Everyone hates warts. They are unsightly, even disfiguring. They are caused by viruses that invade the outer layer of the skin causing keratin, a hard protein in the epidermis, to grow too fast. These hard, tough cells push up and out forming a wart. These viruses belong to the human papillomavirus family (HPV) and more than one hundred different ones have been identified.
The cure of warts is a mix of folklore, old wives tales and urban legend. Medical science has a number of treatments which include external applications such as salicylic acid and cantharidin. Some dermatologists apply liquid nitrogen to freeze the warts. They can also be burned out, lasered out or cut out.
A small girl, almost four years of age had three fairly good sized warts on her fingers. Her mother had taken her to two pediatric dermatologists and one regular dermatologist. Freezing had failed as well as injecting a blistering agent. They were advised she would need to have them surgically cut out when the mother brought her to me.
I was not surprised that the dermatologists’ treatments had failed. They were treating an internal disease, in this case a virus, with external treatments. Homeopaths are universally opposed to such treatments. The wart is the end result of the virus. The only way to treat a wart is to treat the cause. In homeopathy, we treat the patient, not the disease.
The fact her warts were all on her fingers was important as a number of homeopathic medicines are known to treat warts appearing on the fingers. She liked salty chips and was a kindly child. She shared with other children and liked to take care of her older brother and her baby sister. “She is very sweet to her baby sister who is three months old,” said her mother.
I took the following rubrics:
- Warts on fingers
- Desire for salt
- Sympathetic
The medicine was Causticum. She received a single dose and in the next thirty days the warts got smaller and smaller and disappeared, all cured from within.
How elegant! Rather than assailing the warts with crude chemicals from without, the body cured itself with a gentle nudge from Causticum taken by mouth.
Causticum is one of three homeopathic medicines that are famous for removing warts. The others are Thuja occidentalis and Nitric acid.
All the homeopathic books mention these medicines and many homeopaths give them in a routine sort of way. But that is NOT homeopathy. There are no specifics in homeopathy. As a result, those three medicines only sometimes remove warts.
Why is this? It is because we treat the disease THROUGH THE INVIDIVIDUAL. It is the individual who is producing the warts. Each individual is unique with unique characteristics and these characteristics have little to do with the wart. In the above case, the little girl’s extremely sympathetic nature plus her desire for salt and the location of the warts (fingers) pointed to Causticum which cured.
Let’s look at another person with warts who did not receive one of the three famous wart medicines.
A fourteen year old boy came to me in March, 2005, with warts on his fingers near his nails. Several years earlier, he had warts on the soles of his feet. They had been burned off by a dermatologist.
This is NOT the way to treat warts. They are NOT a local, external disease. Yes, they do appear on the exterior. Yes, they do localize on the skin. But, they can only be there because of the cooperation of the whole organism. Nothing occurs without the permission of the larger whole. The virus cannot take root and grow the wart unless conditions permit.
It’s a bit like growing orchids. They need the right soil, the right temperature and the right mixture of sun and shade. All factors together permit orchids to grow. Without these right conditions the orchids cannot grow.
And so it is with warts. If you burn them off, they will grow back either in that spot or elsewhere. Best to make the environment so strong and healthy that the virus that makes the wart cannot survive.
I discovered this teenager was hot-natured, i.e., he had good body heat and preferred cooler weather. He uncovered in bed at night. He regularly had a bowel movement immediately on rising in the morning.
He also described, “An empty sensation in the stomach.” It occurred daily around 11 a.m.
Now, that is striking! When I searched for that symptom in the Repertory, the leading medicine under the heading, “STOMACH, Emptiness, morning, 11 a.m.” is Sulphur. It happens that people who need Sulphur are warm-natured and prefer the cool and tend to have their bowel movement immediately or soon after rising.
Notice! I paid scant attention to the wart. Rather, I paid attention to what we homeopaths call “The Totality of the Symptoms.” These lead me to Sulphur which he received and the warts slowly receded and ceased growing in two to three months.
Four and a half years later, I saw him for another problem and learned the warts had never come back.