Nosodes. By Guy Beckley Stearns, M. D.

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Nosodes.
By Guy Beckley Stearns, M. D.
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet

(Read before I.
H. A., Bureau of Materia Medica, June 25, 1936.)

Dr Guy Beckley
Stearns

“A nosode is an
isopathic remedy consisting of the product of some specific disease
administered in minute doses for the cure of the same disease”. (Century
Dictionary.) This definition applies better to allopathy than
to homœopathy because, in old school practice, a vaccine is
administered specifically for its own disease, whereas, in homœopathy,
a nosode is given in potentized form on symptomatic as well as on
clinical indications. In the old school, vaccines can be either
autogenous or standardized products and are usually given
hypodermically.

A few years ago, it was
discovered that the skin and not the blood is the most active producer
of antibodies. This has led, in pelvic and peritoneal infections, to the
use of pads on the abdomen moistened with streptococci vaccine and the
claim is made that better results occur than from injection.
Homœopathic experience indicates that the mucous membrane of the mouth
and of the digestive tracts is the most protective tissue of all. In
allopathic practice, vaccines are used mostly for acute conditions,
while in homœopathy nosodes have been used for chronic conditions as
much as for acute. It is in the use of nosodes that the two schools have
the most nearly common ground.

Hahnemann made a short
proving of Psorin (the secretion
from the scabies vesicle) but he places nosopathic remedies in his list
of antipsoric remedies because their effect upon healthy organisms had
not, in his day, been sufficiently ascertained. However he held that Psorin
was altered to a homœopathic remedy by the process of trituration and
succussion and that it is a simillimum
of the itch virus.

Since Hahnemann’s time,
through provings and clinical experience, several other nosodes have
been added to our materia medica. They were brought together by H. C.
Allen in Materia Medica of the Nosodes. Allen
lists the symptoms of Anthracinum.
Diphtherinum. Lyssin, Malandrinum. Malaria officinalis, Medorrhinum,
Psorinum. Pyrogen, Secale, Syphilinum. Tuberculinum and Variolinum. Nosodes
can be prepared from diseased tissues and secretions or from bacterial
cultures. Occasionally, excellent results have followed the use of
potencies of the culture made from a focal infection of the patient
himself. H. C. Duncan of New York has given his name to an autogenous
treatment wherein he takes any disease-exudate from a patient, puts it
through a Berkefeld filter and injects the filtrate. He claims excellent
results. Undoubtedly this would work just as well if potentized and
given by mouth.

In homœopathy we are
taught that when remedies which are apparently well indicated fail to
give relief or when there are no characteristic symptoms that call for
any of the usual remedies, we should consider the nosodes.

TUBERCULIN.

The most frequently
used nosode listed by Allen is Tuberculinum
and its usefulness, in both acute and chronic conditions, would almost
justify considering tuberculosis as a fourth chronic miasm. Apropos of
this, Constantine Hering, in his –Preface
to Hahnemann’s translation of Hahnemann’s Chronic
Diseases says :

Upon the same ground
that Hahnemann carefully distinguished from the disease the symptoms
which owed their existence to dietetic transgressions, or to medicinal
aggravations ; upon the same grounds that he acknowledged as
standing and independent diseases the acute miasms, known as purpura,
measles, scarlatina, smallpox, whooping cough, etc. or that he
distinguished the venereal miasms into syphilis
and sycosis, we may afterwards, if
experience should demand it, subdivide psora
into several species and varieties. This is no objection to Hahnemann’s
theory. Hahnemann has taken the first great step, without denying the
faculty of progressive development in his system.

A fairly voluminous
symptomatology has been developed for Tuberculinum
and there are several different preparations in use. Long experience
develops the ability successfully to select this nosode. The following
case illustrates how an experienced prescriber discerns its need.

New York Homeopathic
Medical College and Flower Hospital (1917)

The Materia Medica
Department of the New York Homœopathic College used to have
get-together meetings at Keene’s Chop House. At one of the meetings, the
waiter, a tall, thin German who had been in the war, asked the doctors
what he should do for a painful boil on the nape of his neck. Dr. James
Krichbaum looked at him and, before anyone else had a chance to think,
said : “That man is fighting tuberculosis. He needs a dose of Tuberculinum.”
A powder of the 10M. was given and brought relief at once and the
condition was cured within three days.

