Mrs. L., thirty-five, as a result of undergoing radium therapy for uterus cancer , came with symptoms of profuse and frequent diarrhoea for which the allopaths could not do anything. I did not talk. After a little while, she said, “Doctor, please stop this diarrhoea somehow…”
I continued to look through the pages of the repertory.
After a pause, she just spurt out:
“Doctor, cure me somehow; I want to go to my village people and prove to them that I got completely cured; they had been disrespecting me by telling that I won’t get cured and would die soon. I want to challenge my villagers by telling “Look here, I am cured, what is your answer now?
(A practitioner cannot readily classify this into an appropriate mental symptom in the repertory, but, after selecting a few remedies on other symptoms and while reading mental symptoms of those in the materia medica, he may probably be able to identify or classify this mental symptom.)
If we read the above, we would realize what we have to prescribe for her. But, however, for the anxious pathological prescriber, let us proceed in a different routine:
How the remedy was selected in this case?
Most practitioners would look under the heading ‘diarrhoea’ in the repertory. That is not correct. This complaint is after radium treatment.
The correct symptom is ‘discharge, profuse.’
The discharge is from ‘mucous membranes’ and so I looked into the great monumental work Repertory by Dr. Calvin B. Knerr. On page 1136 of this work, we find the following being relevant to the case on hand:
Mucous membranes, secretions
…profuse, like haemorrhages, draining system, Ham.;
…secretions with depressed vitality, Kreo.
…transudation of watery portions of blood causing copious diarrhoea, Crot. t.
…profuse, watery, serous, especially stomach and intestinal tracts, Elat.
…passive, flux, Ph. ac.
(We cannot find the above rubrics in J.T. Kent’s Repertory and we are unable to understand as to why Kent is talked about and praised so much)
I read all the above five remedies in Boericke’s materia medica; the following words under Hamamelis made me to confirm the remedy.
Wants “the respect due to me” shown.
This made me to recall what the patient had been saying; she wanted to get cured and then go and prove to the people in her village that she is now cured.
Moreover, out of the five remedies indicated above, any homoeopath would easily say that Hamamelis is a ‘traumatic’ remedy and decide this remedy for the case because the discharge (diarrhoea) started after radium therapy.
Hamamelis 1-M single dose cured her completely.