Cina maritima
автор E. B. Nash — Leaders in Typhoid Fever
Historical reference for practitioners and students. The statements below reflect the named author’s homeopathic teaching and do not establish treatment effectiveness. This text is not medical advice and must not replace appropriate diagnosis or care.
CINA IN TYPHOID
I once had five cases of typhoid fever in one family, all in bed at the same time. Two took on the most violent form of the cerebral variety, and the other three were of the abdominal type. The youngest, a little girl of about seven years of age, was very sick, having the stupor, unconsciousness, tympany, diarrhœa, dry dark tongue and such other symptoms as generally characterize or make up the diagnosis of abdominal typhus. The ordinary remedies did not seem to do any good. The only thing that the child seemed to notice was a spoon put to her mouth with water, which she would eagerly open her mouth for as often as it touched her lips. There were two other symptoms that were prominent.
Intense circumscribed redness of the cheeks, and frequent and violent rubbing of the nose.
I hesitated to give Cina because this was an undoubted case of typhoid, and no text-book ever said give Cina. But I finally gave it, and in the next twenty-four hours my little patient became conscious, and general and rapid improvement set in and continued to perfect recovery.
One evening my telephone rang and a brother physician, in a town sixteen miles away, rehearsed a similar case, asking for advice. I answered “Cina.”
“Why, damn it, this is typhoid fever, it isn’t worms!” said the doctor.
I answered again, “Cina, I don’t care what it is.”
Two weeks later he came into my office.
“How is that case of worms?” said I.
“Well,” said he, “that patient improved from the hour she got the Cina. I guess the next time I’ll know enough to prescribe according to the symptoms and not for the name of a disease, as you have always taught me.”
So it is. The next case of any disease may call for a remedy that no one ever prescribed in that disease, because the symptoms call for it. This is Homœopathy according to Hahnemann’s teaching, and the sooner we learn and profit by it the better for us and our patients.
Cina is often neglected because it is generally considered in connection with helminthiasis, not only in fevers, but in rheumatism, where it has aggravation on motion similar to Bryonia, and has cured cases where that remedy had failed.
Arnica suffers the same neglect on account of its reputation for effects of bruises, and is given sometimes when Ledum or Sulphuric acid would be better.
Let us stick to our text, Similia Similibus Curentur.