Lectures On Homœosdasdpathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent

LECTURES ON HOMOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA by JAMES TYLER KENT,
A.M., M.D. Late Professor of Materia Medica in Hering College,

Chicago. Presented by Dr Robert Sror
Arsenicum Iodatum
Generalities and modalities: From a study of the elements making up this
agent, it may be known that it is a deep-acting constitutional remedy.
Its complaints come on in the morning, afternoon, evening, night, after
midnight. In hectic conditions, with many abscesses. Extreme anaemia,
such as belongs to tuberculous subjects.
The patient craves open air when not too cold; wants the windows open,
is sensitive to a close room. Marked general physical anxiety. The hands
and feet tingle as if asleep and the limbs feel as if tied with a band.
Complaints are worse from bathing; takes cold from bathing. It has been
of the highest use in cancerous affections and has cured lupus and
epithelioma. Its symptoms are often found in chlorotic girls; it has cured
choreic action of muscles in girls.
Some are very sensitive to cold, like Arsenicum, and others to heat, like
Iodine; it is sensitive to both heat and cold; cold wind and cold wet
weather make the patient worse and bring out symptoms.
Always taking cold, which brings on coryza and increases his catarrhal
troubles. Many constrictions, internal and external, and constrictions of
orifices are found in this remedy. Convulsive movements of limbs.
Dropsy, external and internal, like Arsenicum. He is worse when hungry
and, like Iodine, better after eating. Increasing loss of flesh and weight in
phtisical patients; emaciation in children, extreme aggravation from slight
physical exertion.
Women: In women who are subject to faintness and fainting spells.
Formication all over the body. Haemorrhage from any mucous
membrane. A sensation of being too warm, must have fresh air. Feeling of
heaviness of the whole body. Induration is a strong feature; sometimes in
glands, in ulcers, in skin affections.
The glands are swollen and hard. Inflammation, external and internal, in
many parts, glands, bones and serous membranes. He has symptoms as
though he had lost fluid. Extreme lassitude; lack of reaction, lying in bed
and lying on the painful side makes the symptoms worse.
She is worse during the menses; worse from motion, but desire to move.
Mucous secretions generally increased, copious, catarrhal discharges,
thick, yellow, or yellowish-green and honey-like.
Numbness of the limbs and painful parts; flushes of heat and surging of
blood in the body; pain in the, bones and glands. Bruised sensation in the
body. Burning internally and in outer parts; paralyzing pains, pinching,
pressing, stitching and tearing pains. Predisposition to phthisis and
complaints in the consumptive diathesis.
There is much soreness, and pressure increases his suffering. Pulsation,
internal and external, like Iodine; the pulse is frequent and small, full,
hard, intermittent, irregular.
Burning is a strong feature, like Arsenicum. It has been very useful in all
scorbutic conditions when the symptoms were similar. Very sensitive to
pain.
The symptoms predominate on the right side; he is sensitive to the
summer heat and the cold in winter. Dropsical and inflammatory swelling;
swelling in affected parts and in glands. It has been curative in all stages
and forms of syphilis. Trembling and twitching of muscles, walking makes
him worse, especially walking fast; worse from warmth, warm air, warm
bed, warm room and warm wraps. Weakness, like a vital prostration, in
the morning, when ascending, on exertion, during menses, and on
walking; worse in wet weather, worse from the worm south wind.
Mind: Anger and irritability during all complaints; aversion to answering
questions; extreme anxiety, restlessness and fear; worse in a warm bed;
confusion of mind morning and evening; delirium during the night;
illusions of fancy and delusions about dead people.
Sadness, even to despair; discontentment, and he is often in a state of
great excitement; mental exertion increases many of his symptoms; there
is marked mental weakness; fear of insanity, of misfortune, of people,
and he is generally timid.
He is impatient and in a constant state of hurry; he becomes indifferent to
his friends, to happiness and to his surroundings. Aversion to work. He
seems to be going toward insanity. He is unable to decide between two
opinions.
He suffers from a sudden impulse to kill somebody. Very talkative at
times, mirthful; changeable moods and alternating conditions of mind; a
degree of mental prostration prevails continuously.
He is oversensitives especially to noise. Inclination to sit; averse. to being
spoken to and he starts during sleep.
Persistent tormenting thoughts; wandering thoughts; stupefaction of
mind. In the woman there is much weeping. Vertigo while walking. It will
cure the particulars given below when the generals above mentioned
strongly predominate.
Head: Although there is hyperoemia of the brain, the scalp feels cold.
Eruptions crusty, scurfy; eczematous; the hair falls out and the head feels
heavy; itching of the scalp, with and without eruptions.
Pain in the morning and afternoon; better in open air; worse in worm
room; better after eating and worse when hungry; worse from motion,
noise, walking; pain in head from catarrh of nasal passages, with coryza;
periodical headaches from malaria, with heart troubles and from syphilis;
pain in forehead in the evening; above the eyes, over the root of the nose;
pain in occiput, sides of head, temples and vertex; pressing pain in
forehead, with sleepiness; pressing pain in occiput and temples; sore,
bruised pain in the head; stitching in head, in temples; tearing pain in
head.
The head pains are stunning. Perspiration of the forehead; pulsating in
the head, forehead, temples.
Eyes: Inflammation of the conjunctiva, and of the iris; chronic catarrhal
condition of the eyes in psoric and syphilitic subjects; easy lachrymation,
worse in cold air; pain in eyes when reading; soreness of the eyeballs
stitching pain in eyes; protrusion of the eyeballs; pupils dilated redness of
eyes.
Starting look. Sunken eyes. The lids are swollen and oedematous;
twitching of the lids. Wild look in the eyes; the eyes are jaundiced; vision
is dim, flickering, foggy and weak. Sparks before the eyes.
Ears: The ears discharge an excoriating foetid pus; buzzing, humming,
ringing and roaring in cars. Catarrh of Eustachian tubes and middle car the
pain is aching, stitching and tearing. Stopped sensation in ears hearing is
impaired,
Nose: Most stubborn nasal catarrh with bloody, acrid, copious,
excoriating, greenish, purulent, thick, yellow or yellow-greenish
discharge; honey like discharge; coryza with watery discharge; coryza in
open air with cough.
It has been a most useful remedy in hay fever. Dryness in nose and
epistaxis.
Obstruction of nose, pain in nose. Smell lost. Much sneezing. Swelling
inside of nose; ulceration in nose.
Face: The face becomes cold. Bluish lips and bluish circles about the eyes
brownish, earthy, or pale face; again the face is red and there are
circumscribed red cheeks the face is sallow and jaundiced; yellow spots
on the face; sickly look the face looks drawn and emaciated; eruptions on
face and nose; acne, eczema, pimples, pustules, expression sickly and old;
pain in the face. Swelling of the glands of the lower jaw.
Swelling of the submaxillary glands. Twitching of the face.
Mouth and throat: In the mouth there are aphthae; the gums bleed easily,
and the tongue is cracked. The tongue is coated brown or white; mouth
and tongue are dry at night and during sleep, the tongue feels enlarged,
inflammation of the gums. Mucus in the mouth in the morning; the
mouth is offensive, even putrid.
Pain in the gums; sore, burning tongue; salivation; scorbutic gums. Speech
stammering. Swollen gums.
The taste is bad; bitter, putrid, saltish, sour, sweetish; teeth feel
elongated; pain in the teeth after eating; tearing pain in the teeth.
Much choking in the throat; dryness in the throat; membranes from in the
throat; burning in the throat; constantly scraping the throat. Swallowing
difficult. Swollen throat; ulceration of the throat from syphilis.
Stomach: The appetite is increased, even ravenous; aversion to food;
constriction of the stomach; the stomach is distended.
He desires stimulants. Sensation of emptiness; eructations empty, sour;
waterbrash; sensation of fullness in the stomach.
Frequent attacks of heartburn; load in the stomach after eating;
indigestion and much hiccough; chronic gastritis; loathing of food; nausea
after eating.
Pain after eating; burning, cramping, cutting, gnawing, pressing and
stitching pains in the stomach; pulsating, retching when coughing,
sensation of tight ness in stomach; thirst, evening, extreme; thirst during
meal; unquenchable thirst.
Trembling in the stomach. Continuous vomiting; vomiting with diarrhoea,
after drinking, after eating, after milk, violent vomiting; vomiting of bile,
blood, food; vomiting yellow, watery substance.
Abdomen: The abdomen is distended with flatus; the flatulency is
obstructed and there is much rumbling. Enlargement of liver, spleen,
mesenteric glands, glands of groin. Inflammation of the intestines, liver
and spleen.
It has many complaints of the liver. Pain in abdomen after eating; during
menses; during stool; better by external warmth.
Pain in hypogastrium, hypochondria, groin, liver, spleen and umbilical
region; burning, cramping, drawing pain in abdomen; cutting in abdomen
during stool; cutting pain in liver pressing pains and soreness in liver.
Stitching pains in hypochondria pulsating in abdomen; restless feeling in
abdomen; pain and soreness in spleen.
Very troublesome constipation; diarrhoea alternating with constipation;
stool hard, knotty and light colored. The diarrhoea comes in the morning
and after eating; in old people, excoriating stool. Dysentery with bloody
mucous stools and tenesmus; diarrhoea with brown,
Copious, frequent, offensive, yellow or white watery stools; ineffectual
urging to stool; urging after stool; offensive flatus. External piles. Itching
of anus. Burning in anus after stool.
Bladder and kidneys: It acts deeply upon the bladder and kidneys. It has
been most useful in Addison's disease.
Retention of urine; constant or frequent urging to urinate; worse during
the night; urination is dribbling and involuntary, suppression of urine; the
urine is albuminous, cloudy, dark, red, copious or scanty and offensive.
Genitals: The genital organs present many symptoms and complaints.
Erections, strong toward morning; later incomplete and wanting. It cures
hydrocele and induration of the testes.
Itching of the penis and glans; perspiration of the genitals; seminal
emissions; swelling of the testes; ulcers on the penis; chancres and
chancroids with bubos.
It has been a great comfort to the women in many complaints. It has
restrained the progress of cancer of uterus in a notable manner; the
burning and odor are removed and the ulceration is lessened.
Life has been prolonged to four years in several cases. Sexual desire is
increased. It has cured enlargement and induration of the ovaries; it has
cured inflammation of the ovaries.
Leucorrhoea, acrid, bloody, burning, copious, after menses, thick or thin,
yellow; menses absent or suppressed, copious, frequent, late, painful,
short.
Haemorrhage from the uterus; pain in ovaries, especially the right; sore,
bruised genitals and ovaries. Prolapsus of the uterus; swollen ovaries. It
has stopped the growth of ovarian tumors.
Larynx and trachea: Croupous condition of the larynx. Dryness in the air
passages. Inflammation of the larynx and trachea; much mucus in the
larynx and trachea; spasmodic conditions of the larynx like Laryngismus;
burning rawness and soreness in larynx and trachea; phthisis of the
larynx.
The voice is hoarse, rough and weak and finally lost; respiration is fast
and asthmatic; respiration is difficult at night, on ascending, on exertion
and motion, with palpitation; respiration is irregular, rattling, short,
suffocative and wheezing.
Asthma from 11 P.M. until 2 A.M. The cough is in the morning, evening
and after midnight; the cough is asthmatic, croupy, deep, dry, exhausting,
during fever; cough from irritation and tickling in larynx and trachea; the
cough is loose, spasmodic, suffocative; worse from motion and talking;
worse in a warm room.
It cures whooping cough. Expectoration most in the morning; is bloody,
copious, greenish-yellow, difficult; mucous and bloody; mucus offensive,
purulent, tough, viscid, yellow, tasting putrid, saltish, sweetish.
There is marked anxiety in the region of the heart. Catarrh of the
bronchial tubes; constriction of the chest, of the heart; fatty degeneration
of the heart. Enlarged and painful mammae. Heat in the chest.
Inflammation of the bronchial tubes, endocardium, pericardium, lungs
and pleura; murmurs of the heart; stitching of the skin of chest;
oppression of the chest and heart in a warm room; pain in the side of
chest; in the heart; burning in the chest; cutting pain in chest and in the
heart; pressing pain in chest; rawness in chest; stitching, pain in chest on
coughing; palpitation from excitement, from exertion; tumultuous
palpitation.
Paralysis of the heart, of the lungs. It is a very useful remedy in ulcerative
conditions during phthisis; swollen axillary gIands: tremulous heart;
tumor of the axilla. Great weakness of chest and heart.
Pain in the back during menses; pain in the lumbar region during menses;
pain in sacrum and coccyx.
Limbs: Coldness of hands, legs and feet; cramps of upper limbs, lower
limbs, thighs, legs and feet; scaly eruptions, eczema and vesicles; heat of
hands; heaviness of the limbs as though tired; heaviness of the feet.
Hip joint disease. Itching of all the limbs; numbness of all the limbs,
fingers, legs and feet; pain in all the joints, gouty and rheumatic;
rheumatic pain in upper limbs; pain in elbow forearm, hip, thigh, knee,
foot; drawing in lower limbs, thighs, knees; stitching pain in shoulders,
wrists and knees; tearing in joints, elbows, fingers; paralytic weakness in
upper limbs; paralysis of lower limbs.
Cold perspiration of hands and feet. Stiffness of limbs, of fingers.
Dropsical swelling of hands, legs and feet; trembling of hands and lower
limbs; twitching of upper limbs and legs; weakness of upper limbs and
knees.
Dreams amorous; anxious; of dead people; distressing; vivid; nightmare.
Restless sleep; sleepiness in the evening; sleepless after Midnight, waking
too early.
Chill at night in bed; chill external and internal, worse from motion.
Quartian, tertian shaking-chill; periodicity marked; warm room does not
ameliorate the chill.
Fever afternoon and night; fever alternates with chill; fever and chill
intermingle; dry, external heat; flushes of heat; chronic intermittent
fever; internal heat with external coldness; fever with no sweat, and
desire to uncover. Hectic fever.
Perspiration morning and night; cold sweat; exhausting sweat; sweat on
motion, or on slight exertion; profuse night sweats.
Skin: Anaesthesia of the skin; burning skin; the skin is jaundiced; liver
spots and red spots.
The skin is cold to touch; dryness of the skin with inability to perspire.
Many eruptions on the skin; boils, pustules, rash and scales moist
eruptions, eczema, itching eruption; herpes; psoriasis.
It has cured ichthyosis. Dry, scaly, burning eruptions; urticaria.
It cures all syphilitic eruptions where the symptoms agree, where
eruptions have been suppressed by local treatment.
Excoriation; erysipelas formication, indurations; itching, burning and
stinging; rough skin; purpura haemorrhagica.
Dropsical, spongy swelling of skin; ulcers with bleeding or bloody
discharges, with corrosive watery, yellow discharge.
Cancerous ulceration. Indolent and indurated ulcers; sensitive and
suppurating ulcers ulcerative pain in ulcers in old syphilitic ulcers.

ECTURES ON HOMOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA by JAMES TYLER KENT,
Bromium
Bromium is one of the routine medicines.
It is one of the medicines that the neophyte will make use of for every
case of diphtheria and croup, and laryngitis he comes across; and when it
does not work he will "try something else."
All who prescribe on the name use Bromium as one of their routine
medicines; but Bromium is so seldom indicated that most homoeopaths
give it up as a perfectly useless medicine.
The reason is that they do not take the symptoms of the case and
prescribe in accordance with the individualizing method.
They do not prescribe for the patient, but for the disease. You may see
very few cases of diphtheria calling for Bromium; but when you see a
Bromium case you want to know Bromium.
There is one underlying feature of the Bromium conditions, they are
found especially in those individuals that are made sick from being
heated.
It there is a diphtheria epidemic and the mother bundles up her baby until
she overheats it, and keeps it in a hot room, and it happens to be a child
that is sensitive to being wrapped up, and one whose complaints are
worse from being wrapped up, look out.
You are going to have a Bromium diphtheria. It is indicated also in
complaints that come on in the night after a very hot day in the summer.
Now, this is as near as you can come to being routine in croup and
diphtheria. If the mother has the baby out in a dreadfully cold, dry day,
and along towards midnight it wakens with spasmodic croup, you know
that it is more likely to call for Aconite than any other medicine.
But if the mother has had the baby out in a hot day in the summer, and
that baby has been overheated, with too much clothing, and it is a
plethoric child, and towards midnight you are called up, and the child has
a red face, and your examinations reveal a membrane in the throat, we
will see as we study the remedy that this may be a Bromium case.
"Hoarseness coming on from getting overheated."
Loss of voice coming on from getting overheated. A turmoil in the whole
economy; with headaches, coming on from getting overheated. That runs
through Bromium. So it is in the hot weather, and being confined to a hot
room, and after going from the cold into the heat.
But after the complaint comes on, no matter where it is, he is so sensitive
to cold that a draft of cool air freezes him; but he cannot be overheated
without suffering.
Glands: Bromium has running through it a tendency to infiltrate the
glands. The glands become bard, but seldom suppurate. They generally
remain hard. The glands of the neck, the parotid, the sublingual, the
submaxillary, are enormously enlarged and very hard.
The processes of inflammation are slow; they are not that rapid, violent
kind like we find in Bell. and Merc.
"Parts that inflame infiltrate, becoming hard."
Inflammation with hardness is the idea. It has been very useful in ulcers
with this infiltration; very useful in enlarged glands with great hardness,
without any tendency to suppurate.
Glands take on tuberculosis, and tissues take on tuberculosis. Glands that
inflame for a while begin to take on a lower form of degeneration, a lower
form of tissue making.
It is very similar to these enlarged, hard, scrofulous glands that we find in
the neck; enlargement of the parotid and submaxillary. It has cured
enlargement and great hardness of the thyroid gland.
Again, we have emaciation, and when we see the tendency to infiltration
it is not strange that it has been a curative medicine in cancer and
tuberculosis. There is weakness in this remedy. The legs become weak.
Growing prostration, with tremulous limbs.
Twitching; tremulous weakness; fainting. In the catarrhal affections there
is a formation, more or less, of membrane.
Membranous exudate is a natural course of events. A natural feature of
the mucous membrane is infiltration, so that the mucous membrane
appears to exude little grayish-white vegetations, and beneath them is
induration.
That is true in ulcers, it is true in mucous membrane. And ulcer will form
upon the mucous membrane and eat in, and build beneath it a hardened
stratum of tissue.
It has febrile conditions along with these catarrhal states. Great nervous
excitement.
"Icy coldness of the limbs. "
"Heat of the head."
"Dyspnoea, with great sweating."
Croupy manifestations. Running through most of the complaints there is
palpitation.
Mind: Palpitation with nausea, palpitation with headache, palpitation
with various kinds of nervous excitement. So weak is be gradually
becoming that he has an "aversion to every kind of work; to reading.
Takes no interest in household duties."
Becomes indifferent. Very tired.
"Great depression of spirits, Low spirited. Sad and discouraged."
Anxiety with most complaints. Headaches from becoming overheated.
"Noise in the ears.
Throbbing and burning in the ears."
And then the complaints of the glands that are so closely associated with
the ears. With ear troubles, enlargement of the glands; the parotid
becomes enlarged and bard.
Ear: Ear affections following scarlet fever, with discharges from the ears.
Pains and aches; inflammation; abscess of the ear.
Suppuration of the parotid gland occasionally, but it is an exception.
"Swelling and hardness of the left parotid gland."
The ovaries, testes, etc., are all affected by Bromium.
Nose: Bleeding of the nose. Ulcerations in the nose. Catarrhal affections
of the nose. Much sneezing.
Acute coryza, violent, with much burning in the nose, and a sensation of
coldness, as if the mucous membrane of the nose were cold from inhaling
cold air.
It is useful for June cold, with the first hot weather in June, or if the first
hot weather comes in July. Violent coryza once a year, during the hot
season. Fluent coryza, with headaches.
"The nose is sore and the wings of the nose swell.
Scurf forms on it, with pain and bleeding on wiping it."
Rawness round about the nostrils.
Face: A Bromium patient is one that is likely to have flushed face,
especially those due to acute Bromium conditions.
"Flushed face."
He becomes heated easily. But this is entirely the opposite of the chronic
constitutional Bromium condition.
That is true with a good many remedies, especially many of the
antipsorics. The old sickly broken-down constitutions, those needing
Bromium for chronically enlarged glands, for goitre, for cancerous
affections, will have the "gray, earthy color of the face.
Oldish appearance."
It is a sickly face, an ash-colored face.
"Face ashy gray."
Then again we have children that are plethoric, with red face, easily
overheated. Of course, when the acute condition is on and the breathing
has been that of dyspnoea for several hours or many days, then the
patient becomes cyanotic, gasping for breath, and choking, the face
becomes ashy pale, as it is in diphtheria, in croup, and in laryngeal
affections.
"Stony, hard swelling of glands, especially of the lower jaw and throat."
Throat: We find that repeated in many divisions of the subject. Many of
the throat complaints that are laid down in Bromium begin in the larynx
and creep up into the throat.
Some of them begin in the throat and go down into the larynx; but the
two are so closely associated in Bromium that both are likely to be
affected; so that diphtheria spreads from one to the other. Diphtheria
begins in the throat and goes into the larynx.
Bromium fits the most malignant type of diphtheria. The membrane
grows like a weed, shuts off breathing, closes up the larynx, So severe are
the cases, that though be has been sick but two or three days and even
when Bromium has mastered the case, the patient is left with great
prostration. All those that belong to Bromium are of that type.
Great violence; great prostration. Extremely sick, and with deathly
weakness. A great many of the cures that have been performed in the
throat have been left sided diphtheria, yet it has cured both sides. You
will very seldom see Bromium develop in cold dry weather; but in hot
damp weather Bromium cases come on; affections in the spring, and in
the fall and summer.
Stomach: The chronic cases that will need Bromium are such as have
ulcers of the stomach. Suspicious ulcers in the stomach, and suspicious
symptoms about the stomach.
Vomiting like coffee grounds, and vomiting with signs of ulceration.
Aggravation after eating; either vomiting, or diarrhoea. Cannot take acids.
Diarrhoea or cough worse after eating, or after acids.
"After eating oysters, diarrhoea, and a disordered stomach.
Worse from the slightest inhalation of tobacco smoke.
Vomiting of bloody mucus.
Eructations.
" Foul stomach. Pain in the stomach from warm things, from hot tea, hot
drinks. "
It is a common feature when there is ulcer in the stomach or when the
mucous membrane is about to ulcerate, that hot drinks are intolerable.
"Pains from taking hot foods."
Stools and rectum: In studying the stool and rectum symptoms we find
exudation. Membranous formations pass in the stool. Diarrheic stool with
membrane.
"Black, fecal stool." Diarrhoea; must go to stool after eating."
We have running through the remedy enlarged veins. These are found
also in the rectum. Hemorrhoids protrude from the rectum, burning.
Smarting day and night.
"Blind, intensely painful varices, with black, diarrheic stools.
Blind, painful hemorrhoids," and hemorrhoids that protrude.
"Haemorrhoids during and after stool."
During the stool the rectum is painful from hemorrhoidal tumors.
Genitals: Swelling and induration of the left testicle. Notice the left
sidedness, the left side of the throat, and the left testicle. Then, again,
dull pain in the region of the left ovary.
"Constant dull pain in the ovary; with swelling and hardness."
There is the same induration of the left ovary. It does seem strange that
some medicines single out more particularly the left organs and the left
side of the body. Like Lach. in many instances it picks out the left side of
the body.
A great many remedies show a preference for one side of the body; the
glands in this remedy are more affected upon the left side of the body
than the right.
"Swelling of the ovarian region before and during menses."
Suppression of the menses. Loud emission of flatus from the vagina.
Larynx: In the larynx it has produced more symptoms than in any other
part of the body. It produces a raw, sore feeling in the larynx from inhaled
air.
"Rawness in the larynx.
Loss of voice.
Hoarseness from overheating."
From too much clothing on a warm day, or from keeping on an overcoat
in a room that is heated; coming out into the air he cools off. He has
laryngitis.
"Tickling in the larynx," keeping up a constant coughing.
Scraping and rawness in the larynx. Scraping mucus from the larynx,
scraping and coughing. It is not a hawk, because that noise clears the
throat.
Every medical should go through all the noises he hears others make, and
try and observe as much as possible what feeling is accompanied with
that noise, so that he can put himself in the other's place.
Each one is accompanied with its own sound, and the instant you hear it
you realize the exact place he is drawing mucus from and just where the
irritation is.
If you allow the patient to describe it he always calls it by the wrong
name. The patient knows very little about this part except that it is the
throat, and if he is drawing mucus from the throat, or scraping it from the
larynx, he always calls it the throat.
But the physician must waive all that and observe as to sound. So let each
one go alone by himself and make all these noises that he bears people
make, and then realize for himself what part it is he is scraping.
It may seem ludicrous, but how else will you learn about it? It is just as
important to figure out these sounds as it is to figure out what a child
needs by its sounds and motions. It is impossible to get the symptoms and
wants of a child except by interpreting its motions.
Every motion it makes indicates something. An astute observer, one who
has been watching children for a number of years, will understand the
child, and will hardly have to ask the mother a question. He will know at
once where the child is sick by what it does.
The child is like the animal. You never have to ask a horse or dog where
he feels pain, because he will always tell by his motions. So does the
infant.
