Dot and carry one.
by Dr Elizabeth Wright Hubbard
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet
Dr E. Wright
Hubbard
The office bell rang
insistently, the secretary called-me and said. “There is a
gentleman here with a baby in his arms and he says that she is
dying ; can you see her at once ?” The current patient
was asked to wait and the breathless father followed by a tense mother
brought a tiny bundle into the office and unwrapped her. She looked more
like a tiny, hairless monkey than a human being, sunken temples, pinched
nose, pallor, extreme emaciation, hardly breathing.The father explained
that he had just brought her A. W. O. L. from one of the finest
hospitals in the city where she had been born three weeks previously, a
third child, normal labor. She had been unable to eat and steadily and
rapidly dwindling without any noticeable symptoms, no respiratory
disease, no vomiting, physical examination negative. They had tried
everything with no result except increasing emaciation and feebleness. I
still don’t known what I chose the remedy, except a process of
elimination. It was definitely not a Calcarea
baby.
It looked utterly
dehydrated and unspeakably sad and wistful. I really thought it was
going to die in the office. It kept protruding its tiny tongue and
pursing its lips. I put a powder of Natrum
muriaticum 10M under its tongue and told the parents to take
it home, keep it very warm and feed it warm water and warm raw certified
cow’s milk with a medicine dropper. Within two hours the mother
telephoned to say that the baby looked a tittle more lively, had a
better color and was breathing strongly and she made a steady gain for
several days. Then I was called to see her again because her hands were
stiffening and the thumbs turning in and she had a bluish look. Cuprum
10m, one dose. The next day she was relaxed and eager to suck
and made a steady progress into a plump and happy, normal baby.
DISCUSSION.
Dr A. H. Grimmer
Dr Thomas K. MooreDr. Grimmer
: I couldn’t help but say
a few words about the artistry in which our good doctor gets to the
Simillimum. She had very little to go on but she could see in that
little dried-up, broken bit of humanity, sadness. You know, only a homœopathic
physician could enter into that sphere to see those things.There is something indefinite in infants that enables
you to interpret their sufferings into the language or from the language
of the Materia Medica. The doctor saw it in a flash when she came to Natrum
muriaticum. We know that Natrum mur., is one of the leaders
in marasmus and when she got the one symptoms she needed to confirm, to
and behold ! it came up.She even saw the complementary and finally curative
remedy at the first visit. She mentioned Cuprum,
thought it would be her remedy but didn’t give it because the case
didn’t include the convulsive side of Cuprum ;
that was a very beautiful piece of artistry.
Dr. Hubbard
: You don’t feel then,
that had I given the Cuprum when the baby first came in the office, it
would have saved it ?
Dr. Grimmer
: No, I think you did
right.
Dr. Hubbard
: I was in a quandary
until I saw the Natrum mur. also had that protruding tongue such as Lachesis
has.
Source :
Homœopathic Recorder, 1946.
Copyright ©
Sylvain Cazalet 2001
