Ferrum Phosphoricum

" ONE of the organic tissue-salts introduced by Schuessler . Needs proving. Prepared by trituration. Good results with the tooth potency have been obtained." ( Hering , Guiding Symptoms).

About the year 1875, Schuessler , a homoeopathic doctor, introduced his twelve Tissue Salts, or Bio-chemical Remedies. Two of the twelve, Silica and Natrum muriaticum, were old homoeopathic drugs, previously proved and given to the world many years earlier by Hahnemann . Of the rest, some have since been proved (on the healthy) or partially proved ; and, as we know, by experience, many of them are invaluable.

Schuessler , looking upon them as tissue foods, gave them in the lower potencies (6x usually) and seems to have fed them in at frequent intervals. But, where they are homoeopathic to the condition we desire to cure, i.e., where they provoke and cure identical symptoms, the higher and highest potencies give as good, or even better results. For instance, his magnificent Magnesia phos., acts like a charm in the C.M. potency in a dysmenorrhoea of like symptoms ; sometimes a single dose has ended the trouble. Its sphere, here, is the agonizing, crampy pains that cause the victim to double up (Coloc.) . and to hug a very hot water-bottle. We are told that it is to their Mag. phos., that such remedies as Coloc., Viburn., Bell., etc., owe their griping, abdominal pains. And yet, practically, one will not do for the other !

Schuessler discarded all but the actual salts in their tissue-combination ; he even discarded later, Calc. sulph., believing that Calc. does not appear thus in the tissues. But vitality has a way of breaking down and building up for itself, and by no means requires that its wants shall be supplied in the exact form, in which they are to be utilized. He passed by that most precious of remedies, Calc. carb. and substituted Calc. phos., but — the wide difference in their symptoms ! The soft, lethargic Calc. carb. baby, with sweating head, sourness, " plus tissue of minus quality " very where — even in bones, is utterly distinct from Calc. phos., equally valuable in its place, but no substitute for the either : the Calc. phos. baby is often emaciated and generally dark ; more wiry ; and the sweating head, so characteristic of rickets, is absent. For precise work — alas ! neither will do for the other.

And chemical and life-processes, as Hahnemann showed, are by no means identical.

Another point : — to feed in your drugs upon a hypothesis is one thing, and may advantage the patient. Whereas, to stimulate the organism to take what it needs from ordinary foods by which the want can, and should be supplied, is surely a far higher aim.

The stimulative dose of Calc. carb. when symptoms agree, will cause the babe to supply its calcium-need from milk — provided the vitality of the milk has not been destroyed by modern methods ; just as the infinitesimal dose of Natrum mur. (potentized salt) will stimulate an (e.g. asthma patient — we have seen it) — to take the salt he craves and starves for, from the usual food sources that supply ordinary mortals, and so end, with his asthma, his inordinate appetite for salt.

Science means knowledge. But the science of any day is never ultimate knowledge, and is apt to be pushed off the board by the science of to-morrow. And always we admire and extol it ; yet, looking back, the science of many days seems to have been but a see-saw of sense and folly.

For instance, to safeguard milk from being a possible vehicle of contagion, it has to be " sterilized " — " pasteurized ", till the poor babes fed thereon, semi-starved of its more occult yet indispensable ingredients, lack the power of resistance to those very disease-organisms from which we have striven to protect them.

Then "science advances," and decrees orange juice, lemon juice, or the " cheap raw juice of swedes " — never intended for the up-building of infants — to be added. Again, babes are brought to us, fed on bone-marrow ; on dried milk ; on peptonized milk ; on predigested foods, considered by the experimental, boastful, advertising chemist as proper substitutes for mother's milk, often to the inhibition of necessary gland-activity.

Then science, advancing still further, discovers VITAMINS (mark you ! always present in normal foods and in proper quantities, since the dawn of creation, and available for all except the children of civilization). These " vitamins " being destroyed in drying and sterilizing preparations, it now becomes necessary to supply them artificially : and (the next problem) not to over-supply them, as science is already discovering in regard to " Vitamin D ".

Natural foods contain, in requisite proportions, the elements from which we may draw health and life. Clever, clever scientists ! — when the chemistry of life in its perfection has been in operation since man strode the earth and women nursed their babies ; and is still in operation, unless interfered with by ephemeral " science ". And infants have lived delightfully, and flourished exceedingly, and grown into the robust men and women ; whose descendants we are.

Knowledge is proud because she knows so much.

Wisdom is humble, that she knows no more.