The hoarseness comes on after being overheated. Remember that.
"Rough, dry cough; pain in the larynx." jumping up for want of breath.
"Gasping and suffering for breath, with wheezing and rattling in larynx.
Sensation as if air passages were full of smoke."
Now we have all these rough sounds; rough breathing; croupy breathing;
rasping breathing different ways of describing different forms of croup.
You cannot individualize a remedy by these because one child will croup
in one pitch, and another will croup in another; but to get at the
constitution of the child and the mother is the important point.
"Voice hardly audible."
"Spasm in the glottis."
In the croupy condition it is really a membranous formation upon the
inflamed surface, very often extending downward through the trachea
into the bronchial tubes, and producing a croupous pneumonia.
Bromium has that in its nature. But without any membranous formation
at all Bromium constricts the larynx. It has constriction of the larynx; just
like a clutching, a spasm.
"Tickling in the larynx, with irritation to cough.
Scraping and rawness in the larynx.
Sensation of coldness in the larynx."
That is a very peculiar symptom with Bromium. In laryngitis, where the
patient says the feeling is as if it was covered with down.
I have heard them describe it as if it was covered with velvet, but it feels
so cold.
The air breathed, feels cold, just like it was the air blown off from snow or
ice.
Sensation of coldness in the larynx.
"Constant sore pain in the larynx."
This means that the larynx is painful to touch. Phos., Bell., and Rumex
have soreness in the larynx, sore to touch; but the Bromium soreness is
commonly below the larynx and in the throat pit as well.
"Sensation as if the air tubes were full of smoke."
Some patients, will describe that as sulphur fumes, or as of smoke from
tar. After the first few hours mucus begins to accumulate in the larynx
and trachea, and a constant expectoration keeps up, of a whitish thick
mucus, and he coughs and scrapes the larynx constantly, and there is no
peace.
This is often present in laryngitis without any membranous formation.
Bromium is not given as often as it is indicated in voicelessness, in
irritation of the larynx, in rawness of the larynx because it is uncommon
for persons to have laryngitis and hoarseness in the larynx from being
overheated.
Many of those cases would be cured promptly by Bromium. But where it
is thought of by the routine prescriber is where there is croup or
diphtheria.
That was never taught by Hahnemann.
"Much rattling of mucus in the larynx.
Inspiration very difficult.
Larynx drawn down."
This would take place in croup, after the formation of the membrane.
"Cough hoarse, crowing, suffocative; breathing sawing, whistling.
Spasms of the larynx; suffocative cough.
Membranous formation in larynx and trachea.
Croupous inflammation formed by exuberant growth of fungi."
"Asthma of sailors as soon as they go ashore;" relieved again as soon as
they are at sea.
Difficult breathing with rattling throughout the chest. Bronchitis and
pneumonia. Bromium is often the remedy when whooping cough is
prevailing in the spring, towards the hot weather, and membranes form
in the larynx.
The cough gets immediately worse from dust. Handling old books from
the shelf aggravates. Sneezing, hoarseness, irritation in the respiratory
tract from picking up and handling dusty things.
"Cough, with sudden paroxysms of suffocation on swallowing."
Bromium is full of catarrhal conditions, especially of the breathing
apparatus. It has hepatization of the lungs; infiltration is one of its most
natural features.
Conium Maculatum
This medicine is a deep, long acting antipsoric, establishing a state of
disorder in the economy that is so far reaching and so long lasting that it
disturbs almost all the tissues of the body.
Glands: The complaints are brought on from taking cold, and the glands
become affected all over the body. From every little cold the glands
become hard and. sore. Infiltration in deep-seated diseases in the region
of ulcers and in the region of inflamed parts; in the glands along the
course of the lymphatics, so we get a chain like knots.
The glands under the arm inflame and ulcerate. The glands in the neck, in
the groin and abdomen become enlarged. Ulcerated parts indurate. An
abscess of the breast becomes surrounded by lumps and nodules.
Nodules in the breast even where milk has not yet formed; lumps and
nodules, indurations and enlarged glands form under the skin all over the
body.
Conium has been used extensively for malignant affections of glands,
because it takes hold of glands from the beginning and infiltrates, and
they gradually grows a stony hardness, like scirrhus.
Now, another grand feature running through this remedy is the action
upon the nerves.
Trembling, jerking of the muscles and twitching from the weakness of the
nerves. Inability to stand any physical effort without great exhaustion.
Gradually growing paralytic weakness, somewhat as was described in
Cocculus. Exhaustion of body and mind, that is a general slowing down of
all the activities of the body. The liver becomes indurated, sluggish,
enlarged. The bladder is weak, can expel only a part of the urine. Or
sometimes there is a paralytic condition and no expulsive power. This
shows that the remedy increases toward a paralytic weakness.
Mind: Hysteria. Hypochondriacal state of mind, with the nervousness,
trembling and weakness of the muscles. He gets tired in the earlier stages,
but finally this goes on until the limbs are paralytic.
A great many of the complaints are painless. The ulcers and the paralytic
conditions are painless. Great physical and mental debility; great
prostration of the muscular system; exhaustion, tremulous weakness.
Paralysis of the legs and hip. Mental symptoms, nervous symptoms,
trembling, in widows and widowers who have suddenly been deprived of
their sexual relations.
When in a state of considerable vigor, if suddenly deprived, the woman or
the man takes on a state of trembling weakness, inability to stand any
mental effort, and inability to put the attention upon things said by
others.
Not so marked or not so common in the woman as in the man. When this
state comes on in a woman who is of unusual sexual vigor there may be
severe congestion of the uterus and ovaries, Apis is more likely to fit her
symptoms than Conium. But with hysteria and excitability Conium is often
the remedy. Many of its symptoms come about from such a cause.
Conium has such a deep action that it gradually brings about a state of
imbecility. The mind gives out. The mind at first becomes tired like the
muscles of the body. Unable to sustain any mental effort. The memory is
weak.
The mind will not concentrate, it will not force itself to attention; it
cannot meditate, and then comes imbecility. Inability to stand any mental
effort or to rivet the attention upon anything are some of the most
important symptoms in this medicine.
Insanity of a periodical type. Imbecility, though, is far more frequent than
insanity. When you come to examine the mental states you will see
symptoms that will make you think the patient is delirious, but that is not
quite it.
It is a slow-forming weakness of mind; not that rapid, active state, such as
accompanies a fever; it is a delirium without a fever, so to speak, which is
not constant. Forms of insanity that are passive. He thinks slowly, and he
continues in this stage for weeks and months, if he recovers at all.
Those excitable cases that have more or less violence and activity in
mental states are such as will correspond to Bell., Stram. and Ars.
You see nothing of that in this medicine. This state of the mind has come
on so gradually that the family has not observed it.
The mind is full of strange things that have come little by little, and when
the family look over the many things that he has done and said they begin
to wonder if he is not becoming insane, but he is traveling toward a state
of imbecility.
Conium is of a slow, passive character. Complete indifference; takes no
interest in anything, particularly when walking in the open air.
"He is averse to being near people and to talking of those passing him; is
inclined to seize hold of and abuse them."
That, of course is an insane act.
"Sad and gloomy.
Great unhappiness of mind, recurring every fourteen days," showing a
two weeks periodicity. The Conium patient will sit and mope in the corner
in a state of sadness and depression, giving no reason only that he is so
sad.
A hypochondriacal subject going around with whims and notions that
people attempt to reason him out of, and the more they attempt to
reason with him, the more sad he is. Morose, peevish, vexed.
Every thing vexes and disturbs him. Cannot endure any kind of
excitement, it brings on physical and mental distress, brings on weakness
and sadness. Sometimes Conium symptoms will be found in persons who
have suffered from grief; they become broken in memory. This is likely to
come first.
They forge, never can recall things just as they want them. And so they
grow weaker and weaker until they become imbeciles. If it is decidedly
mental, imbecility results; if it is taking physical course the ending is
paralysis, and it is not uncommon for general paralytic weakness to come
on, so that body and mind progress toward weakness together until some
decided manifestation is made, and then it will be seen to be going
toward paralysis, or some decided manifestation is made which will send
it toward imbecility, and then the body will seem to remain stationary.
There comes a time in these cases where there is a sort of division
between the body and the mind. Whenever under homoeopathic
treatment the physical, improves and the mental grows worse, that
patient will never be cured. There are such cases. I never like to see the
physical grow better and the mental grow worse in any degree.
That does not mean the aggravation caused by the remedy. If the mental
does not improve it means that the patient is growing worse. There is no
better evidence of the good action of a remedy than mental
improvement.
Conium patients cannot endure even the slightest alcoholic drink.
Any wine or stimulating beverage will bring on trembling, excitement,
weakness of mind and prostration. There are many headaches -in these
patients. Patients going into decline will manifest headaches. Stitching,
tearing pains in the head; throbbing in the head. Signs precursory to a
giving out of the brain. Neuralgia.
Pains: Weakness of muscles. Weakness of muscles on one side of the face.
Paralysis of the upper lids. Tingling pains. These are only in keeping with
the signs of a general breakdown. We would not think of giving Conium
for those sudden, violent congestions of the brain, or sudden, violent
attacks of pain in the head, face or eyes, but those that accompany a
general progressive disease.
There are stitching, lancinating, knife-like pains along the course of nerves
about face and eyes and head. Stitching in the top of the head. Burning on
top of the head. Often the symptoms will lead the homoeopathic
physician to make a physical examination. A great deal more important
than the physical examination are, the symptoms that point out a
remedy.
Excitement will bring on headaches. Numbness of the scalp is one of the
common symptoms of Conium. It is a general; wherever there is trouble
there will be numbness, numbness with pains, very often numbness with
the weakness.
Paralytic conditions are attended with numbness. Sick headache with
inability to urinate. Great giddiness. Everything in the room seems to go
around. Confused feeling in the head. Often sits lost in thought.
Vertigo: Vertigo and pressure in the head with unaltered pulse. Vertigo,
worse from stooping. The slightest spirituous drink intoxicates him.
Vertigo when turning the head, like turning in a circle, when rising from a
seat; worse when lying down, as though the bed were turning in a circle;
when turning in bed or when looking around.
The vertigo most common in Conium is that which comes on while lying in
bed rolling the eyes or turning the eyes. This is somewhat as it is in
Cocculus, not as to vertigo alone, but the general slowed down condition
of the muscles. The paresis, or weakness of the muscles all over the body
is also present in the eyes.
There is a muscular weakness of all the muscles of the eye, so that the
Conium patient is unable to watch moving objects without getting sick
headaches, visual and mental disturbances. Riding on the cars, watching
things in rapid motion and inability to focus rapidly, slowness of the
accommodation is what we must call it is the cause for many sicknesses.
Eyes: Inability to follow moving objects with sufficient rapidity and a
headache comes on.
"Objects look red, rainbow colored, striped; confused spots; double
vision; weakness of sight. Short sighted; cannot read long without letters
running together."
All this is due to defective accommodation.
"Sluggish adaptation of the eye to varied range of vision.
Vision becomes blurred when he is irritable.
Weakness and dazzling of the eyes, together with dizziness.
Aversion to light without inflammation of the eyes."
The pupil will not accommodate itself to the changes between strong light
and dim light, and he suffers from it. Severe photophobia and
lachrymation. Photophobia without congestion of any tissue without or
within the globe of the eye.
Sometimes the pupils are contracted and sometimes dilated. Conium has
cured ulcer of the cornea.
"Burning in the eyes when reading."
'Shooting smarting, burning pain in the eyes.
The lids indurate, thicken and are heavy and fall.
It is with, difficulty that he can lift them up.
So this paralysis extends all through the muscles of the body and affects
the mind similarly. "
Could scarcely raise the eyelids, they seemed pressed down by a heavy
weight.
Burning on entire surface of lids; Hordeola; paralysis of muscles of the
eyes."
Glands: A marked condition is that of swelling of the glands about the
face, ear and under the jaws. The parotids are swollen and, hard. The
same gradually increasing hardness in the sub-maxillary and sublingual
glands.
Enlargement of the glands of the side of the neck in cancerous affections.
It has cured epithelioma of the lid, and of the nose and of the cheek.
Ulcers about the lip with induration. Deep under the ulcer there will be
hardness, and along all the vessels that send lymph towards that ulcer
there will be a chain of knots.
Paresis extending to paralysis of the oesophagus; difficulty in swallowing;
food goes down part way and stops. As food is about to pass the cardiac
orifice it stops and enters with a great effort.
"Strange rising in the throat, with sense of stuffing, as if something were
lodged there.
Sense of fullness in the throat as of a lump with involuntary attempts at
swallowing.
Fullness in throat with suppressed eructations.
Pressure in oesophagus as if a round body were ascending from
stomach."
That is a nervous affection found in nervous women and bas been called
globus hystericus. When a woman feels as if she wanted to cry, and she
swallows and chokes, she will have a similar lump in the throat.
Nervous, broken-down constitutions; tired of life; sees nothing in the
future but sickness and sorrow and paralysis or imbecility. When they
have their lucid moments they weep, become sad over their enlarged
glands and weakness, and have a lump in the throat.
Stomach: There are many stomach troubles; ulceration of the stomach;
cancer of the stomach. Conium is one of the greatest palliatives in
symptoms of the stomach when all the symptoms agree.
It will palliate cancerous conditions for a while, then on comes the
difficulty again, because when the symptoms have advanced sufficiently
to indicate Conium many times there is no hope of cure.
Hardness of the abdomen, great sensitiveness of the abdomen. Pinching
pains, stitching pains, colicky, cutting pains, cramping pains. Bearing down
in the abdomen-in the woman as if the uterus would escape.
Often more common than diarrhoea is constipation with ineffectual
urging, hard cool, paralysis of the rectum. Inability to strain at cool,
inability to expel contents because of the paralytic weakness of all the
muscles that take part in expulsion.
Pulsation and emptiness in the abdomen after a normal stool The woman
strains so much at stool that the uterus protrudes- from the vagina. After
every stool tremulous weakness and palpitation.
Urines: The urine will stop and start. He strains to, expel the urine and
gets tired and stops.
The stream of urine stops and without any pressure whatever it starts
again and it does that two or three times during urination. Irregular
muscular actions while passing urine.
"Intermittent flow of urine, with cutting after micturition.
Urine turbid after standing."
Weakness of the sexual powers of the male; impotency.
Men: He may have most violent sexual desire yet he is impotent.
"Great sexual desire with partial or complete incapacity.
Emissions without dreams.
Painful emissions and painful ejaculations."
"There is a catarrhal state of the seminal vesicles attended with much
soreness, so that when ejaculation takes place there is cutting like a knife,
as if the semen were acrid.
Bad effects from suppressed sexual desire in widowers and those who
have been accustomed to coition.
"Sexual weakness. Insufficient erection, lasting only a short time;
weakness after embrace.
Swelling and induration of testicles."
Hardness and swelling of the testicles gradually comes on.
"Discharge of prostatic fluid on every change of emotion, without
voluptuous thoughts, or while expelling faeces; with itching of the
prepuce."
Hence we have a strange intermingling of increased irritability of the
parts, the neck of the bladder, sexual organs, prostrate gland, with
weakness, with impotency.
Women: In the male, remember, there is induration and enlargement of
the testicles; in the woman induration and enlargement of the ovaries
and uterus.
"Uterine spasms during too early and scanty menses."
Soreness in the abdomen in the early stages of gestation, motions of the
child are painful. Burning, stinging, tearing pains in the neck of the uterus.
Great soreness of the breasts. This medicine has dwindling of the
mammary glands as well as enlargement and induration. Suppressed
menstruation, painful menstruation, throbbing, tearing, burning pains in
the uterus and in the ovaries, in the pelvis.
It has cured fibroid tumors of the uterus. It has restrained cancerous
growth of the cervix. One of the most distressing growths known to
women is a cancerous growth of the cervix. It is the most difficult to check
of all the cancerous affections known.
It will progress most rapidly, but Conium is one of those remedies that
will slow down that inflammation and restrain somewhat the
hemorrhages. Conium has produced induration and infiltration of the
cervix.
Respiration and cough: Difficult breathing. Dry cough almost constantly,
worse lying in bed. Cough when first lying down. Is obliged to sit up and
cough is out.
Taking a deep breath causes cough. Such are the striking features of a
Conium cough. In the chest, violent stitches. Painful swelling of the
breasts. Rending, tearing pains in the chest.
Back: In the back, weakness is a most striking thing, with some dorsal
pains, Lancinating pains are spoken of.
"III effects of bruises and shocks to the spine."
After injuries, especially in the lumbar region, pains and filling up of the
veins of the lower limbs. Rheumatic pains; paralysis of the lower limbs;
ulceration. And the sufferings and conditions are better by letting the
limbs hang down.
Conium differs from a great many medicines. It is common for pains and
aches to be relieved by putting the feet up on a chair; by putting them up
in bed.
But the patient with the rheumatism, with the ulceration of the legs and
the other strange sufferings of the legs, will lie down and permit his legs
to hang over the bed up as far as the knee. That is something that
somebody ought to undertake to account for, so we could have at least
one thing we could prescribe for under pathology. But up to date we have
no explanation. Tottering gait in middle-aged men.
Another grand feature of the remedy; he sweats copiously during sleep,
Sometimes the patient will say that if he merely closes the eyes he will
sweat. It is certainly true on closing the eyes preparatory to going to sleep
he will break out in a sweat.
Owing to the fact that Conium produces such a marked induration and
infiltration of tissues that have been inflamed, stenoses are apt to form
where inflammation has been present. Stricture of the urethra and
stenosis of the os uteri have been cured by Conium.
HOMOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA by William BOERICKE,
M.D. Presented by Mdi-T

KALIUM BROMATUM Bromide of Potash (KALI BROMATUM)
Like all Potash Salts, this weakens the heart and lowers temperature.
Brominism is caused by it. General failure of mental power, loss of memory,
melancholia, ansthesia of the mucous membranes, especially of eyes,
throat, and skin; acne; loss of sexual desire, paralysis. Leading remedy in
psoriasis. Nodular form of chronic gout. Symptoms of apoplectic attacks,
urmic or otherwise; somnolence and stertor, convulsions, aphasia,
albuminuria. Epilepsy (with salt-free diet).
Mind.--Profound, melancholic delusion; feeling of moral deficiency;
religious depression; delusions of conspiracies against him. Imagines he is
singled out as an object of divine wrath. Loss of memory. Must do
something-move about; gets fidgety (Tarant). Fear of being poisoned
(Hyos). Amnesic aphasia; can pronounce any word told, but cannot speak
otherwise. Night terrors. Horrid illusions. Active delirium.
Head.--Suicidal mania with tremulousness. Face flushed. Numb feeling in
head. Brain-fag. Coryza with tendency to extension into throat.
Throat.--Congestion of uvula and fauces. Ansthesia of fauces, pharynx,
and larynx. Dysphagia, especially of liquids (Hyos).
Stomach.--Vomiting, with intense thirst, after each meal. Persistent
hiccough (Sulph ac).
Abdomen.--Sensation as if bowels were falling out. Cholera infantum, with
reflex cerebral irritation, jerking and twitching of muscles. Green, watery
stools with intense thirst, vomiting, eyes sunken. Prostration. Internal
coldness of abdomen. Diarrha, with much blood. Green, watery stools.
Retraction of abdomen.
Urinary.--Sensibility of urethra diminished. Urine profuse, with thirst.
Diabetes (Phos ac).
Male.--Debility and impotence. Effects of sexual excesses, especially loss of
memory, impaired co-ordination, numbness and tingling in limbs. Sexual
excitement during partial slumber.
Female.--Pruritus. Ovarian neuralgia with great nervous uneasiness.
Exaggerated sexual desire. Cystic tumors of ovaries.
Respiratory.--Spasmodic croup. Reflex cough during pregnancy. Dry,
fatiguing, hacking cough at night.
Extremities.--Fidgety hands; busy twitching of fingers. Jerking and twitching
of muscles.
Skin.--Acne of face, pustules. Itching; worse on chest, shoulders, and face.
Ansthesia of skin. Psoriasis.
Sleep.--Restless sleep. Extreme drowsiness. Sleeplessness due to worry and
grief and sexual excess. Night terrors. Grinding teeth in sleep. Horrible
dreams. Somnambulism.
Modalities.--Better, when occupied mentally or physically.
Dose.--A few grains of the crude salt to the third trituration. Remember the
unstable character of this salt. Said to be much more active if salt is
eliminated from the diet.

Phytolacca
This is a very imperfectly proved remedy, and it is only possible to present
fragments of it.
The mental symptoms have not been brought out, but the remedy has
some striking features.
You will notice the resemblance of this drug to Mercury, and it is an
antidote to mercury. In those lingering mercurial bone pains, where the
patient has been salivated; the pains come on at night from the warmth
of the bed; the body aches; a chronic, sore, bruised state; soreness of the
periosteum where the flesh is thin, over the tibia; joints; soreness of the
muscles; drawing and cramping; drawing in the muscles of the back;
backache, worse at night; worse from the warmth of the bed.
The patient suffers from these symptoms in cold, damp weather, as in
Mercury. Tendency to ulceration, hence its usefulness in syphilis; old,
chronic, syphilitic ulcers; the patient has been salivated; had Mercury
rubbed in; he became saturated with it, but it no longer helps. Ulcers in
the throat; on the skin; on mucous membranes anywhere.
Spasmodic conditions; drawing in the muscles; this may extend to violent
spasms; opisthotonos; sometimes the cervical region is affected and the
head is drawn back; jerking and twitching of the muscles.
Glands: Phytolacca is a glandular remedy.
The glands become inflamed, and hard. It produces sore throats, with
inflammation of the glands of the neck, particularly the sub maxillary and
parotid. Inflammation of the throat with the accumulation of thick,
tenacious mucus; swelling of the tonsils. Low grade inflammation like
erysipelas.
The symptoms are aggravation at night, on cold days, in a cold room, and
from the heat of the bed; so that there is a controversy between heat and
cold.
It seems that the remedy centres in the mammary glands. Soreness and
lumps in the breasts from each cold, damp spell; becomes chilled and a
sore breast results; sore breast in connection with the menses; a nursing
woman is exposed to the cold, the breast inflames and the milk becomes
stringy; coagulated milk.
This comes out in the proving, but poke root has been extensively used by
cattle raisers when the cow's milk became thick and there were lumps in
the bag, and when the condition was brought on from the cow standing
out in the rain.
Almost any excitement centers in the mammary gland; fear or an
accident; lumps form, pains, heat, swelling, tumefaction; even violent
inflammation and suppuration. No other remedy in the Materia Medica
centres so in the mammary gland. Mercury is similar; when the patient
takes cold the glands become sore. If every tribulation makes the glands
sore in a nursing woman, give her Phytolacca.
When a mother says she has no milk, or that the milk is scanty, thick,
unhealthy; dries up soon; Phytolacca becomes then a constitutional
remedy if there are no contra-indicating symptoms. A bloody watery
discharge which continued for five years after weaning the infant was
cured by Phyto. The breast is so sore that, when she nurses the child, she
almost goes into spasms, with the pain extending down the back and
limbs all over the body.
Diphtheria. In certain epidemics; great tumefaction of the throat; swelling
of the glands of the neck, parotid and sub maxillary; aching in the bones;
fetor from the mouth, with heavily coated tongue; great aching in the
back; nose bleed; soreness of the muscles.
Analogous to Mercurius; they are closely related in diphtheria. At times in
diphtheria we can only obtain the fetor, loaded tongue, exudation,
swollen glands and stiff neck.
This looks like Mercurius or one of the Mercuries. The Protoiodide is right
sided, and stays there or may go to the left side. The Biniodide goes from
left to right. The Merc. cyanide has a thick, green membranous cast,
extending from the nose to the throat. In Phytolacca we have many
features of Mercury.
It has cured syphilitic nodes on the skull and shin bones.
Skin: Many eruptions.
"Squamous eruptions; Pityriasis, psoriasis."
"Ringworm."
"Barber's itch."
"Rash on body; measles; scarlet eruptions all over the body."
It is not surprising that it cures scarlatina, as it has this scarlet rash, the
sore throat and glandular involvement.
It has the ability to delay the formation of malignant growths, especially
in the breast; glandular tumors that become hard and scirrhous. Until this
remedy was known there was but one remedy for the old cicatrices in the
mammary gland. Women who were confined years before, had abscesses
of the breast which were poulticed and lanced had a cicatrix left, and now
in the present confinement they have trouble; inflammation in the old
cicatrices; ulceration which eats off the lacteal glands or turns the ducts
aside and twists them; high inflammation - throbbing and pain; milk
bloody.
Graphites was the old routine remedy, but Phytolacca, is a better remedy
and suits the general concomitants oftener. The symptoms usually found
in an inflamed breast after confinement are: aching in the back and bone
pains; fever and shivering.
Phytolacca has these and falls into the very nature of the case. Graphites
has it only in a limited way. if there is high fever; congestion to the head;
throbbing carotids; much redness, and the redness radiates from the
nipple, Belladonna is the remedy.
When the entire gland is as heavy as a stone, and hard, and the patient is
sensitive to motion and touch, Bryonia. Mercury when the general
symptoms agree. Hepar and Silicea after suppuration is inevitable,
especially when the only comfort is obtained from heat. Hepar when
there is extreme pain and soreness, irritability and this relief from heat; it
limits the extent of the suppuration and opens the part without pain.
