Preface to the 1st English Edition

Therapy using local anesthetics occupies an ever more important place amongst alternative methods in medicine. The President of the American Society of Anesthetists, Professor J. J. Bonica, has stated that the nerve block as a diagnostic, prognostic, prophylactic, and therapeutic method has been received with ever-increasing interest in the USA and has been employed ever more frequently in recent years. He has expressed the view that the nerve block used as a specific therapy may well be the best clinical means to treat illness. But the “nerve block used as a specific therapy” is precisely what the Huneke brothers of Germany introduced into medicine in 1928. They called it “neural therapy.” That this is not generally known in the USA is less remarkable than the fact that even in the Germanspeaking parts of the world few people are aware that the use of local anesthetics for therapeutic purposes, which is far more widespread in these countries, goes back to the Huneke brothers. As long ago as 1925, the great French surgeon, Leriche, whose specialty was surgery of the sympathetic chain, observed healing reactions produced by local anesthetics administered before the operation and praised procaine as the “surgeon’s bloodless knife,” the use of which sometimes made surgery necessary. But these experiences were allowed to be forgotten. In Russia, the observations made by Spiess on the anti-inflammatory effects of local anesthetics were investigated more closely. There, pupils of Pavlov, such as Speransky, Vishnevski, Bykow, Wedenski, and others, confirmed that it is possible to influence the regulating mechanisms of the neurovegetative system by means of procaine. These discoveries prompted Speransky to construct A Basis for the Theory of Medicine, which he published after emigrating to the USA in 1936. For a time his work remained controversial, but today it is again receiving recognition. Before him, Ricker had attempted to provide a theoretical basis for all vital processes, including the phenomena of neural therapy, in his Pathology as a Science; Pathological Relationships. Later, Wiener’s teachings on biocybernetics and Pischinger’s observations on the basic neurovegetative system provided new viewpoints to explain these phenomena of healing. The Huneke brothers discovered the therapeutic potential of procaine by empirical means and independently of their predecessors. They recognized the importance of their discovery and expanded their systematic observations into a method that has now established itself particularly in continental Europe and in South America. Because it is so successful and has such a wide therapeutic spectrum, it has been received with special enthusiasm by the general medical practitioner, who inevitably finds him or herself standing in the firing line. Neural therapy does not regard itself as a substitute for scientific medicine as taught at medical schools, but as complementary to it. This is especially the case where mainly functional disturbances are involved, whose interacting cause–effect relationships cannot be accurately determined because they result from cybernetic regulatory dysfunctions. Fleckenstein proved that procaine also possesses an unusual feature apart from its well-known effectiveness as a local anesthetic. The cell, which has been depolarized by endogenous and exogenous stimuli, is able, under the protection afforded by procaine, to reseal the cell membrane that has become permeable. The potassium-sodium pump is thus enabled to displace the sodium that has penetrated into the cell and to replace this again with potassium. By this means, the physiological potential of –60mV to –90mV needed by the cell in order to function normally is built up again. This enables us, with the use of local anesthetics such as procaine or lidocaine, to repolarize depolarized cells and thus to reactivate them in their functions, cells that would otherwise be incapable of repolarizing themselves from their own resources. From this it will be obvious that successful treatment by these injections depends on the correct positioning of the local anesthetic and on the use of a special technique in administering it. The technique of using accurately sited injections in the area where the symptoms occur is known as “segmental therapy.” There are four methods that produce a segmental effect with the use of local anesthetics: 1. Injection directly to the site of pain. The accurately sited injection of procaine or lidocaine is effective as much in treating painful conditions in the muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and nerves as it is for contusion, hematomas, abrasions, painful scars, and traumatic damage of any type. 2. Acting on painful areas by means of paravertebral injections in the relevant segment. 3. Neural-therapeutic treatment by direct injection to the sympathetic chain and its ganglia, i.e., the stellate, ciliary, pterygopalatine and/or the Gasserian Thieme-Verlag Frau Langner Sommer-Druck Feuchtwangen Dosch Manual of Neural Therapy WN 024034/01/02 TN 140602 16.8.2007 Titelei