study and application of pyrogenium

. The heat at first is dry, with intense aching in the limbs, and restlessness, which is ameliorated by heat and motion If the patient is a child, this restlessness and nervousness is re lieved by being covered up well and rocked, especially by hard rocking in a chair. The patient will not sleep in bed, but wants to be held in the lap, like Chamomilla, but kept in slight mo tion; and if the motion stops, or you attempt to lay the child down, he immediately wakens, Like Sulphur, Pyrogen has a great aversion to being washed, and the child cries a great deal, when being washed. However, if very hot water is used, it relieves the situation.The pains of Pyrogen are worse when sitting, and decidedly. worse from rest. The aching pains are like those of Eupatorium, or are sore, bruised pains. The intense restlessness can be com pared to Rhus, which is relieved by continued motion; but un like Rhus, which is aggravated from first beginning to move, Py rogen is relieved immediately upon motion. Many of the com plaints of Pyrogen are brought on by becoming cold and damp. We find indications for this remedy in many of the hectic fevers of phthisis, when these symptoms are present.The delirium of Pyrogen simulates that of Baptisia, in that it is a confused delirium, as though the parts of the patient were scattered about. The Pyrogen fever is apt to be very high, often times reaching 106; and with it there is great soreness and ach ing all over the body, but the pains are relieved by motion. A condition peculiar to the Pyrogen fever which stands out as a characteristic symptom is the loss of rhythm between the pulse and the fever. With an intensely high fever, the pulse will be low. There is threatening heart failure in septic and zymotic fevers.In conditions where there is scanty flow from an open wound, or when the secretions are scanty, together with great pain, this is one of the first remedies to be considered. In abscessed condi tions there is always intense burning. Here we can compare Py rogen with Arsenicum, Anthracine, and Tarantula cubensis. The differentiation from Arsenicum is in the thirst and the slow pulse. It is interesting to note that Anthracine is also a pus product. Tarantula cubensis was produced from a Tarantula shipped from Cuba, which had been long delayed on the way. The alcohol hadPYROGEN705been spilled and the spider had partly decomposed; therefore we get the active septic conditions. In recurrent abscesses, where they follow a history of sepsis, Pyrogen has done remarkable work. The patient is pale, sickly, rheumatic and stiff, together with these recurrent abscesses, which will date back to a sepsis of some kind. In the chronic states, the complaints practically always date back to a septic condition. The patient says she has never been well since she had puerperal fever years ago. Again, it is to be thought of in cases of Bright’s disease where there has been a septic base years be fore. When we get a very obstinate case of varicose ulcer in old people, if we go into the history of the case carefully we are apt to find that some septic condition has been present earlier in life, and Pyrogen will often cure these ulcers where the history of an early sepsis is to be found.The discharges of Pyrogen are intensely offensive, putrid. There is a cadaverous odor from the body, from the breath, and even the perspiration is very offensive.Now let us glance at some of the peculiar and characteristic symptoms. The delirium is peculiar. The patient will know that one part of his body is in the correct position, but he cannot tell where the rest of his body is. He has a sensation as if he covered the whole bed. He is always irritable, and with this, there is a decided loquacity; he talks all out of proportion to his normal state; he talks rapidly, and changes from one subject to another in quick succession.There is the fan-like motion of the ala nasi, making us think of Lycopodium and Phosphorus. The tongue may show a brown streak down the center; it may be clean, smooth and dry; but the characteristic tongue is shiny as if varnished. The vomiting of Pyrogen, like Phosphorus, occurs as soon as water becomes warm in the stomach. There is thirst for cold drinks in the chill as well as in the fever. The patient craves chocolate. Stools are usually involuntary, and exceedingly offensive. The urinary de posits are red and very hard to wash from the vessel, making us think again of Lycopodium. In the heart action there is great palpitation, with a sinking feeling of the heart; a sensation as if706THE HOMEOPATHIC RECORDERthe heart were pumping cold water; a sensation as if the heart were purring.It is a remedy of very great importance in the last stages of tuberculosis, where there are the very offensive, copious night sweats and the great tendency to diarrhoea.There are many more detailed symptoms recorded, but the main characteristics of the remedy stand out clearly, and Pyro gen becomes one of our great curative agents when these peculiar and unusual symptoms are present in fevers or septic conditions This great nosode is to be compared with Arsenicum, Baptisia, Sulphur, Phosphorus, and all of the reptile and many of the spider poisons. A