Nose: The most distressing, lingering, inveterate, old catarrhs with
destruction of the bones of the nose.
"Total obstruction of the nose: when riding, must breathe through the
mouth."
"Coryza and cough, with redness of eyes and lachrymation; photophobia;
feeling of sand in the eyes, with soreness and burning."
"Syphilitic ozaena, with bloody, sanious discharge and disease of bone."
"Noli me tangere and cancerous affections of nose."
It is somewhat like Graphites, in that it seeks out fissures in which to
establish inflammation, induration and eruptions. Where the circulation is
feeble it has the tendency to establish induration.
"Face sunken, pale, hippocratic; blue around eyes; yellowish complexion;
looking blue and suffering .
Pains in bones of head and face at night."
"Swelling around left ear and side of face like erysipelas; thence over
scalp; very painful."
"Lips everted and firm. Tetanus."
"Ulcers on lips."
"Parotid and sub maxillary glands swollen."
"Tongue thickly coated on back; coated yellow and dry."
This is found in all acute complaints and is like Mercury. Phytolacca holds
a reputation among the Eclectics, and in their results we see a shadow of
its homeopathic action. In Cincinnati they used three drops in a tumbler
of water and gave it for ulcers in the mouth. It was a standard remedy
with them and they made some homoeopathic cures.
"Ulcerated sore mouth."
Syphilitic ulcers find a curative remedy in Phytolacca, when the symptoms
agree.
Throat: There are several pages in the Guiding Symptoms showing
homeopathic cures of the throat; diphtheria; sore throat; inflamed glands;
aching bones worse at night, violent cases, with difficult swallowing, pains
in the tonsils; enlarged tonsils; tendency to slough. Syphilitic and
mercurial sore throats. The sore throats are often aggravated from warm
drinks; he wants cool things; and there is an aggravation at night.
Here is a summary:
"Diphtheria; sick and dizzy when trying to sit up; frontal headache; pains
shooting from throat into ears, especially on trying to swallow; face
flushed; tongue much coated, protruded; thickly coated at back, fiery red
at tip; breath foetid; putrid; vomiting; difficulty of swallowing; tonsils
swollen, covered with membrane, first upon left; three or four patches;
tonsils, uvula and back part of throat covered with ash-colored exudation.
Pain in the root 'of the tongue on putting out."
Pains: Old gout and rheumatism of the limbs; in acute rheumatism which
is prolonged, worse at night, worse from the warmth of the bed, worse
from warm applications.
Gouty rheumatism; syphilitic cases; pains as if in the bones.
"Sharp cutting pains in hip, drawing; legs drawn up; cannot touch floor."
"Syphilitic or gonorrheal sciatica, etc."
"Ulcers and nodes on the legs."
A certain class of physicians used to call Podophyllum "vegetable
Mercury."
Phytolacca ought to be called "vegetable Mercury" because it is so full of
symptoms analogous to Mercury.

Anacardium Orientale
Mind: This remedy is full of strange notions and ideas.
The mind appears to be feeble; almost, if not complete imbecility; seems
as if in a dream; everything is strange; slow to comprehend. Marked
irritability; disturbed by everything; cursing.
Weak memory. Forgetful of things in his mind but a moment ago. All his
senses seem to vanish and he gropes around as if in a dream.
Change of states; after states. Dullness and sluggishness of the mind
prevail. He is in a continuous controversy with himself. Irresolution marks
his character. He cannot settle between doing this and that, he hesitates
and often does nothing. He cannot decide, especially in an action of good
or evil.
He hears voices commanding him to do this or that, and seems to be
between a good and an evil will. He is persuaded by his evil will to do acts
of violence and injustice, but is withheld and restrained by a good will. So
there is a controversy between two wills, between two impulses. When
this is really analyzed by one who knows something of the nature of man
it will be seen that the man is disturbed in his external will, but the
internal will cannot be affected by medicine.
His external voluntary is continuously excited by external influences, but
his real will, in which is his conscience, restrains that and keeps him from
carrying the impulses into effect. This can only be observed when its
action is on a really good man. He has a controversy when his external
will is aroused, but in an evil man there is no restraint and be will not
have this symptom.
Hallucinations: a demon sits on one shoulder and an angel on the other.
He is disposed to malice and has an irresistible desire to curse and swear.
Laughs when he should be serious. So it is carried on until all things in the
external will are inverted. Internal anxiety, i. e., the internal will is in a
turmoil. over this external disturbance.
"Contradiction between will and reason" is an attempt to express what
the individual knew nothing about.
"Feels as though he had two wills."
That is better. It finally destroys or paralyzes the external will, and when a
man is naturally evil and is under the paralyzing influence of Anacardium
he will do acts of violence.
A wicked man is restrained, not by his conscience, but by fear of the law.
Anacardium paralyzes the external will arid places him in a position of
imbecility, and he does acts of violence from his own natural perverted
self It has so acted on a portion of the mind that it teaches a great deal.
I have learned much from Anac., Aurum and Argentum of the strange
action of medicines on the human mind.
Psychology must be figured out by the action of drugs on the human
mind. By this means we get at facts and can lay aside many hypotheses.
Ideas as if nothing were real, all seems to be a dream. Fixed ideas. He
thinks he is double. This comes from a vague consciousness that there is a
difference between the external and internal will, a consciousness that
one will is the body and another is the mind.
Dwells on thoughts about salvation. That a stranger is by his side, is
another recognition of the two wills. That strange forms accompany him,
one to his right side and one to his left. This mental state drives him to
madness.
Alternation of his moods and understanding. One moment he sees a thing
and another moment he does not understand it. One moment she sees it
is her child and another that it is not. One moment it is a delusion and
next moment it is an illusion.
One moment thinks it is so and next moment has enough reason left that
it is not so .
Delusion is an advanced stage of illusion.
In the Repertory we have the same remedies often in illusion and
delusion, it is a matter of grade.
When the intellect is slightly affected it is an illusion, and what he sees he
knows is not so.
He sees demons, and at first he knows from his intelligence that a demon
is not there, but later, he wants you to drive him out.
It does not matter which, they are similar symptoms, and it is a matter of
degree, and so, in the Repertory, delusions and illusions are not given
separate places.
Anac., Hyos., Stram, and Bell., are important in bringing out the quality of
the perverted human mind as to the intelligence and affections.
Whenever a medicine makes a man desire to do something it affects his
will, and when it affects his intelligence it is acting on his understanding.
Medicines act on both.
Low-spirited, disheartened, fears be is pursued, looks for thieves, expects
enemies, fears everything and everybody.
Full of internal anxiety. No peace. He is separated from the whole world,
and he despairs to do that which is required of him. Cowardly in the
extreme.
Fears some dreadful thing will happen. Morose, sulky, sullen.
Unsocial; complains of weak memory. Slight causes make him excessively
angry. A strong feature is that all moral feeling is taken out of him. He
feels cruel. Can do bodily injury without feeling.
Cruel, malicious, wicked.
Bad effects of mental excitement. Weak-minded. Consequences of fright
and mortification. Suitable in religious mania when the conflict between
the external and internal will is kept up. It is analogous to Hyos.
Many complaints are ameliorated by eating.
Sensation here and there of pressure, described as if a plug, all through
the body, in the head, eyes, in the navel and down the spine.
Objects appear too far off. Things have a strange look, sometimes
uncanny. Illusions of smell, burning timber, pigeon's dung.
Chronic dry coryza.
The whole body has been well covered by symptoms; but it seems that
the mind represents the principal aspect, and A will seldom be used
excepting for such mind symptoms.
Usually when the mental symptoms are strong the physical are also
covered by the remedy.
Full of trembling and paralytic weakness. Tetanus; epilepsy. Sensations as
of a hoop or band around the body, limbs or head; pressing as of a plug.
Skin: The eruptions are like Rhus in many respects; erysipelatous
eruptions dark, dusky and of malignant types.
It is an antidote to Rhus poisoning.
Eruptions all over. Yellow vesicles are common. Intense itching of
eruptions. Warts on the palms like Natrum mur. Skin burns much. It
seems closely related in its symptoms to all the Rhus family.
BISMUTHUM SUBNITRICUM Precipitated Sub-Nitrate of
Bismuth (BISMUTHUM)
Irritation and catarrhal inflammation of the alimentary canal, is the chief
and action of this drug.
Mind.--Solitude is unbearable. Desire for company. Complains about his
condition. Anguish. Discontented.
Head.--Headache alternates with gastralgia. Neuralgic pain, as if torn by
pincers; involves face and teeth; worse, eating; better, cold; alternate with
gastralgia. Cutting or pressure above right orbit extending to occiput.
Pressure in occiput; worse, motion; with heaviness.
Mouth.--Gums swollen. Toothache; better, cold water in mouth (Coff).
Tongue white. Swollen. Black, gangrenous looking wedges on dorsum and
sides of tongue. Profuse salivation, teeth loose. Thirst for cold drinks.
Stomach.--Vomits, with convulsive gagging and pain. Water is vomited as
soon as it reaches the stomach. Eructation after drinking. Vomits all fluids.
Burning; feeling of a load. Will eat for several days; then vomit. Slow
digestion, with fetid eructations. Gastralgia; pain from stomach through to
spine. Gastritis. Better, cold drinks, but vomiting when stomach becomes
full.
Tongue coated white; sweetish, metallic taste. Inexpressible pain in
stomach; must bend backwards. Pressure as from a load in one spot,
alternating with burning, crampy pain and pyrosis.
Stool.--Painless diarrha, with great thirst, and frequent micturition and
vomiting. Pinching in lower abdomen, with rumbling.
Respiratory.--Pinching in middle of diaphragm, extending transversely
through chest. Angina pectoris; pain around heart, left arm to fingers.
Extremities.--Cramps in hands and feet. Tearing in wrist. Paralytic
weakness, especially right arm. Tearing in tips of fingers under nails (Berb).
Itching erosion near tibia and back of feet near joints. Cold limbs.
Sleep.--Restless on account of voluptuous dreams. Sleepy in morning, a few
hours after eating.
Relationship.--Antidotes: Nux; Capsic; Calc.
Compare: Antimon; Ars; Bellad; Kreosot.
Dose.--First to sixth potency.

Chelidonium
Chelidonium is a remedy more suitable for acute diseases, though it cures
certain chronic conditions. It is not a very deep acting remedy. It is about
like Bryonia in its general plane, length and depth of action.
It has been used principally in gastric and intestinal catarrhs, in acute and
semi-chronic liver troubles, and in right-sided pneumonia.
Skin: The skin is likely to be sallow, and gradually increases to a marked
jaundice in connection with these complaints. Semi-chronic gastritis, with
jaundice.
"Gastro-duodenal catarrh.
Congestion and soreness in the liver, with jaundice.
Right-sided pneumonia, complicated with liver troubles, or jaundice."
This remedy seems to act throughout the system, but almost always along
with it the liver is involved, and it is suitable for what the old people and
the doctors called "biliousness." The patient is generally bilious, has
nausea and vomiting. Distension of the veins. Yellowish grey color of the
skin.
Mind: Very few mental symptoms have been brought out in its proving
not enough to give us a good idea of the desires and aversions. We do not
get a clear idea of the intellectual faculties. It needs further proving, yet in
many regions it has had superabundance of proving.
"Sadness and anxiety."
Brooding over some sort of trouble generally runs through the mental
state.
"Anxiety, allowing no rest," keeping the patient uneasy day and night.
Sadness, as if she had committed a crime; as if some dreadful thing was
going to happen. So sad that she thinks she must die
"Weeping despondency.
Distaste for mental exertion and conversation.
If you examine those medicines that act primarily upon the liver, that
slow down the action of the liver, you will find the word melancholia."
With heart troubles, great excitement, With liver troubles, slowing down
of the mental state, inability of the mind to work, sluggishness of the
mind, inability to think, inability to meditate, slow pulse. Sluggishness of
the whole economy.
Dizziness: The sensorium is very commonly disturbed, and the patient is
dizzy.
"Things go round in a circle."
Dizziness comes, and it does not let up until nausea, and sometimes
vomiting, follows.
"So much turning in the head that he vomits.
Confusion of mind.
Loss of consciousness and fainting."
These are also common features with liver troubles.
The mind symptoms are present more or less with the following liver
symptoms; there are pains of a dull aching character, "soreness." Bruised
pains. Tenderness of the liver to touch. Aching pains, that seem to involve
the whole right lobe of the liver; creating a sensation of fullness. Pressure
upwards, with difficulty of breathing. Pressure downwards, sympathetic
with the stomach, with the nausea and vomiting.
Right scapula: And then more intense pain felt under the right scapula.
"Dull aching pains under the right scapula; sharp, shooting pains under
the right scapula"; these complicate themselves again with pneumonia,
with pleurisy.
It cures pneumonia and pleurisy; it cures various forms of congestion in
the liver, when these pains go from before backward, and seem to be felt
through the back.
"Stitching in the region of the liver, extending through to back.
Hard pains felt through the back."
Some patients will describe these pains as shooting pains; some as tearing
pains, and others as sharp pains, going through the right hypochondrium
or through the right lobe of the liver to the back.
"Pains from the region of the liver, shooting towards the back and
shoulders.
Spasmodic pain in the region of the liver.
Pressing pain in the region of the liver."
In congestion or inflammation, fullness and enlargement, semi-chronic
cases, or even acute, this medicine proves suitable for such conditions.
The right hypochondrium is tense and painful to pressure.
This remedy has cured gall stone colic. Practitioners, who know how to
direct a remedy, relieve gall stone colic in a few minutes. We have
remedies that act on the circular fibres of these little tubes, causing them
to relax and allow the stone to pass painlessly.
In a perfect state of health, of course, there are no stones in the bile that
is held in the gall bladder, but this little cystic duct opens its mouth and a
little gall stone engages in it, and it creates and irritation by scratching
along the mucous membrane of that little tube.
When this pain is a shooting, stabbing, tearing, lancinating pain,
extending through to the back, Chelidonium will cure it. The instant it
relieves the patient says:
"Why, what a relief; the pain has gone."
The remedy has relieved that spasm, the little duct opens up and the
stone passes out through the ductus communis choledochus. Every
remedy that is indicated by the symptoms will cure gall stone colic.
A patient lying in bed, with great heat, extreme sensitiveness, cannot
have the body touched, screaming with pains, red face and hot head, will
gall stone colic, will be relieved in three minutes by Bell., but that is not at
all like this remedy. Natrum sulph. and many other remedies have cured
gall stone colic in a few minutes, when the symptoms agreed.
Now as to the pneumonia, it is generally of the right side, or right sided
spreading to the left. The right-sidedness is marked, and but small
portions of the left lung are involved. The pleura is generally involved,
and so there are stitching, tearing pains.
One may not practice long before be will find a Chelidonium patient,
sitting up in bed with high fever, bending forward upon his elbows,
holding himself perfectly still, for this medicine has as much aggravation
from motion as Bry. All of the pains are extremely aggravated from
motion.
This patient is sitting with a pain that transfixes him; he cannot stir, he
cannot move without - the pain shooting through him like a knife.
The next day you will see that his skin is growing yellow. If you see him in
the beginning Chelidonium will relieve him and you will prevent that
pneumonia. It is not uncommon in children, and it is extremely common
in adults.
Do not get confused with Bryonia. Both are violently worse from motion.
Bryonia wants to lie on the painful side, or wants to lie on the back if the
pneumonia is mostly in the posterior part of the right lung. In
Chelidonium he is worse from touch and motion.
Bell. has that extremely painful, tearing, rending, of the right lung with
pleurisy, but in Bell., one cannot touch that right side, cannot press it, but
must lie on the other side and he cannot move.
Cannot stand a jar of the bed, because of the extreme sensitiveness to
motion: I mention all three in this particular way because they have some
things in common, but the remedies are different.
Chelidonium has cough with chest symptoms of the right side, liver
affections, and the mental affections that commonly belong to these,
violent aggravation from motion. The pains are ameliorated by heat. Pain
that extends to the stomach, ameliorated by heat.
Mental symptoms: ameliorated by eating. Craves hot milk; hot fluids.
Eating warm food ameliorates the liver, the chest and stomach
symptoms.
"Bilious vomiting. Retching; bilious eructations.
Nausea and retching during an attack of anxiety."
Stomach: These are all commonly present during the complaints
described. The pains, when they become severe, seem to strike the
stomach and cause vomiting. Ameliorated by something hot.
"A feeling of anguish in the pit of the stomach.
Persistent pain in the stomach; aggravated by motion and ameliorated by
eructations.
Constriction and sensitiveness in the pit of the stomach."
These are all aggravated by touch and ameliorated by eating.
"Constant aching pain in the stomach, ameliorated by food.
Constrictive, pinching pain in the stomach better from drawing up the
limbs and lying on the left side, ameliorated by eating."
Eye: It has many eye symptoms. Stitching pains.
"Opacity of the cornea."
Inflammations.
Bruised pain in the eyes.
Right supraorbital neuralgia."
In many instances it prefers the right side.
In the face the jaundice is the most marked thing that is expressed and,
then, we have the dirty gray complexion.
"Pale, dirty-yellow-face."
Head: The headaches are brought on from heat, unlike the stomach and
the liver, and the lungs, etc.
The head is aggravated from motion, aggravated from beat, aggravated
from a warm room, aggravated from warm applications. There is where it
differs from the internal or general state. There are numerous headaches.
Periodical bilious sick headaches, with vomiting of bile, brought on from
exposure to beat, from being overheated, aggravated from motion, wants
to lie perfectly quiet in a dark room, and better from vomiting bile.
Old-fashioned bilious sick headaches.
Bilious diarrhoea. Along with jaundice, clay-like, pale, faecal, puttylike
stool. Bileless stool. Stool too light colored. Stool quite white in children.
Diarrhea and constipation alternate. Stool brown, white, watery, green
mucus, thin, pasty, bright yellow, or gray tinged with Yellow.
Voice and respiration: Hoarseness.
"While coughing, pain in the larynx, and pressure in the larynx."
The difficult breathing comes on with liver symptoms and pneumonia and
chest troubles in general.
"Difficult respiration, with short fits of coughing.
Short, quick breathing.
Anxiety as if he must choke.
Difficult breathing; tightness over the chest as if breathing would be
hindered."
It has also nightly attacks of humid asthma. This is brought on from every
change of the weather.
All its complaints are brought on from changes in the weather. He cannot
stand weather changes, either too cold or too warm. Rheumatic
complaints in the shoulders, hips and limbs, from changes in the weather.
With complaints of the liver, lungs and chest, there are coughs. They are
spasmodic. The chronic cough is violent, spasmodic, dry, coming in
paroxysms.
"Spasmodic cough, without expectoration."
After it has existed a while there wilt be some expectoration.
"Repeated attacks of short cough: Short cough, with little grayish phelgm.
Rattling; fatiguing cough".
Limbs: In the limbs there are rheumatic and neuralgic pains. Neuralgia of
the limbs in general, most violent. Limbs feel heavy and stiff. Limbs
flabby. Later the patients runs down somewhat, weak heart, weak
circulation; dropsical conditions of the limbs. Great restlessness.
"Trembling and twitching of the limbs.
Weariness.
Indolence.
Indisposition to work."
The neuralgias are more common in the head and face than in the lower
parts of the body, in the limbs and in the extremities.
It has sharp, febrile attacks, such as found in pneumonia with chill and in
inflammation of the liver. It has cured intermittent fever, coming in the
afternoon and evening.
Itching of the skin. jaundice. It has cured old putrid ulcers.

Natrum Carbonicum
Proved by Hahnemann, Hering and others.
Persons who are in the habit of taking carbonate of soda for sour stomach
get a proving of this remedy. I have met some of these people and been
able to confirm many Natrum symptoms.
Old dyspeptics who are always belching and have sour stomach and
rheumatism; after twenty years they are stoop-shouldered, pale, sensitive
to cold, chilly, aggravated by the least draft; require much clothing;
unable to resist the cold or the heat; require a medium climate; are worse
from the changes of the weather; their digestive, rheumatic, and gouty
troubles are all worse from the weather changes.
Mind: A state of trepidation from the slightest noise, the slam of a door;
nervous excitement and palpitation with great prostration; nervous
weakness with trepidation; weakness from slight exertion of mind or
body; internal and external trembling.
The rattling of paper causes palpitation, irritability and melancholy.
Estrangement from family and friends. Aversion to mankind and to
society; to relatives, to strangers; feels a great division between himself
and them; sensitive to, certain persons.
Music causes a tendency to suicide, melancholy, weeping and trepidation;
playing the piano is so exhausting that she must lie down; music causes
great sadness which increases to religious insanity.
This is true of all the Sodiums, but especially so of Natrum carb.;
aggravation from the slam of a door, a pistol shot, which causes headache
and complaints in general, aggravated from music.
Digestion: The more soda these patients take, the more flatulent do they
become; they are stoop-shouldered; digestion is difficult, and finally milk
will not digest at all, bringing on a diarrhoea with undigested, lienteric
stools; also, starch causes flatulence and looseness of the bowels, Many
symptoms from drinking cold water when overheated.
Urine offensive like that of a horse, from a vegetable or milk diet. This is
not so marked as in Nitric ac., but resembles it.
Skin: Natrum carb. throws out eruptions upon the knuckles and fingertips;
also the toes; vesicular eruptions open up and form ulcers on the joints of
finger-tips.
Borax, Sepia, Ars., and Natrum carb. are the remedies most inclined to
produce ulceration of the tips and knuckles of the fingers, and also the
toes.
Vesicular eruptions on the body in patches and circles; the herpes family
is especially, related to Natr. carb.; zona, herpes labialis, herpes
preputialis; patches as large as a dollar on the hips, thighs and back.
Smaller patches show vesicles containing a white serum, burning,
smarting and itching, better from scratching.
The eruption passes away with a crust, but will often ulcerate, it does not
heal and an ulcer forms. Circulation feeble; wounds suppurate. Feet and
skin burn. Crusty eruptions on the skin that have not been vesicular; but
most Natr. carb. and Natr. mur. eruptions are of the vesicular form.
Tingling, biting, itching, changing place, now here and now there; cold
skin; sweaty body.
Mind: Nervous exhaustion, physical exhaustion, weakness of mind and
body.
Book-keepers lose the ability to add up figures. In reading a page, the one
previous to, it soon goes out of the mind. The memory will not hold out
from the beginning to the end of a sentence. Forgets what he reads.
Confusion of mind follows and then he is unable, to perform any mental
labor. Men become so fatigued from the details of business that a
confusion of the mind comes over them, they get brain fag.
Oversensitive to heat, especially after sunstroke, even some years after;
has to be well shaded when walking in the sun, must seek a cool or dark
place the patient has not had the proper acute remedy during the attack
the remedy is aggravated by both cold and heat, but this is a special
aggravation from the heat of the sun; head troubles are not worse from
cold in Natr. carb.
Old cases of brain fag with weakness and trepidation. The body troubles
are aggravated from cold and in the winter; as cold as if he had no blood
in the body, extremities cold, and he cannot get them warm; cold as ice
to, the knees and elbows.
The body and extremities are worse in winter, the head in summer.
Anxious trembling and sweating during pains.
The senses are all disturbed; oversensitive to light pain in the eyes from a
bright light.
Oversensitive hearing; little noises seem enormous, like thunder; the
crumpling of paper seems like the crashing of a waterfall.
Taste perverted, too sensitive, so that the tasting of things ordinarily
grateful becomes painful; sometimes loss of taste.
Loss of smell. Hay fever, catarrhal fever; where catarrhal conditions are
present there is copious, thick, yellow, purulent discharge from the eyes,
nose, vagina.
The vesicles are filled with thin, white serum, but the pustule, when it
ruptures, throws out a thick, yellow discharge. Leucorrhoea thick, yellow,
ropy; gonorrhea of the same character; thick, yellow, ropy, purulent
discharge from the bladder which clogs up the urethra when urinating.
Otalgia, with sharp, darting, piercing pains when the mental state, the
chilliness and other generals are present. The discharges are commonly
offensive.
Coryzas trouble much; always has a cold in the head the watery discharge
is of short duration and is soon followed by a thick copious flow of yellow
mucus.
Ulceration, thick crusts; sleeps at night with the month open; dry, yellow
crusts are blown out with pain and bleeding. The catarrh increases with
each fresh cold, until it becomes foetid; the bones of the nose are
affected; almost a constant headache over the eyes, in the forehead, at
the root of the nose; congestive headaches, worse from change of
weather, cold room, damp weather; increased by every storm.
Most foetid ozoena, mucous membranes ulcerated and destroyed.
Pale face with blue ring around the eyes, yellow blotches on the forehead,
puffiness. There is puffiness in general; the hands, feet, face pit on
pressure; infiltration of the cellular tissue; those states of the heart and
kidneys that favor dropsies; old malarial cases, flesh doughy; urine
albuminous.
Enlargement of the glands with induration, axillary, inguinal, abdominal,
salivary. Especially suitable for enlargement of the prostate in old men.
Chronic enlargement of the parotids, slow and of long duration; of the
tonsils.
Ulcerations of the mouth; nursing sore month in women; thrush in
infants; little white aphthous patches, especially in nervous, withered
infants who cannot stand any kind of milk, who have diarrhoea from milk;
they thrive better on cereals; when asleep the child jumps, cries, springs
up and grasps the mother; a nervous, cold baby, easily startled like the
Borax baby.