Dr Rudolph
Frederick Rabe

A tragic case was that
of a teacher who developed severe pain in her right hip, diagnosed as
sciatica. No remedy helped her although her case was studied most
carefully. After a few days, a diagnosis was made of acute inflammation
of the hip-joint and the leg was placed in an extension apparatus but
the pain continued. Dr. Rabe and I had studied the case and, one day at
our wits’ end, we applied the rule that, where an apparently well
indicated remedy fails, one should study the nosodes. Tuberculinum
bovine 10M. was given with prompt relief. Two repetitions in
higher potencies carried her through but she was felt with an ankylosed
hip-joint. Too much time had been lost at the start.

The next case that I
had began the same way. The character of her symptoms, together with a
red streak down the middle of her tongue, let me to give her Chamomilla,
with great relief ; but, within forty-eight hours, it ceased to
help and a dose of Tuberculinum bovine 10M.
took up the cure and she recovered without the use of an
extension-splint and without any resulting lameness. By the way, Tuberculinum
has “red streak in the center of the tongue”.

FOCAL INFECTIONS.

Over a hundred years
ago. Dr. Rush noted that rheumatism was at times cured by extracting bad
teeth. In the present generation, the study of focal infections has
shown that not only are the teeth at fault in systemic troubles but also
the tonsils, the gall-bladder and the colon. Of these, the colon appears
to be the most frequent focus from which chronic systemic diseases
spring. Vaccines of stool-cultures have been used with varying success.
One well-known gastro-enterologist, claims to have good results by
making a twenty-four hour culture of a stool-sample and injecting it
into the rectum, doing this once a week.

COLONIC NOSODES.

Dr Charles Edwin
Wheeler

Bach of London isolated
the various strains of colon bacteria in his cases and injected the
vaccine of the dominant type. From observation and through association
with Dr. Wheeler, he gradually adopted the method of potentising his
vaccine and giving it by mouth, allowing each dose to act for several
weeks. Later, he built up stock vaccines from a large number of strains
of each of the common colonic types. These were potentized and are being
used by many homœopathists. Bach and Wheeler and others have reported
on their uses and an extensive symptomatology is available. Listed under
Bach’s group are : Coli mutab., Dysentery.
Gærtner, Morgan, Polyvalent and Proteus. Fæcalis alkali has since been
added and we have added Skatol. Flexner dysentery bacteria phage and
Muco coli bacteria phage. (The “we” mentioned in
this paper are Doctors Isaac Sossnitz, Rosario Ferrara and myself, whose
group research extends over the last five years). Fæcalis alkali is a
gram positive organism and the nosode fits cases which are upset by fats
and sugars. In our work it has been the most frequently indicated of all
the intestinal nosodes.

The colonic group are a
constellation in themselves and, if we were seeking to enlarge
Hahnemann’s miasm group, we should place the colonic constellation in
importance and in frequency of use ahead of the Tuberculins.

STREPTOCOCCINS.

The Streptococcins
make up another group. The infections of the tonsils, of the
teeth-roots, gall-bladder and the stomach ulcers are usually
streptococcic. Cardiac infections usually result from tonsilar and tooth
infections. This does not necessarily apply to that fatal cardiac
infection, septic endocarditis, but it is true of the slowly developing
disease affecting the coronary arteries. When animals are experimentally
infected with a strain of streptococcus, the germ is apt to invade the
same tissues in the new host that it invaded in the old. In our
experience, the Streptococcins are
more apt to be indicated in acute infections, although at times they
apply to chronic.