careful study of these several poisons in com parison with Pyrogen will yield abundant reward to the careful prescriber. It will do yeoman duty in many so-called surgical conditions, and will turn a hopeless prognosis into one of assur ance of complete recovery. When we have a desperate case, and hope is all but abandoned, if these characteristic symptoms are present, Pyrogen will turn defeat into victory.DERBY, CONN.DISCUSSION.CHAIRMAN W. W. WILSON: Pyrogen is a great remedy. What is the experience of some of you men with Pyrogen? DR. P. BROWN: I have enjoyed this paper very much. I have used Pyrogesfor three years. This is the first paper I ever heard on Pyrogen. I wish to bear testimony to the efficacy of this remedy. I have some cases which I have successfully treated with it. I am prescribing it in quite large doses. PRESIDENT G. STEVENS: Dr. Leonard, who was for twelve years health officer in Minneapolis, told me that he had cured at least one case of malignant DR. J. GREEN. I turned the tide in a very serious case of erysipelas withsmallpox with Pyrogen.Pyrogen prescribed on a mental symptom. The patient had a very sudden andvery strong delusion of wealth and began to talk about what he was going todo with all the money that had come into his possession. DR. L. ROSS: During the influenza epidemic in 1918, early in October led to Pyrogen by that discrepancy between temperature and pulse in the per case I saw. The man made a very uneventful recovery, but he was desper ately sick.DR. E. UNDERHILL, JR.: My first experience with Pyrogen was in a pneu monia case. I had only been converted to homeopathy about a year when I saw this case and I had some little difficulty in deciding to give Pyrogen as 1 couldn’t find that it had ever been recommended for pneumonia. However, I gave it on the septic symptoms, the slow pulse. It worked like magic. That patient afterwards went into a state requiring Psorinum and while I thinkPYROGEN707is dangerous to say that one remedy is the chronic of another it seems toOne other point is that I see great similarity between Phosphorus and Perogen. In one case of meningitis I came to the conclusion that I needed remedy was correct. The case had gone too far, however, and the patient died, DR. V. REEL: I had excellent results with Pyrogen in a case of hay-fever,controlling the condition early in the spring CHAIRMAN W. W. WILSON: What were the symptoms?DR. V. REEL: General symptoms of hay-fever, just an ordinary case. CHAIRMAN W. w. WILSON: What called the Pyrogen to your mind?DR. V. REEL: I can’t tell you, I made no notes of the case at all, but I used Pyrogen and the case was so wonderfully benefited by it that the second year, at the time when the hay-fever usually developed, I gave her a 200th of Py rogen. She has never had any further trouble and that was four years ago. T. G. SLOAN: A woman who had scarlet fever gave birth to a child. Twenty-four hours after the child was born she had a emperature of over 104 with an offensive lochia. She was desperately sick. I hesitated whether to give her Sulphur or Pyrogen. Finally I gave her Pyrogen ca and she made a verynice recovery.CHAIRMAN W. w. WILSON: I had a case some years ago of a young married woman. She was in rather extreme pain, and I couldn’t make much out of the case when I first saw it. But her husband, a young chap, called me out into the hall and told me that he had contracted gonorrhoea and had transmitted it to his wife who had been in the care of a physician in Newark, and had no idea that she had gonorrhoea.The case developed extreme symptoms. She ran a tremendously high tem perature and what puzzled me was that she had the restlessness of Rhus tox all over the case. She had the awfully sore pains of Arnica and she had the thirst of Arsenic. What are you going to do in a case like that? You can’t combine the three. I was fearfully stumped. I went home and on looking it up I found nothing. So I went to our good friend, Philip Krichbaum, and he said Pyrogen right away.Sure enough, there it was, the restlessness of Rhus, the soreness of Arnica and the thirst of Arsenic. I gave the girl Pyrogen. I guess I gave her a 200th at the time and repeated it. Within a very short time she began passing tre mendously copious stools of black material. She made a good recovery. That was my experience with Pyrogen, the only experience I have ever had with it in a case that was very, very sick.DR. C. L. OLDS: Outside of these very acute cases, such as sepsis after con finement or miscarriage where we have the characteristic symptoms of Pyro gen, there is another class of cases you will sometimes get. We might call them subacute, patients running temperatures that zigzag up and down, tempera tures that are out of all proportion to the pulse rate. Those patients have very few other symptoms. I have had two or three of those cases in my experience and Pyrogen has always fixed them up. There are no other Pyrogen symptoms. only this disparity between the pulse and the temperature.DR. WEBSTER: Dr. Wilson’s case reminded me of a case of gonorrhoea I had some few years ago, which was cured by Pyrogen, followed by Lycopodium. I wish to say that Lycopodium complements the action of Pyrogen in many cases.