So are the Natrum babies in general.
Accumulation of mucus in the throat and posterior nares, generally yellow
in color, while with Natr. mur. it is white; the latter spits up copious,
thick, white mouthfuls.
Natr. carb. is ameliorated by eating; when chilly, he eats and is able to
keep warm; the pains are ameliorated after eating; he has an all gone
feeling and pain in the stomach which drives him to eat; he gets hungry at
5 A.M. and 11 P.M. 5 A.M. is the favorite time for the Natr. carb.
aggravation; he becomes so hungry at this time that he is forced out of
bed to eat something, which also ameliorates the pain.
Headache, chilliness, and palpitation better from eating (Ignat., Sepia,
Sulph.).
Nervous hunger in pregnant women, who cannot sleep unless they get up
at night and eat crackers, calls for Psorinum.
Locomotor ataxia with its fulgurating pains, amel. by eating; gnawing, all-
gone, hungry feeling in the stomach. Soles numb, in males erections and
priapism, sensitive thighs, hypersensitive spine; the results of too much
excitement.
Emissions; ejaculation of semen premature.
Thirst in the afternoon, incessant; thirst between chill and heat great
desire for cold water a few hours after dinner. Extreme aversion to milk.
Flatulency and accumulation of wind in the bowels; diarrhoea; stool
yellow, soft with violent tenesmus and urging; a yellow substance like the
pulp of an orange in the stool; diarrhoea from milk.
The most troublesome constipation; stool hard, dark, smooth and
crumbling. All the Natrums take away the desire to go to stool; no ability
to bear down; stool large and hard, great effort to pass it.
Prostatorrhoea after urinating and a difficult stool.
Sterility, a constitutional state in a woman where she is unable to,
conceive; she is nervous, cold to the knees and elbows; cold body in
winter, hot head in summer; always tired; relaxation of the sphincter
vaginae causing the seminal fluid to gush out as soon as ejaculated by the
male, thus causing sterility.
There may be a spasm of the sphincter, producing the same effect, or a
clot of blood or mucus shoots from the vagina with noisy flatus. Nervous,
fidgety, excitable, lean, dyspeptic women, not hysterical. Menses too
soon or too late; neuralgias, oversensitive to drafts and dampness,
sensitive spine, legs numb; leucorrhea yellowish-green, copious.
Paralytic states; ptosis or spasms of the lids; difficult swallowing, must
drink much water to wash the food down on account of paralysis of the
pharynx; paralysis of the bowels, cannot bear down at stool; stool like
sheep's dung; paralysis of the left lower extremity with tingling.
Palpitation at night when ascending and while lying on left side. Many
spinal symptoms. Goitre.
Stiffness of the neck, violent backache after walking. Rheumatic pains in
the extremities. Jerking in all the limbs. Stumbling while walking. Weak
ankles in children. Heaviness of the legs. Pains in the hollow of the knees
on motion. Tension in the bend of the knee. Easy dislocation of the ankle.
The soles burn while walking. Ulceration of the heel from blisters. Icy cold
feet. Weakness of the legs. Vesicles on tips of fingers and toes. Spots and
tubercles on the skin. Skin dry and cracked. Itching and crawling.
Phosphorus
The complaints of Phosphorus are most likely to arise in the feeble
constitutions, such as have been born sick, grown up slender, and grown
too rapidly.
Its complaints are found in such as are emaciated, and in those who are
rapidly emaciating; in children who are going into marasmus, and in
persons who have in them the foundation of consumption fairly well laid.
Delicate, waxy, anemic and emaciated subjects. In persons who are
vehement, irascible.
This expresses the person's disposition somewhat as well as his internal
constitutional state. Internally he is in a turmoil. Subject to violent
pulsations, complaints from electric changes in the atmosphere; violent
palpitations and orgasms. In chlorotic girls who have grown too rapidly
and have suddenly taken on weakness, pallor, green sickness, with
menstrual difficulties. Ebullitions and congestions. Hemorrhagic
constitutions.
Blood: Small wounds bleed much; the prick of the needle will bubble forth
much bright red blood.
Hemorrhage from small wounds, from the nose, from the lungs, from the
stomach, from the bladder and from the uterus. Bleeding from
ulcerations. False granulations that bleed. Purpura hoemorrhagica. Black
and blue spots.
Blood settles beneath the conjunctiva, or beneath the skin anywhere.
Bloody saliva; evidences of disorganized blood, or that the blood seems to
become fluid. Small bruises take on broad blue spots. Blows much blood
out of the nose. Petechiae all over the body, such as are found in typhoid
fever, low forms of continued fever with hemorrhages. Fungous growth.
Fatty degeneration is a marked feature of Phosphorus, and can be found
in the liver, heart or kidneys.
General dropsical condition. Bloating of the hands and feet, especially
dropsical conditions after scarlet fever. The mucous membranes are all
pale, such as is found after bleeding or in low forms of disease. A marked
state of anemia and relaxed condition of the muscles. Muscles flabby.
Fatty degeneration of the muscles.
The genitals hang down. In the woman, relaxation of the pelvic organs,
prolapsus and other displacements. Stiffness is a marked feature of
Phosphorus. Stiffness on beginning to move. Limbs stiff like a foundered
horse, especially in the morning. Rheumatic stiffness in all the limbs.
Phosphorus has tearing, drawing pains in the limbs. Drawing, tearing
pains in affected parts. Phosphorus complaints are worse in cold weather.
The patient himself, generally considered, is sensitive to cold. All his
complaints are worse from cold and cold applications, and better from
beat and warm applications, except the complaints of the head and
stomach, which are ameliorated from cold as will hereafter be described.
Phosphorus has been very useful in weak, relaxed conditions of the joints
following sprains, when the symptoms agree.
Necrosis is another feature of Phosphorus, especially of the lower jaw,
but may be useful in necrosis of any of the bones. Exostoses of the skull
with tearing pains. Tearing, boring pains, especially at night. Phosphorus
has cured polypi of the nose and cars. Scrofulous and glandular swellings.
Glands enlarge, especially after contusions like Bellis.
Glandular affections of weak, pale, sickly individuals, such as suffer from
diarrhea, such as suffer from exhaustive conditions, abscesses, fistulous
openings, with hectic fever. Abscesses with copious discharge of yellow
pus. Malignant growths are greatly restrained by the use of Phosphorus,
when the symptoms agree. Burning pains are observed everywhere.
Burning in the brain, burning in the skin. Burning in the stomach, in the
chest, and in various parts.
The Phosphorus patient is very sensitive to all external impressions slight
odors, noises, touch. Slight causes lead to exhaustion of either body or
mind. Trembling throughout the body from slight causes, using the bands,
from slight exertion, from debility, from coughing. Weakness prevails in a
marked degree, finally becoming paralysis or paralytic weakness such as
occurs in most forms of typhoid fever, with sliding down in bed, trembling
and jerking of the muscles. Paralysis with formication and tearing in the
limbs.
Paralysis that comes with apoplexy. Jerking and twitching of the muscles
such as has been found in paralysis. Spasms of the paralyzed parts.
Tearing, drawing, burning pains throughout the body.
The Phosphorus patient wants to be rubbed. He is generally better after
sleep. Always wants to rest. Always tired. The Phosphorus patient
undergoes great excitement. Tremulousness. Wild thoughts. Excitability,
keeping him awake at night. Violent imaginations.
Mind: Excitability even to ecstasy and clairvoyance.
The mind may be overactive or may be extremely passive with loss of
memory. Irritability of mind and body and great prostration of mind after
slight mental effort, and of the body afar slight physical exertion.
Anxiety, gloomy forebodings. Fear that something will happen. Anxious at
twilight. Anxious when alone. Apprehensiveness. Apprehensive during
thunder storms, which brings on many complaints; palpitation, diarrhea
and trembling. Trembling of the whole body.
Attacks of indigestion from fear. Fear in the evening, fear of death. Fear of
strange old faces looking at him from the corner. Full of strange, insane
imaginations. On the border land of insanity. Inability to sustain a mental
effort. Fear of apoplexy. Reflecting brings on headache and difficult
breathing associated with apprehensiveness or sinking at the pit of the
stomach. His fear seems to begin 'at the pit of the stomach.
Apathy or indifference; indifferent to his friends and surroundings.
Indifferent to his children. Answers no questions, takes no notice of his
family and things about him, answers slowly, thinks sluggishly, seems
dazed or in a stupor. Everything looks dark, he is weary of life, gloomy
and says nothing.
Dejected; a most marked case of hypochondriasis. Weeping, sad,
hysterical; will uncover the body and expose his person. Violent,
loquacious; delirium. Delirium of low forms of fever, or delirium of mania
a potu.
Maniacal attacks come on during sleep with fury and extreme violence, so
that no one dares approach him, and this progresses to imbecility,
silliness, weak brain, idiocy. Brain fag from mental overwork and constant
strain of eyes. Vertigo is a very common symptom throughout all of the
complaints of Phosphorus. Staggering while walking as if intoxicated.
Vertigo when in the open air; vertigo after eating; vertigo in the evening.
Heaviness and confusion in the head and things go round; great weakness
of the head.
All of these mental symptoms are worse in the dark; worse when alone;
sometimes worse from music; worse from excitement; worse from
playing the piano.
Head: The headaches of Phosphorus are congestive and throbbing.
The blood mounts to the head. The headaches are ameliorated from cold
and worse from heat, worse from motion, and better from rest, worse
lying down. The patient is often compelled to sit upright, with great
pressure upon the head and cold applications. The face is flushed and hot;
burning in the brain.
The warm room, warm surroundings, warm food, putting the hands into
warm water will increase the headache. The complaints of the head like
the complaints of the stomach are worse from heat, warm applications
and from warm food, and better from cold things; while the complaints of
the body are better from warmth and, worse from cold.
The headaches are most violent and are often attended with hunger or
preceded by hunger; headaches with vomiting, red face, and scanty urine;
uraemic headaches; violent neuralgic pains darting, tearing, shooting
through the head; pressing pains in the head. Periodical headaches,
headaches brought on from mental exertion.
Great heat in the head and stiffness in the muscles of the face and jaws.
This is sometimes attended with coldness in the back of the head. Shocks
through the brain. The headaches are worse from noise, from light;
apoplectic congestion of the head. It has cured acute hydrocephalus and
hydrocephaloid symptoms.
Chronic inflammation of the meninges of the brain; softening of the brain;
imbecility; insanity. Violent head pains; atrophy of the brain; medulla
oblongata. The scalp is covered with dandruff; the hair falls out in
patches, leaving bald places here and there. Great heat in the scalp;
tension in the scalp and face and forehead as if bound by a bandage. Scaly
eruptions on the bald places of the head; exostoses on the skull.
The complaints of the head are brought on from becoming overheated.
Sensation as if the hair were pulled; great soreness of the scalp; must let
the hair hang down during headaches.
Eyes: The eye symptoms are very numerous; burning, redness,
congestion, enlargement of the blood-vessels.
Objects look red and often blue in the field of vision, or objects
sometimes look green and gray as is observed in incipient cataract.
Colors, also, appear black before the eyes. Vision is vague; the eyes give
out while reading; sees better in the morning, in the twilight.
The eye symptoms, like Phosphorus in general, have amelioration after
rest. Momentary blindness like fainting; seems to suddenly become blind;
paralysis of the optic nerve; blindness after electric shocks, or after a
stroke of lightning. It has cured glaucoma. It has cured inflammation of
the retina in Bright's disease.
It has cured opacity of the vitreous humor. It has cured paralytic
weakness of the various muscles of the eyes. It has cured paralysis of the
third pair of nerves where there is falling of the lids; sub-acute
inflammation of the eyes.
Burning, redness, and smarting ameliorated from cold applications. The
eyelids twitch and tremble; swelling of the eyelids; dropsical swelling of
the eyelids; great darkness around the eyes; great circles around the eyes.
It is a very useful remedy in malignant growths involving the eye,
restraining very much the progress of the disease.
The eye symptoms like the head and mind symptoms are such as often
come on in brain workers; working under a bright light causing much
determination of blood to the head in which the eyes as well as other
parts suffer.
Ears: Phosphorus has a peculiar deafness.
One of the most striking features of Phosphorus is inability to understand
the articulations of the human voice. Hearing is difficult. He sometimes
feels as if there were something over the ears; as if the ears were
covered, obstructing the waves of sound.
Violent itching in the ears; congestion of the external ear; itching, tearing,
throbbing, burning pains within the ear, It has cured polypi in the ears.
Nose: The nose symptoms are also very numerous; inveterate nasal
catarrh.
He takes cold in the nose, but the most common seat of the Phosphorus
cold is in the chest, and most of his difficulties begin in the chest, but
Phosphorus cures nasal catarrh and coryza.
There is painful dryness in the nose; constant sneezing and running from
the nose of bloody water.
Frequent alternations of fluent and stopped-up conditions of the nose;
coryza with sore throat; stoppage of the nostrils; much sneezing and
stopping of the nose alternating with dryness of the nose in scarlet fever;
nostrils filled with green mucus; a copious nasal discharge of greenish-
yellow, blood-streaked mucus, worse in the morning; bad odor from the
nose; frequent blowing of blood from the nose; copious hemorrhage from
the nose of bright red blood; swelling of the nose, redness and shining;
very sensitive to touch; necrosis of the bones of the nose.
It has cured polypi of the nose, especially bleeding polypi. Fan-like motion
of the nose, like Lycopodium.
Face: The Phosphorus patient presents a sickly face, earthy, sunken and
pale, such as we find in consumption and those about to go into
consumption those suffering from deep-seated constitutional conditions;
haggard, anemic.
The color is changeable; swollen, oedematous face; puffed under the
eyes; lips and eyelids swollen. Again, red spots upon the checks, which
appear in hectic fever; the hectic blush. Tension of the skin and of the
face; tearing, shooting pains all through the face and about the eyes, from
the temples and vertex down to the zygoma. Jerking, tearing pains in the
teeth.
The pains of the teeth are often ameliorated by warmth, while those of
the head are ameliorated by cold. The pains of the teeth are worse when
talking and eating, and worse after eating It has violent neuralgias of the
face involving the jaw and temples, with hot, bloated face, worse from
talking and from eating.
It has caries of the lower jaw, with great heat, burning and fistulous
openings. Neuralgia of the face and teeth; has to be wrapped up at night;
worse in windy weather.
The countenance is sickly, sunken, declining, as if a serious sickness was
coming.
The lips are parched, dry and bleeding. The lips become black, brown and
cracked as in low forms of fever, and with necrosis of the lower jaw.
Inflammation of the parotid gland, especially when it suppurates or there
are fistulous openings. Rapid decay of the teeth. The gums bleed and
settle away from the teeth.
Phosphorus is very useful for the bright red hemorrhage after the
extraction of teeth. The tongue is swollen and speech is difficult. It is
difficult to articulate. The taste in the mouth is bitter or sour, especially
sour after taking milk; sometimes salty or sweetish; bitter after eating.
Taste of hydrogen sulphide in the morning. The tongue is coated like fur;
sometimes chalky-white, sometimes yellow; dry, cracked and bleeding;
sordes on the teeth. Crusts form upon the mucous membranes of the
mouth, gums, lips and tongue. The tongue is swollen and the papillae are
engorged.
Throat: Dryness of the mouth and throat; sore, excoriated mucous
membranes of the mouth and throat.
The mouth may be covered with thrush, as in nursing sore mouth; bloody
erosions of the mouth; nursing sore mouth. Much watery saliva and
bloody saliva flows from the mouth. The saliva is copious, tasting
sweetish, saltish or foul. The mucous membranes of the throat are like
those of the mouth. Great dryness, roughness, rawness, excoriation,
bleeding, and inflammation of the tonsils; inflammation of the throat;
sensation of cotton in the throat; sensation of velvet in the throat.
The tonsils are much swollen. Intense pain in the throat and burning in
the throat that extends into the oesophagus. Inability to swallow any
nourishment because of paralysis of the oesophagus or acute
inflammation of the mucous membranes of the throat and oesophagus;
constriction of the oesophagus.
In Phosphorus there is violent hunger and very soon after eating the
hunger returns again. Must eat during the chill. Must get tip in the night
to eat. Feels faint and is driven to eat. Ravenous hunger during headache;
he knows that the headache is coming on because of his violent hunger;
in periodical headaches.
The hunger is often spasmodic, because at times there is aversion to food.
Again, he wants to eat and as soon as the food is offered he does not
want it. Thirst is one of the most constant features of Phosphorus.
In acute and chronic complaints there is violent thirst; thirst for ice-cold
drinks. Wants something refreshing; is ameliorated momentarily by
drinking cold things, but the thirst appears as soon as the water gets
warm in the stomach. Vomiting comes on as soon as the water becomes
warm in the stomach, but there are many conditions where the ice-cold
water agrees.
Unquenchable thirst. When the water is vomited there is always
unquenchable thirst. He wants cold food as well as cold drinks; refreshing,
spicy things, juicy things; desire for wines and sour things. Phosphorus
often cures the violent' longing in inebriates for alcohol.
It simply resembles the congestion of the mucous membrane of the
stomach. Aversion to sweets, to meat, to boiled milk, to salt fish, to beer,
to puddings, to tea and coffee.
Many of the complaints of Phosphorus are ameliorated by eating. The
nervous symptoms of Phosphorus drive the patient to eat and he feels
better for a little while, and then he must eat again or the nervous
symptoms will come on. Often he can sleep better after eating and cannot
go to sleep until he eats something.
Stomach: The stomach symptoms are numerous: pains, nausea, vomiting,
burning.
The stomach symptoms are ameliorated by cold things and aggravated by
warm things. The nausea and vomiting are brought on by putting the
hands into warm water, from being in a warm room, from warm things
and from taking warm things into the stomach. The nausea of pregnancy
is cured when the woman cannot put the hands into warm water without
bringing on vomiting. Another marked feature of Phosphorus is
eructations of food.
The food is eructated by mouthful until the stomach is emptied of the last
meal. Constant nausea except when something cold is in he stomach. As
soon as water becomes warm in the stomach it comes up. This very much
resembles the vomiting and nausea of Chloroform, and Phosphorus is a
great friend to the surgeon because he can nearly always antidote the
stomach affections of Chloroform by Phosphorus. Vomiting of blood and
violent vomiting of sour fluids; vomiting of bile and mucus; vomiting of
black substances, coffee-ground substances. Awful sinking, gone feeling in
the stomach.
This sometimes comes at 11 o'clock like Sulphur. Pressing pains, burning
pains, tearing pains in the stomach; pain in the stomach after eating;
sensitiveness in the pit of the stomach; inflammation of the stomach. It
has been a very useful remedy in cancer of the stomach, with coffee-
ground vomiting and burning; coldness, as if freezing, in the pit of the
stomach; paroxysms of knife-like pains in the stomach.
The pains in the stomach are ameliorated by ice-cold things for a
moment; spasmodic contractions of the stomach; hemorrhage from the
stomach; vomiting of great quantities of clotted blood; long-standing
dyspepsia; much flatulence; regurgitation of food; distended stomach and
abdomen; ulceration of the stomach.
The liver furnishes us many symptoms of Phosphorus. Congestion of the
liver, fullness, pain, hardness, fatty degeneration of the liver, hyperemia
of the liver. Phosphorus is one of the most useful liver remedies; hard,
large liver. With the stomach and liver symptoms there is commonly
jaundice.
Abdomen: Very sensitive abdomen, painful to touch, rolling and rumbling.
Sensation of emptiness in the abdomen; sunken feeling in the abdomen.
The abdomen feels as if relaxed; hanging down sensation and sensation of
great weight in the abdomen. Tympanitic abdomen such as occurs in
typhoid fever.
A marked feature in Phosphorus is the peculiar gurgling which begins in
the stomach and gurgles along down through the intestines, attended
with involuntary stool. This occurs in typhoid fever. The gurgling that
occurs in Arsenicum is down the oesophagus.
Flatulence; colic; rending, tearing, cutting pains throughout the abdomen;
stitching pains in the abdomen; violent neuralgic pains in the abdomen;
inflammation of the bowels, of the peritoneum; appendicitis. Yellow,
brown spots on the abdomen; petechiae over the abdomen during
typhoid fever.
Phosphorus is rich in symptoms of the rectum and stool; involuntary
discharges from the bowels; copious emission of fluids; foetid, gushing
stools; horribly offensive, yellow, watery stools. The patient lies as if
dying, the stools passing involuntarily; stools of white mucus; stools of
slime intermingled with little specks like tallow; involuntary oozings from
the constantly wide open anus.
Hemorrhage from the bowels in typhoids, in low forms of disease; bloody
discharges like meat washings, involuntary, on every motion. Burning in
the rectum during stool. Protrusion of the rectum; protrusion of
hoemorrhoidal tumors. Sharp, stitching pains from the coccyx up the
spine to the base of the brain drawing the neck backward, and this
symptom occurs during stool. It has occurred during involuntary stool.
After stool painful cramps in the rectum; burning in the anus; violent
tenesmus; sinking feeling in the abdomen; obliged to lie down;
exhaustion and fainting. The copious diarrhea is like the profuse flow of
water from a hydrant. It is useful in cholera times and in cholera morbus.
It is a useful medicine for chronic diarrhea with soft, thin stools. It has
been a very useful remedy in cholera infantum. It has also cured
dysentery with bloody mucus, scanty stools with violent tenesmus. It also
cures inveterate constipation.
The stool is hard, long, and slender, described in the books as like that of
a dog. Alternating diarrhea and constipation in old people. Spasms of the
rectum. Paralysis of the bowel, so that it is impossible to strain at stool,
Hemorrhage from the bowels. It has cured polypi of the rectum;
inflammation of the rectum. It has many times cured bleeding, protruding
hemorrhoids; hemorrhoids that burn. It has cured fissures of the anus.
Among many of these bowel symptoms the anus feels as if wide open.
Kidneys: Phosphorus is a useful remedy in diseases of the kidneys,
especially diabetes, with sugar in the urine when there is great thirst for
ice-cold things and ice-cold water. Gradual emaciation; gradual weakness;
considerable heat of the head; coldness of the extremities, and sugar in
the urine. Phosphorus will cure fatty degeneration of the kidneys. Renal
calculi. No desire to pass urine though the bladder is full.
There is a paralytic weakness which resembles the paralytic weakness
throughout all the muscles of the body. He is unable to strain to pass the
urine because such straining increases pain in the region of the bladder.
Profuse, pale, watery urine; frequent and scanty or completely
suppressed urine. Turbid, whitish urine; curdled like milk. Albuminous
urine. Involuntary urination during sleep.
Tearing in the urethra; twitching and burning in the urethra. Periodical
sick headaches sometimes are preceded by scanty urine and sometimes
by a copious watery flow of urine.
Men: The male sexual organs furnish many symptoms of Phosphorus.
Violent sexual desire driving him frantic. Erections frequent and painful
day and night. Seminal emissions at night even without lascivious dreams.
Sexual debility from the inordinate use of table salt. Impotence after
excessive excitement and secret vice, preceded by over-excitement of the
sexual organs.
Frequent discharges day and night of thin, slimy, colorless fluid from the
urethra. Sexual abuse with spinal disease. Discharges of prostatic fluid
during a hard stool. Chronic urethral discharges due to hypertrophy of the
prostate gland gleety discharge, Swelling and soreness of the testes and
cord; inflammation of the testes and cord. It has cured hydrocele
following gonorrhea.
Women: In the woman it is equally useful.
Phosphorus has cured many cases of sterility supposed to depend upon
violent sexual excitement. Violent sexual excitement with aversion to
coition. Violent pain in the ovaries extending down the inner side of the
thighs during menstruation caused by inflammation of the ovaries.
Inflammation of the uterus during menstruation and during pregnancy or
during pyoemia. Copious hemorrhages from uterus, bright red, clotted
blood after confinement, during menstruation or during the climacteric
period. Frequent and profuse hemorrhages from the uterus caused from
cancerous affections.
The menstrual period is too early, flow bright red, lasting too long, is
copious; during the menstrual period ice-cold feet and hands; nausea;
pain in the back, as if broken; blue rings around eyes; loss of flesh; much
fearfulness. It has also menstrual suppression in consumptives with
cough, bleeding from the nose, and spitting of blood. Violent sexual
excitement driving to secret vice.
Copious yellow leucorrhoea with great weakness; leucorrhoea instead of
menses; white, watery leucorrhoea, acrid, excoriating; milky leucorrhoea,
copious when walking. The leucorrhoea is so excoriating that blisters form
upon the genitals. Burning and smarting in the vagina. Stitching pains
upward from the vagina into the pelvis. While there is violent sexual
excitement during coition there. is lack of sensation in the vagina, as if it
were numb.
Condylomata appear like fig warts and excrescences about the genitals
and in the, vagina. Bleeding warts. Erectile tumors on the external
genitals.
Dropsical swelling of the labia. Cauliflower excrescences with much
bleeding. Painful, hard, large nodosities in the female mammary glands.
Fibroid tumors of the breast. Fibroid tumors of the uterus with copious
hemorrhages
During pregnancy and lactation violent sexual desire; vomiting of
pregnancy. Much prostration, sinking, and trembling, puerperal
convulsions; pain in the back, as if it would break. Increased secretion of
milk out of season. Inflammation of the mammary glands with much heat,
weight, and suppuration. Erysipelas of the breasts or of the genitals.
