Morgan Bach — Homeopathic Remedy Profile

Morgan Bach is a bowel nosode, prepared from the intestinal organism Proteus morgani and introduced into homeopathic practice by Edward Bach, then developed clinically by John Paterson. It exists only as a dynamic preparation, from 30C through the very high potencies Griggs used, and its single keynote is congestion: of the skin surface, of the liver and gastric mucosa, of the bronchial tree, of the pelvic and peripheral circulation. Where an indicated remedy stalls, especially in old bronchial and skin cases, Morgan Bach often clears the ground.

At a Glance

Source and Preparation

Morgan Bach is one of the intestinal-flora nosodes worked out in the British bowel-nosode school. Two sub-types are recognized in practice. Morgan Pure runs close to Sulphur and does its strongest work on the skin. Morgan Gaertner runs closer to Lycopodium and takes up cholecystitis and adrenal colic. Both are prescribed only as dynamic preparations. Because no crude substance is administered, dose-based cautions do not apply here. The range runs from 30C upward; Griggs, cited by Murphy, worked as high as 100,000C in asthmatic children. What acts is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality of the case.

The Essence: Congestion

Murphy names congestion the keynote and returns to it in almost every paragraph of the entry. The blood pools where it stands. The skin flushes and thickens. The gastric mucosa swells and sours. The bronchi choke on their own secretions. The pelvic organs settle into passive fullness. The lower limbs go blue at the ankle. What links the picture is not a lesion but a tendency of the whole organism to stagnate at its surfaces and its hollow organs, and to do so repeatedly, seasonally, in the same subject year after year.

Constitutionally the patient is red, coarse and blotchy. Introspective. Anxious about health in a way that circles back on itself and produces the very fatigue that reads as new illness. Tense, active, easily excited; irritable and prone to weeping. Fear of impending disease. Agoraphobia in crowds and anxiety when left alone. Murphy notes, at the extreme end, the suicidal disposition "by jumping." Not a cheerful constitution. The picture is closer to Sulphur exteriorized, with the same heat, the same aggravation from warmth, the same appetite at 11 a.m. In Morgan Bach the surface is always giving way somewhere.

Clinical Portrait

Mind and temperament

The state fluctuates between apprehension and irritability. The patient is tense and active. Fears the unknown, the dark, the sense that something bad will happen. Claustrophobia and agoraphobia coexist; the crowd is dangerous, and so is the empty room. Weeping, tearful, despondent. Where the depression deepens it can take a suicidal turn, and Murphy specifies the mode: jumping from height. The health-anxiety is watchful rather than dramatic. The patient will consult on the same catarrh or the same eruption for years, tracking it season by season.

Face and skin

The face carries the constitution. Acne rosacea. Erysipelas. Eczema on chin and forehead and in the ear passages. Cracks and eruption behind the ears. The eruption is pustular, weeping, scalding, very itchy, worse from heat and from wool, sensitive to sun. Behind the presenting patch there is usually more: eruption on the margins of the scalp, pustular, itchy, scaling; hair falling; complete alopecia in the old cases. Callosities. Chilblains. Herpes zoster. Cracked heels with thickened, fissured skin on the soles. When the source calls the skin "tremendous thickening and congestions… with deep cracks," it is describing an appearance every practitioner recognizes the moment they see it.

Head and headaches

The Morgan Bach headache is congestive, with a flushed face. Frontal, occipital, or on the vertex. Weekly sick headache. Bilious in origin more often than not, and worse for hot atmosphere, for thunderstorm weather, for excitement, for travelling in bus or train. Paterson leaned on it for the migraine that comes with the liver picture and clears on a large vomit of bile-stained mucus. The scalp is sensitive; the hair loosens; the whole surface of the head participates.

