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Eel serum or Serum Anguillae Ichthyotoxin
Eel serum or Serum Anguillae Ichthyotoxin A . G. G. R O S S ,
M.B., CH.B., M.F.HOM.
Eel serum is one of our most neglected remedies. I t is not mentioned in K e n t or in Clarke's Materia Medica, but its toxic action is noted in the ninth edition of Boericke's Materia Medica, where it is stated that the serum destroys blood globules and has an elective action on the kidneys. The late Dr. Nels Bergman of Chicago used it in low potency in hypertension and kidney disease. 1 Dr. R. A. F. J a c k has a very complete paper in the BRITIS~ HOM(EOPATHIC JOURNAL,2 where he writes up thoroughly a case of severe hypertension treated with Spartium, and the constitutional homceopathic remedy which, in his case, happened to be Sulphur. Spartium scoparium (broom) has been a disappointing remedy in m y hands, as for t h a t m a t t e r has been Eel serum, perhaps because I had expected more of them, or because I missed the corresponding and suitable constitutional homceopathie remedy. When I first came across Spartium scoparium in Boericke, as one with some small but undeserved reputation of a gardener I asked the help of the Curator of the University Grounds to send me a dozen of the brooms in great v a r i e t y - red, white, purple, blue, and so forth. None of them did well, and those which have survived went back to the common chrome yellow colour, and they do not look too h a p p y in m y soil. I never had the time, ability, or knowledge, to make a potency from m y brooms, so I tend to neglect them as I do with the Eel serum, though the yellow brooms look lovely on the Old Course in the Spring. However, hypertension is such a universal problem t o d a y I thought t h a t I must make myself better acquainted with t h a t slippery customer, the eel. I t has occurred to me that, if the efficiency of Eel serum could be proved it might save the National Health Service a great deal of money in their expensive kidney machines. H o w to go about getting interest aroused in such an off-putting creature as the Eel is not easy, and there is little information. To begin with, what do I know about eels? I asked a fisherman, who said, "You can catch them with a bit of wool tied round a hook, for t h e y are terrified of choking, and they hate constriction; if you stand on the tail of a wriggling eel it will die". Two points which made me think at once of Lachesis, and, sure enough, the name Anguilla confirms t h a t the eel belongs to the snake family. Lachesis has been proved as a homceopathic medicine for patients hating constriction of any kind, and it is good for throat conditions. Also, Lachesis has been used for hypertension---see two cases reported b y Dr. A. Hennessy. 8 I n the same number, Dr. L. R. T w e n t y m a n ~ has a fine paper on Lachesis, where he points out the throat symptoms, the sensitivity of the throat to touch and constriction
228
THE
BRITISH
HOM(EOPATHIC
JOURI~AL
in any part of the body, and the spring and autumn aggravations in Lachesis types. My old friend and teacher Sir D'Arey Wentworth Thomson, Professor of Zoology at St. Andrews, once said: Nothing of itself is interesting, it's what we can weave around the subject t h a t makes it stick in the mind. Not his exact words, but the meaning is near enough. So now I will t r y to say something about the eel, a much more pleasant creature than his dangerous distant relative Lachesis, the bushmaster of Surukuku in South America. E v e n in the seventeenth century it was known that if an incision was made round the neck of an eel the skin could be pulled off complete like a stocking. Indeed, if this skin was dried in s~lt and stuffed with sawdust it made a very efficient whip. Samuel Pepys records in his Diary (entry 24/4/1663): "Up betimes, and with m y salt-eel went down into the parlor and there got m y boy, and did beat him until I was faine to take breathe two or three times". A disappointing side-light on Pepys, whom we are accustomed to think of as an amiable soul, only interested in ships and the ladies. I s a a k Walton wrote: "The fresh water Eel when dressed be excellent good, yet it is certain that physicians account it dangerous meat." This was because its favourite habitat in England was in sluggish streams and canals where sanitation was primitive. They have a life-style all their own, which was confirmed b y Schmidt in 1922. After spending five or six years in their rural retreats, all eels in this country (and from the shores of the Mediterranean) make the long journey to the Sargasso Sea in the Bermuda Triangle, where they spawn and die. Their m a n y eggs hatch into larvae, and thousands get eaten by other fish, but thousands survive, grow