A Specific Indication for Baptisia.

F. C. HANEY, M. D., MILWAUKEE, WIS.

Your article on baptisia in the August number brought to my mind the following fact which I have proven.

The homeopaths say among other things of baptisia that the indications are: "Difficult respiration, the lungs feel compressed, is obliged to rise on account of fear of going to sleep lest he suffocate."

During the past winter I had a case of influenza. On the second or third day the patient complained that the medicine she was taking was undoubtedly too strong, as she experienced a sinking feeling when about to go to sleep and therefore had propped herself up in bed to keep awake as she was afraid that she would suffocate. Some time prior to this I had read the homeopathic indications for baptisia and fortunately they left a strong impression, perhaps due to the fact that I could find nothing similar in any eclectic books.

I added 15 drops of specific baptisia to the same remedies given before in order to see the result. On the next day the patient said she passed a good night, slept well and the sensations complained of were entirely gone; the baptisia was continued for some time with no return of these symptoms.

This may be "old" to most of your readers, but as I have found nothing like it in our literature I thought it might be of some little value, and would like to know whether any more doctors had the same experience, with this remedy.

I always await your journal with interest, and any new facts are noted on margins of my materia medica, so that it will soon look like a proof to be returned to the printer— but the looks don't count with me, it's what's contained between the covers that counts.

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