Counseling Sheet

Agatha M. Thrash, M.D.
Preventive Medicine

Copy of a letter sent to a person with trigeminal neuralgia:

I was sorry to hear about your trigeminal neuralgia. There are several things that I can recommend. The first is that you take a series of 15 hot baths such as the one described in our book Home Remedies on page 111. Briefly the treatment consists of sitting in a tub of hot water for 20 to 40 minutes. The bath temperature should be between 102 and 106° F. You should sponge your face almost continuously with cloths squeezed from cold water which you have prepared ahead of time. It is best to use about three trays of ice cubes with two or three washcloths dropped into them in a large bowl or small tub. You usually do not need to put water in the ice because the heat from your face transmitted to the cloths will melt the ice.

You can check your mouth temperature from time to time, and it need not go any higher than 102.5° F. If it reaches 101°, you have probably had a sufficient elevation to be effective. You can do the hot baths daily from Monday through Friday, and then you should leave them off for two days to allow the immune system to make a complete reaction. Then begin again the next Monday through Friday for two more weeks making a total of 15 treatments in all.

During the time you are taking the fever treatments it would be well if you took goldenseal and echinacea with licorice root tea. The way to prepare the tea is a heaping tablespoon of echinacea, a slightly rounded tablespoon of goldenseal powder, and a rounded tablespoon of licorice root powder simmered gently in one quart of water for 20 minutes. Strain and drink one cup of the tea four times daily, or you may take half a cup eight times daily. If the bitterness is extremely unpleasant to you, you may put one level teaspoon of soy milk powder in each cup of the tea which cuts the bitterness significantly.

Let me hear from you how the treatment has worked for you.