by James Tyler Kent
Emergencies – End-of-life care
I am often asked what can be done in cases of great suffering to provide the patient with immediate relief. The homeopathic remedy, provided someone knows how to prescribe it, is all that is needed to diminish the worst suffering. Every true homeopath knows the value of these wonderful medicines.
However, some points should be observed:
When the hectic fever that rapidly consumes the patient strikes with full force; with hot skin in the afternoon, night sweats, constant burning thirst, a red spot on the cheek, diarrhoea, stools passed during coughing, high fever post meridiem; with chest constriction, fits of suffocation; then Phosphorus should be given in a very high potency, but never repeated. An aggravation will follow, yet one must not interfere, for this passes quickly, relieves the patient of the fever and allows the patient to die far more easily. If, regrettably, one intervenes, this causes the dying person great torment.
The distressing fits of suffocation and the internal suffering of the chest and stomach, the profuse sweating, the rapid wasting, the desire to remove all clothing from the neck, chest and abdomen, the sickly expression and choking call for Lachesis and this is given as often as required, though not in a potency stronger than C-200, to obtain rapid relief and satisfactory results.
But if, in addition to this dreadful state, he is covered in cold sweat and someone is fanning him with fresh air at each side of the bed, his abdomen distended and his breath cold, Carbo vegetabilis dissolved in water over six hours, one dose each hour, will bring rest and bliss combined with great gratitude.
Yet there comes a time when even these remedies can no longer help us.
This dreadful condition has not changed, but in addition we have the pains caused by the dying cells – death pains, the suffering of the end stage. These pains begin with the onset of the dying process. If they are localised in the abdomen, we can avert them, depending on the rest of the symptom picture, with Arsenicum or Secale; but if the pain occurs in the final stage of the consumptive changes, we need another remedy.
Late on Tarentula cubensis appears. It relieves the complaints of a dying person like no other remedy. I have seen Arsenicum, Carbo vegetabilis, Lycopodium and Lachesis act quickly and gently in the last hours of dreadful agony, but Tarentula cubensis goes beyond them. Recently I have always prescribed it in the 30th centesimal potency. When death is inevitable and the remedies mentioned above seem most indicated but no longer act and his friends say, "Doctor, can't you do something for this terrible suffering?"; for pain, rattling in the chest, when he is too weak to expectorate, and the patient still has some hours to suffer, he can be helped within a few minutes with Tarentula C-30 just as well as with dreadful morphine.
I am convinced that no doctor would use a narcotic (such as morphine) if he only knew a better way.
Is there anything more inhuman than leaving the suffering patient, surrounded by weeping friends, in the last hours of his agony? The true doctor will seize the opportunity at that moment to demonstrate his skills.
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