stronger and make the long leisurely journey--sometimes taking three years, back to the h a u n t s ' o f their parents. Now they are known as Elvers which grow into eels, who hang about until the cycle starts again, and they make the long journey back to the Sarg~sso Sea, and to their deaths. When enquiring about the life style of the eel someone said it was similar to t h a t of the salmon in Scotland, the king of fish. This is not so. As I have said, the eel has a unique life style of its own. The salmon returns after 5/6 years from the oceans of the world, to lay her eggs in some remote shingle where she was born, far up a Highland river. The male covers them with milt, sometime in December. The spawn are called alevin who become small f r y - then they grow to parr then smolt--taking two years. After about two years they travel to Greenland, where they live in the sea for five years. As grilse they return to the place of their birth if they are lucky, where they spawn. But here they do not die in orderly fashion like the eels in the Sargasso Sea. After the female salmon spawn, they are exhausted; now known as kelts, m a n y are found in poor condition on river banks, in a vain a t t e m p t to reach the all-embracing sea. Kelts are not good eating. Here a whimsical thought strikes me. Eels and salmon, and for that m a t t e r pigeons, have a strong homing instinct, if we homceopaths could discover what exactly causes this we might have a cure for home-sickness, more efficient than Capsicum or Tobacco! The eel on its sea journeys has 9 per cent. of fat under its skin, but in the sluggish lazy life in canals and rivers, about a quarter of the body weight is blubber fat. They were once about the only meat available to the poor, and the conger eel is the largest specimen of the eel family caught about the Channel Islands; congers grow to gigantic size.
EEL
SERUM
OR
S]~RUM
ANGUILLAE
ICHTHYOTOXIN
229
I n Alice in Wonderland, an old conger eel was "The Drawling master, who came once a week to teach Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in coils." I can remember a verse of an old Music Hall song about a young swell who died after an accident on his motor-bike (circa 1914). "There's a plate of jellied Eels upon the side-board, There's a glass of mild and bitter standing by. To-night there is a strangers' face in Heaven, And Gabriel wears a monocle in his eye!" My mother explained this was an awful warning about the lethal nature of this new machine, and the folly of wearing a monocle. The popular food eaten at funerals was always jellied eels! There is another eel which I have heard about, but do not know. This is Electropus electricus, the electric eel, which is a large South American eel, similar to the conger eel. I t seems curious to me that this eel, full of extraordinary electrical potential, has not been fully investigated by medical researchers, or indeed, why has the humble eel not been given its full due, to discover what it can do to help mankind? Homceopaths have done this with the cuttle fish, and Sepia, the product, is a medicine no homceopath could do without. Perhaps the broom and the eel could both be found of great medicinal value in essential hypertension, a complaint that modern living has made common, and which needs all the help we can muster if it is to be conquered. Some say practitioners would need to be psychologists, social workers, philosophers, and financial wizards to help patients with hypertension. We have to work with the tools available, and perhaps Eel serum is a remedy neglected, except by a few early homceopaths, and the common broom has medicinal values still to be explored? In m y experience, it is never good to tell a patient he or she has high blood pressure. Women can support it far better than can men. My own mother lived to be 84, and for the last ten years of her life she kept going on Crataegus, Strophanthus, and, occasionally, Adonis vernalis, when she was tight-chested. Neither Spartium or Eel serum had any effect on her, as far as I am aware. The bogey of high blood-pressure was not helped by some insurance Societies insisting that the diastolic pressure should be 100 plus your age; one can go far wrong with statistics, and high blood pressures are not always dangerous, unless there is valve insufficiency and kidney failure.
REFERENCES Gladish, D. G. Eel's serum or serum Anguillae ichthyotoxin (letter). J. Am. Inst. Horn., Nov.-Dec. 1960, reprinted in Br. Horn. J. 1961; 50: 132. '~Jack, R. A. F. Severe hypertension treated with Spartium and the constitutional homceopathic remedy. Br. Horn. J. 1979; 68: 39-50. Hennessy, A. Three Lachesis cases. Br. Horn. J. 1975; 64: 19-21. 4 Twentyman, L. R. Lachesis. Br. Horn. J. 1975; 64: 22-28.
