Phaseolus Nana.

A. M. GUSHING, M. D., SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

Mr. Editor, as you have sent me a copy of your journal containing an article, "Phaseolus Vulgaris," you may be interested in my experience with the bean:

When a boy, I stuck the tine of a hayfork forcibly into the top of my bare foot, and it was thought it would either make me a cripple for life or lame all summer. A "herb doctor" split open a common white bean, phaseolus nana, and bound the flat, split side dry on to the wound. The pain was so severe I became delirious, but went to sleep and woke well.

During the fifty-two years I have practised, I have tried it many times in punctures by rusty nails, etc., and never a failure, cured in a few hours, but painful. A number of years ago I had a patient badly bloated from uterine cancer. I steeped some dry pods of phaseolus nana and gave it pretty fully. It greatly relieved the dropsy, but after a few days she screamed, "O, my head," and was dead. I had no idea then that the bean water produced the result, but now I fear it did, for not long after in another case of a middle-aged man, he said, "You must do something for my head, or I shall go wild." I stopped the bean water and the headache ceased. Now if the vulgaris has the power of the nana (and I don't believe it has), I don't see how Dr. Romm can give it in such large and repeated doses, without disastrous results. I think the resinoid of the bean is a deadly poison similar to atropine.

Physicians in your own building will tell you I have tried to practice "homeopathy" for fifty-two years, and during that time I have probably proved more remedies upon myself than any other one living, and one of them was "Phaseolus Nana." I prepared it, triturating the bean with sugar of milk, one to ten to the fourth attenuation. With this I made my proving. I had taken it a few days, watching the action of the kidneys, when my heart almost stopped, only a little feeble pulse. That stopped the proving, but I think that was all the scientific proving that has been made of the remedy.

In the usual way I made other attenuations, first by distilled water, then equal parts water and alcohol, then pure alcohol, one part to nine, and put a vial of this in my pocket. Soon after I was called by an old school doctor to a case of confinement. The patient was 25 years old, with her first child, was badly bloated, the urine was loaded to albumen, there were violent; convulsions and heart failure, which did not yield to the usual remedies. We gave a dose of that preparation from the vial. In five minutes the action of the heart was improved, in ten minutes it was normal, and the doctor was happy and wanted the vial.

Soon after I was called to see a gentleman, 44 years of age, so badly bloated that he could not wear his pants, he had to sleep on his knees, with his head on a bed or on a lounge, the urine was full of pus and albumen, hyaline and glandular casts. The pulse was but 28. In one week he was out of the city visiting friends, three months later he was working six days in the week. I gave him phaseolus nana, the 15th attenuation, once in two hours. The next day he had such a violent headache that I had to omit the remedy. He took but little other medicine.

Some five years ago, a lady of 55 years came to me, with a report from an expert chemist, that she had Bright's disease. Her objective symptoms certainly pointed to it. There was general anasarca, with sacks under the eyes. I gave her phaseolus 25 x, once in two hours (I knew no better then). The next day I had to omit it on account of a violent headache. For two years she did not have a symptom of the trouble. Then she lost an only brother, and grieving over that brought on the symptoms again. I then gave her one dose of the 200 attenuation. The next day she said she had a busy night with her kidneys and bowels. She had no more trouble with her kidneys. Recently she has had a severe attack of pneumonia, and has recovered with no sign of the former disease.

A returned soldier has reported to me, whose pulse had been from 120 to 150 for thirty years; he was cured in a month. A prominent clergyman, given up to die from fatty degeneration of the heart, took the 25th, and in three months he wrote me from Toronto, "I am all right." Two months ago, a minister, who had retired from active work several years ago, suffering from heart and nervous trouble, came to me. For two years he had been under the constant care of the homeopathic physician, and was suffering from constant burning pain, in the upper left arm. He was said to have neurasthenia. I gave him phaseolus, 200. In three days, the pain was all gone, and there has not been any pain since. I report these cases to show how much better this is than to give it daily. I think it is better to make it by trituration than in the tincture.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.