Stomach, liver and gallbladder

The morning picture is unmistakable. Dirty tongue on rising. Bitter taste. Mucus accumulated at the back of the throat so that gagging begins as the patient sits up. No appetite before mid-morning. Then, near 11 a.m., a sinking feeling in the epigastrium relieved by eating. Recurrent bouts of indigestion with vomiting of mucus and occasionally blood, without ulceration. Water brash and heartburn. Sour, acid, bitter mouthfuls. Duodenal and peptic ulcer. Behind it sits the liver: bilious attacks with severe headache, relieved by vomiting large quantities of bile-stained mucus; gallstones; attacks of jaundice; a tender epigastrium and both hypochondria. In menopausal women these bilious attacks often join the hot flashes and the headache into a single distinct picture, and Morgan Gaertner, the Lycopodium-side sub-type, is often the remedy when the well-selected medicine has stalled.

Bowel and rectum

Constipation alternating with a loose morning stool, urgent, sometimes passed immediately after food. Hemorrhoids, bleeding, itching or painful, and anal fissures. The stool may be pasty, foul, streaked with blood and mucus. The triad of gallbladder congestion, constipation and hemorrhoids sits at the centre of Murphy's summary of the remedy; where all three run together in the same patient the nosode is thought of before any of the local remedies.

Chest, lungs and asthma

The chest work is what carried Morgan Bach into wider use. Sargunar, cited by Murphy, treated 5,300 cases and reported that the nosode relieved the attacks of bronchial asthma as quickly as Adrenalin. Griggs used it from 200C to 100,000C in asthmatic children after Nat-sulph, Arsenicum album and the standard asthma remedies had failed completely. The clinical field is broader than asthma alone: broncho-pneumonia where the indicated remedy fails to act, bronchitis returning each winter, morning cough dry then loose and sticky, suffocative attacks, emphysema, congestion of nasal and bronchial mucous membranes in children with a history of pneumonia and never well since. When Sulphur or Nat-sulph has done its work and something residual will not clear, Morgan Bach is the classical next thought.

Circulation

Varicose veins and varicose ulcer. Phlebitis. Cerebral thrombosis. High blood pressure. Sluggish circulation, easy bruising, vertigo out of the raised pressure. In the limbs: blueness, chilblains, hot feet, offensive foot sweat, tingling, numbness. The surface hyperemia is close to Sulphur; the deep internal venous stasis is nearer Graphites and Hamamelis in territory, and Morgan Bach spans both.

Female sphere

Pelvic congestion. Dysmenorrhea. Menorrhagia and metrorrhagia. Uterine fibroids. Leucorrhea that is corrosive and offensive, brown, green or yellow. Bartholinitis. Pruritus of the vulva and vagina. Pain on intercourse. At menopause the hot flashes, the congestive headache and the bilious attack often appear together and answer to the nosode as a single case rather than three complaints.

Sleep, throat and elsewhere

Insomnia, light and restless. Throat parched, dry, burning, granular, with the "apple-core" sensation and easy choking. Recurring tonsillitis with cheesy pieces. Thyroid enlarged. Ears: catarrhal deafness, boils on the meatus, Meniere's. Eyes: granular lids, styes, tarsal cysts, iritis, spots before the eyes. Bones and joints: osteoporosis, growing pains in children, rheumatoid changes at wrists and thumbs, stiff swollen finger joints worse on beginning to move, better with continued motion.

Modalities

Worse: heat; hot atmosphere; thunderstorm weather; fats and eggs; excitement; travelling in bus or train; wool next to skin; beginning to move; morning stiffness; sun on the skin.

Better: vomiting large quantities of bile-stained mucus (the bilious headache); eating around 11 a.m. (the epigastric sinking); continued motion, once movement has begun (the back and joints).

Relationships

Murphy places Morgan Bach as having "deep range of action covering the field of a number of anti-psoric remedies." The classical comparisons are with Sulphur, Calcarea carbonica and Lycopodium, and more generally with the carbonates. Morgan Pure runs beside Sulphur; Morgan Gaertner beside Lycopodium.