Larynx: Inflammation of the larynx with hoarseness in the morning; husky
voice; great sensitiveness of the larynx to touch and cold air; pain and
burning in the larynx on talking; weakness in the vocal cords; violent
tickling of the larynx while talking; constriction and spasms of the larynx;
constant irritation to cough in the larynx; tuberculous condition of the
larynx; bleeding; loss of voice; cannot speak a word on account of pain in
the larynx; sensation of velvet in the larynx; rawness and smarting in the
larynx.
Phosphorus has cured many cases of croup, membranous croup, when all
the symptoms were present. Every change of weather, from becoming
overheated, and colds settle in the larynx, producing loss of voice and
hoarseness, especially in public speakers and singers. Hoarseness and loss
of voice; great dryness in the larynx and all of the air passages. Hard, dry,
rasping cough that shakes the whole body from irritation in the larynx.
The irritation travels down the air passages, affecting the trachea, along
with difficult respiration; asthmatic breathing; clutching in the larynx;
suffocation; dyspnoea; spasms and constrictions of the chest.
Violent, stridulous inspiration in the evening on falling asleep; fear of
suffocation; labored breathing. Paralysis of the lungs; fullness in the chest
after eating, much irritation in the larynx; difficult breathing; scraping of
mucus from the larynx after eating.
Chest: In the chest, Phosphorus produces oppression; anxiety, weakness
and constriction going along with its chest complaints. Heaviness as if a
great weight were lying upon the chest. With the cough, bronchitis,
pneumonia and cardiac symptoms there is always more or less
constriction of the chest as if bound, or as if bandaged, or as if tied tight
with a string.
Tightness felt over the sternum, and with all complaints great weakness
of the chest; pressure as of a weight over the middle of the sternum;
feeling of a rush of blood to the chest with or without violent pulsations.
Sensation of heat in the chest mounting to the head; flushes of heat in the
chest extending upward. Stitching pain in the chest; spasmodic pains in
the chest; violent stitching pains in the left side of the chest better by
lying on the right side. These are pains likely to occur ig pleurisy or in
pleurisy with pneumonia.
Complaints of chest, worse in cold air. Rawness in the trachea extending
into the lungs; burning in the chest; acute pain in the lower part of the
lungs; violent pain in the chest with coughing. The patient is compelled to
hold the chest with the hand. Inflammation of the lungs with anxiety,
oppression, and expectoration of bright red blood.
The Phosphorus patient suffers from copious hemorrhages from the lungs
in phthisical conditions, in inflammation, inflammation of the bronchial
tubes with intense fever and violent shaking cough; the body trembles
with the cough; tearing pains in the sternum with the cough; suffocation
and constriction of the chest. Pain in the larynx. The expectoration may
be blood-streaked or rust-colored as it is in pneumonia. It may be
purulent. In the later stages it becomes thick, yellow, sweetish.
Phosphorus is a useful remedy in old bronchial catarrhs, in complaints
that date from pneumonia or from bronchitis. Every cold settles in the
chest. The lungs seem to be weak. Again, in hepatization during
pneumonia with hard, dry, hacking cough; in hepatization of the lungs
during pneumonia Phosphorus, Sulphur and Lycopodium are the most
frequently indicated medicines.
Phosphorus is often the remedy to follow Arsenic when Arsenic has been
suited to the restlessness, prostration, and anxiety that comes to a place
where because of hepatization it is capable of accomplishing no more
toward the cure of a case. If, then, the patient has thirst for ice-cold
water, constriction of the chest, dry, hacking cough, paralytic weakness of
the lungs, and expectoration of blood or frothy mucus Phosphorus is the
best remedy.
In pneumonia, there may be burning in the chest, burning in the head, hot
cheeks, and fever; gesticulation and delirium; violent thirst for ice-cold
water; fan-like motion of the nose; difficult breathing; catchy inspiration;
lying on the back with the head thrown far back; short, dry cough.
The carotids pulsate. Rawness in the chest; bruised feeling in the chest;
pains are cutting; burning or sharp and tearing in the lungs when
coughing. Suffocation, or inspiration almost impossible, especially at the
beginning of hepatization when the face becomes livid and the features
pointed with cold sweat and quick, hard pulse. Frothy expectoration in
low forms of pneumonia known as typhoid pneumonia.
Threatened paralysis of the lungs. Again, Phosphorus is a useful remedy
when tuberculosis is about to make its appearance, in persons who are
narrow-chested, slender, and of feeble vitality. All colds settle in the
chest. After each cold, much rattling, hard cough that shakes the whole
body, in persons who are feeble, pale, sickly, and disposed to
hemorrhages.
Cough comes on in cold air. Emaciation; emaciation of the chest and neck.
Along with these conditions comes hectic fever in the last stages of
phthisis; intense fever, red face, and night sweats; fever coming on in the
afternoon and lasting until after midnight.
A powder of Phosphorus very high will reduce this fever and make the
patient comfortable until death. In all incurable cases after the fever has
been reduced, Phosphorus should not be given, as it will intensify the
fever and do just what it was given to avoid. It is not uncommon for a
crisis to follow the administration of Phosphorus. Prolonged sweat and
diarrhea, these should never be interfered with as they will soon stop of
their own accord and the patient will be left in a state of quietude.
Phosphorus is a dangerous medicine to give very high in some cases of
phthisis, in the last stages of phthisis. In this case they should have
received Phosphorus when they were yet curable. In these cases
Phosphorus 30 th may sometimes be used with safety and it will act as a
test in doubtful cases to see whether reaction can be brought about. In
such cases where reaction can be brought about the administration later
of a still higher potency may be found useful, but in the beginning with
Phosphorus in phthisical cases far advanced it is better not to go higher
than the 30 th or 200 th.
Phosphorus very low will act as a poison in really Phosphorus cases and
the only safety some patients have had who have received Phosphorus so
very low was due to the fact that the Phosphorus was not similar enough
to either kill or cure.
Heart: Phosphorus has violent palpitation; worse from motion, and from
lying on the left side especially in the evening; worse at night on waking,
with orgasms of blood in the chest, accompanied by much suffocation.
Tightness in the chest and palpitation over the body; pressure in the
region of the heart. Phosphorus has cured endocarditis. Phosphorus has
cured enlargement of the heart and dilatation and also fatty
degeneration. With fatty degeneration where there is much venous
stagnation, puffiness of the face, particularly under the eyelids,
Phosphorus is often the remedy.
In all of these cardiac affections thirst for very cold water will always be
present. Internal heat; he wants something cold to cool his insides.
Violent orgasms of blood in the chest from every excitement, from worry,
and from anticipation. Phosphorus has many neuralgic pains upon the
outer chest and yellow brown spots.
Back and spine: There are many symptoms in the back; stiffness in the
back and in the back of the neck, between the shoulders, and in the small
of the back.
Stiffness on rising from a seat. Sensation of intense heat in the back
running up the back. The patient complains of a hot spine.
Soreness in places up and down the spine; soreness to touch between
the! shoulders; pulsations in various places in the back and in the whole
spine.
The coccyx is sensitive to pressure; pain in the coccyx as if ulcerated,
preventing motion. Pain in the back during menstruation and during
confinement as if the back would break. Spinal affections and
inflammations, Weakness of the limbs after mental exertion, prolonged
physical exertion, being overheated, sunstroke and sexual excesses;
paralytic weakness. Myelitis; softening of the spine; progressive spinal
paralysis.
Phosphorus has been a useful remedy in locomotor ataxia, palliating
many of the symptoms; the pains; restoring the reflexes. Phosphorus is
often suitable and restrains the progress in multiple sclerosis where there
is much weakness and trembling of the extremities. Phosphorus has cured
caries of the vertebrae in scrofulous children. Phosphorus is a broad
remedy in various diseases of the spine.
Limbs: In the limbs we have paralytic weakness extending to both arms
and legs, with trembling and numbness; paralysis of one or of both lower
extremities or of the upper extremities with trembling and numbness.
The hands and arms become very cold. The limbs emaciate and the veins
become distended; the arms burn; periodical constriction of the fingers;
numbness increasing to complete insensibility of the fingers; finger tips
feel numb and insensible.
Great restlessness in the lower limbs; weariness in the lower limbs;
weakness in the lower limbs, especially observed on walking, unsteady
and trembling gait; paralysis of the lower limbs. Acute inflarnmation of
the joints of the knees and hip joint.
Burning, tearing pains in the limbs from exposure to cold, Rheumatism of
the joints and muscles; stiffness of the joints on becoming cold. All
complaints of the limbs are ameliorated by heat, while complaints of the
head and stomach are ameliorated by cold. The complaints of the chest
are ameliorated by heat. The lower limbs are covered with foetid sweat,
The lower limbs are gangrenous. Inflammation of the periosteum of the
tibia. Ulcers upon the lower limbs; feet icy-cold.
The Phosphorus patient wants to lie down; exhausted; he is unable to
walk; staggers when walking from weakness and from vertigo. A gradual
progressing weakness creeps over him; weakness; trembling; faintness.
Jerking and twitching of the muscles; spasms of the paralyzed parts.
Epilepsy; convulsions; neuralgic pains of the various parts of the body and
of the limbs especially, ameliorated by heat. It has cured multiple neuritis.
Sleep: Restless sleep; starts in sleep; feels in the morning as if he has not
kept enough, yet most of the complaints and aches are ameliorated by
sleep, especially the head symptoms; walks in his sleep.
He sleeps on the right side. Lying on the left side causes anxiety and pain
in the heart and palpitation. Late falling to sleep in the evening; lies
awake thinking about the affairs of the day and borrowing trouble.
Phosphorus is a usual remedy in low forms of typhoid fever on the
symptoms previously mentioned.
Skin: There are many eruptions in Phosphorus.
The eruptions are dry and scaly; dry furfuraceous herpes; blood blisters;
purple spots; yellow spots on the chest and abdomen; formication and
itching in the paralyzed parts; numbness of the skin; irregular brown spots
upon the body; psoriasis of the knees, legs, elbows, and eyebrows; hives
and blood boils; phlegmonous inflammation.
Chronic suppurating openings with hectic fever; fistulous openings; ulcers
bleed on appearance of the menses; deep eating ulcers; indolent ulcers;
malignant ulcers.
Very useful in cancerous ulcers that bleed and take on fungous
appearance and in low forms of scarlet fever where the rash is very dusky
or disappears and suppuration begins in various places about the neck or
upon the extremities or upon the ends of the fingers and there is violent
thirst for cold water, purple appearance in the throat, and dry, hacking,
shaking cough.
Petroleum
Generals: It is one of the abused remedies.
It is used externally in rheumatism, bruises and all sorts of troubles, and
the amelioration that comes is the result of establishing a disease on the
surface, by counter-irritation, and not by homoeopathic action. Crude
Petroleum is extensively used in the oil regions on both man and beast as
a "cure all."
Mind: It is a counter-irritant and, on the skin, produces irritation,
eruptions and disturbances, like Turpentine.
Among the early things that Petroleum does to a prover is that it puts him
in a state of confusion of mind and dizziness; he is dazed so that he loses
his way in the street. She has strange imaginations that there are people
near her who are not present; that the atmosphere is full of strange
forms; that her limbs are double; that another person is in the bed with
her.
Such things are found in the fevers. A woman after childbirth imagines
there is another child in bed with her, and she wonders how she will take
care of the two. These ideas are found in many diseases, have been often
verified. In typhoids and low forms of sickness; in diarrheas; when just
awakening he is in confusion; in his dreams he had the idea of being two
or more and the impression remains with him while he is in a semi-
conscious state. He cannot reconcile the state, but when aroused to
consciousness he is able to reason it away, and when semi-conscious
again it returns. This annoys him day and night.
Skin symptoms. The surface symptoms are striking. The tendency is to
throw out vesicles, herpetic vesicles which are isolated, and the tendency
of the vesicles is to form thick yellow crusts, with considerable moisture.
The vesicles break early.
At times the vesicles do not form crusts, but break early and ulcerate
underneath, and this changes into a phagedenic ulcer; this condition
occurs about the fingers, scrotum, face and scalp. There is a special
tendency to produce vesicular eruptions about the back of the neck.
Papular, pustular, vesicular, dry, mealy eruptions, but most commonly
moist; eruptions which extend deeply. It builds up eruptions on the site of
old eruptions, with an increasing hardness in the base of the old eruption.
When the crust dries down it indurates, and this induration takes place at
the margin and builds up little rings about the margin. The induration
cracks, bleeds, looks purple. Apply this to salt rheum, and eruptions about
the hands. It is suitable when there are cracks about the ends of the
fingers and on the backs of the hands.
The skin is rough, ragged, exfoliates, cracks, bleeds; the tissues are
hardened; this occurs sometimes about the palms of the hands and nails.
This tissue ulcerates, and the ulcers eat and spread. All eruptions itch
violently. He can not rest until he scratches the skin off, when the part
becomes moist, bloody, raw and inflamed.
There is also itching with no visible eruption. He scratches the skin until
moisture oozes forth, and keeps on scratching until the skin bleeds and
the part becomes cold.
(This word makes me remark here that coldness in spots is quite a feature
of this remedy. Coldness in spots; coldness in the stomach, in the
abdomen, in the uterus; coldness in a spot between the scapula; coldness
in the heart - sensation as if the heart were cold.).
Various forms of eczema. Eczema of the scalp, especially of the occiput.
Herpetic eruptions about the mouth (Nat. m.), about the genitals, lips,
face, and the patches become crusty and ooze much.
The mucous membrane, or internal skin, has little patches of ulcers, with
induration about the patch, and hence Petr. is useful in syphilitic ulcers.
Ulcerous patches in the throat; aphthous patches in the mouth. There is
inflammation of the mucous membranes everywhere, producing watery
and finally thick yellow discharges.
The nose is filled by tumefaction of the Schneiderian membrane. Old
catarrhal complaints of the nose, crusts, thick yellow discharge, foetid
odor from the nose.
The nose, posterior nares and pharynx become thickened and there is an
accumulation of thick mucus, especially in the morning.
The larynx is involved and there is loss of voice, and the trouble extends
to the chest, causing a catarrhal condition with cough. He coughs
especially at night, and there is emaciation of the body with pain and
soreness of the chest. Dry, hacking cough, alternating with copious
expectoration; emaciation about the chest. A striking feature of this drug
is that the cough is worse at night, and the diarrhea is worse during the
day.
Catarrh of the stomach and bowels. Catarrh of the rectum, much mucus
with the stools. Diarrha during the day time, ameliorated at night,
while the patient is quiet and at rest.
He cannot eat without pain, but he has a gnawing hunger which drives
him to eat. (Lach., Graph.) There is an "all-gone," hungry feeling after
stool, which drives him to eat. With the diarrhea there is constant hunger,
yet he cannot eat without pain; emaciation, skin eruptions, unhealthy
ragged fingers which never look clean; he cannot wash them, as this
causes them to chap.
Urinary and genitals: Catarrh of the bladder and urethra; chronic catarrhal
discharge chronic gonorrhea. Itching is common to the internal skin, and a
striking feature in gonorrhea is the itching in the posterior half of the
urethra with the discharge. It almost drives him wild, keeps him awake at
night. He rubs and manipulates the perineum to relieve this itching. The
gonorrheal discharge is white or yellow. It is useful in that "last drop."
Also in the early stages of gonorrhea when the itching is troublesome.
Sore bruised feeling all over the body, especially in the joint Rheumatic
pain in the joints on motion; sore to touch; sensation as if bruised. It is
analogous to Arnica in relation to bruises.
Petroleum is suitable in old stubborn occipital headaches. Silicea is the
routine remedy for offensive foot sweat and periodic occipital headaches.
Petroleum has also offensive foot sweat; offensive sweats all over, and
especially so in the axilla, where it is so pungent that it can be observed
on the patient entering the room.
The pain often remains in the occiput, but when very severe it extends up
over the top of the head to the eyes and forehead (Silicea has that
condition). Petroleum is not so closely related to Silicea as it is to
Graphites and Carbo veg., which are carbonaceous substances; and all
carbonaceous products affect the back of the head.
"Pain from occiput over head to forehead and eyes, with transitory
blindness; he gets stiff; loses consciousness."
"Circumscribed pain in the occiput, aggravated on shaking the head."
This remedy, unlike Carbo veg., has oversensitiveness of the senses,
bearing, touch and smell.
Ears: The Petroleum constitution produces a peculiar vertigo which comes
on under regular circumstances, when on ship-board, or riding in a
carriage, or on the ears.
It suits occipital headache from riding on the ears, or from such motions,
with nausea like seasickness. Seasickness is a trouble we cannot always
meet, yet most people, when constitutionally treated, can be directed
into a better state, so that they will not be troubled under ordinary
conditions, such as riding on the cars or in a carriage.
To a great extent the above condition is due to a lack of accommodation,
a visual trouble; coming on, for example, from focusing the eyes on the
waves as they retreat from the rear end of the ship, or on passing objects,
the patient being relieved while in a dark state-room. Occipital headache,
with the vertigo above mentioned, and an all gone hungry feeling or pain
in the stomach, driving him to eat, will be mitigated by Petroleum.
The most common form of seasickness I have found to be the following:
Awful deathly nausea pallor, cold body, profuse sweat and exhaustion,
ameliorated by fanning, by the open air, by closing the eyes, by quiet and
darkness, and aggravated by warmth. Tabacum is generally the remedy of
such cases.
In Petroleum there is much disturbance of vision, but the catarrhal the
eyes is striking. Vesicular formations, ulcerations, inflammation, redness
and copious discharge; granular lids, thickening mucous membranes,
cracks in the lids, fissures in the corners eyes with great itching.
This itching is present in all congestions of the mucous membrane.
Eustachian tubes. The mucous membrane is thickened, and deafness
results. It is a catarrhal state, attended by great itching in the tube, which
be cannot reach method; itching deep in the ear. He rubs the ear and tries
to it, but he cannot reach it. Itching in the pharynx; also in the I canal of
the ear. Ear discharges.
Induration and inflammation of the glands of the body. In ear troubles,
the parotids enlarge; in troubles about the jaw, the sub-maxillary and
sub-lingual glands are involved; they become hard and tend to remain so.
Face pale or yellow; sickly.
"Nausea and qualmishness all day".
Stiffness in the back. Pain in the back on rising from a seat.
Heat and burning. Skin hot in places; with sensation of coldness. Burning
and itching of palms and soles; face and scalp. The itching and burning
often go together; parts that burn much. Feet burn and have a sensation
as if frozen. Chilblains itch, burn and become purple. Parts frozen will,
years after, itch, burn, sting and become red and hot. The patient can tell
when it will thaw because of the itching in the chilblains.
Petroleum cures the itching and burning in frozen parts, but not as
prominently as Agaricus leads all other remedies, especially when the
condition affects parts where the tissues are thin over the bones, as over
the back of the toes.
Paretic conditions, especially left-sided., Weakness of muscles, weakness
of the lower extremities, especially left-sided.
The eruptions on the surface and the state of induration are like
Graphites, but the oozing in Petroleum is thin and watery, and in
Graphites it is gluey, honey like, sticky, viscid. You have indurations and
cracks of the fingers, and rhagades in both remedies, but the horn-like
warty growths, lifting up the quick of the nails, you will find only in
Graphites.
It is of wonderful use and competes with Rhus in eczema of the genitals of
either male or female. Eruption on the scrotum, penis, vulva.
Rhus produces violent inflammation of the skin of the genitals in male and
female; erysipelatous inflammation; nodules vesicles and large blebs.
Petroleum produces small vesicles which itch, sting and burn.
Herpetic eruptions which tend to become erysipelatous. Petroleum and
Rhus are the most common remedies for eruptions on the scrotum and
genitals.
"Herpetic itching, redness and moisture on scrotum; skin cracked, rough
and bleeding; extending to perineum, and thighs."
"Obstinate dry eruptions on genitals and perineum."
"Sweat and moisture of external genitals of both sexes."
Scurfy nipples; white, bran-like scurf; itching; always peeling off. If the
woman is in run-down health, then the nipples inflame and become
oversensitive to the touch of clothing.
Very sensitive to change of weather, like Phos. and Rhod.; aggravated
before a thunder storm. Often sensitive to air and cold. Lean, emaciated
subjects; threatening consumption. Eruptions disappear of themselves or
are suppressed. Hands and feet burn; wants the palms and soles out of
bed.
Do not be too sure Sulphur because the soles burn, or too sure of Silicea
because the feet sweat. Sweating of single parts. Eruptions in patches.
Itching in patches. Coldness in parts. Complaints come in single parts.
The most striking offensiveness is about the feet and in the axillae. There
are many strange sensations which are peculiar and striking. Study closely
the skin symptoms and compare with Graphites and Sulphur.
Acetic Acidum
Introduction: There is either diarrhea or constipation; with the latter he is
rheumatic, with the former he is at his best, as when the diarrhea slacks
up he is full of suffering.
Generals: The diarrhea is his great relief, like Natrum sulph. and Zincum.
Sharp pains here and there, but especially in ovaries and joints.
This remedy is, useful in complaints of pale, sickly people.
Patients who have been weak for many years, who have inherited
phthisis, Emaciation, weakness, anaemia, loss of appetite, burning thirst
and copious pale urine are a combination calling for Acetic acid.
Sensation of heat with pulsation coining and going, like orgasms; chlorosis
in young girls; dropsical conditions in general; bad effects from stings and
bites, have been cured by this remedy.
Vinegar is an old remedy for bad effects from chloroform. It is useful in
the hemorrhagic constipation. Bleeding from various mucous membranes,
nose, stomach, rectum, lungs and from ulcers. Sensitive to cold.
Mind: Confusion of mind does not know her own children; forgets what
has recently happened attacks of anguish; constantly borrows trouble
thinks something is going to happen; peevishness, complaining.
Fainting spells in weak, anaemic subjects; headaches; face pale and waxy;
epistaxis; one cheek pale and the other red; diphtheria in throat or larynx,
unquenchable thirst; sensitive stomach; vomiting blood, and all food
taken; ulceration of stomach; hot, sour eructations; frothy vomiting;
gnawing pain; distension of stomach, with a constant commotion; burning
in stomach and abdomen, ameliorated by lying on the stomach.
Abdomen: In the abdomen there is great pain, distension, flatulence or
dropsy, sore to touch; diarrhea, thin, bloody or pure blood; profuse
bleeding from piles; chronic diarrhea.
Urines: Copious watery urine. It has cured diabetes, with sugar in the
urine or without, where there is great thirst, weakness and pallor and loss
of flesh.
Genital: Weakness with seminal losses; relaxed genitals and swollen feet.
Uterine haemorrhage; copious menses, or watery menstrual flow scanty
menses with chlorosis.
Larynx and chest: Weakness of larynx; croup; diphtheria. It has cured
many cases of laryngeal diphtheria; hoarseness, with pale mucous
membranes; chronic dry, hacking cough in sickly, pale persons, such as
have inherited phthisis, with oedema of extremities, diarrhea and
dyspnoea, or night sweats; haemorrhage from the lungs; burning in chest
and stomach; rattling in chest; chronic bronchitis.
Extremities: Weakness and lameness in extremities, with swelling,
rheumatic or oedematous; dropsy of limbs, with diarrhea.
It is a deep-acting, constitutional remedy, and when well studied will be
very useful.
All substances abused as food become great remedies, such as vinegar,
coffee, common salt, etc. We should look to them oftener than we do for
the stubborn chronic cases.

APOCYNUM CANNABINUM Indian Hemp
Increases secretions of mucous and serous membranes and acts on cellular
tissue, producing dema and dropsy and on skin causing diaphoresis.
Acute hydrocephalus. A diminished frequency of the pulse is a prime
indication. This is one of our most efficient remedies, in dropsies, ascites,
anasarca and hydrothorax, and urinary troubles, especially suppression and
strangury. In the digestive complaints of Bright's disease, with the nausea,
vomiting, drowsiness, difficult breathing, it will be found of frequent
service. The dropsy is characterized by great thirst and gastric irritability.
Arrhythmia. Mitral and tricuspid regurgitation. Acute alcoholism. Relaxation
of sphincters.
Mind.--Bewildered. Low spirited.
Nose.--Long-continued sneezing. Snuffles of children (Sambucus). Chronic
nasal catarrh with tendency to acute stuffiness with dull, sluggish memory.
Dull headache. Takes cold easily, nostrils become congested and blocked up
easily.
Stomach.--Nausea, with drowsiness. Thirst on walking. Excessive vomiting.
Food or water is immediately ejected. Dull, heavy, sick feeling. Oppression
in epigastrium and chest, impeding breathing (Lobelia infl). Sensation of
sinking in stomach. Abdomen bloated. Ascites.
Stool.--Watery, flatulent, with soreness in anus; worse after eating. Feeling
as if sphincter were open and stools ran right out.
Urine.--Bladder much distended. Turbid, hot urine, with thick mucus and
burning in urethra, after urinating. Little expulsive power. Dribbling.
Strangury. Renal Dropsy.
Female.--Amenorrha, with bloating; metrorrhagia with nausea; fainting,
vital depression. Hmorrhages at change of life. Blood expelled in large
clots.
Respiratory.--Short, dry cough. Respiratory short and unsatisfactory.
Sighing. Oppression about epigastrium and chest.