One thinks of the old home life ; the fat, happy, rosy babies ; away in the country, because town-life--and in these days, flat life — is not good enough for children : — The selected cow, whose unboiled milk reared them ; the rushing and exciting games in garden and woods ; the discipline of contact, of the clash of wills and tempers that bred self-control, and provided such ideal training to meet the trials and troubles of the wider life later.

The tissue-salts one knows best (besides the aforesaid Natrum mur. and Silica), are four in number, and curiously enough, the phosphates : Calc. phos. as said ; Ferrum phos. for somewhat nondescript acute inflammations in their early stage — colds, pneumonias — which lack the well-defined indication that would call for Acon., Bry., Phos., etc. ; Mag. phos. for the terrible nerve pains, where previously we had only Spigelia, Coloc., etc. ; but with the very definite Mag. phos. cry for pressure and heat ; Natrum phos., so useful in acid-muscle conditions, whether from fatigue (Arn.) or sickness, as in the " growing pains " of small children, indefinite and disregarded often, but ominous where there is with them a small rise of temperature, and perhaps the suggestion of a blowing heart-murmur.

To these many doctors would add Kali phos. But this last, for some or no reason, not having taken much hold on one's imagination, and never having become an intuition, it may be well, later on, to Drug-Picture it : — a grand means of grasping the real inwardness of a remedy, and learning its uses.

Well, now — to revert to our subject — Ferrum Phos.

Here is Schuessler's Theory in regard to it. He says in his last Edition (quoted by Clarke in his Dictionary) : " Iron and its salts possess the property of attracting oxygen. The iron contained in the blood corpuscles takes up the inhaled oxygen, thereby supplying it to all the tissues of the organism. The sulphur contained in the blood corpuscles and in other cells, in the form of sulphate of potassa, assists in transferring oxygen to the cells containing iron and sulphate of potassa. When the molecules of iron contained in the muscle-cells have suffered a disturbance in their motion through some foreign irritation, the cells affected grow flaccid.

If this affection takes place in the annular fibres of the blood-vessels, these are dilated ; and as a consequence the blood contained in them is augmented. Such a state is called hyperaemia from irritation ; such a hyperaemia forms the first stage of inflammation. But when the cells affected have been brought back to the normal state by the therapeutic effect of iron (Phosphate of Iron), then the cells are enabled to cast off the causative agents of this hyperaemia, which are then received by the lymphatics in order that they may be eliminated from the organism." Again, " When the muscular cells of the intestinal villi have lost molecules of iron, then these villi become unable to perform their functions ; diarrhoea ensues." And, once again, " When the muscular cells of the intestinal walls have lost molecules of iron, then the peristaltic motion of the intestinal canal is retarded, resulting in an inertia, with respect to the evacuation of faeces." . . .

" When the muscular cells which have grown flaccid through loss of iron receive a compensation for their loss, the normal tensional relation is restored ; the annular fibres of the blood vessels are shortened to their proper measure, the capacity of these vessels again becomes normal, and the hyperaemia disappears, and in consequence the inflammatory fever ceases."

Schuessler says " Iron will cure :

" The first stage of all inflammations.

" Pains -and haemorrhages caused by hyperaemia.

" Fresh wounds, contusions, sprains, etc., as it removes the hyperaemia.

" The pains which correspond to iron are increased by motion, but relieved by cold." (No ! Ferrum is better for gentle motion.)

Schuessler recommended trituration and dilutions from the 6x to the 12x. As said, his idea seems to have been to feed in the drug, probably in a potency in which it could be utilized. But, for the more subtle purposes of stimulation, the higher potencies, in less frequent repetition may do even more brilliant work.

So much for theory : now for the practical experiences of successful prescribers.

Nash has a page of appreciation for Ferrum phos. We will glean.

A valuable remedy in some inflammatory diseases.

In keeping with its element of iron, it presents the local congestive tendencies of that remedy ; in its Phosphorus element its affinity for lungs and stomach ; and in its combination proves a great hemorrhagic remedy.

The hemorrhages are of bright blood, and may come from any outlet of the body.

He also says, further provings and clinical use will enable us to employ it more scientifically than now.

So far as he has observed, it is less adapted to the full-blooded, sanguine arterial subjects, with an over-plus of red blood that Aconite cures, but rather to the pale and anemic, who are subject to sudden and violent congestions and inflammations, like pneumonia, or sudden congestion to head, bowels, etc., or to inflammatory affections of a rheumatic character. It is only useful in the first stage of such attacks, before the stage of exudation appears. . . . In dysentery, in the first stage with good deal of blood in the discharges it is valuable and often cures in a very short time.

" A very valuable remedy ; and ought to receive a thoroughly Hahnemannian proving."

Boger (Synopsis) :