12/12/2025
This is an old case before antibiotics and modern sanitation.
But the lesson is the same. Sometimes it is difficult to treat a loved one and we need the help of another homeopath that can stay objective.
Homeopathy in History... (and a wonderful story)
In 1891, Dr. M. M. Walker of Germantown, Pennsylvania, documented fifty consecutive cases of typhoid fever with one death, a mortality of 2 percent. He wrote:
"The total number of cases treated was fifty, and the number of deaths one. … I think I can truly say that in a majority of typhoid cases we can get them under control by the selection of the properly-indicated homœopathic remedy within a week or ten days, and the fever will not rise again above 103° F. except from some imprudence in food, exposure, or getting about too soon. The homœopathic remedy will reduce the temperature more effectually than anything else I know of."
Here is one of his cases:
"Sarah C. W., aged two years; February 14th to April 14th, 1881; 60 days. Our little daughter, and the youngest case I ever had, was taken ill on St. Valentine’s day, and went through all the various stages of the disease according to the description in Professor Raue’s Pathology. Sewer gas found its way into our cellar from the house adjoining, and, contaminating the milk as well as the atmosphere of the house, was the probably cause. A light case of fever occurred next door, and when the workmen dug out their kitchen cellar afterward, they were frequently overcome from the odor of the sewer gas in the soil, this fact showing defective drainage.
No one but an anxious parent knows the anguish one suffers as they see their dear, little, helpless child go through all the various stages of this disease with scarcely any mitigation. The fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eigth days passed by. The delirium grew worse; the diarrhœa continued. Our darling grew thinner and thinner; her hands and feet felt dry, and were more like the claws of a fowl than the extremities of a child. In her nervousness and delirium she would scratch us like a bird of prey. I looked up her case and gave her Arsenicum album, Lycopodium, Hyoscyamus, Rhus toxicodendron, Baptisia, and other remedies, but all were of no avail.
My parental anxiety overcame my professional judgment, and I felt helpless, with but a slender cord between life and eternity for our lovely child. I then called in the noble Farrington, who sat down patiently in my library, and studied out the case faithfully and religiously; when I reminded him that it was getting late and that trains would not wait, he said: “Never mind the trains; let us find the remedy.”
At length he said it is either Chamomilla or Coffea. I had not thought of either; but as I read the symptoms it was chamomilla beyond a doubt. The third decimal was given in water every hour. This was on the 7th of April and fifty-second day of her illness. Next day, and not till then, did improvement set in. I think in our anxiety and endeavors to find the proper remedy, we look too far into the beyond for something great or unheard of, and seldom used, when we should read and reflect, and often select the simple and familiar similar, as Chamomilla was in this case, a proper messenger under the Homœopathic law of cure.
Three weeks later, our daughter being convalescent, I went on a pleasure trip to California, and on my return, in June, I found our little one as plump and happy as a child could be. I have never forgotten to bless the name of Samuel Hahnemann for his glorious law of cure, nor to praise the name of the since lamented Dr. E. A. Farrington for his persistent endeavors to save our child."
