12/17/2025
Dr. Walter James was both a student and practice partner of Adolph Lippe's. He was an excellent homeopath. Here is another great case from his files...
"January 23rd, 1879. A little girl, scarcely more than two years old, was taken with a violent attack of croup. At six p.m. her respiration was stertorous, the walls of the chest rising and falling like a pair of bellows. Her head was thrown back, and the eyes were starting from their sockets in the struggle for breath. Her voice was entirely gone; she could speak only in a hoarse whisper. Her cough, likewise, was but a whisper. The skin was hot and dry. Tongue whitish, with red points.
Not knowing, the true simillimum, I ordered cloths wrung out of hot water to be applied to the chest and throat, and, after some hesitation, I gave Bell. 200. At 8 p.m. I saw her again. She was no better, still I did not change the remedy. Being called elsewhere, I did not see her again until 11 p.m. , when I found her much worse. She was throwing herself wildly about. There was cold perspiration upon the forehead; the skin of the face, especially round the mouth and on the cheeks, was of a dusky hue from non-oxygenation of the blood, and there was a sound in the larynx as of an accumulation of mucus which would be expectorated, yet none came up.
In the provings of Tartar Emetic made by Hahnemann, and published in the Archives, in 1824, there are two or three principal symptoms, as follows: -
Mucous rattling in the chest. Oppression of the breathing. In the morning, at three o'clock, he became oppressed so that he cannot breathe. He must sit up to get air.
When beginning to cough, he gasps for air as if he could not breathe.
The first of these symptoms has been brilliantly confirmed by Dr. H. N. Guernsey, and, expressed in the style of the above italicized symptoms, now forms one of his series of "key-notes." On referring to the Materia Medica, I found the one symptom upon which I was doubtful, namely, cold sweat on the forehead - in Lippe's Text-Book, Symptom 69.
I thereupon gave the Tartar-emet. 54 M in water.
In half-an-hour the breathing became easier; the voice was regained; and shortly after midnight the cough became loose and of natural tone, large quantities of thick yellow mucus being raised. At one o'clock a.m. she could drink water without struggling for breath, and as she had not been weaned, notwithstanding her age, her mother gave her the breast. She continued to nurse for some time without once stopping to gasp. At two o'clock a.m. she was sleeping peacefully.
The next day, in disobedience to my injunctions, the child was allowed to stand in the draught from an open door while covered with a warm perspiration. That same evening, about eight o'clock, she was attacked again with the same symptoms in a milder form. The before-mentioned key-note "cropped out," and I gave her one dose of Tartar-emetic 54 M on the tongue. In an hour or two she was relieved.
The great error in this case was in giving Bell. without a sufficient number of indications. For it is probable that, had I searched more carefully for the remedy, I would have found that the symptoms pointed to Tartar-emet. from the first. The child might thus have been saved several hours of suffering. As it happened, I prescribed with many misgivings, and so losing confidence, was driven to the use of a palliative, namely, hot fomentations.
Here we have an illustration of the beginnings of mongrelism. The less the physician knows of the true similar in any given case, the more likely is he to call in the aid of temporary influences. He thus goes on from one case to another until he becomes a full-fledged empiric. Then he appears in the journals as a strenuous advocate for "liberty of medical opinion and action."
Another objection to the use of palliatives lies in the fact that if we admit them to be "remedies" at all, then, when we prescribe them in conjunction with the dynamic remedy, we are violating one of the greatest principles of homoeopathy, namely, the administration of the single drug. If the patient recovers, it is calculated to raise a doubt as to which cured. At all events, it forms a peg upon which cavillers can hang an objection. Fortunately for clinical progress, in this case there can be no doubt as to the curative agent, for the patient got worse notwithstanding the continued application of the hot cloths, until the simillimum was given, when a cure immediately followed; thus showing, what has been so often proved in other cases reported, that in the most grave conditions the smallest possible dose of the truly homoeopathic remedy will cure safely, mildly, and quickly, thereby fulfilling the sole duty of the physician - to heal the sick."
