Honey - like Eczema (1976)
To see a young person in distress is always heart wrenching. This was my state of mind when I met this 16-year-old boy who was suffering from chronic eczema for more than 6 years. He had taken treatment from other systems, but continued to suffer. I could see a honey like sticky fluid oozing from the patchy lesions on his legs. As he came to the crowded OP department, I did not get enough time for taking a detailed history. Based on the nature of the discharge from the lesions, I gave him Graphites 1000. His symptoms aggravated with lot of oozing in the following week, but gradually it began to dry up. After that, he developed intense itching, followed by burning. Sulphur in high potency until 10 M was given. Sulphur complemented the action of Graphites and cleared the internal miasmatic error. In five to six months he was completely cured of his skin disease.
Discussion
Prima facie, this appears to be a simple case of Graphites eczema, not difficult for a true student of Homoeopathy to diagnose and prescribe. I am narrating this case for my students to understand certain intricacies of “Classical homoeopathic treatment.”
For treating a deep rooted skin disease, a deep acting medicine is required. The practitioner should assess the depth of the disease while taking the case to select the similimum, its accurate dose and potency. The success of the treatment depends not only on the selection of the similimum, potency and the dose but also on observing the patient after administering the medicine, rightly inferring and patiently waiting without committing a mistake in the second and subsequent prescriptions. Waiting for the results after administering the similimum is the toughest part, I would say, in the treatment of a chronic disease. Many a failure happens at this phase of treatment. One should remember our master's golden words in Organon of Medicine, “as long as there is amelioration, we should not repeat or change the medicine.” In Dr. Hahnemann's “The Chronic Diseases”, he narrates the three common mistakes committed by a physician- giving large doses, wrong choice of remedy and undue repetition.
In the above case, after administering Graphites, there was profuse oozing with itching and pain. The patient suffered a lot for a brief period. The patient requires counselling by the homoeopath during this period. The physician must have the acumen to assess the progress of recovery and the ability to instil confidence in the patient to adhere to the treatment until visible improvement happens after the initial healing crisis. In a nutshell, for successfully treating a chronic case, the homoeopath requires a thorough knowledge of the system, a lot of confidence, patience and the tactics to educate and handle the patient during the whole treatment process. This is certainly possible, if Homoeopathy is his or her passion.
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