to nothing but the _Heloderma_, and they were of such a character that he refused to take any more. It would be well to use the remedy with caution until the pract.i.tioner has gauged its powers.)

(Dr. Charles E. Johnson wrote as follows to Dr. Booc.o.c.k concerning the remedy):

"I have had under treatment a case that has been p.r.o.nounced incurable by many physicians. She has had most of the symptoms developed in your proving, that awful coldness being most p.r.o.nounced. She has had two doses of the 200th. I learn through a neighbor that she is delighted with the result of the last medicine. The coldness has nearly disappeared, leaving a comfortable glow upon the body. She tells her neighbors this without having been informed by me what results I expected from the medicine."

(Dr. Erastus E. Case contributed the following detailed clinical case to the _Medical Advance_, July, 1897):

An auburn haired woman, 55 years of age, had numbness in the feet two years ago. It has gradually extended upward until it now includes the lower part of the abdomen.

Tingling, creeping sensation on the legs as if from insects.

Worse when lying in bed at night.

Worse from exposure to cold air.

Worse from touch; she cannot endure to place her bare feet together.

Legs insensible to an electric battery.

Legs wasting away, skin very dry and inelastic.

Ankles turn easily when trying to walk.

Numbness of the arms from the hands to the elbows.

Forgetfulness.

Melancholy with weeping.

Worse in stormy weather.

Worse when thinking of her ailments, cheered by company.

Pain in the forehead in the morning, aggravated by turning the eyes.

Tongue dry and cracked in the morning.

Swallowing difficult.

Empty eructations, especially before breakfast.

Empty, gone sensation in the stomach.

Dislikes sweet things and worse from taking them.

Sensation of constriction about the whole abdomen.

Constipation from torpor of the r.e.c.t.u.m.

Hemorrhoids and itching of the a.n.u.s.