19/08/2025
A great case from the patient files of Dr. Adolph Lippe...
"I find an emaciated, groaning young man on the twenty-first day of typhus; he continually vomits masses of black matter, more so after drinking; bowels very often moved, black, very offensive watery discharges; tongue black and dry; pulse over one hundred and forty; he is very restless; passes no urine, etc., etc.
Here is a full and unmistakable picture of Arsenicum album, but Arsenicum album had done nothing for him, and why? Because he did not want to be covered! Arsenicum album has among its characteristic symptoms a desire for heat, because heat relieves the sufferings.
Now it was a very clear case; pathologically we had before us a case of typhus on the last critical day, with gangrene of stomach and abdomen fully developed, and furthermore, we had one characteristic symptom not necessarily belonging to the pathological conditions, and also not belonging to the remedy apparently covering the pathological condition, and the symptoms in general.
The remedy had been administered to no purpose, the disease had gained on the sufferer. Now did we consider his individual symptoms, we individualized! Looking over Secale cornutum, we found the characteristic symptom, aggravations from heat, wants no cover, just the opposite to Arsenicum album, and also all the other symptoms. Secale cornutum was the last remedy the patient took, and not much of it; he made a perfect recovery.
It has, further, never been claimed that the individual Hahnemann, or any other mortal, was, or ever can be, “infallible,” but if we accept the fundamental principles established through and by him, principles governing the healing art, constituting the science of medicine, they must be infallible, or else they are no principles at all. And who could best give us also the art medical, i.e. the rules by which we must be governed in applying these principles practically, but the individual who found these principles and found the rules under which he obtained the practical confirmation of their infallibility?"
