Anathema

“ Then he sits down on a rock, with an air of freedom and independence, and throws small cobblestones at the feet of the Guardian of the Entrances;—cunning, he conceals his fear beneath the mask of raillery and slight audacity. In the faint, grey, almost colorless light, the head of the accursed one seems enormous; especially large is his high forehead, which is furrowed by wrinkles of fruitless reflections and unsolvable eternal problems. Anathema's thin beard is perfectly grey ”

“ As before, the earth is weighted down by the heavy iron Gates, closed from time immemorial, beyond which dwells in silence and in mystery the Beginning of every being, the Supreme Wisdom of the universe. And the Guardian of the Entrances is just as silent and as sternly motionless as before. Nothing has happened; nothing has changed.
The grey light, as grey as the rocks, is terrible; the place is terrible, but Anathema likes it. And he appears again; but he does not crawl on his belly like a dog; nor does he hide himself beyond the rocks like a thief. ”

“ Anathema goes to the door. Silence.
DAVID.
The spirit of God has come over me. Adenoi. Adenoi.... Who was the terrible one that spoke through the voice of old Nullius, when he spoke about my little children who died? Only an arrow out of the bow of the Omniscient strikes the very heart with such good aim. My little birds.... Verily, You have saved me upon the edge of the abyss, and You have torn my spirit away from the clutches of the Devil. He who looks straight at the sun may grow blind, but with the lapse of time the light may come back to the revived eyes ”

“ If Hahnemann in his lifetime had been made acquainted with such gross violations of his most positive directions, he would have entirely disowned all such disciples, and pronounced his severest anathemas upon them. At the present time, one who is nominally a homœopathist gives emetics, another cathartics, another bleeds, another uses counter-irritants; and thus by degrees these practitioners are stepping into the domain of what they call, by way of reproach, Allopathy. ”

“ So great has been the calamitousness of these times, and the inverate malice of the heretics, that there has been nothing ever so clear in the statement of our faith, or so surely settled, which they, at the persuasion of the enemy of the human race, have not defiled by some sort of error. For which cause the holy synod hath taken especial care to condemn and anathematize the principal errors of the heretics of our time, and to deliver and teach the true and Catholic doctrine ”

“ Hysteria, general debility, emaciation, sterility, various nervous affections, phthisis, in short, a perversion of almost any of the various physiological functions may be the direct result of anæmia. On the other hand, anæmia may be only a symptom or sequel of some other morbid condition—but of such cases I do not now speak. I have to do here only with those cases where anæmia is the primary and etiological of a group of symptoms, and where therefore it is to this that the treatment must be mainly directed. ”

“ Permanent degeneration of the alimentary canal, of the heart, liver, kidneys, and blood-forming organs, may remain, and even prove fatal, although the primary cause is no longer present. The history and the absence of other sources of anæmia are all we may have to go upon for diagnosis in such circumstances.
Ankylostomiasis is sometimes confounded with beriberi, and vice versa. The presence of paretic and cardiac symptoms not accounted for by the moderate degree of anæmia in beriberi, and their absence in ankylostomiasis, suffice for diagnosis. ”

“ If it is thought that any authority is needed to support this view, we can scarcely find a weightier than that of Virchow, who repeatedly insisted on the right use of the word "anomaly," and who taught that, though an anomaly may constitute a predisposition to disease, the study of anomalies—pathology, as he called it, teratology as we may perhaps prefer to call it—is not the study of disease, which he termed nosology; the study of the abnormal is perfectly distinct from the study of the morbid. ”

“ The use of tonics and stimulants, as much as the stomach will bear, should be encouraged. Bathe the surface with a solution of a drachm of quinine in a pint of whiskey.
(6.) Iron, in some form, is the special internal remedy in anæmia. Meantime, it is proper to treat the patient with gentle, manual friction, rubbing the surface of the body lightly and briskly with the warm, dry hand, which greatly stimulates the circulation of the blood. Anæmia occurs more frequently in the female than in the male, because her functions and duties are more likely to give rise to it. ”

“ The purest form of acute cerebral anæmia, aside from that produced by surgical interference with the cerebral circulation or extensive hemorrhages, is that induced by mental influences, such as fright, a disagreeable odor, or a disgusting or harrowing spectacle. Some persons, not suffering from general anæmia or any diseased condition thus far mentioned, on experiencing the emotional influences named will be observed to turn pale, to breathe heavily, and either sink into a chair or fall on the floor partly or entirely unconscious. ”

“ The very notion of Diagnosis in our modern sense of the word depends upon Morbid Anatomy. The older physicians seldom attempted to determine the seat of an ailment. [8] Disease was looked upon not as a condition depending upon disordered physiological functions, but as something external, attacking a previously healthy person, disturbing, and, if not expelled by art, finally destroying him; while any structural changes which were found after death were regarded rather as the effects than the causes of the symptoms during life. ”

“ Girls of the better classes are by no means exempt; indeed, some writers speak of it as specially prone to affect the higher ranks of life. Lack of proper exercise, good food, and fresh air, the mental stimulation of unhealthy literature, and masturbation, are important factors. Emotional and nervous symptoms may be prominent—so much so that the disease is regarded by some as a neurosis.
The anatomical peculiarities relate to the blood and circulatory system. There is anæmia, but the impoverishment is less in the number than in the corpuscular richness in hæmoglobin. ”

“ Disease of the brain or its membranes, apparently slight, often seems to cause insanity, and often there is marked disease without insanity. We certainly cannot place all the pathological conditions found in the brain of a person dying insane in direct causal relation to his insanity. The anæmia observed by Meynert in melancholia and the hyperæmia of maniacal excitement, even if proved to be universal in those conditions, may be only symptoms of the underlying disease or caused by it. It is certain that there are indications of as great anæmia or hyperæmia in other states without insanity. ”

