Apis Mellifica; or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent

The world is not only indebted to Hahnemann for a knowledge, but also for a natural corrective of this serious abuse. His provings on healthy persons show this beyond a doubt. Few men, if their attention has once been directed to this abuse, will feel disposed to deny its extent. Nor has a favorable change in this respect been looked for in vain, since homœopathy has now, for half a century at least, shown the uselessness of all regular methods of purgation, and the superiority of the means with which this new system accomplishes most effectually all that those pernicious methods promised to do. It should be considered a duty by every physician, to be acquainted with the new means of cure. The continued use of purgatives should be considered a crime against health. They will soon cease to exist as regular means of treatment, and their pernicious consequences will no longer have to be relieved by remedial means. But until their use is abolished, we shall have to counteract them by adequate means of cure, more particularly the abnormal irritation and the paralytic debility, which are the most common consequences of the abuse of cathartics.

It is a most fortunate thing that we have in Apis one of the most reliable means of removing the evil effects of cathartic medicines. A single globule of Apis 30 is sufficient to this end. It is best to use it as follows: dissolve the globule in five tablespoonfuls of water by shaking the mixture well in a well closed vial, and let the patient take a tablespoonful of this solution. If this dose acts well, no repetition is necessary for the present. If this dose should not be sufficient, we prepare a new potence by throwing away three tablespoonfuls of the former solution and substituting four tablespoonfuls of fresh water, shaking the mixture well. We give a spoonful of this second solution, twenty-four hours after the first had been given, and, if necessary, a third spoonful prepared in the same way, and even a fourth and fifth, after which we await the result, without thinking either of improvement or exacerbation.

Generally, a feeling of ease is experienced shortly after taking Apis. The painful sensitiveness of the pit of the stomach and of the abdomen, together with the troublesome, disagreeable and oppressive distention and weight, soon disappear; the tongue gradually loses its swollen and cracked appearance, its dirty redness, its slimy coating, its sore spots, tardy indentations along its edges, the burnt feeling at its tip, which is dotted with very fine vesicles, that cause a good deal of soreness; the pappy, sour, bitter, metallic, foul taste disappears; the appetite is again normal; both the previous aversion to food and the excessive craving disappear; the absence of thirst, which is so common in this condition, again gives place to a natural desire for drink, the bluish-red color and swelling of the palate and throat, and the incessant urging to hawk, decrease visibly: the distress after eating; the sour stomach with or without nausea or heartburn; the excessive rising of air; the regurgitation of the ingesta; the eructations which taste of the food that had been eaten long before; the yawning; the irresistible drowsiness when sitting; the general loss of strength; the vacuity of mind, the aversion to talking and to company, decrease more and more every day; the whole abdomen feels easier and softer: the excessive and irresistible urging to urinate, especially after rising from a chair or from bed, and accompanied by a distressing nervousness, abates; the diarrhœic and abnormally colored evacuations, together with the frequent and irresistible urging, increased after eating, early in the morning and after sour and flatulent food, and accompanied by various sore pains in the rectum, diminish more and more, and give place to normal evacuations, first for days, next for weeks, although they continue to alternate more or less with constipation, or painful, insufficient, hard stool, until they terminate sooner or later, according as the disease is more or less deep-seated, and had lasted more or less long, in permanent restoration of the normal secretions and excretions of the digestive organs. At the same time the many distresses which the abnormal condition of the bowels and stomach had occasioned in the head and heart, disappear; the poor patient who had been a prey to so many sufferings, feels like one born again.

This is the general result, unless psoric, sycosic, syphilitic or vaccinine complications should be present. Unfortunately the abuse of cathartics excites these miasms if they exist in the organism, and at the same time prostrates the reactive powers of the organism, and enables its enemies to rise against it. The distress becomes more and more complicated; disorganizations, alterations of the fluids, disturbances of the assimilative sphere, nervous derangements from simple illusions of the sentient sphere, and occasional trembling and twitching, to spasmodic and convulsive movements, and final extinction of nervous power, marasmus of the spinal marrow or a ramollissement of the brain; these are the consequences of such miasmatic complications.

In such a case Apis alone is not sufficient. We have to employ such antidotes as Sulphur, our most powerful anti-psoric which, unless it had been abused previously, never leaves us in the lurch in the presence of psora; iodine which, under similar circumstances, becomes indispensable wherever psora and sycosis are combined; bichromate of potash or fluoric acid, if psora, syphilis and mercurial poisoning are united; and lastly, tartar emetic, or again fluoric acid, if the vaccine poison alone, or in combination with the other poisons, occupies the foreground.

