Another liver remedy, for it has one very characteristic symptom, viz.: Aching and heaviness in the region of the liver, greatly aggravated by lying on the left side; turning to the left causes a dragging sensation. (See Bryonia, which is also < lying on left side and has the dragging sensation. Remember, Bryonia is generally > lying on painful side.) Magnesia mur., you will remember, has all these symptoms, termed "bilious," but like Mercurius, it is worse when lying on the right side. Then Mercurius is apt to have loose stools, while Magnesia mur. is greatly constipated. Ptelea may have either constipation or diarrhea, or, like Nux vomica, constipation and diarrhea alternately. I cured one bad case of liver trouble with Ptelea after edema of the feet and legs had set in; she had the symptoms, could not lie comfortably on the left side; her breathing was becoming oppressed, and I thought the case looked as if it would not be very likely to be much better. I used the 30th in this case. The trouble rapidly disappeared and never returned. I considered it a brilliant cure.
§ 1
The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed. ( 1) FN (1) His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by interweaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essential nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases originate in the interior of the organism, (whereon so many physicians have hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time); nor is it to attempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant - whilst sick humanity sighs in vain for aid. Of such learned reveries (to which the name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who call themsel...