“ In chronic anæmia, in chlorosis, in fevers and wasting diseases the process may be extreme, without leading to any more marked symptoms than feeble action of the heart, palpitation on exertion or excitement, with signs of slight dilatation, and a soft mitral systolic murmur from incompetency of the valves. In cases of idiopathic anæmia, in which the fatty degeneration is perhaps more marked than in any other condition except phosphorus-poisoning, the pulse is frequently full, though soft, and regular so long as the patient is quiet. ”

“ Sandler,575 in his case of a boy, aged 11, who died of anæmia, assumes a trichocephalus toxin to be the cause of the disease, and Kahane also reports on anæmic conditions induced by Trichocephalus. Girard,576 in addition to symptoms in the gastro-intestinal tract, calls attention to those arising in the blood—anæmia and its sequelæ—and also to nervous symptoms: cerebral phenomena, headache, giddiness, aphonia, symptoms of meningitis. ”

“ The most powerful agent in producing degeneration, and to which doctors always give the first place, is the reduction of the formation of the blood in the organism. Is there really a retardation of this function, or an exaggerated destruction of the blood? I can not take the responsibility of deciding. Whatever it may be, emigrants are attacked with the same affection as in its phase of complete development among us is called anæmia. The more existence is tried by debilitating influences, the more intense becomes tropical anæmia. ”

“ Suppose a disease in question, which appeared always accompanied with certain symptoms in certain stages, and with some one or more symptoms in all stages—say deranged digestion, capricious alternation of vivacity and languor, headache, dilated pupil, diminished sensibility to light, &c.—Neither the man who selected the one constant symptom, nor he who enumerated all the symptoms, would give the scientific definition talem scilicet, quali scientia fit vel datur, but the man who at once named and defined the disease hydrocephalus, producing pressure on the brain. ”

“ Associated with the profound anaemia there may be oedema of legs and about joints and functional cardiac murmurs. The kidneys do not seem to be affected. There may be a diarrhoea in the later stages of the disease. There is no eruption in uncomplicated cases.
The most important findings in the disease are those in connection with the blood examination. The rod-shaped organisms, which are thought to be the cause of the disease, are somewhat difficult to observe in fresh blood preparations. They show definite motility within the red cells, particularly after warming the blood slide. ”

“ It is easy enough to say that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all. It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent. ”

“ The one great doctrine which constitutes the basis of Homoeopathy as a system is expressed by the Latin aphorism, “SIMILIA SIBILIBUS CURANTUR,”
or like cures like, that is, diseases are cured by agents capable of producing symptoms resembling those found in the disease under treatment. A disease for Hahnemann consists essentially in a group of symptoms. The proper medicine for any disease is the one which is capable of producing a similar group of symptoms when given to a healthy person. ”

“ The Symptoms are those of other forms of anæmia, but being more obscure in origin and therefore less open to corrective treatment, it is more likely to grow to an extreme development and fatal issue. The weak pulse, irritable heart, debility, unsteady walk with the hind limbs, hurried breathing and sweating under exercise, watery, puffy eyes, dropsies in limbs and dependent parts of the body, progressive emaciation, and weakness are even more marked than in symptomatic anæmia. ”

“ Indeed, there is scarcely any room for doubt that, if our senses were far more acute, a diathesis or tendency to some special disease would be disclosed in definite signs of imperfection, or of disorder. A diathesis is often seen gradually merging into development, and development into a diathesis, and the frequency with which this is seen to recur in the same person gives tone to the conclusion that the letter state is only a very mild or occult phase of the former. ”

“ It may therefore be considered certain that during sleep there is an anaemia, or partially bloodless condition, of the brain, and that the blood is drawn off to other organs, whilst at the same time this anaemic condition may be modified by changes in the circulation or in the respiratory mechanism caused by position, by sensory impressions or by sudden changes in the state of repose of the muscles. ”

“ Where syphilitic inflammation is diffused over a considerable portion of the meninges, it is certain very quickly to produce symptoms which can hardly fail to apprise us of the gravity of the affection; there will be decided and rapidly increasing impairment of memory, and general cloudiness of intellect, tending toward complete imbecility, the special senses will be greatly interfered with or lost, and muscular paralysis will be developed. ”

“ In my opinion, blindness from amaurosis, being not so much a disease as a symptom, or rather the consequence, of many other diseases, is not, in onanists, the result of exhaustion, of asthenia, any more than the debility and paralysis of the lower extremities are, when the spinal marrow is diseased. ”

“ It will moreover be found very efficacious in counteracting secondary anæmia, and thus, by maintaining the general strength of the patient, often enable nature and appropriate treatment to cope successfully with the original disease. ”

“ Annan attended the dissection of a brain of a patient who died at Bush-hill some days afterwards, and observed the blood-vessels to be unusually turgid. In those cases where congestion only takes place, it is as easy to conceive that all morbid appearances in the brain may cease after death, as that the suffusion of blood in the face should disappear [107] after the retreat of the blood from the extremities of the vessels, in the last moments of life. It is no new thing for morbid excitement of the brain to leave either slender, or no marks of disease after death. ”

“ The allopath travels around a race-track in the opposite direction from the disease, and thwarts it through a head-on collision. The homeopath travels around the race-track in the same direction as the disease, and thwarts it by pulling at the reins. If we consider the two words together and get these ideas in mind, we shall have no further trouble with allopaths and homeopaths—except, perhaps, when they have rendered their services and presented their bills. ”