Glacial Acetic Acid
(Acetic Acid )
This drug produces a condition of profound anæmia, with some dropsical symptoms, great debility, frequent fainting, dyspnœa, weak heart, vomiting, profuse urination and sweat. Hæmorrhage from any part. Especially indicated in pale, lean persons, with lax, flabby muscles. Wasting and debility. Acetic acid has the power to liquefy albuminous and fibrinous deposits. Epithelial cancer, internally and locally (W Owens). Sycosis with nodules and formations in the joints. Hard chancre. The 1X solution will soften and cause formation of pus.
Mind
Irritable, worried about business affairs.
Head
Nervous headache, from abuse of narcotics. Blood rushes to head with delirium. Temporal vessels distended. Pain across root of tongue.
Face
Pale, waxen, emaciated. Eyes sunken, surrounded by dark rings. Bright red. Sweaty.
Epithelioma of lip. Cheeks hot and flushed. Aching in left jaw‑point.
Stomach
Salivation. Fermentation in stomach. Intense burning thirst. Cold drinks distress. Vomits after every kind of food.
Epi‑gastric tenderness. Burning pain as of an ulcer. Cancer of stomach.
Sour belching and vomiting. Burning water brash and profuse salivation. Hyperchlorhydria and gastralgia. Violent burning pain in stomach and chest, followed by coldness of skin and cold sweat on forehead. Stomach feels as if she had taken a lot of vinegar.
Abdomen
Feels as if abdomen was sinking in. Frequent watery stools, worse in morning. Tympanitic. Ascites. Hæmorrhage from bowels.
Urine
Large quantities of pale urine. Diabetes, with great thirst and debility (Phos ac ).
Female
Excessive catamenia. Haemorrhages after labor. Nausea of pregnancy. Breasts painfully enlarged, distended with milk. Milk impoverished, bluish, transparent, sour. Anæmia of nursing mothers.
Respiratory
Hoarse, hissing respiration; difficult breathing; cough when inhaling. Membranous croup. Irritation of trachea and bronchial tubes. False membrane in throat.
Profuse bronchorrhœa. Putrid sore throat (gargle).
Back
Pain in back, relieved only by lying on abdomen.
Extremities
Emaciation. Œdema of feet and legs.
Skin
Pale, waxen, œdematous. Burning, dry, hot skin, or bathed in profuse sweat. Diminished sensibility of the surface of body. Useful after stings, bites, etc. Varicose swellings. Scurvy; anasarca. Bruises; sprains.
Fever
Hectic, with drenching night‑sweats. Red spot on left cheek. No thirst in fever. Ebullitions. Sweat profuse, cold.
Relationship
Acetic acid is antidotal to all anæsthetic vapors. Counteracts sausage poisoning.
Compare
Ammon acet (Profuse saccharine urine, patient is bathed in sweat).
Benzoin oderiferum–Spice‑wood (night sweats). Ars; China; Digitalis; Liatris
(General anasarca in heart and kidney disease, dropsy, and chronic diarrhœa).
Dose
Third to thirtieth potency. Not to be repeated too often, except in croup.
Finding the correct remedy is such a complicated and subtle task that a patient who visited different homeopaths and who underwent different interviews would be likely to receive different remedies. In fact, the process of finding the correct remedy can vary so much that it has led to the emergence of distinct schools of homeopathy. For example, clinical homeopathy simplifies matters by focusing only on the patient’s main symptom and ignoring the more tangential aspects that would emerge during the usual homeopath’s interview. Similarly, combination homeopathy is interested only in the patient’s main symptom, but it relies on mixtures of different remedies that all share the ability to treat this one outstanding symptom. In other words, a patient with migraine would receive a homeopathic mixture of all the remedies that include headache as one of the symptoms that they cure. Another way to prescribe is according to the doctrine of signatures, which places less emphasis on the symptoms in the Materia Medica and instead looks for a clue, or signature, that indicates that a particular remedy is the one that should be adopted. Therefore a walnut‑based remedy would be appropriate for various mind‑related disorders, such as stress, because the walnut resembles a brain.
With so many approaches and so many possible remedies, some homeopaths employ specific and peculiar techniques for checking that they have found the appropriate treatment. This can include dowsing, whereby a pendulum is held above a shortlist of possible remedies. The direction of swinging should indicate the correct remedy, yet a scientific trial conducted in 2002 showed no evidence for the power of homeopathic dowsing. Six homeopaths were given twenty‑six pairs of bottles; one bottle in each pair contained Bryonia remedy and the other contained a placebo, and the challenge was to use dowsing to identify the genuine remedy. Although the homeopaths generally felt that they were selecting with a high degree of confidence, they were successful only 75 times out of 156 trials, which is a success rate of just under 50 per cent: roughly what one would expect from guesswork.
All this ritual–from extreme dilutions to vigorous shaking, from prolonged provings to dubious dowsing–is performed with the ultimate goal of trying to restore a patient’s vital force to its usual, healthy balance. Hahnemann proposed that this vital force, something akin to the spirit, permeated the body and entirely determined a person’s well‑being. Many modern homeopaths still believe in the crucial significance of the vital force, which in turn means that they tend to reject many of the principles of conventional medicine, such as the role of bacteria as agents of disease. For example, a homeopath would treat a patient with an ear problem by noting every single mental and physical symptom and then prescribing the most appropriate remedy according to the Materia Medica ; the goal would be to rebalance the patient’s vital force. By contrast, a conventional doctor would focus on the patient’s main symptoms, perhaps diagnose a bacterial ear infection and then prescribe antibiotics to kill the bacteria.
Not surprisingly, modern science struggles to accept homeopathy. After all, there is no logical reason why like should be guaranteed to cure like; there is no known mechanism that would allow such ultra‑weak dilutions (devoid of any ingredient) to impact on our body; and there is no evidence whatsoever to support the existence of a vital force. However, the sheer oddity of homeopathy’s philosophy and practice does not necessarily mean that this approach to medicine should be rejected, because the critical test is not how bizarre it is, but whether or not it is effective. This can best be decided via the ordeal of the clinical trial, that tried and trusted tool of evidence‑based medicine, which is capable of separating genuine medicine from quackery.
The rise and fall and rise of homeopathy
Homeopathy spread rapidly through Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century, so much so that Hahnemann’s philosophy became well established during his own lifetime. The idea that ‘like cures like’ and the belief that diseases were ‘derangements of the spirit‑like power that animates the human body’ sounded similar to some elements of the still highly respected Greek philosophy of medicine, so homeopathy was greeted with enthusiasm. Moreover, Hahnemann’s ideas were emerging before scientists had firmly established the germ theory of disease or the atomic theory of matter, so the vital force and ultra‑weak dilutions did not sound quite so strange as they do today.