Personal Experience of a Physician | Page 5

dilutions, as some have done; but if you are satisfied that you
have selected the right remedy, instead of changing the remedy when
you do not see relief from its use, change the dilution from low to high
or high to low, as the case may be. I could detail many cases to show
the importance of doing this. No physician should labor specially to
sustain either a theory or preconceived ideas, but to cure his patients

promptly. The health and lives of our fellow-beings are too important
to be trifled with.
During the early years of my practice of homoeopathy I was called to
see a young man recently attacked with "epileptic fits." As he was
going immediately to New York, with his sister, I advised them to call
on the late Dr. John F. Gray, with whom I became acquainted during
my first visit to New York. On reaching New York they called on Dr.
Gray, and the young man remained under his treatment for several
weeks. Of Dr. Gray's treatment of this patient, so far as remedies were
concerned, I know only of a single remedy which he gave, which was
Nitrate of silver, which I understood was given in a somewhat crude
form, and not even in a low centesimal dilution. The young man,
finding little or no benefit from the treatment, went to his home in
Georgia, after which I received a letter stating that he had not been
essentially benefited by Dr. Gray's treatment, and requesting me to
prescribe for him. In response I sent him the 30th dilution of Nux
vomica, which he took and soon recovered from the disease, and never
had any return of the paroxysms. Dr. Gray was a low dilutionist.
On the other hand, during my second or third visit to New York I called
on Dr. Edward Bayard, who was a high dilutionist. I found him in poor
health. He had been suffering, as he told me, for some time from a
subacute irritation of the mucous membrane of the bowels, with loose
passages, and some febrile excitement. He asked me to prescribe for
him. After a careful inquiry as to existing symptoms I said to him,
"Mercurius vivus ought to cure you." He replied that he had taken it
repeatedly without the slightest effect. I asked him what dilution of this
remedy he had taken. He replied that he had taken the 30th and 200th
dilutions. I suggested that he should take the 3d trituration. "Why," he
exclaimed, "I have not prescribed the 3d trituration of mercury for
many years, and I do not know as I have any in my office." But, on
looking around, he found a bottle of the second centesimal trituration;
and I said to him: "That will answer. You can take a dose of that now
[which he did] and repeat it three or four times between now and
to-morrow night, after which take a dose of the 30th or 200th dilution
of sulphur." The next time I saw him he told me that my prescription

cured him promptly.
That the careful treatment of diseases by the use of low dilutions of
Homoeopathic remedies, when compared with the Allopathic treatment,
is wonderfully successful I well know; for it was by the success which
attended the use of the low dilutions that I was led into the new practice,
as thousands of other graduates of allopathic colleges have been. Still, I
know very well by experience that the low dilutionists, in a very large
number of cases, fail to cure patients promptly, and in many cases fail
to cure them at all when they could cure them promptly by the use of
the high dilutions, often by the very same remedy which they have
been using. I was called to see a patient suffering from puerperal
anaemia, with "nursing sore mouth." She was greatly exhausted; her
stomach, which was very acid, would retain very little nourishment.
She had been under Allopathic treatment for some time without
experiencing any relief. I gave her a low dilution of Pulsatilla, which
afforded her no relief. Then I selected other remedies, from which she
derived no benefit. After that I gave her the 200th dilution of Pulsatilla,
the first dose of which produced, as she declared, a change for the
better within an hour, and she rapidly recovered under its use. A lady
who had for two winters been sent to Florida by her Allopathic
physician for a severe cough, attended by the physical signs of
induration of the summit of one of her lungs, called on me early in the
fall, saying that her physician advised her to go again to Florida, but
that she did not like to go, and wanted me to prescribe for her. After