M.B., CH.B., M.F.HOM.
Eel serum is one of our most neglected remedies. I t is not mentioned in K e n t or in Clarke's Materia Medica, but its toxic action is noted in the ninth edition of Boericke's Materia Medica, where it is stated that the serum destroys blood globules and has an elective action on the kidneys. The late Dr. Nels Bergman of Chicago used it in low potency in hypertension and kidney disease. 1 Dr. R. A. F. J a c k has a very complete paper in the BRITIS~ HOM(EOPATHIC JOURNAL,2 where he writes up thoroughly a case of severe hypertension treated with Spartium, and the constitutional homceopathic remedy which, in his case, happened to be Sulphur. Spartium scoparium (broom) has been a disappointing remedy in m y hands, as for t h a t m a t t e r has been Eel serum, perhaps because I had expected more of them, or because I missed the corresponding and suitable constitutional homceopathie remedy. When I first came across Spartium scoparium in Boericke, as one with some small but undeserved reputation of a gardener I asked the help of the Curator of the University Grounds to send me a dozen of the brooms in great v a r i e t y - red, white, purple, blue, and so forth. None of them did well, and those which have survived went back to the common chrome yellow colour, and they do not look too h a p p y in m y soil. I never had the time, ability, or knowledge, to make a potency from m y brooms, so I tend to neglect them as I do with the Eel serum, though the yellow brooms look lovely on the Old Course in the Spring. However, hypertension is such a universal problem t o d a y I thought t h a t I must make myself better acquainted with t h a t slippery customer, the eel. I t has occurred to me that, if the efficiency of Eel serum could be proved it might save the National Health Service a great deal of money in their expensive kidney machines. H o w to go about getting interest aroused in such an off-putting creature as the Eel is not easy, and there is little information. To begin with, what do I know about eels? I asked a fisherman, who said, "You can catch them with a bit of wool tied round a hook, for t h e y are terrified of choking, and they hate constriction; if you stand on the tail of a wriggling eel it will die". Two points which made me think at once of Lachesis, and, sure enough, the name Anguilla confirms t h a t the eel belongs to the snake family. Lachesis has been proved as a homceopathic medicine for patients hating constriction of any kind, and it is good for throat conditions. Also, Lachesis has been used for hypertension---see two cases reported b y Dr. A. Hennessy. 8 I n the same number, Dr. L. R. T w e n t y m a n ~ has a fine paper on Lachesis, where he points out the throat symptoms, the sensitivity of the throat to touch and constriction
228
THE
BRITISH
HOM(EOPATHIC
JOURI~AL
in any part of the body, and the spring and autumn aggravations in Lachesis types. My old friend and teacher Sir D'Arey Wentworth Thomson, Professor of Zoology at St. Andrews, once said: Nothing of itself is interesting, it's what we can weave around the subject t h a t makes it stick in the mind. Not his exact words, but the meaning is near enough. So now I will t r y to say something about the eel, a much more pleasant creature than his dangerous distant relative Lachesis, the bushmaster of Surukuku in South America. E v e n in the seventeenth century it was known that if an incision was made round the neck of an eel the skin could be pulled off complete like a stocking. Indeed, if this skin was dried in s~lt and stuffed with sawdust it made a very efficient whip. Samuel Pepys records in his Diary (entry 24/4/1663): "Up betimes, and with m y salt-eel went down into the parlor and there got m y boy, and did beat him until I was faine to take breathe two or three times". A disappointing side-light on Pepys, whom we are accustomed to think of as an amiable soul, only interested in ships and the ladies. I s a a k Walton wrote: "The fresh water Eel when dressed be excellent good, yet it is certain that physicians account it dangerous meat." This was because its favourite habitat in England was in sluggish streams and canals where sanitation was primitive. They have a life-style all their own, which was confirmed b y Schmidt in 1922. After spending five or six years in their rural retreats, all eels in this country (and from the shores of the Mediterranean) make the long journey to the Sargasso Sea in the Bermuda Triangle, where they spawn and die. Their m a n y eggs hatch into larvae, and thousands get eaten by other fish, but thousands survive, grow stronger and make the long leisurely journey--sometimes taking three