Dr W. J. Sweasey
Powers

Dr. J. W. S. Powers had
a case of acute appendicitis in a woman whose age was in the late
sixties. The consulting surgeon, who confirmed the diagnosis, said that
most cases at that period of life had an arteriosclerotic appendix and,
if operated on, almost always died and he advised that, if homœopathy
could do anything for the case, she be prescribed for. Streptococcin
in high potency took care of the acute phase. This was followed by
Chlorine and later by Iodine with a perfect cure, although the patient
was very ill for a while. At one time, she had such symptoms as would be
caused by a rupture of the pus-sac into the peritoneal cavity. This was
after the severity of the acute condition had subsided. If there really
was a rupture, it was of a sterile fluid such as appears when a
clean-cut homœopathic prescription brings an abscess to a head. In
those cured cases where the abscess can be seen, the swelling becomes
very small and circumscribed and the discharge is not a thick, pussy
discharge but a thin, almost watery one.

STAPHYLOCOCCINS.

Another group are the Staphylococci‘s.
They, as would be expected, cover more chronic conditions
than the Streptococci‘s
and are very useful, although they are not needed as frequently as the
other nosodes mentioned. In abscess formation, the staphylococcus
replaces the streptococcus as soon as pus begins to form. In fact, this
organism is probably the cause of pus formation. Whereas the
streptococcus frequently tends to run wild and spread through the
tissues rather than to come to a head, and often enters the
blood-stream, causing a bacteremia, the staphylococcus concentrates the
infection and dead leukocytes make up the bulk of the pus.
Bacteriaphages of both the streptococcus and the staphylococcus, like
those of the colonic group, are wonderfully active remedies when
indicated. These two groups, the streptococci’s and the staphylococci’s,
represent two more miasmic backgrounds for chronic diseases.

PNEUMOCOCCINS.

A word about the
Pneumococcins. We have recently had potentized the four major types of
pneumococcus and, in three cases of pneumonia, the response has been
equal to that obtained from the best prescriptions we have ever made by
the old standard remedies. The action in each case was as though the
remedy were a specific. In two cases Type 3 was given and in one case
Type 2, the latter an ambulatory case. These nosodes are worth keeping
in mind in your pneumonia cases.

INFLUENZINS.

Influenzin

is the most important of all the nosodes. It is often required in
patients who give no history of ever having had influenza. This leads us
to believe that influenza is the most common of all chronic diseases. It
blends in with all other chronic troubles so that it is difficult to
determine from the symptoms when this miasm is the major one. In our
experience, all patients, when first treated, have more than one chronic
miasm and it is essential, when making the first prescription, that the
dominant miasm have its specific nosode. Frequently, Influenzin is
required when there is no history of the patient having had the disease.

However, there may be a
history of a severe attack far back in the past or of a series of
attacks over a period of years. Where a patient has never been well
since an attack of influenza, the nosode will almost certainly be
indicated. Patients requiring this nosode may have trouble in any part
of the body, although it has a particularly close relationship to
diseases of the central nervous system. Usually a patient with any type
of nervous disease will be benefited at the start by Influenzin. Chronic
heart conditions, particularly with low blood-pressure or with a rapid
or arrhythmic pulse, often call for this remedy.

One of our patients, a
man in the early sixties, who holds a high executive position, had a
constant pulse around 100 with frequent extra systoles and shortness of
breath. Along with this, his memory was becoming poor, especially for
names. We gave him a series of ascending potencies of lnfluenzin,
spaced at long intervals, which greatly improved his condition. After lnfluenzin,
he had a course of constitutional remedies and his pulse and general
conditions further improved. Then, as occasionally happens, another
nosode was required, in his case. Fæcalis
alkali. followed by another course of constitutional
remedies. And now, for more than two years, his pulse has been in the
seventies and he has lost all shortness of breath. At the same time, he
has regained his memory and looks ten years younger.

It is a common
experience to have stubborn cases which fail to respond, in spite of
careful prescribing, until finally they are put on the right course by
one of the old nosodes. More frequently than not, we find that if, at
the start, we find a nosode which covers the case, the cure is much
shortened.

We have four types of lnfluenzin,
the Spanish Influenzin. (the source
of which I have not been able to learn), the lnfluenzin
serum, lnfluenzin antitoxin. Grippe pneumonia (which is
rarely useful) and Influenza meningeal,
furnished by Dr Griggs of Philadelphia. He obtained his nosode from a
child cerebrospinal fluid. (The case was reported at the 1935 I. H. A.
meeting). If we were to add another chronic miasm to those already
suggested, influenza should be placed at the head of If list. It is
vicious, hydra-headed and ubiquitous. Its ramification are so extensive
that a full description calls for the rich vocabulary that Hahnemann
applied to psora.