Heart.--Tricuspid regurgitation; rapid and feeble, irregular cardiac action,
low arterial tension, pulsating jugulars, general cyanosis and general
dropsy.
Sleep.--Great restlessness and little sleep.
Modalities.--Worse, cold weather; cold drinks; uncovering.
Relationship.--Cymarin is the active principle of Apocyn, lowers pulse rate
and increases blood-pressure. Strophanthus (extreme cardiac depression
with intense gastric disturbance; dropsy). Aralia hispida-Wild Elder-a
valuable diuretic, useful in dropsy of the cavities, either due to hepatic or
renal disease with constipation. Urinary disorders, especially with dropsy.
Scudder advises doses of five to thirty drops in sweetened cream of tartar,
(Solution). Apis, Arsenic, Digital; Helleb.
Dose.--Tincture (ten drops three times daily) and in acute alcoholism 1
dram of decoction in 4 oz water.
Cactus Grandiflorus
Generalities: Constrictions, contractions and congestions run through
Cactus.
Determination of blood to the head, and coldness of the extremities. Or
determination of blood to an organ, the chest, or the heart. There is never
an equal circulation of blood in the body; it is spasmodic and irregular.
Disturbed by contractions of circular fibres everywhere. When this comes
in places where it can be felt; and realized by the senses, it is felt as
contractions, as if caged in wires, and this gives us the key to Cactus.
Where contractions cannot be felt, where there is no sense of feeling, we
know that it goes on as a spasmodic condition of circular fibres; but these
contractions that are felt are more upon the surface of the body, and in
organs having circular fibers tubes and canals.
They constrict, and this constriction is felt like a spasm. It has a sensation
of tightness and constriction about the head, about the chest, about the
attachments of the diaphragm, all over the abdomen. Contractions about
the heart that are tonic in character, like a tight clutching; constriction.
"Constriction felt about the heart."
Constrictions and congestions: These constrictions are felt about the
throat, in the oesophagus, causing a spasm; in the vagina, causing
vaginismus and preventing coition.
In the uterus it produces the, most violent cramps. Clutching, and
constrictions, as it the uterus were grasped and held tightly, like a spasm.
But at these times, when these constrictions take place, there are
congestions.
"Rush of blood to the part, with constriction."
"Violent congestion of the uterus with constrictions. Rush of blood to the
chest, as if the chest was filled with hot gushes of blood, with
constrictions, and constriction of the heart."
These peculiarities run through Cactus more markedly than any other
remedy. Many remedies have similar things now and then, but in Cactus it
is common; it is the nature of Cactus to constrict, to cause constriction in
places where it has never been felt, and never been thought of.
Constrictions of the whole body, as if the body was held in a wire cage.
Constrictions of the scalp, of the skin, growing tighter and tighter. Violent
congestions that come on suddenly. Congestion of the brain, with hot
head, flushed face.
At the beginning of complaints, at the beginning of pneumonia;
congestive chill with hot head and cold body (like Arn.) with violent
constrictions and tightness, as if the head were pressed, as if the
membrane of the brain were too tight, as if the brain were covered with a
tight cloth, and were being screwed tighter and tighter.
Uniform tightness of an organ, as if it were being bound tighter and
tighter, but in tubes and canals it is a constriction of a particular part.
Many times like as if tied with a string. Constriction, like hour-glass
contraction, in the uterus.
It has inflammations, congestions, rush of blood to the part, gradually
progressing to inflammation, and infiltration. Inflammation of various
parts.
It has rheumatism. It is a remedy very useful in gouty constitutions; very
useful in acute inflammatory rheumatism; and in this instance the
congestion is in the joints that happen to be affected.
And then again the constriction, as if tied with a tape, or as if bandaged.
Tightness, tension, pressure, are involved in that thought. It has such a
prolonged determination of blood to the heart that the heart finally
becomes disturbed in its function, disturbed in its tissues; and it has a
profound curative action upon the heart and even cures organic heart
diseases, such as are produced from this cause, conditions coming on
from congestion, or coming on through congestion in rheumatic
constrictions, where the rheumatism has left the joints partially and the
heart has become involved, and there is constriction of the heart.
Various efforts have been made by provers, and by patients, to describe
the constriction of the heart. It is sometimes described
"as if grasped with an iron hand."
It is only to illustrate the tenacity of the constriction. In these rheumatic
troubles when the joints have ceased to be affected and the heart
becomes affected with this chronic congestion and enlargement, we have
enlargement of the valves so that there are murmurs, the head is hot, and
the patient gradually emaciates.
Kidney troubles will come on; the heart grows weaker, and then dropsical
conditions set in that is, the course of Cactus.
Towards the last, cardiac affections, along with kidney affections, with
emaciation, and then swelling of the hands, and feet. That is the very
nature of Cactus, and you will not find any medicine in the whole Materia
Medica that reads like it.
There is nothing to compare with it in the intensity of these symptoms. All
these things that I have described seem to turn upon these words,
congestion, constriction and contraction.
The pains in Cactus are violent, no matter where they occur. They compel
the patient to cry out, and the pains are clutching pains, constricting
pains; they often feel like tearing pains; but there is always that idea of
clutching.
Suppose you should tie a tape round a violently congested organ, and tie
it tighter and tighter. It seems to me that is about the kind of suffering the
patient has with that constriction of a congested organ.
Pains and spasms: Pains in congested parts; pains in sore parts. Tearing;
constricting, cramping, when pains occur in the intestines they are
constricting, but when the pains are in the long muscles they are not the
constricting pains, for it is not the circular fibres then but the long fibres
that contract, and we call them cramps.
Cactus produces some spasmodic conditions in long muscles, but not to
any great extent. In Bell. especially, and also in many of those medicines
that have this nature of cramping, and constricting and contracting of
circular fibres, there is convulsive tendency.
The violent congestion of the brain in Bell. will commonly be attended
with cramps in the extremities and convulsions of the muscles all over or
in parts. Not so with Cactus. Violent congestion, and he grows stupid
under it.
Congestion of the brain, first with very red face, then darker from the
venous stasis, and then stupor. He grows sluggish under the cerebral
congestion.
The mental state is that of fear and distress, because of the intensity of
the suffering. The patient has never felt such suffering, and he does not
see what it can all mean. So much suffering, such violent suffering, such
sudden suffering, such cramps, such tearing, such constriction.
When this constriction comes in the heart, and about the chest, it makes
the patient think he is going to die, and he is at once, struck with fear, and
it is depicted upon the face. He fears death, and it seems he is going to
die, his pain is so intense.
But with this intense pain he has nothing of the anxiety we find in,
Aconite, which has a similar constriction of the chest and constriction of
the neck. The violent choking in Aconite makes him fear he is going to
choke, to death, and the anxiety is awful.
It is not so intense in Cactus. Screaming with pains is a common thing in
Cactus.
"Taciturn, unwilling to speak a word or to answer."
Mind: That often accompanies the Cactus state, which is the opposite of
most of the medicines that have such violent pains.
"Sadness, taciturnity, and irresistible inclination to weep.
Fear of death that is, he thinks he is going to die from the severity of the
pain.
"He believes his disease is incurable;"
it seems to him that such suffering must end in death. That violent,
irregular action of the heart is followed out through all the blood vessels,
because the circulation is so irregular, is so spasmodic. He is not here, and
cold there.
Heat in the head, or heat in the chest. The circulation is that of
determination to some particular part. With all the cardiac remedies we
have violent dreams, great excitement of the brain during sleep, waking
up startled and frightened, very commonly with a feeling of failing.
Dreams of falling. Dreams full of excitement. These features run through
Cactus, especially with the cardiac symptoms.
"Vertigo from congestion; face red, bloated; pulsation in brain. Feels as if
he would go mad. Vertigo, worse from physical exertion."
With most of the cardiac remedies, or remedies where the circulation and
heart are much involved, we have marked vertigo.
"Vertigo; worse from physical exertion, turning in bed, stooping, rising
from a recumbent position, and deep inspiration."
Many of the complaints of Cactus are disturbed by irregularities of
breathing. Here we see vertigo coming on from deep breathing. If he
holds his breath, it seems as if his heart would fly to pieces, it would go so
fast. Increased pulsation all over the body when holding the breath.
Headaches: The headaches are constricting, pressing. They are all violent,
with intense heat of the head, for they are congestive.
A pressing in the top of the head as if the top of the head would be forced
in; but this is ameliorated by pressing hard upon the pain.
"Heavy pain like a weight on vertex, better by pressure."
Oftentimes the patient may be wrong in the idea of pressure that is felt in
the head. They often describe it in the most marked congestions as if the
head would be crushed in, when the congestion in the brain can be seen
to be most violent, causing pressure from within out, and we would think
they would be better from some sort of support externally, and yet they
feel great soreness and feel as if the head is being crushed in.
Others with headaches feel as if the head is being pressed out.
"Heavy pain like a weight on vertex; better by pressure, but worse from
sounds, hearing, talking, or strong light."
This runs through the headaches. Greatly aggravated from hearing voices.
The sound goes through the head. The brain seems to be sensitive, as if
the sound were a material substance hurled at the brain. Right-sided
headaches. Pulsating headaches. Heavy, pulsating pain in the head.
Tensive pain in the head, tensive pain in the vertex.
A tightness across the vertex, as if the scalp was being drawn tighter and
tighter upon the skull.
There can be no doubt about there being a marked cerebral congestion
with all these symptoms. The eyes show it; the face shows it; the heat of
the head shows it. It has been recommended for threatened apoplexy,
when the congestion is so violent, and the face is flushed and purple, or
very red, and the pulsation is felt in the brain and all over.
This remedy has the violent congestion of the head found in Bell., but
with Bell. we have the intense heat of the body, fever heat which is not
found in Cactus. In Cactus it is only a moderate fever. The heat is in the
upper part of the body, in the head and neck.
Fullness of the neck; bloating of the neck. Feels as if the head would
expand from the pressure of blood in the head, but without any great rise
of temperature.
It has fever, but it has these without fever. But with Bell. when you have
these pulsations the patient is intensely hot, and he burns all over. There
is some burning in Cactus, but not to be compared with Bell. Heat in the
head from mental exertion is a strong symptom of Cactus. This symptom
is found in persons who are trying to break off from coffee and Cactus is
often the remedy.
The patient has choking about the neck, as from a tight collar.
Constriction; tension of the skin and muscles everywhere. Choking about
the neck with constriction of the heart. Choking about the neck in
hysteria; globus hystericus; a lump or ball coming up into the throat, and
she constantly swallows and choked and she goes into cramps with great
numbness of the left arm.
Cramping especially of the left arm. Complete numbness of the left arm
along with cardiac conditions in the history of rheumatism and in
hysteria. The history of rheumatism goes well to fill up the Cactus case.
The face is flushed bright red, becoming blue. With weakness of the heart
it is blue, blue lips.
We need Cactus for a patient that has constriction about the neck, with
congested head, blue face, and lips mottled, numbness of the left band,
constriction of the heart. The left hand mysteriously weak, or is numb,
tingling and crawling, like a formication.
Congestion and hemorrhages: Another thing running all through the
remedy is its hemorrhages. That is not surprising. Any medicine that has
such cardiac conditions and such vascular conditions will at times have
more or less relaxation of blood vessels, and it would be quite in the
nature of it to bleed. It has hemorrhages of two kinds. Hemorrhage from
vascular relaxation accompanying cardiac and vascular conditions, and
hemorrhage from violent congestion of a part.
The rush of blood to the head is of such violence in the moderately
plethoric patient that he bleeds from the nose, and hawks blood from the
throat. Congestion of the chest so violent that he expectorates blood
from the chest.
Bleeding from congestion, rather than from tuberculosis. Congestion of
the uterus with bleeding. Congestion of the bladder and kidneys, with
blood in the urine, with discharges of blood from violent congestion. In
old cardiac conditions, where relaxation is present in most marked
degree, haemorrhage from relaxation.
Strong pulsations felt in strange places, in the stomach, and in the bowels;
sometimes in the extremities, the feet and hands, as well as in the head.
Throbbing all over.
Around the attachment of the diaphragm feeling as if a cord was tied
tighter and tighter; round the lower part of the chest. This is a strange
symptom; it clutches him so tightly around the waist line that it takes his
breath away, and he struggles for breath, and wants to do something. It
clutches him tighter and tighter. Cactus produces congestion of the
bowels; inflammation of the uterus. Gastric inflammation and with, it the
clutching.
It is a remedy for the cure of hemorrhoids; the relaxation of the great
portal system, and the lower veins in the rectum, the hemorrhoidal veins.
The veins are in such a state of relaxation that tumors will form, and
bleed copiously. Bleeding hemorrhoids. Constriction of the anus. it has a
very troublesome constipation; constipation in connection with
hemorrhoids.
Bladder: It has a paralytic weakness of the bladder. It has retention of
urine. Such a constriction of the neck of the bladder that the urine cannot
be passed for a long time, and there is retention. In the kidneys such a
congestion as favors suppression of the urine.
Bloody urine; blood in clots. It is a remedy that favors the formation of
clots speedily. The blood that flows, clots so rapidly and so densely that it
blocks up the way. Bleeding into the bladder blocks up the way. Bleeding
into the vagina causes a clot difficult to expel, and pressing upon the
urethra of the female that it is impossible for her to pass urine.
It is like an immense tampon. And hence it reads,
"urination prevented by clots," clots in the vagina, as well as clots in the
bladder.
Female: Inflammation of the ovaries; inflammation of the uterus. It is a
medicine that you will need to know when a young, plethoric, vigorous
woman comes down violently with congestion of the uterus at the
menstrual period, and she screams because of the violent clutching and
cramping of the uterus.
Before the flow starts, or just at the beginning, there is violent spasm. The
circular fibres clutch; and she describes it accurately as if a tape were tied
around that sore and congested uterus.
The uterus fills with blood clots, and the spasm to expel that blood is like
a labor-pain, and she screams again, and it is some time before the flow
becomes free enough to give relief.
If this condition is met with in rheumatic diathesis, where there is more or
less rheumatism of the joints, clutching pains and constriction in other
places, we have a remedy in Cactus.
The excitement and the sharp scream, can be heard by the neighbors.
Suffocative attacks with these pains, because the heart suffers, and
constriction of the heart will commonly go along with the constriction of
the uterus. In cardiac conditions it seems as if he will die for want of
breath.
Constrictions of the chest. Oppression as if a great load was on his chest,
crushing the life out of him, so great is the constriction, and the
congestion. A sudden congestion, and it comes on and ends without
inflammation in many instances.
A violent rush of blood to the chest, with awful dyspnoea and constriction
of the heart and it passes away without inflammation. At other times
Cactus has conditions like pneumonia, inflammation of the lungs, and
congestion ending in inflammation, with the usual expectoration, bloody
or blood streaked.
Cactus is also a remedy for hypostatic congestion of the lungs. He cannot
lie down, must sit up in bed, and there is a dullness of the lower part of
each lung, gradually growing higher and higher from an effusion of serum
into the lower portion of the lungs.
This hypostatic congestion is due to a cardiac weakness. Cactus will often
relieve this a few times when it occurs in old broken down cases towards
the end of Bright's disease, and at the end of dropsical conditions and
heart troubles.
It will postpone death.
"Could only breathe with shoulders elevated and lying on back."
Lies leaning back or sitting quite upright.
"Periodical attacks of suffocation, with fainting; cold sweat."
"Feeling as if heart was compressed or squeezed by a band. Cardiac
rheumatism, Heart seemed to be held by an iron band for many hours.
Pain in the cardiac region. Great pressure at heart, going round under left
axilla to back."
Often this pain shoots down the left hand, is attended with numbness,
and sometimes with swelling. Numbness, tingling, swelling.
"Dull pain in the heart. Heavy pain in, the heart, aggravated from
pressure. Contractive pain in the region of the heart going down to left
abdomen. At times felt as if, some one was grasping the heart firmly.
Paroxysms of pain in the heart," that is this kind of constriction comes in
periods of violent paroxysms. "
" Acute inflammation of the heart. Chronic inflammation of the heart.
Palpitation of the heart, continued day and night when walking, and, at
night when lying on the left side."
Another thing running through the remedy is that chest com plaints often
come on or are exaggerated at if oclock. Eleven o'clock in the morning, or
eleven at night.
Its intermittent fever will bring on a chill with violent congestion to the
head at ii o'clock. Regular paroxysms at 11 A.M. and 11 P.M., or
sometimes at 11 A.M. and sometimes at if P.M.
A daily chill at 11 A.M. It has cured intermittent fever of the congestive
type, when the congestions are here and there, but particularly of head,
with constrictions, congestions and contractions.
Calcarea carbonica
If you were about to produce a Calcarea subject to order you could do so
by feeding him lime or lime water until the digestive organs were so
debilitated that they could no longer digest lime; and then the tissues
would be increasingly deprived of what they need, and give us the lime
subject, the "bone salt inanition" case, for that is really what it is. Infants
that are fed lime water in the milk will in a little while be lime subjects.
They will soon get in such a state that they cannot take the lime from
their natural food, and the result will be a Calcarea subject such as we are
about to describe.
But the natural cases are those that have a natural sickness, are born so,
born with an inability to digest the lime that is in their natural food, and
they grow fat and flabby, and produce deficient bones.
There is a greater proportion of cartilaginous material in the bones than
lime, and the bones bend, and take on diseases and destructive troubles.
Deficient teeth, or no teeth at all. The bones simply stop growing, and the
patient goes into marasmus.
What a foolish notion it is to feed that infant lime water because he
cannot digest lime! Is it not just as reasonable as anything else in
allopathy? And yet our homeopaths use allopathic medicines. They use
the lowest potencies they can get and it would seem strange if those
substances cured any better in the hands of the homeopath than in the
hands of the allopath.
Nor, it is astonishing that one single dose of the potency suitable to meet
the state of disorder will make that infant commence to digest its food,
and appropriate from its food the lime substance that it needs in its
bones, and wherever else it needs it.
All at once the teeth begin to grow; the bones begin to grow, and the legs
get stiff enough for him to begin to walk, and they will hold up. It is
astonishing what changes will take place under the various medicines that
are suitable for the disturbances of the hair, and the bones and nails.
The remedy must be sufficiently potentized to correspond with the
wrong. It certainly must not be crude because the child is already stunted
by the crude material. You will see within a month or six weeks after
giving a solitary dose of the sufficiently potentized remedy the nails that
were corrugated and uneven and spotted and irregular will form a margin
and will grow out smooth.
You will see the ugly little crowns upon the teeth, distorted, and black
things as they come up out of the gums; but when they have been under
the suitable homeopathic remedy you will see them form a margin line,
and from there on the teeth look healthy, and from there on the little
body of the tooth is smooth and round; just as if that child bad had an
impulse to grow better teeth.
That same thing probably takes place where the bones exist. The
periosteum takes on healthy work.
This is the Calcarea state when the patient needs lime and he cannot get
it because he has been cloyed; or, because he has an indigestion, he is
unable to assimilate the lime that is in his food, and it goes through him
and does not affect him.
So it is with much of the sickness we have, an inability to extract from the
food and assimilate such things as the body needs. Would not anyone be
a simpleton to suppose that he had been the cause of the building of a
tooth?
You do not build mole hills out of our high potencies; they simply
establish a state of order, so that digestion and assimilation go on, order
is established and the tissues are improved.
Health comes, beauty, a growth of hair, better skin, better nails.
The Calcarea constitution is what we want to know. We do not need to
know that the individual has been poisoned by lime; it is not worth much
to know it, because that is not the index to the remedy. If indigestion of
lime has been brought about by lime, it may need one of ten other
remedies to overcome that indigestion for lime.
It is not always Calcarea that covers the symptoms. The medicine that
covers the symptoms is the one that will change the economy from an
abnormal to a normal state, and digestion will become orderly, and we
will have growth and prosperity in the economy.
Aspect: The Calcarea case is to be known by the symptoms, and not by
the fact that the patient has been poisoned by lime; the chances are that
those we have to treat have never had any lime. Many of them have
never been poisoned by lime but have been unable to assimilate lime
from birth.
Calcarea is full of congestions, determination of blood to the head cold
feet; hot head; congestion of the chest. Calcarea corresponds in a very
high degree to the chlorotic and anaemic, pale and waxy, and in spite of
this plump. It has both fat, flabby and pale patients and it has emaciated
states, too.
Muscles emaciate. Emaciated about the neck; emaciated about the neck
and from there downwards. Anemic conditions; pale, waxy, sickly; pale
lips; pale ears; pale fingers; pale and yellowish.
Chlorosis is a word especially relating to the anemia of girls. A large
number of remedies is indicated in those conditions, but Calcarea
produces the kind of anemia known as chlorosis. It produces most
pernicious anemia.
Great relaxation in the tissues everywhere; relaxation of muscles;
relaxation of veins; relaxation of the walls of blood-vessels to such a great
extent, especially in the lower limbs and anus, that there are marked
hemorrhoidal manifestations or marked varicose veins in the legs.
Distended veins, burning in these varicose veins. Burning and smarting.
Bleeding and oozing. Inflammation and painful swelling of joints.
Glands: Another marked feature running through the remedy is its
tendency to attack glands, the glands of the neck, all of the glands of the
body, especially the lymphatic glands.
The lymphatic glands in the abdomen become hard, inflamed and sore,
like great nodules, like hickory nuts; tubercular. Calcarea is useful in
tubercular formations.
Calcareous degenerations, calcareous glands, induration of glands. It is
useful in indurations in ulcers, and the base of ulcers, and round about
ulcers, hence its wonderful use in palliating and restraining the growth of
malignant ulcers, as malignant ulcers always have an indurated base.
Old cancerous ulcers are greatly restrained in their growth, that is, the
constitutional state is much improved, the patient himself has more
endurance and the ulcers will take on healing. In cancerous affections that
would kill in sixteen months the patient will live five years with Calcarea,
if Calcarea is indicated.
That is something, and in any times that is all that can be expected in a
cancerous growth.
In glandular affections where the glands round about are infiltrated and
hard, where there is much burning and stinging pain, where the growth
has invaded and appropriated the surrounding tissues so that there are
adhesions, matters are serious.
There is malignancy in almost all these cases. They differ entirely from
glands that are loose from the skin, glands that roll under the skin, and
have no fibrous attachment. Cancerous affections burn and sting.
Calcarea cures many tumors, fatty, cystic, if the symptoms agree, so
strongly is it related to this building tip process in glands. It builds up
glands and bone.
Another thing running through the remedy is a pyoemic state, in which
there are abscesses in deep muscles. Abscesses deep in the neck, deep in
the thigh, in the abdomen.
You will be astonished to learn that Calcarea will take care of the abscess
(when the symptoms agree), and it will not break. I have many times seen
an abscess disappear when fluctuation was most positive. I have seen
those abscesses disappear when pus was shown to he present by the
needle; I have not only seen the abscesses go away, but also the pyoemic
state which was prior to it. We have but a few medicines that will do that.
There is something singular about this. Why does Calcarea favor the
resorption of that fluid and encourage the part to become calcareous?
It is more than I am able to explain, but it does it when the symptoms
agree. But Sulph. and Sil., when their symptoms agree hasten
suppuration. But Calcarea has that peculiar action of concentrating and
contracting.
One may be indicated in one case, the other may be indicated in the
other. There are times when Sil. is indicated and the abscess is in such a
dangerous place. Then if Sil. is given the result that naturally belongs to
the spreading of that abscess is dangerous; in such an instance the
surgeon must be called to drain the abscess in a safe manner, even when
we know that if that abscess were located in a safe place, it would be far
better for that patient to have the remedy he needs.
Sometimes the periosteum is injured by a hammer striking it through
muscles, injuring or contusing the periosteum. Inflammation will set in,
pus will form rapidly, and if Calcarea is indicated by the constitution of
the patient the surgeon's knife is entirely useless, and a most detrimental
thing.
But in thinking from the old standpoint, the physician who knows nothing
about Homoeopathy, and the wonders of our homeopathic remedies,
would hold up his hands in horror.
"Why, if you produce a resorption of that pus into the system you will
have blood poisoning and death."
But under Calcarea this resorption does take place in some manner, and
the patient improves every moment, he stops his sweating, his rigor has
disappeared, he becomes perfectly comfortable, his appetite improves,
he is stronger by the time it is over, and remains well.
Judging from the old standpoint, we cannot conclude anything about the
problems that will come up under Homoeopathy. We can only judge from
our standpoint, and from what we know.
And if you hear that somebody has tried this and tried that without
success, remember that somebody has only demonstrated his own
failure. Homoeopathy is capable of demonstrating itself in all intelligent
hands; wherever the physician has intelligence and makes use of the law
and applies the remedy in accordance with the symptoms he will see the
case turn out as described.
Polypi: Another grand feature running through this remedy is its ability to
grow polypi. Those who need Calcarea will grow polypi in the nose and
ears, in the vagina, in the bladder, and here and there. Cystic growths also
and strange little papillomata.
Exostoses: Another strange thing that it does is to cause exostoses. This
state of disorder comes from the irregularity in the distribution of the
lime. You would think that nature would try to distribute it around evenly
where it can do the most good.
But when this bone salt inanition has commenced the lime may be piled
up in one place, and almost absent in another. One bone will be
cartilaginous and another will have bony growths on it. Softening of the
bone.