Clinically the nosode is often given after Sulphur or Nat-sulph to clear residual bronchial infection. Griggs recorded that the well-selected asthma remedies had failed in cases where Morgan Bach then acted. Clarke, quoted through Murphy, had seen it clear a moist infantile eczema after Graphites, Psorinum and Medorrhinum had all failed. A sequence worth remembering in the exuding, bleeding, scratching eczema of a small child.

Clinical Uses

Bronchial asthma, especially where an indicated remedy has failed

The specific indication is a chest that will not clear on the correctly chosen remedy, or an asthma that returns each winter on the same terrain. Given in potency and not repeated too often, the nosode opens the case. Sargunar's series remains the largest reported and turned on the ability of Morgan Bach to break the acute paroxysm.

Weeping infantile eczema

Raw, red, exuding, itching, bleeding from scratching, worse from heat, on chin and forehead and behind the ears. 30C of the nosode followed by low-decimal Sulphur (3X or 6X) is the combination Murphy sets out for the acute itch phase, the nosode meeting the constitutional level and the low-potency Sulphur addressing the surface heat.

Congestive headache with flushed face and bilious vomiting

Weekly sick headache in a menopausal or middle-aged patient with a flushed face, worse for hot atmosphere and thunderstorms, relieved on a large bilious vomit. Where Nux vomica, Bryonia and Iris are on the differential but the liver picture keeps returning, the nosode is thought of.

Gallbladder and gallstone tendency

Morgan Gaertner is the sub-type here: Lycopodium-side, right-hypochondrium tenderness, jaundice attacks, morning bitterness, the bilious triad with constipation and hemorrhoids. The differential in gallstones cases turns on this sub-type when the right-side liver picture dominates the rest of the case.

Circulatory congestion of the limbs

Varicose veins with blue, cold, chilblained extremities and hot burning feet at night. Phlebitis on a background of high blood pressure. Where the local remedy palliates but the tendency returns each season, the nosode addresses the terrain.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Morgan Bach and where does it come from? Morgan Bach is a bowel nosode prepared from the intestinal organism Proteus morgani. It was introduced by Edward Bach in the early twentieth century and developed clinically by John Paterson. Two sub-types are worked with: Morgan Pure and Morgan Gaertner. It is prescribed only as a dynamic preparation, and Murphy indicates all potencies for it.

Which potencies are used, and how often is it repeated? 30C is a common starting point, especially in skin cases where a low-potency Sulphur follows. Higher potencies (200C and upward) are the norm in chronic bronchial work; Griggs reported using Morgan Bach as high as 100,000C in asthmatic children after the standard remedies had failed. As with any deep-acting nosode, it is given as a single dose or a short series and allowed to act, not repeated at the pace of a plant remedy.

When would a prescriber choose Morgan Pure over Morgan Gaertner? Morgan Pure runs closest to Sulphur and takes the lead in skin conditions, the weeping, itching, heated eruption in particular. Morgan Gaertner runs closer to Lycopodium and takes the lead in cholecystitis, gallstones, adrenal colic, and the right-hypochondrium bilious picture. In many general congestive cases the parent nosode Morgan Bach itself will act.

Can Morgan Bach be given after another remedy has failed? Yes, and this is one of its most characteristic uses. Murphy names it explicitly for broncho-pneumonia where the indicated remedy has stalled, for residual infection after acute illness, and for the eczema of a small child that has not moved on Graphites, Psorinum or Medorrhinum. It is a nosode of second thought as often as of first.

References

• Murphy R. Nature's Materia Medica. Entry: Morgan Bacillus (with Morgan Pure and Morgan Gaertner sub-types). Quoted clinical material from Sargunar and W.B. Griggs is contained in this entry.
• Paterson J. "The Bowel Nosodes." British Homoeopathic Journal, 1950.
• Bach E. Original clinical work on the intestinal-flora nosodes, 1920s–1930s.
• Clarke JH. A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica. Cited via Murphy on infantile eczema clearing after Graphites, Psorinum and Medorrhinum.