NOSODES FROM PATHOLOGICAL MATERIAL.

As a generalization,
nosodes, made from pathological material, particularly if the persons
from whom they are taken have been successfully prescribed for have a
much broader field of action and can be more safely selected intuitively
than the nosodes made from individual bacterial cultures.

Among our disease
products is a new nosode that illustrates this : Five years ago we
had a patient who had been losing weight and was suffering from severe
pain in the left epigastrium. His appearance was cachectic and there was
a palpable lump in the upper abdomen just left of the median line. We
suspected cancer and the remedies which helped most were those useful in
cancer, notably, some of the Cadmium‘s.
For six months he was a complete practice and his progress,
in as far as the physicians were concerned, was a gradual retreat,
although at no time there was a complete giving-out of his vitality.

No need to recite the
day-by-day study and working-out of remedies which held for only a day
or two. He finally thinned down to almost a skeleton and his case looked
hopeless. There came a day when action of his bowels ceased, with a
great increase of pain. Merc. viv. 10M. came in here and, after four
days, gas began to move and stools passed. Then he began to complain of
pain in the right side of this abdomen below the liver and a smooth
rounded swelling could be felt deep in the abdomen just below the liver.

The exploratory needle
produced a foul-smelling pus. A simple opening was made and more than a
quart of extremely foul pus drained away. This pus was potentized at
once. Whatever had been his pathology, it had broken down and the pus
had worked around back of the stomach, building up about itself a strong
barrier as it sought a vent. A drain was introduced and the patient
slowly recovered and, ever since, he has been better than he ever was in
his life before. We named this nosode Staph. abdominalis because,
theoretically, it was a staphylococcic product and it occurred in the
abdomen. We are not proud of the long name, but it has proved to be a
star performer among the nosodes.

POLYPHAGE.

Another product, which
possibly may be called a nosode, is Polyphage,
which was discovered by Dr. C. W. Coates of the New York Aquarium. It
was observed that a cut occurring in the hands of workers in the waters
of the aquarium healed rapidly. It occurred to Coates that the water in
the aquariums ought to be filled with germs and that no fish should be
able to live in the water. He found there was some product from the fish
which made the water live able and he isolated this substance and called
it Polyphage. We potentized it and
have found it a wonderful remedy in skin conditions, particularly in
inveterate eczemas.

RESIDUAL PATHOLOGY.

Some work’ done by Dr.
Gregory Schwartzman of the Laboratories, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
City, belongs in the field that has been discussed in this paper. By the
use of fluids filtered out from bacteria, but which do not contain the
bacterial agents which produced them, he has succeeded in producing
degenerative diseases in animals, very similar to those of man. These
diseases are such as coronary thrombosis, apoplexy, kidney diseases and
diseases of the blood-vessels. In short, he has produced in animals
these changes that occur slowly in the aging process, as well as cause
the degenerative diseases that result in premature death.

It is in these
conditions that we have found the nosodes useful. However, we have never
known the nosodes to complete a cure in any case. A nosode will improve
the patient very much and, in some cases, it will appear to make a cure
which lasts for several months to a year or two but invariably, after a
time, the symptoms return, although they are less pronounced. When they
do return, the nosodes will not help, but constitutional remedies of the
type Hahnemann described as antipsoric are necessary to complete the
cure. Sometimes a second nosode will be necessary to get the case
started.

For instance, sometimes
Influenzin will be the first nosode and Tuberculin the second, after
which the constitutional remedies must be given. Later on, usually two
or three years later, another nosode may be required, to be followed by
another course of constitutional remedies. This, of course, is only in
patients who have accumulated much residual pathology through decades of
recurrent mild infections and perhaps one or two major illnesses. It is
just as though there ware layers at different levels which have to be
uncovered before a patient is fully restored.

New York, N. Y.

---

DISCUSSION.