This is not the place to treat of these special forms of human distress, and to individualize their treatment; I shall endeavor to do this on a more suitable occasion. I shall have to limit myself here to a superficial sketch of the treatment, adding merely that a single dose of the specific antidote will act best if given highly potentized, and that the improvement should afterwards be allowed to progress as long as a trace of it remains visible. But as soon as the improvement stops and an exacerbation sets in, which is not speedily followed by another improvement, or which seems to require our aid, we use Apis 3, one drop every day, until the improvement is again perceived, after which we wait until another exacerbation demands our interference. One dose of Apis is often insufficient; if not, from three to five doses will be found sufficient to mitigate the pains, and to advance the cure which Apis will complete in conjunction with the high potency that should not be repeated, and which is not interfered with by the Apis. What more precious boon for the physician and patient in these serious moments? It is only a physician who has instituted provings upon himself, that is capable of comprehending this harmonious blending of the two therapeutic agents. He sees the well known effects of a well known cause go and come at alternate periods. What man of common sense would be willing to repudiate such evidence?

But even in a case where Sulphur and Iodine had been given to excess, and a sort of Sulphur and Iodine diathesis had been established in consequence, Apis is still the best remedy to meet this complicated derangement.

Although we may believe that the time is at hand when this kind of ignorance shall no longer be tolerated, it unfortunately is still a prevailing sin of the profession. Even if we should be unable to effect a perfect cure, yet we may afford essential relief to such patients; we may often arrest their sufferings for a longer or shorter period, and shorten the paroxysms until they become almost imperceptible. Apis is particularly instrumental in effecting this end. Diseases of the

RESPIRATORY ORGANS

are likewise successfully combated by Apis. The American Provings contain the following symptomatic indications:

1. No.'s 731, 733, 736, 742, 743, 749, 760: "Hoarseness and difficulty of breathing, roughness and sensitiveness in the larynx, each time after he smells of the poison; talking is painful, sensation as if the larynx were tired by talking; drawing pains in the larynx; cough when starting during sleep; rough cough during evening; heat; difficult breathing, every drop of liquid almost suffocates him; labored inspirations as during croup."

2. 737-740: "Violent paroxysms of cough, occasioned by a titillating irritation in the lower part of the larynx near the throat-pit, with increase of headache when coughing, on the left side, superiorly; in half an hour, some phlegm is detached, after which the coughing ceases; on the first day, when waked from his sleep before midnight, he had a violent cough, especially after lying down and sleeping, with titillation at a very small spot, deep down on the posterior wall of the thorax, which wakes him; he feels better as soon as the least little portion of mucous is detached; cough particularly during warmth, during rest, and rousing him from his first slumber for several evenings."

3. 1081, 746, 790: "Chilly every afternoon at three or four o'clock; she shudders, especially during warmth; chill across the back, the hands feel as if dead; in about an hour she felt hot and feverish, with rough cough, hot cheeks and hands, without thirst; this passes off gradually, she feels heavy and prostrate; cough and labored breathing as during croup, after violent feverish heat, with dry skin and full pulse; disturbed sleep, with muttering, timid and incoherent talk, whitish-yellow coating of the tongue, and painless, yellow-greenish, slimy diarrhœa, in four days the breathing become labored, a violent abdominal respiration, red face, increasingly livid, pulse hard, cough, with barking resonance—pains in the chest, with labored breathing."

4. 754, 770, 772, 803: "Hurried, labored breathing, with heat and headache; chest oppressed; difficult labored breathing; sense of suffocation even when leaning against a thing; general debility; worse during cold weather, accompanied by asthmatic pains; cough; sense of suffocation; pains in the chest; coldness and deadness of the extremities, which looked bluish; sense of soreness; lameness; sense of bruising in the chest, as after recent contusions by a blow; jamming, etc."