years, back to the h a u n t s ' o f their parents. Now they are known as Elvers which grow into eels, who hang about until the cycle starts again, and they make the long journey back to the Sarg~sso Sea, and to their deaths. When enquiring about the life style of the eel someone said it was similar to t h a t of the salmon in Scotland, the king of fish. This is not so. As I have said, the eel has a unique life style of its own. The salmon returns after 5/6 years from the oceans of the world, to lay her eggs in some remote shingle where she was born, far up a Highland river. The male covers them with milt, sometime in December. The spawn are called alevin who become small f r y - then they grow to parr then smolt--taking two years. After about two years they travel to Greenland, where they live in the sea for five years. As grilse they return to the place of their birth if they are lucky, where they spawn. But here they do not die in orderly fashion like the eels in the Sargasso Sea. After the female salmon spawn, they are exhausted; now known as kelts, m a n y are found in poor condition on river banks, in a vain a t t e m p t to reach the all-embracing sea. Kelts are not good eating. Here a whimsical thought strikes me. Eels and salmon, and for that m a t t e r pigeons, have a strong homing instinct, if we homceopaths could discover what exactly causes this we might have a cure for home-sickness, more efficient than Capsicum or Tobacco! The eel on its sea journeys has 9 per cent. of fat under its skin, but in the sluggish lazy life in canals and rivers, about a quarter of the body weight is blubber fat. They were once about the only meat available to the poor, and the conger eel is the largest specimen of the eel family caught about the Channel Islands; congers grow to gigantic size.
EEL
SERUM
OR
S]~RUM
ANGUILLAE
ICHTHYOTOXIN
229
I n Alice in Wonderland, an old conger eel was "The Drawling master, who came once a week to teach Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in coils." I can remember a verse of an old Music Hall song about a young swell who died after an accident on his motor-bike (circa 1914). "There's a plate of jellied Eels upon the side-board, There's a glass of mild and bitter standing by. To-night there is a strangers' face in Heaven, And Gabriel wears a monocle in his eye!" My mother explained this was an awful warning about the lethal nature of this new machine, and the folly of wearing a monocle. The popular food eaten at funerals was always jellied eels! There is another eel which I have heard about, but do not know. This is Electropus electricus, the electric eel, which is a large South American eel, similar to the conger eel. I t seems curious to me that this eel, full of extraordinary electrical potential, has not been fully investigated by medical researchers, or indeed, why has the humble eel not been given its full due, to discover what it can do to help mankind? Homceopaths have done this with the cuttle fish, and Sepia, the product, is a medicine no homceopath could do without. Perhaps the broom and the eel could both be found of great medicinal value in essential hypertension, a complaint that modern living has made common, and which needs all the help we can muster if it is to be conquered. Some say practitioners would need to be psychologists, social workers, philosophers, and financial wizards to help patients with hypertension. We have to work with the tools available, and perhaps Eel serum is a remedy neglected, except by a few early homceopaths, and the common broom has medicinal values still to be explored? In m y experience, it is never good to tell a patient he or she has high blood pressure. Women can support it far better than can men. My own mother lived to be 84, and for the last ten years of her life she kept going on Crataegus, Strophanthus, and, occasionally, Adonis vernalis, when she was tight-chested. Neither Spartium or Eel serum had any effect on her, as far as I am aware. The bogey of high blood-pressure was not helped by some insurance Societies insisting that the diastolic pressure should be 100 plus your age; one can go far wrong with statistics, and high blood pressures are not always dangerous, unless there is valve insufficiency and kidney failure.
REFERENCES Gladish, D. G. Eel's serum or serum Anguillae ichthyotoxin (letter). J. Am. Inst. Horn., Nov.-Dec. 1960, reprinted in Br. Horn. J. 1961; 50: 132. '~Jack, R. A. F. Severe hypertension treated with Spartium and the constitutional homceopathic remedy. Br. Horn. J. 1979; 68: 39-50. Hennessy, A. Three Lachesis cases. Br. Horn. J. 1975; 64: 19-21. 4 Twentyman, L. R. Lachesis. Br. Horn. J. 1975; 64: 22-28.