Dr. Carr :

I don’t know whether any member here experienced the use of
Tuberculinum, but in general practice I had several families that were
tuberculous in history, and invariably the children will have some skin
trouble very similar to eczema in some form, with no distinctive
symptomatology whatever. I seldom fail in clearing up the whole skin
trouble with Tuberculinum, when you
have a decided inherited tubercular tint, and it may prove useful in
other conditions when they have a tubercular heredity back of it.

Dr. Campbell :

Just a confirmation of what Dr. Stearns told us about Polyphage. I got a
potency and used it on two cases of psoriasis. One was in a young
individual and one in a lady who suffered from it all her life,
practically. The case of recent origin cleared up completely and has had
no return in eighteen months. The other case I just had recently, and it
was a terrible thing, all over his face, and it is improving
beautifully.

I would like to ask the Doctor where those potencies
can be secured.

Dr. Stearns :

Boericke & Tafel have a few, and Ehrhart & Karl have a great
many.

Dr Alfred
Pulford

Dr. Miller :

There was a question that arose in my mind. Dr. Stearns made the
statement that the nosodes frequently improved, but do have to be
followed up by another remedy, they do not cure, that usually the
disease will manifest itself within one to three or four years. I just
recall to mind several cases of tuberculosis that I have treated. I do
not recall that I have had to follow up with any other remedy in three
of these cases. One of them dates back over thirty years, another one
twenty-five, and then one about seven years ago. I have some others, but
I do not recall positively with reference to the treatment afterward,
but in those three cases I do not recall that I ever followed up with
any other remedy, but I gave Bacillinum in 200th and higher ; I
don’t remember what the higher potency was.

Dr. A. Pulford

:
The nosodes, like all other remedies, have their special indications,
and when we wander away from that we are tramping on allopathic grounds.
We want to keep away from that as much as possible. We have in our
office, I believe, as complete a set of nosodes as are in existence, but
we rarely ever resort of them and we only resort to them, when we cannot
cure the case with properly indicated homœopathic remedies, and
whenever we do use them we try to use them according to the indications
that Allen or Bœnninghausen give.

Dr Harvey
Farrington

Dr. Farrington :

What the last speaker has said is quite true, but as I understand from
Dr. Stearns’ paper, that is just what he is doing, in cases that do not
seem to be touched by remedies apparently indicated -I think that is the
way to put it, apparently indicated ; they were not really
indicated. I agree with that.

This is an interesting
field that Dr. Stearns has opened up to us. Personally, it didn’t make
me very comfortable, because it only adds one more burden to all of
those that I have, because this question of nosodes has been brought up
at different times, and new ones are being discovered. Nosodes cure some
cases but as the Doctor rightly says, the nosodes seldom complete the
cure. You have to follow up with some other remedy.

The relation of
tuberculosis to influenza is interesting. Swan, you know, was the
original nosode developer, and he had some that were foolish, but he was
wise, and had a very keen mind and keen appreciation of what medicines
would do. After Dr. Swan died. I found in his library eight or ten
neatly bound books about a quarter of an inch thick, and 4 x 6 inches,
bound in brown morocco. Swan had written in there symptoms of his
nosodes in a very neat hand. I copied some of the things out of there
and put them in Allen’s book of the nosodes.

Dr. Allen used to say
that his reputation was made on the nosodes, and it was a general
opinion that ha prescribed nosodes empirically and when they were not
indicated, but I don’t believe any living man understood more about the
principal ones, Psorinum, Medorrhinum, and Syphilinum. Like all of these
older men who taught that certain remedies were good in certain
conditions, he knew more about them than he told, so that he cannot be
accused of prescribing empirically. He often used Tuberculinum in
extreme headaches in grippe in the nineties, he told me.

I have been wondering
whether the old potency of the grippe, which I have in my collection of
Swan’s remedies, would be equivalent to more modern influenza.

I was very much
interested in what Dr. Stearns said about the nosode injected into an
animal, It reminds me of a case that I cured long ago, and I think I
have spoken of it in some of these meetings.

A maiden lady of eighty
had a scirrhus of the breast which was about two and a half inches in
diameter, hard as a rock, and the skin was grown in. The center was
covered with a scab an inch in diameter, bloody, and oozing a fluid.
There were fine stitching pains. I gave her three powders of Swan’s DMM.
of Schirrhus Mammæ. She asked me
how long it would take to show an effect. I guessed thirty days. At the
end of thirty days, the tumor began to shrink.