Defective formation of bone. A keynote has grown out of this, viz:
"Late learning to walk," because the legs are so weak.
It is not late learning to walk, but it is late walking.
It knows how to walk, but it can't walk. Natrum mur. has brain trouble, in
which the child is late learning to do things.
"Tardy development of bone tissues. Curvatures."
Muscles flabby, joint affections, like hip-joint disease. It is full of
rheumatism. Rheumatic and gouty conditions of the joints.
The Calcarea patient is a chilly patient. Sensitive to the cold air. Sensitive
to the raw winds. Sensitive to the coming of a storm; sensitive to the
coming of cold weather, and when the weather changes from warm to
cold it seems impossible for him to keep warm; he wants the body kept
warm.
Head: The head is sometimes congested; and it is hot to the touch; but it
often feels cold to him. His scalp feels as if it were cold. But the body is
nearly always cold to the touch and he feels cold, and he wants plenty of
clothing.
The feet are cold. He sweats in various places, sweats in spots. Sweats
upon the forehead, or upon the face, or upon the back of the neck, or the
front of the chest, or his feet.
Sensitiveness to cold and weakness run through the remedy. Weakness in
the legs. Inability to endure. Worse from every kind of exertion. Out of
breath. Fat, flabby anemic subjects, sometimes they look plump, often
flushed in the face, but they have no endurance, and if such a patient
undertakes a little exertion he is down sick with a fever, or a headache.
Calcarea is full of complaints brought on from lifting, from exertion, from
walking, from walking enough to get into a sweat; and these come very
suddenly, because he cannot stop that perspiration by keeping still
without getting sick.
If he gets into a sweat, and stops long enough to be comfortable, the
perspiration will stop so suddenly that he will have a chill, or he will have
a headache. Weak, tired, anxious.
Difficulties of breathing. Weak heart. Weak all over. No ability of the
muscles to sustain prolonged effort, and it is the same way with the mind.
No ability of the mind to sustain prolonged mental effort. Calcarea is a
tired patient.
He is suffering from want of lime. He has been unable to digest lime, and
he goes into a state with enlarged glands, emaciation of the neck and of
the limbs, while the fat and the glands of the belly increase. Especially is
this noticed in children. A big bellied child, with emaciated limbs and
emaciated neck.
Enlarged glands. Pale, and flabby, and sickly. Those that take on flesh
without any increase of strength. They take on flesh and grow flabby.
Remain feeble. Those that get up from sickness take on flabby flesh, and
in a little while they become dropsical.
The Calcarea patient can't go upstairs; he is so tired in his legs, and so
tired in the chest; he pants and suffocates from going upstairs. He has
every evidence of muscular weakness and flabbiness. Nutrition is
impaired everywhere.
This is the kind of patient that used to be called scrofulous; now we call
the condition psora; and Calcarea is one of our deepest anti-psorics. It is a
medicine that goes deep into the life, and takes a deep hold of every part
of the economy.
Mind: Now we will take up the mental symptoms. All the mind symptoms
represent Calcarea as in a state of great weakness; in ability to prolong
mental operation.
Becomes very tired from mental work. Full of anxiety. He is tired
mentally, and tired physically, from mental work and breaks down in a
sweat, and becomes excited and irritable and disturbed. Great
disturbance of the emotions; complaints lasting for days and weeks from
excitement of the emotions; from worrying, from vexation, or a general
emotional disturbance is prostrated.
"Inability to apply himself."
Inability to do good thinking for some time after such excitement,
disturbance or worry. It is very useful in complaints from prolonged
worry, from prolonged application to business, from excitement.
It is full of a peculiar kind of mental feeling, differing quite considerably
from most remedies; he feels his exhaustion of mind, and it seems to him
that this weakness, and this inability to do and to think connectedly, must
be going towards insanity, he broods over it, he is convinced that he is
insane, or about to become insane, that he is getting weak-minded, and
he looks it, too, because what he has in his mind is this: that he is
becoming insane or weak-minded and he thinks people will observe it.
He thinks people look at him suspiciously, and he looks at them
suspiciously, and he wonders why they do not say something to him
about it.
He thinks he is going insane, and that other people are observing his state
of mind, and he keeps that in his mind most of the time. He thinks of it
day-times, and he gets greatly roused up over it; he thinks of it nights, and
it keeps him awake.
He lies awake late at night thinking. Calcarea leads to little ideas, that is, it
compels the mind to littleness, to little ideas, or to dwell on little things,
but his mind, as it were, is forced to dwell upon things that he cannot put
aside.
When the Calcarea patient begins to relate to his friends how he feels
they all naturally say to him,
'Why don't you put that aside; that doesn't amount to anything,"
but to him it is a big thing, and he cannot put it aside; all these little things
combine to convince him that he is going crazy. he cannot calculate, he
cannot do deep thinking, he cannot dwell upon deep things; he may have
been a philosopher, and he has lost his ability to think out things in
philosophy.
He has lost his mental depth. he forms conclusions out of his emotions
rather than from his intelligence. He forms conclusions about things as he
wants them to be. You would almost think he wants to grow crazy, he
keeps talking about it so much.
He is unable to accept any sort of argument, and this grows worse and
worse. He is unable to accept the assurance of his physician, in whom he
has always had confidence. It is no use, it seems, to try to reason with
him; yet he is not so far gone but he can reason about other things except
his own mental state.
He imagines things; and the things he imagines you will really wonder at
his dwelling upon them so, because they are such little things. And so it is
when he goes into insanity, or imbecility, or a general breakdown.
It is a passive state, in which he sits and thinks about his little affairs, and
his little things that amount to nothing at all, and he sits and sits, the text
says,
"Sits and breaks sticks, or bends pins all day long with his fingers."
Does little things, and in this way he keeps himself busy, wears himself
out more and more. Any amount of thinking be comes impossible. It is
almost impossible for him to come to a conclusion, for he never figures it
twice alike.
He cannot add and subtract even in the simplest forms. Now, he thinks
about this matter so much and thinks everybody else is watching him,
until finally the instant he closes his eyes he has visions, just as soon as he
gets down quiet and thinks
"Now I will go to sleep, I will get rid of all this,"
and he closes his eyes to sleep, then he must get them open as quick as
possible, he is in a state of excitement, for he sees horrid little spooks; he
cannot keep his mind clear.
He cannot go to sleep because his thoughts trouble him, and he sees all
sorts of things. There is no congruity in his mind. We know that strong
intelligence puts aside such follies, but these are just the things that
Calcarea patients dwell upon.
Talking to himself. He lies in bed, or sits, when be is alone, and carries on
a general conversation with every conceivable individual he has had to do
with, on every conceivable subject; and it multiplies and it grows, and he
imagines it is all real.
We see how far that is removed from the healthy mind, and yet he is not
fit for the insane asylum, with all of these strange things, for when he is
roused he does carry on a conversation, and he does as ordinary people
do.
When he is alone, when he has nobody to talk with him, he does these
strange things. He is controlled and dominated when he is in company, to
a great extent, and hence these things are not brought out.
He carries out that same idea when he becomes delirious or insane. Picks
his fingers, and does all sorts of peculiar little things. Sees visions and
faces of persons when eyes are closed.
"Imagines some one is walking beside her."
In the proving of Sil. that was observed very strongly. It has been
observed in Petroleum, and in Calcarea. In a perfect state of health, with a
strong, vigorous intelligence, it is not likely to be felt, but in nervous
people, and especially in women, it is common.
"Mental aberration with horrid visions. Sees dogs crowding around him,
fights them off."
Here is a sensation, occurring in nervous women,
"Feels as if she would like to run up and down, and scream."
Feels as if she could not help it, she must scream. That occurs in persons
overwrought, dreadfully excited from a loss in the household by death.
The mother loses her child, or husband; or a young girl loses her intended.
She is broken-hearted, and greatly excited. It is a hysterical state. And yet
I have seen the same in men.
I remember one. It came upon him from business cares. He had that same
feeling; he would walk up and down the house, he said he felt as if he
must fly or jump out of a window, or do some thing. That is analogous to
the mental state found in hysteria, or a great state of nervous excitement.
"She thinks and talks of nothing but murder, fire, rats, etc."
That is that same idea of talking about little things and foolish things.
Things that are not interesting to anybody, And yet I have seen these
things in patients and I would ask them why they did it. It is generally
said,
"I tried a good while to stop it, and when I could not I just kept right on at
it, for it seemed to do me good."
"She thinks and talks of murder, fire, rats, etc."
Your patient may talk about other foolish things, but it is only to il
lustrate the idea that she sits and talks about foolish things, and can not
control herself; thinking, thinking, or expressing it, talking, talking,
talking.
Violent screaming spells. And then the Calcarea patient will refuse to talk,
will say nothing. She may talk to herself when alone, but will decline to
enter into conversation, and will sit perfectly silent.
A Calcarea patient sometimes takes an aversion to work, and quits work.
He will quit a most thriving business, and go home and do nothing, after
being fatigued in carrying on the business until it- reaches a most thriving
condition. He says business is not good for him.
He is tired of business, and when he goes to his business again it seems as
if it would drive him crazy. He does not want to see it, he does not want
to know anything about it.
Of course, you can readily see that it is not so much in the Calcarea
patient that he is driven to, weakness and fatigue from distress in
business, although it has that, but that which I am speaking about is that
he has overworked until he has given out, and right in the midst of his
success he quits his business and goes home, and leaves all-it looks just as
if he were lazy.
If you look at him you come to the conclusion that he is lazy. Yet it is an
insanity; not the laziness that belongs to tramp nature, though that also
might be cured many times. He has been industrious, and all at once takes
a turn. A great change occurs in the mind, and he takes on symptoms. It is
not such persons as were born that way, born lazy, never would work; but
those that become lazy.
It is like the symptom in a pious upright man, whose walk and
conversation has been upright but all at once he turns and commences to
swear. Of course we know that individual is insane. On the other hand,
we have patients that have been only ordinarily industrious that develop
an insanity for work, and it seems they have ability in that insane industry
to work almost night and day; they are up early and late.
It is a sick state. So when we see in the Repertory "Industry" it does not
mean an ordinarily industrious state but one that is exaggerated into a
symptom. He has become so industrious that he has a mania for work.
"Whimpering. Low-spirited and melancholy."
It is a strange thing to see a bright little girl of 8 or 9 years old taking on
sadness, melancholy, and commencing to talk about the future world, and
the angels, and that she wants to die and go there, and she is sad, and
wants to read the Bible all day.
That is a strange thing; and yet Calcarea has cured that. Ars. has cured
that state, and also Lach. They are a little inclined to be precocious, and
they have attended the Sunday-school, and they have taken too seriously
the things they have learned.
Children sad and unhappy, and old people who take on a loathing of life,
become weary of life. That is a good deal like Aurum. In going over Aurum
I explained that, and dwelt upon it, that the highest love is the love of life;
and when an individual ceases to love his own life, and is weary of it, and
loathes it, and wants to die, he is on the border line of insanity.
In fact, that is an insanity of the will. You have only to look with an
observing eye to see that one may be insane in the affections, or insane in
the intelligence. One may remain quite intact, and the other one be
destroyed.
We find in Calcarea both equally disturbed. One patient may be insane in
his voluntary system, so that all of his loves are perverted; he has no
affection that is like what it used to be, like it was when be was well.
Antipathy to his family or some member of his family.
Or, he may have the affection fairly intact, but no intelligence, and does
all sorts of strange things.
He is full of fear.
Weary of life; hopelessness, anxiety. The world is black.
"Fear that something sad or terrible will happen. Fears that she will. lose
her reason, or that people will observe her confusion of mind."
"Fear of death; of consumption; of misfortune; of being alone."
Fear abounds, especially when the voluntary system is disturbed. She is
startled at every noise. He can't sleep sq that the body rests or the mind
rests. He is disturbed in his sleep with horrible dreams. His sleep is a
restless one.
"Great anxiety and oppression. Restlessness and palpitation. Despairing;
hopeless."
These symptoms have to be coupled and connected with that
leucophlegmatic, pale, flabby, sickly individual.
"Child cross and fretful. Easily frightened."
Many complaints after exertion of the mind. Many complaint after
excitement, chagrin or fright.
He is so weak in his circulation, so much disturbed in the heart, it
palpitates from every excitement. He is out of breath from every physical
exertion; and these take part so much in the circulation of blood in the
body, have so much to do with circulation of blood in the brain, have so
much to do with the intellect, with the sensorium, that we see at once
vertigo on almost all occasions, intermingled with all sorts of symptoms.
Fear, anxiety, and vertigo. If his. emotions stir him up he becomes dizzy.
From going upstairs the blood mounts to the head, and he becomes dizzy.
Confusion of mind and vertigo from mental exertion. If he becomes
shocked, or has bad news, or has any mental excitement or chagrin, this
vertigo will come out.
Confusion of mind, determination of blood to the head, cold extremities,
covered with sweat, with vertigo.
"Vertigo, when climbing into high places;"
that is the effort of going up. The blood rushes to the head and he
becomes dizzy.
"On going upstairs or up a hill. On suddenly rising, or turning the head,
even when at rest."
Head: One of the most striking symptoms of the head of the Calcarea
patient is the sweat, the sweat of the head upon the slightest exertion. He
will sweat on the face when he sweats nowhere else, and his head is
covered with cold sweat when he is comfortable in other places about the
body.
The same thing is true about the feet. When his feet become very cold
they will sweat. When they are warm they will sweat. You would
naturally think that a person going into a cold room would stop his
sweating. But sometimes the Calcarea patient will break out in a sweat,
upon the head, and upon the feet, in a cold room,
He sweats upon the forehead, so that every draft of air makes him chilly,
and this brings on headache. Coldness of the whole scalp, so he has to
wrap up the head. Yet during congestions, the head is hot.
So it has at times great heat in the head. The Calcarea headaches are
stupefying, they are benumbing; they bring on confusion of mind.
The Calcarea patient has a catarrh in the nose, with more or less
discharge; at his best he has considerable discharge. But he goes into a
cold place, the discharge is slacked up, and he gets a headache. Headache
over the eyes. Congestion of the head; back of the head.
"Tearing headache above the eyes down to nose," is a strong symptom of
Calcarea.
It seems sometimes as if a great wedge were lip in there. This is relieved
by very hot applications. It is relieved in the dark; it is aggravated in the
daylight. He must go into dark room and lie down for relief.
Sometimes this headache is ameliorated by lying down in the dark. This
headache continues to grow worse during the day, until in the evening it
becomes so severe that it is at tended with nausea and vomiting.
It is one of the forms of constitutional headache, is a headache that
sometimes occurs once in two weeks. Headache every seven days, or
headache once in two weeks. Periodical headaches. Sick headache, the
old-fashioned American sick-headache.
There is commonly a periodicity belonging to it, of seven to fourteen days,
but again, it comes on whenever he is exposed, by riding in the wind, for
he is a very chilly patient, if he becomes really chilled or very cold, he gets
a headache, a sick-headache.
Then, again, it has pain in the left side of the head. One-sided headache.
Headache worse from noise, from talking, but ameliorated in the evening,
from lying in the dark. It has headache in the temples, and this headache
seems to draw through to the root of the nose.
The headaches from the supraorbital region draw through to the nose.
Headaches in the temples seem to produce a feeling of tightness, a feeling
of great tension in the forehead. Headaches worse from motion, from
walking, from talking.
Most of the Calcarea headaches, as soon as they become severe, are
attended with pulsation. The pulsation is so strong that the patient is not
satisfied by merely saying it is a pulsation, he describes it as hammering.
Most of the pains are pressive or tearing.
"Concussive headaches."
Stitching, pulsating pains in the head, as if it would split. Headaches
worse from walking, and from a jar. Sometimes he feels a coldness in the
head, it seems as if the cold head is numb, cold as if made of wood. He
sometimes feels this numbness, and describes it as if he had a cap,
sometimes as if there were a helmet, on the head.
Now, all of these sensations are difficult to describe, but sometimes they
are one and the same thing. All the headaches of Calcarea, are more or
less congestive. It is a peculiar feature of Calcarea, that the more marked
the congestion of internal parts, the colder the surface becomes.
With chest troubles, and stomach troubles, and bowel troubles, the feet
and hands become like ice, W covered with sweat; and he lies in bed
sometimes with a fever in the rest of his body, and the scalp covered with
cold sweat.
That is strange. You cannot account for that by any process of reasoning
in pathology, and when a thing is so strange that it cannot be accounted,
for, it become very valuable as descriptive of the remedy, and is one that
cannot generally be left out when prescribing for a patient.
That is almost a general state, it is so marked. It has burning in the vertex,
and this is often present coldness of the forehead, or the whole head may
feel cold except a burning spot on the vertex. Calcarea will again have
cold head and icy cold feet when walking in cold air or in very cold
weather; but as soon as the feet get warm, they go to the other extreme,
and burn so that he puts them out of bed.
This has often led inexperienced prescribers to prescribe Sulph., because
that is a keynote of Sulph. All keynote prescribers give Sulph. whenever
the patient puts the feet out of bed, but a number of remedies have
burning feet, hot feet, so we are not limited to Sulph. Calcarea has
affections of the bones of the skull, the outer part of the head.
Slow formation of bone. The fontanelles remain open a long time. It has
hydrocephalic conditions, effusion in the membranes, and the bones do
not grow and keep pace with the growth of the head, and hence the
sutures commence to separate and the head grows wider, and larger all
the time, with hydrocephalus.
In hydrocephalic children this sweating head is a common feature. The
child lies at night upon the pillow, and the sweat pours from the head and
wets the pillow all around; especially sweating at night.
In persons suffering from softening of the brain, the pillow is wet all
around the head. Children going through difficult dentition have dreadful
times in their dreams, they screech out in the night, and the pillow is wet
all around their head.
Old plethoric patients, broken down constitutions, fat, flabby, lymphatic
patients, with enlarged glands, with sweating of the head, cold sweating
of the head. The hair falls out, not in the regular way such as occurs in old
ago bit in patches here and there.
You see a bald spot on the side of the head, or the back of the head; a tuft
of hair has come out, or in two or three places. Then it has eruptions upon
the head and face; eczema that we find in children and infants.
"Thick scabs on the head, with yellow pus."
Eyes: Offensive eruptions. The eye comes in for a share of troubles, and
Calcarea is one of the best friends the oculist has, if he knows how to use
it. It is not especially suitable for every inflammation, but in those fat,
flabby constitutions, where every cold settles in the eyes, and produces
an inflammation, and this goes on for a few days, and ulceration begins,
then study Calcarea.
Vesicles are formed and break and spread into an ulcer. From exposure of
the feet in water, from riding in the wind, from cold, damp weather he
gets eye troubles. Ulceration of the cornea. In all of the complaints of the
eyes and of the head the photophobia is so marked that the Calcarea
subject when he is at all disturbed cannot even stand ordinary light, and
to be out in the sunlight is extremely painful, and many times
inflammations are started from merely going into a bright sunlight, from
steady looking, and from straining the eyes.
All kinds of exertions bring on headaches and eye troubles. Tension,
because one muscle is weak. There is a disturbance of accommodation.
Worse from every exertion of the eyes; you see that is like its generals,
that is, aggravated from exertion.
He cannot endure any prolonged exertion; you see that is just as true of
his parts as the whole. You know that reading, writing and looking at one
thing all are marked exertions. With Calcarea, the part itself is worse from
exertion, and the whole body is worse from exertion.
Calcarea has cured cataract. Calcarea has other disturbances of the eyes,
in connection with head troubles, in connection with fevers, and when he
is out of sorts from great exertion; he so easily gets into a fidgety state,
confusion of mind that is almost a delirium, and on closing the eyes he
sees the most horrible visions, specters, ghosts.
Long before any disturbance can be observed in the tissues, or in the
retina, or any disturbance of the eye by looking into it with the
ophthalmoscope he will complain of seeing smoke, or steam in the air
before his field of vision, as if looking through a veil, as if looking through
a cloud, all meaning the same thing.
"Dim vision." His vision is weak.
The muscles are weak. He suffers from dim vision, which is going on
gradually to blindness as he grows increasingly weak. All of his eye
symptoms, and his headaches, and his nervous symptoms arc aggravated
from reading, from writing, from looking steadily at one thing.
He is very much exhausted after such an exertion and will have tearing
pains over the eyes, behind the eyes in the head. That is a peculiar kind of
a headache, such as he is in the habit of having. It may be in any part of
head.
Called eye-strain. It is a wonderful remedy for eye-strain (Onosmodium).
Calcarea has cured many cases of opacity of the cornea (Bar, iod.). In an
old case a cure can never be promised. It is one of the results of disease,
and we never know when we are going to remove the results of disease,
because the intelligent homeopath never prescribes for the results of
disease. He prescribes for the patient. An opacity itself, when it is present,
is not a symptom, but a result of disease.
Often when a patient is prescribed for on his general symptoms, such a
state of opacity of the cornea will, after a while, begin to pass away. The
patient grows better, feels better himself. His symptoms commence to
subside, and after the symptoms have subsided pathological conditions
will commence to subside.
Do not be discouraged in prescribing if the pathological conditions do not
go away; but if all the symptoms of the patient have gone away, and the
patient is eating well, and is sleeping well, and doing well, do not feel that
it is impossible for that opacity of the cornea to go away, for sometimes it
will.
I have known patients to come back, years later, even after I had given
them up as cured, as their symptoms had all disappeared, and I was
foolish enough to say to the patient,
"Well, I do not suppose this condition will ever go away, but you are all
well, there is nothing to prescribe on, there is not much use of your taking
any more medicine," but in six months from that time the patient would
come back to me and say:
"Doctor, do you suppose the treatment you gave me had anything to do
with this trouble going away? It has nearly all disappeared."
I only tell you this to give you an idea how long it takes to restore order,
for nature herself to replace the bad tissue and put healthy tissue in that
same place, to restore an organ. It takes time, and it is best that we
should not be surprised. it may be that the medicine has done all it can
do.
Here is another thing I have seen: even when there were no symptoms
left, and after waiting a considerable time and there were no symptoms, I
have seen another dose of the same medicine that was given on the last
symptoms give the patient a great lift, and pathological conditions
commence to go way.
So Calcarea is a great friend to the oculist, and every physician ought to
be just as good a prescriber as the oculist can be, for he prescribes for the
patient. So must the oculist. In prescribing I am in doubt whether there
can be any such thing as a specialty, because the homoeopathic physician
prescribes for the patient. He prescribes for the patient, whether he has
eye disease, or car disease, or throat disease, or lung disease, or liver
disease, etc.
Ears: In the ear we have a great deal of trouble. It produces thick yellow
discharge from the ears. Cold, chilly weather brings on ear trouble; quite
likely from becoming cold or chilled, from an exposure, or from a sudden
change of cold damp weather he has additional complaints in the ears.
While he is at his best the idea holds good here as in other catarrhal
conditions, there is copious discharge. But from exposure and cold this
slacks up a little, and when it does there is a little inflammation, and like
enough throbbing, and headache. That occurs every time from exposure.
Whether the catarrh is in the nose, the eyes, or the ears, there will be
headache. The Calcarea patient is so easily disturbed from cold weather
and exposure, he is so sensitive to the cold, that it is next to impossible
for him to dress and protect himself. He is flabby and soft, easily
disturbed, sensitive to his surroundings.
If it is an ear trouble, he may have difficult hearing, abscess of the middle
ear, catarrh of the Eustachian tubes, etc., but all of these bring on
headaches; and around about the ear the glands are all affected.
Nose: The catarrh of the nose is extremely troublesome. Old lingering
stubborn catarrhs, with thick yellow discharge; great crusts from the
nose. In the morning he blows out enormous blackish, bloody chunks.
He breathes part of the night through the nose, and then his nose clogs up
so that he breathes, through the mouth. It has cured a great many times
polypi of the nose.
The homeopathic physician, trusting so much to his symptoms, knows so
well the remedy after studying the case, that be very likely will prescribe
for the patient on the symptoms alone. He says:
This patient needs Calcarea, there is no doubt about it. He prescribes for
him and sends him away.
After three or four weeks the patient comes back with a gelatinous
looking tough thing on a handkerchief, and says:
"Doctor, look there at what came out of my nose.
Do you suppose your medicine had anything to do with that?"
Perhaps you did not know he had polypus, it does not make any
difference, your prescription cannot be any different if he has polypi in
the nose, and you do not know it is there; you cannot by any process of
torsion remove it before you prescribe, so you will have to leave that
torsion to those that do not know about Homoeopathy; and hence the
examination is not so important as it is to those who prescribe for the
polypi, and forget about the patient.
Affections of the bones of the nose. That is, the catarrhs go on so long,
and they are so deep-seated, that the bones of the nose and the cartilage
of the nose are infiltrated, any they break down.
Then operators cut out bones, remove cartilage, and perform operations
too numerous to mention; and every one must have the same operation;
but in order for him to be cured, he must even after that go to an
homoeopathic physician. He should first be cured and then if there is
anything to be removed let him be operated on.
Face: The face is sickly, cold, covered with sweat. Sweats on the slightest
exertion, and sometimes it sweats in the night, on the forehead.
"Cold sweat on the face. Face pale and cachectic," such as we see in
advanced cases of cancer, and consumption.
Face sallow, pale, sickly, dropsical. Eruptions on the face. Eruptions about
the lips; and the lips are chapped and the mouth is raw. The lips are
cracked and bleeding. Painful swelling on the parotid glands; painful
swelling of the sub-lingual and sub-maxillary glands.
