Lapis Albus

This is the name given by Von Grauvogl to a species of gneiss that he found in the spring of Gastein. Goitre and cretinism abound among the people who drink this water. Grauvogl experimented with it, and found it to cause burning and shooting pains in the cardia and pylorus, and also in the uterus and mammæ. In practice he found it remarkably successful in scrofulous affections, but that it did harm in cases that had previously suffered from malaria. He treated five cases of uterine carcinoma, pronounced true and incurable by allopaths, and cured them all. I have a case now under my care, to which I was called a year ago. She has a very large uterine fibroid. Under various remedies she grew worse, having hæmorrhages, frequently repeated, so profuse that it seemed as if she would bleed to death. The tumor, which involved the whole body of the womb, laid across the pelvis, the upper part, in the left sacro-iliac fossa, and the os, of course, exactly opposite in the other side of the pelvic cavity, so far up on the other side that it was impossible with the speculum to get the least view of it. After the bleeding had gone on for months in this way the discharges became black and horribly offensive, and the os had a decidedly rough feel to the finger. Finally she began to complain of intense burning pains all through the diseased parts. Arsenicum album effecting nothing for her, I put her upon Lapis albus as an experiment, for I had no hope she could live more than two weeks at the longest. Under the action of this remedy she began to improve immediately, and from the half dead wreck that could not turn in bed without help, a skeleton, white as a ghost, she has steadily improved until she is now doing her own housework, the discharges having all ceased except her natural menses at her regular periods. The tumor grows smaller, and it seems as though she might get well. She takes a dose of Lapis albus 30th once a week.