After that, every time
she got her three doses of nosodes, this tumor would swell, get red and
throb, and then it would shrink. It took four years to cure it. At the
end of the four years, it was down to nothing but a little cicatrix. She
said, “My brother is paying the bill and I don’t think it is worth
while at my age to continue any longer.” A number of years
afterwards I heard she died from the aftereffects of illuminating gas
poisoning at the age of 96.

There is a relation, I
think, between tuberculosis and smallpox vaccine. I remember long ago
treating a lady who had a tubercular history but no evident symptoms of
tuberculosis. I was giving her Tuberculinum.
Every time she got a dose of Tuberculinum,
her vaccination scars twenty years old would swell and get red and sore.

Dr. Stearns

:
Once in a while, through clinical experience, you can intuitively select
one of these nosodes. It is tricky business but most satisfactory when
the correct nosode is selected. I would not care to present this paper
to a medical society that was not composed of physicians who thoroughly
understand homœopathy. It sounds so easy and the results so
satisfactory when a nosode that is needed is given, that those who have
not the ground-work of homœopathic-clinical experience are likely to
use the wrong ones and do more harm than good.

We have learned
“how to use them through experimenting with the effect of
potentized substances on the reflexes”, so we do not have to make a
proving to know about the effect of a drug. However, once we have
observed the effects of a given nosode, clinical experience leads to
successful intuitive use of them. I would like to have all of you get as
many of the nosodes as you can. They can be obtained from Ehrhart &
Karl and some from Boericke & Tafel. Record your experiences
and publish them in the Recorder. In
this way, you will build up a materia medica.

I purposely omitted the
details of how these remedies have been selected because it would have
encumbered the paper with an enormous amount of detail. The purpose has
been to open up the field of the nosodes. There is material enough for a
hundred papers if all the details were given. Details of too many
remedies become a burden but a few underlying principles that relate to
a class of remedies will lead to an understanding of the group and the
understanding of a given case will frequently lead, to the correct
nosode, if one is needed.

I am glad to hear of
the result from Polyphage. This is a
nosode that will occasionally help in intractible skin conditions such
as eczema cases. Our first case was an Italian in his early fifties. He
had had severe eczema ever since the war and his hands were a mess. He
had to wear bandages on them all the time. This was a handicap as he was
a porter in a saloon where he cleaned spittoons, shined shoes, etc. He
had been to many clinics. The applications that he was given by them
would help for awhile, then he would be just as bad as ever. Polyphage
helped him wonderfully. Our first prescription was the 500th, then the
1M., then the 10M., three doses in all. We never repeat a remedy in the
same potency. When we do repeat it is always a higher one. Sometimes we
give what in England they call a “plused” potency.

That is, we will run
the potency, say the 500th, up to the 505th, 510th and 515th.
Occasionally within a few days of the first dose, one of these plused
potencies is required. After that it is usually a much higher potency,
for instance, if we have given the 500th and then the 510th, the third
potency will be the 1M., with a much longer interval between the 510th
and the 1M. than between the 500th and the 510th. Polyphage
was discovered by C. W. Coates of the New York Aquarium. This is
supposed to be a bacteriaphage. Most bacteriaphages are specific for a
single strain. If this is a bacteriaphage, it is apparently specific for
a great number of strains. It is probably a product developed by the
fish In the aquarium which protects them from infections.

Wherever there is a
tubercular case in a family, you will almost always find that the other
members in that family at some time need Tuberculinum ; usually one
or two doses will be sufficient but you will always find the taint
running through the family.

Influenza is one of the
most subtle of our chronic diseases and lnfluenzin
will shorten the treatment of many patients. In four patients who show
signs of a beginning cardiac failure, such as rapid pulse on slight
exertion, especially with frequent extra systoles, or even with a
recurrence of anginal symptoms in a patient who has been recovering from
heart seizures, keep lnfluenzin in
mind.

Source :

Homœopathic Recorder, April, 1937.

Copyright © Sylvain
Cazalet 2001

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