On Fistula and its Radical Cure by Medicines

Dr. James Compton Burnett was born on July 10, 1840 and died on April 2, 1901. He studied Medicine in Vienna and received his M.D. from Glasgow in 1872. As a brilliant anatomist and pathologist his dedication to the principles that Hahnemann had set forth were obvious in all of his writings. He was one of the groups (Burnett, Cooper, and J. H Clarke) that met regularly to discuss homeopathy and his observations were well noted in Clarke three Volume Dictionary of Materia Medica. Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. Along with other nosodes, he introduced the remedy Baccillinum. His famous publications are - "Gout & its Cure", "Curability of Cataract with Medicine","Vaccinosis" etc.

During the past fifteen years a considerable number of cases of diseases of the anal and intercrural regions have been under my professional care, notably cases of haemorrhoids and varicocele; and intercurrently with these not a few cases of fistula have come under my observation. At first I did not quite believe it possible to cure fistula with medicines alone without any operation or topical applications, for I had been taught that to cure a fistula you must need to operate upon it. So you will not find anything about fistula in works on Medicine. I pulled down a dozen master works at random from my shelves, Kafka, Grauvogl, Kissel, Guttceit, Rademacher, and the like and found either nothing at all, or passing reference to fistula merely. Fistula belongs to the surgeons. But I had also been taught that piles cannot be cured without operation and as I found this teaching false and untrue (having myself cured numbers of such cases with homoeopathic treatment alone). I set about the treatment of fistula also with medicines, and frequently succeeded in my task, mostly with the help of the experience of eminent homoeopathic physicians, whose written testimony any inquirer may find for himself on reference to the literature of the homoeopathic school. With the lapse of time my own experience has grown, and I have found that not only haemorrhoids, but also fistula can be genuinely and radically cured with medicines alone, a knowledge of homoeopathy, a little patience, and diagnostic skill being given.

It is unfortunate for the progress and extension of Scientific Medicines, and by Scientific Medicine I mean no more and no less; than Homoeopathy it is unfortunate, I say, that our surgeons are so clever with their hands, for they do their work for the most part so well, so neatly, so painlessly, that medical men have come to rely more and more upon the knife, to the almost total exclusion of the more gentle, more humane, and more rational treatment with medicines.

The medical profession at large condemn homoeopathy, they know nothing about it. There was a time when I also condemned it, I also then knew nothing about it but now, having studied it and practised it, my contempt has given place to humble-minded thankfulness and I maintain that homoeopathy, real scientific homoeopathy, is the most mighty weapon against any disease known to mankind. It is in the hope that other may share this knowledge that I send these pages to the press.

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