These observations do not indeed show with characteristic certainty the diseases to which Apis might correspond. But if they are contrasted with the total character of Apis; if we consider that Apis develops a catarrhal irritation throughout the whole intestinal mucous membrane, affecting most deeply the nervous system and the normal constitution of the fluids, we have sufficient ground to experiment with Apis in those respiratory diseases which seem to be inherent in the prevailing genius of disease, and which are characterized by the very conditions which I have described. Who is not struck by the fact, that the same individual morbid process is reflected by different forms of disease, croup, whooping-cough, influenza, acute and chronic bronchial catarrh? The more essential the resemblance between these forms of disease and the medicinal power, the more certainly may we expect a cure. The medicinal power which seems to be most adequate to this end, is undoubtedly Apis. My observations in this respect are not sufficiently numerous to enable me to offer positive directions concerning the best mode of using the medicine in these diseases, or concerning the extent of the curative process or the complications that may exist. All I can do is to recommend Apis for further experiments in this range, and to remind my brethren of the insufficiency of other drugs, which has been a source of trouble to us in the past ten years. Every body who has watched the course of these diseases during this period, must have seen the difference existing between the present and the past character of the symptoms. It must, therefore, be a source of satisfaction to all of us, to have found in Apis an agent that is capable of filling up the gap.

My observations regarding the curative virtues of Apis in urinary, uterine and ovarian difficulties, and in rheumatism and gout, are not very extended. In the American Provings, symptoms 634 to 669, seem to point to urinary difficulties, and 685 to 695, to ovarian troubles; symptoms 697 to 727 to uterine derangements; and 837, 842, 867, 873, 874, 918, 919, 940, 942, 964, 969, to rheumatism and gout.

What little experience I have had in the employment of Apis in these diseases, is, however, sufficient to induce me to recommend the use of it for further and more enlarged knowledge.

I have had abundant opportunities of verifying the warning expressed in No. 721, "pregnant women should use the drug very cautiously." I am not acquainted with any drug which seems possessed of such reliable virtues regarding the prevention of miscarriage, more particularly during the first half of pregnancy, as Apis. I have often become an involuntary spectator of the power of Apis to effect miscarriage; for I had given it to honest women who did not know that they were pregnant, and where the fact of pregnancy was revealed to them by the subsequent miscarriage, which took place after one or two doses of Apis had been taken. Ever since I have made it a rule not to give Apis to females in whom the existence of pregnancy can be suspected in the remotest degree until the matter is reduced to a certainty, and the conduct of the physician can be determined upon in accordance with existing facts.

I am unable to say how far this power inherent in Apis, of producing miscarriage, may be serviceable to females who are prone to miscarriage.

I beg the privilege of adding a more general warning to this particular one. The more generally useful a thing is, the more liable is it to abuse. The most important and useful discoveries of homœopathy are abused in this manner by our age given to all sorts of excesses.

Not only are the records of homœopathy ransacked by speculative minds, who use her advantages for personal gain without giving due credit to the source whence the good things are obtained. This species of egotism may perhaps be excused in consideration of the use which this kind of plagiarism affords, even if whole volumes should be filled with it. But if the stolen property is paraded before the world as something belonging to one's self by right divine; if official influence is abused for the purpose of dressing up that which rightfully belongs to our science, as some original discovery, thus caricaturing and disfiguring the beauty of the genuine blessing; then good is changed to evil, and the evil is the greater, the more comprehensive the truth that is so shamefully abused. It is absurd and may entail sad consequences upon the world, if the rational use of Apis is to be converted to the irrational proceedings of the so-called specific method, which is often practised by men who, knowing better, purposely conceal the truth from the world. For years past, I have been called upon again and again, by patients who had been in the hands of these men, and who had been drenched with medicine, and had had all sorts of disastrous complications engendered in their poor bodies, to afford them some relief from these tortures inflicted by physicians who do not hesitate to assail the health of their patients by massive doses of drugs, of which they often know nothing but the name.

With these facts before me, nobody can find it strange that I should feel some misgivings in laying before the world a drug endowed with such extensive virtues. Apis is one of those drugs, the abuse of which may prove as destructive as the use of it is a source of saving good. It is no anti-psoric, nor is it capable of antidoting the three miasms, or of inflicting medicinal diseases for life. Nevertheless, it is a deeply and speedily-acting drug, for it affects the whole internal mucous membrane, the nervous system, and the process of sanguification, thus disturbing the health for a long time. Its primary aggravating action, its deeply penetrating interference with the existing morbid process, which may lead to errors in diagnosis, and its power to exhaust the reactive energies of the organism prematurely, render it a very dangerous agent. These circumstances go to show that such an agent, in the hands of the partizans of the Specific School, may be as dangerously and injuriously abused as other important drugs have been. I cannot sufficiently warn my readers against such distressing abuses. Only he is protected from the danger of imitating such shameful absurdities, who listens to the words of our master:

"Imitate this, but imitate this correctly!"