The glands all take part in the Calcarea troubles.
Throat: Calcarea is a medicine for chronic sore throats. The throat
appearance itself is not always sufficient to prescribe on, but the
complaints in the throat are those that come on in persons taking cold so
frequently that the patient has not time to get over one before be goes
into another, and this engrafts upon him a chronic sore throat.
It may in the beginning be a Bell. throat, which is quite likely, but before
he gets over it he has taken another cold. Remember that this is a part of
the Calcarea patient, that he takes cold so easily; he takes cold from
every, draft, from very exposure, and from damp weather.
When getting over a Bell. sore throat - about the time he thinks he is over
it he takes a new cold. Perhaps it has been relieved two or three times
with Bell., and then it settles down into a chronic state, and there are
little red patches, perhaps little ulcers in the throat, this extends all over .
It extends to the roof of the mouth, a sore tongue, and a constant dry,
choking feeling in the pharynx, covering the tonsils and extending, up into
the posterior nares, filling with thick, yellow mucus.
Chronic inflammation. The uvula may be puffed; swollen.
"Parts swollen, red, tumid," but it patches.
The throat very painful on swallowing; dry, choking feeling.
Stomach: The stomach in Calcarea is slow in its action.
"Food taken into the stomach remains."
It does not digest, it turns sour.
"Sour vomiting."
Milk sours. Milk disagrees; the digestion is also slow, feeble. He has a
feeling of tumefaction and fullness; enlargement after eat ing; and
everything sours in the stomach; everything disorders the stomach.
Weak digestion. The Calcarea patient has a very strong longing for eggs.
Little children crave eggs; at every meal they will eat eggs, and eggs, will
digest better than anything else. It is very seldom that little children
naturally long for eggs; children with cold feet, emaciated extremities,
large heads, enlarged abdomen; stomach distended like an inverted
saucer, rounded out; bloated abdomen, and slender extremities; cold and
sensitive to cold; pale skin; pale, waxy surface.
Then, there is complete loss of appetite, no desire for any kind of food. If
any desire at all, it is for eggs. Aversion to meat; aversion to warm food.
This with enlarged glands, with goitre. Flatulency. Sour vomiting; sour
diarrhoea; that is, it has a pungent, sour odor, especially in children.
In infants living on milk, the milk passes in an undigested form; the stool
is so sour that it is pungent. It excoriates the parts, and keeps the nates
raw in infants where the diaper comes in contact with the parts.
There are times when the abdomen is emaciated; the gases go out and
the abdomen sometimes becomes flabby; but most of the time it is
distended with flatulence. When it is flabby it can be observed that there
are nodules in the abdomen.
The lymphatic glands are hard, and sometimes can be felt through the
emaciated abdomen. There is a tubercular tendency, and tabes
mesenterica is one, of the natural endings of the lime constitution, with
this we get the glandular affections of the bowels.
Tubercular deposits in the mesenteric glands. Diarrhoea comes on sour;
watery diarrhoea; gradual emaciation, especially of the extremities. Every
cold brings on more indigestion, and more sour vomiting.
Diarrhoea that can't be stopped, because every time he gets a cold it
renews the diarrhoea. When it, is an acute attack Dulc. often relieves it
but when it has recurred several times Dulc. can no longer relieve it and
Calcarea then becomes one of the remedies.
Again, it is one of the most useful medicines in old, lingering, stubborn
cases of constipation. When there is only a moderate diarrhoea the stool
is white; and when this constipation is present, the stool is white, or like
chalk.
In infants taking milk you can account for the white or pale stool, because
of the milk; but when the patient does not live on milk, and lives on
ordinary substances, the stool becomes bileless and is very light colored;
is yellow or white; and in the constipation, often the stool is very light
colored and hard.
Calcarea has a kind of indigestion, a fermentation that favors the
formation of worms, so that Calcarea babies are sometimes wormy.
Pass worms in the stool, and vomit worms. Calcarea so corrects this
indigestion, when the symptoms agree, that worms no longer hatch out.
The symptoms disappear, and we really wonder what becomes of the
worms.
The idea with the homoeopathic physician is not to give vermifuges, but
to so correct the digestion that worms will not thrive; and it is true that
worms will not thrive in the healthy stomach and intestines. Whether
they leave by expulsion or whether they are destroyed, or what becomes
of them, I do not know.
To remove them by physicking them out, and by vermifuges, only makes a
bad matter worse, because it increases the indigestion, it increases the
turmoil. So it is with all worms in the stomach and rectum; all those
worms will come if they are favored with just exactly the right kind of
fluids to hatch out in.
They come, and they grow. I suppose at least twenty-five times in the last
twenty years have I known Calcarea to bring away tape worm, and in
most instances I did not know it was present; but I simply prescribed for
the patient. I was not aware of its existence. It is so with many remedies,
but this more than others.
Genitals: The Calcarea patient is weak sexually, with general relaxation
and weakness. Sometimes an inordinate carving, sometimes an
overwhelming desire keeps him awake at nights. But weak; weak in this
way, that any indulgence is followed by weak back, sweating, weakness in
general, so that he is compelled to abstain because of the sufferings.
The woman is affected in a similar way. You need not be surprised, when
you hear all of the constitutional weakness, that it is a common, thing for
Calcarea women to be sterile. So tired, so relaxed; wholly unfit for
reproduction.
And the same as in the male, she suffers from lassitude, swelling,
wakefulness, and weakness in general after every coition. The parts feel
relaxed. The uterus drags down. Sensation as if parts would be forced out.
State of general weakness and general relaxation of the sexual organs of
both male and female. Calcarea has a tendency to grow warts and
polypoid growths, pedunculated growths, that bleed easily, that are soft
and spongy.
The woman flows too much at the menstrual period; too long, and, of
course, this naturally brings her around too soon. Often every three
weeks, lasting a week, with a copious flow. Menstrual period too soon,
lasting too long, and profuse. Calcarea is not always indicated; not unless
all of the symptoms go together to make up the Calcarea patient.
Sometimes it may occur to your mind to say, that with five or six key-
notes, certainly you would give Calcarea; but suppose you did have five or
six key-notes of Calcarea, and the patient should be a Puls. patient, would
you expect to cure her with Calcarea?
Suppose the patient always avoided warm things and much clothing, and
wanted the cold open air, and still had a dozen key-notes, you would find
every time that Calcarea would fail. Unless you combine the particulars
with the things that are general, and the generals with the particulars,
unless the remedy fits the patient from within out, generally and
particularly, a cure need not be expected. That is why I say, do not
prescribe on key-notes, but upon the symptoms of the patient.
This great state of relaxation which we always have in every Calcarea
patient is also manifested in leucorrhea, copious, thick, constant
leucorrhea, discharging day and night. Leucorrhea that is acrid, keeping
up an itching, and smarting, and burning,
"Leucorrhoea thick and yellow," from one menstrual period to another,
and some times it intermingles with the menstrual flow.
"Vaginal polypi. Burning soreness in the genitals" from leucorrhoea.
"Itching and rawness" from leucorrhoea.
Hemorrhage of the uterus from over-lifting; from excitement; from
shocks; from anything that greatly disturbs; from fear, from any great
emotion, or from straining the muscles. Such are the conditions of
relaxation and weakness. Inability to strain the muscles, or to exert
himself mentally or physically.
The complaints of pregnancy are generally those of great relaxation and
weakness. Threatened abortion. After delivery, weakness and
prostration; sweating. Weakness from nursing.
Voice: The Calcarea voice is that of painless hoarseness. The vocal cords
are tired, and cannot endure strain; almost a paralytic weakness.
Sometimes a copious flow of mucus from the larynx. Much irritation in
the larynx, but weakness. Not that burning and rawness that we find in
Bell. and Phos., but painless hoarseness. In Phos. it is painful, in Bell. it is
very painful. He cannot speak without pain.
But in Calcarea he wonders why he has so much trouble in the larynx,
because he has no feeling in it. This goes on from bad to worse, and with
the tubercular tendency, look out for tubercular laryngitis. Given early it
may keep off such a tubercular tendency. It has cured tubercular
laryngitis.
Much rattling of mucus; rattling breathing; coarse rattling; that is, much
mucus in the trachea, in the larynx, in the bronchial tubes, in the chest.
Great dyspnoea.
The dyspnoea comes on from going up stairs, from walking against the
wind. Anything that bas any exertion in it will bring on the dyspnoea. We
find this in asthma, weak heart, weak chest and in threatening phthisis.
That state of the lungs you will know very often by the kind of breathing;
because all that are going into phthisis are tired and weak. He is too tired
and weak to make any effort at breathing, so that he has difficult in going
up stairs, climbing a hill, walking against the wind.
Chest: The chest troubles furnishes one of our best fields for Calcarea.
We having spiting of blood prolonged cough; copious expectoration of
thick yellow mucus, or even pus; ulceration, or abscess. Tickling cough.
We have, in threatening chest trouble, the beginning emaciation, the
pallor, the sensitiveness to cold, changes, and to the cold air and to wet
weather and to winds.
He takes colds and they all settle into the chest; gradual emaciation in the
limbs; always so tired. It corresponds to just such constitutional weakness
as precedes, or is present in the first stages of phthisis. It stops the patient
taking cold, which is the very beginning of it. The patient will begin to feel
better after taking Calcarea, and it improves his general state, and it will
even encyst tubercular deposits.
It turns them from a caseous into a calcareous form, and cysts have been
found in the chest long afterwards. Patients have lived a long time and
improved, and gone into a general state of health, when quite well
advanced with tubercular deposits. Of course, when any person is well
into a tubercular condition, it may be expected that he will go.
Do not believe or think favorably of cure for consumption. Every little
while we have some one. Coming out with something or other that cures
consumption, a new cure.
Every one who know much about the real nature of phthisical conditions,
cannot have much confidence in such things, and I certainly lose respect
for an individual who has a consumption cure. He must either be crazy or
something worse.
Generally he is after the money that may be in it. Hardly any one who
knows anything about it can conscientiously present a consumption cure
to the world.
To prevent those things is what we want to do, and this is the great
sphere of Calcarea. The expectoration is sweetish very often, like Phos.
and Stannum. White, yellow, thick.
We might go over all the general symptoms here, the soreness, the
tenderness, the kind of pains, the lassitude, and a great many symptoms
of that sort, they are too numerous to mention, but they are non
descriptive, for the reason that after you get these pains and study them
carefully, you are no better off. You must study the constitution of
Calcarea, the nature of Calcarea, its character.
There are spine symptom s; plenty' of them. Weak; all degrees of
weakness. The Calcarea patient is so weak in the back that he slides down
in the chair while sitting; cannot sit right in his chair.
Rests on the back of his head. The back of his chair and the back of his
head come in contact. A weak spine, a sensitive spine, and the glands of
the neck are swollen. Again, a marked condition of the spine is where the
lime element is deficient, and we soon get deformity; curvature.
It may be surprising to you to hear that Calcarea is a great help, and has
sometimes cured that without any brace or support whatever, when
taken early.
You take infants manifesting a weakness of the spine, let them lie flat on
their back in bed, put them on the indicated remedy - it is sometimes
Calcarea - and in a little while that knuckling will cease, and the little one
will sit up straight.
Such wonderful things occur under the use of Calcarea, when the
symptoms agree. In the extremities we have all the rheumatic conditions
that it is possible to describe.
Gouty affections of the joints, with enlarged joints; gouty conditions,
especially of the small joints, of the toe and finger. Rheumatic complaints
of the joints from every exposure, from every change of the weather to
cold, especially if it is cold and damp.
The feet are always cold, or cold and damp, except at night in bed after
piling clothing upon the feet more than any other part of the body, then
the feet begin to get warm, and then they often go to the other extreme
and burn; and so they burn at night in bed.
But the feet are so cold that the patient has to put more clothing on the
feet than the body will endure. Cold, damp feet. Late walking. Clumsiness;
awkwardness; stiffness.
Rheumatic conditions. Stiffness belongs to Calcarea all over. Stiff on
beginning to move; stiff at night on rising from a seat. Stiffness in all joints
on beginning to move; and if it turns cold or there is a cold rain, the
Calcarea patient always suffers; suffers from coldness, stiffness,
rheumatism has rheumatism in every cold change in the weather.
The sleep is greatly disturbed. Late going to sleep, sometimes not till 2, 3
or 4 o'clock. Full of ideas; when closing the eyes horrible visions. Grinding
the teeth. A child in sleep, chews and swallows and grinds the teeth.
Sleeplessness a good part of the night. Cold feet at night in bed.
Digitalis
History: This drug as used by the Old School has done more mischief than
any one drug in their Materia Medica. Every patient who had a fast heart,
or anything the matter with the heart, was given Digitalis.
It has caused more deaths than any drug. If administered when the heart
is going fast it will soon produce a peculiar kind of paralysis; the heart
then having lost its balance-wheel, compensation gives out, the patient
sinks and finally dies.
They do not know that many patients would have lived through fevers,
pneumonia and other acute diseases if it had not been for this medicine,
used as they have used it in the tincture, in many-drop doses, until the
heart was slowed down.
They call it sedative; yes, it is a sedative. It makes the patient very sedate.
You have seen how very sedate a patient looks after he has been in the
hands of an undertaker and has on his best garments. That is what
Digitalis does. In that way it is a sedative in the hands of the allopath. A
homoeopathic physician never prescribes to bring down the pulse. He
prescribes for the patient and the heart's action takes care of itself.
Digitalis is a very poor fever medicine. Instead of being indicated when
the pulse is fast, the proving says it is indicated when the pulse is slow.
The allopath gives it when the pulse is fast to make it slow; if given to a
well person it will make the pulse slow, and when indicated in a sick
person the pulse is slow.
Liver: It produces a great disturbance of the liver.
"Congestion and enlargement of the liver.
Soreness of the liver."
Tenderness about the liver-but during that time the pulse is slow. It
makes the bowels very sluggish, produces inactivity of the liver, and
stools are bileless, light colored, putty-like-and the pulse is slow.
Add to that jaundice and you have a grand picture of Digitalis: jaundice
with slow pulse, with uneasiness in the liver, pale stool, and even if you
have never seen or beard of Digitalis before you will scarcely miss it. Now,
you might add a myriad of little symptoms, but it does not change the
aspect of things. It is Digitalis.
Stomach: Another group of symptoms that belongs with the Digitalis
heart, the Digitalis liver and the Digitalis bowels, is a gone, sinking feeling
in the stomach. It seems as if be would die, and he does not get better
from eating. It is a nervous, deathly sinking that comes with many heart
troubles.
You would not be surprised to find in Digitalis much nervous prostration.
Restlessness and great nervous weakness.
"Feels as if would fly to pieces.
Anxiety.
Feels that something is going to happen."
Seems as if his whole economy were full of anxious feelings and
restlessness. Lassitude, faintness exhaustion and extreme prostration.
Faints on the slightest provocation. It begins in the stomach; an awful
sensation of weakness in the stomach and bowels.
Sleep: His sleep is full of horrible dreams, nightmare, fright. Dreams of
falling, that is very common with cardiac affections. When the pulse is too
slow, when it is irregular, the brain is irregularly supplied with blood
during sleep, and there is a turbulent state.
A shock goes through the body like an electric shock, like internal jerkings,
twitchings. Sudden muscular movements, as if a current of electricity
passed through the body. This, with slow pulse, with a sense of faintness,
and great weakness. Bluish paleness of the lips in persons who suffer at
times with cardiac spells - it seems at times as if the pulse would cease.
Face becomes blue, the fingers become blue. Wants to lie on the back.
Frequently startled in sleep; jerking at night.
The heart symptoms are numerous, but none is so important as the slow
pulse. The pulse is slow in the beginning of the case. It may now be flying
like lighting.
Pulse: He is anxious, restless, has horrible dreams and sinking in the
stomach - that sounds like the advanced stage of Digitalis - but I want to
know if in the beginning, the pulse was slow.
The patient himself seldom knows, but someone says that in the
beginning the pulse was 48; that is Digitalis. If the pulse in the beginning
was rapid do not think of Digitalis, for it will not do any good.
The Digitalis pulse is at first slow and perhaps remains so for many days,
until finally the heart commences to go with a quiver, with an irregular
beat, intermits, feels as if it would cease to beat, and then we have all
these strange manifestations.
Weakness is the very character of the Digitalis pulse, and all these
characteristics go along with it. First it is slow, and sometimes strong.
Slow, strong pulse when rheumatism is threatening the heart.
"Violent. but not very rapid pulse.
Sudden violent beating of the heart, with disturbed rhythm."
The slightest motion increases anxiety and palpitation. When the pulse is
going very slow, sometimes down to 40, the patient turns the head and
the pulse flutters and increases in its action. If he turns over in bed it
seems as if the heart would stop. If he moves he feels it fluttering all over
him, and it settles back and is slow again; but, finally, it changes and
flutters all the time.
Palpitation of the heart originating in grief. Sudden sensation as though
the heart stood still. Fluttering of the heart, The least muscular exertion
renders the heart's action labored and intermittent in a feeble heart.
Cough: A person with an enlarged liver, with a slow pulse, with jaundice
and pale and stool. With that he will have a troublesome cough. Digitalis
is not much of a remedy for a cough unless it is a cardiac cough.
Cough at midnight. Cough, with expectoration of "boiled starch." Cough,
with expectoration of bloody mucus in hypostatic congestion of the lungs.
Cough, brought on by talking, walking, drinking anything cold, bending
the body. These are coughs associated with other troubles.
Respiration: The same thing is to be said of the respiration. There are
difficulties of respiration, along with cardiac troubles and liver troubles.
"Respiration irregular and performed with great difficulty.
Constant desire to take a deep breath.
When he goes to sleep the breath seems to fade away, then he wakes up
with a gasp. Lachesis, Phosphorus, Carbo veg. and some other remedies
have that; remedies that affect the cerebellum particularly, producing a
congestion of the cerebellum.
When a patient goes to sleep the cerebrum says to the cerebellum:
"Now you carry on this breathing a little while, I am getting tired."
But the cerebellum is not equal to the occasion. It is congested, and just
as soon as the cerebrum begins to rest the cerebellum goes to sleep, too,
and lets the patient suffer; and in that way we get suffocation. The
cerebellum presides over respiration during sleep and the cerebrum
presides over respiration when the patient is awake. We might learn that
from the provings of medicines if we never found it before.
"Fear of suffocation at night."
Now, to analyze that. He knows from experience that every time he drops
into a sleep he suffocates, and hence he fears to go to sleep for fear he
will suffocate. The fear of suffocation at night is from this origin. It is the
same if he falls asleep in the day time.
"Can only breathe in gasps."
Digitalis is a useful medicine when there is a filling up of the lower part of
thy lungs. The patient is sitting up in bed, and there is dullness in the
lower part of each lung and plenty of resonance in the upper portion.
Then it is, if he lies down, he will suffocate. Digitalis likes mostly to lie flat
on the back with no pillow, when there is no filling up of the lungs. But
when there is hypostatic congestion he suffocates. If early in the case the
pulse was slow and it has become fast, Digitalis may be of some benefit.
Urinary organs: Now, a feature in connection with the genito-urinary
organs. In old cases of enlarged prostate gland I do not know what I
would do without Digitalis. Where there is a constant teasing to pass
urines.
In many instances where the catheter has been used for months or years
because he is unable to pass urine in a natural way, and where there is a
residuary urine in old bachelors and old men, Digitalis is a good remedy.
It diminishes the size of the prostate gland and has many times cured.
"Dropsy with suppression of urine."
In uraemic poisoning and in various phases of Bright's disease of the
kidneys we have symptoms indicating Digitalis. Retention of urine;
dribbling of urine. Spermatorrhea, Nightly emission. In persons addicted
for years to secret vices. Enlarged prostate gland.
It is capable of curing chronic gonorrhoea. It has cured acute gonorrhea. It
has cured inflammation of that thin, delicate membrane covering the
glans penis. Dropsical swelling of the genitals.
Food: "Loss of appetite and violent thirst."
Most doctors give Sulphur when the patient drinks much and eats little.
The nausea of Digitalis is not like that of Ipecac. and Bryonia. It is a
singular nausea. The smell of food excites a deathly nausea, a sinking, a
goneness, associated with cardiac troubles, with Jaundice and liver
troubles.
The nausea is accompanied by a deathly feeling, as if be is sinking away.
Sometimes the nausea is relieved by eating, but the sinking remains after
eating, showing that it is something besides hunger.
"Persistent nausea.
Extreme sensitiveness, in the pit of the stomach.
Faintness and sinking in the pit of the stomach as if be would die.
No appetite, but great thirst.
Soreness and hardness in the region of the liver.
Sensitiveness to pressure in the region of the liver."
Now remember the liver and the heart symptoms, the jaundice, the slow
pulse, the awful sinking in the stomach, the enlargement of the prostate
gland, the gray stool, and you have the principal symptoms of Digitalis.
After all that I have said you are not surprised at the horrible anxiety that
the Digitalis patient carries with him all the time.
He wants to be alone; sadness, melancholy, despondency and
restlessness. He cant decide upon anything that be ought to do;
tremulousness.
The stomach, bowel and liver troubles are just what you see sometimes in
a hard drinker after trying to break off. He is prostrated; his heart gives
out, is irregular, weak, slow; and he has sadness and melancholy; inability
to apply himself. Digitalis will help him straighten out.
Alumina
Alumen and Alumina: This remedy comes in very nicely after Alumen,
which has much Alumina in its nature and depends largely upon Alumina,
which is its base, for its way of working.
It occurs to me to throw out a little hint. When you have a good
substantial proving of an oxide or a carbonate, and the mental symptoms
are well brought out, you can use these, in a measure in a presumptive
way, in prescribing another salt, with the same base, which has a few
mental symptoms in its proving.
For instance, you have a group of symptoms decidedly relating to Alumen.
The mental symptoms of Alumen, however, have not been brought out to
any extent, but still you have the mental symptoms of the base of
Alumen, which is the oxide, so that if the patient has the mental
symptoms of Alumina and the physical symptoms of Alumen, you can
rationally presume that Alumen will cure because of the Aluminum in
each.
Mind: We know the mental symptoms of Alumina fairly well.
It especially takes hold of the intellect and so confuses the intelligence
that the patient is unable to effect a decision; the judgment is disturbed.
He is unable to realize; the things that he knows or has known to be real
seem to him to be unreal, and he is in doubt as to whether they are so or
not.
In the Guiding Symptoms this is not so plainly expressed, but in the
Chronic Diseases we have a record of this which is the best expression of
it that occurs anywhere.
There we read:
"When he says anything he feels as if another person had said it, and
when he sees anything, as if another person had seen it, or as if he could
transfer himself into another and only then could see."
That is to say, there is a confusion of mind, a confusion of ideas and
thoughts. It has cured these symptoms.
The consciousness of his personal identity is confused. He is not exactly
certain who he was; it seemed as though he were not himself.
He is in a dazed condition of mind. He makes mistakes in writing and
speaking! uses words not intended; uses wrong words.
Confusion and obscuration of e intellect. Inability to follow up a train of
thought. Then he enters into another state, in which he gets into a hurry.
Nothing moves fast enough; time seems so slow; everything is delayed;
nothing goes right.
Besides this he has impulses. When he sees sharp instruments or blood,
impulses rise up within him and he shudders because of these impulses.
An instrument that could be used for murder or for killing causes these
impulses to arise; impulse to kill herself.
The Alumina patient is very sad, constantly sad. Incessantly moaning;
groaning, worrying, fretting and in a hurry.
Wants to get away; wants to get away from this place, hoping that things
will be better; full of fears.
All sorts of imaginations. A sort of general apprehensiveness. When he
meditates upon this state of mind he thinks he is going to lose his reason.
He thinks about this frenzy and hurry and confusion of mind, how he
hardly knows his own name, and how fretful he is, and he wonders if he is
not going crazy, and finally he really thinks he is going crazy.
Most of the mental symptoms come on in the morning on waking.
Sadness and weeping on waking in the morning. His moods alternate.
Sometimes his mental state is a little improved and his mood changes into
a quiet placid state, and again he goes into fear and apprehensiveness.
Some evil is going to take place and he is full of anxiety. Anxiety about the
future.
Nerves and weakness: The next most striking feature is the way in which
the remedy acts upon the nerves that proceed from the spine.
There is a state of weakness of the muscles supplied by these nerves;
weakness over the whole body. There is difficulty in swallowing, a
paralytic condition of the oesophagus; difficulty in raising or moving the
arms; paralysis of one side of the body, or paralysis of the muscles of the
lower extremities, or of the bladder and rectum.
The paralytic state begins as a sort of a semi - paralysis, for a long time
merely an inactivity, which grows at length into a complete paralytic
condition. Everything is slowed down.
The conductivity of the nerves is impaired so that a prick of a pin upon the
extremities is not felt until a second or so afterwards. All of his senses are
impaired in this way until it really means a benumbing of the
consciousness and appears to be a kind of stupefaction of his intellect, a
mental sluggishness. Impressions reach his mind with a marked degree of
slowness.
The paralytic state runs through the remedy and is observed in various
parts in many ways. The bladder manifests it in the slowness with which
the urine passes.
A woman sits a long time before the flow starts, with inability to press,
and then the stream flows slowly. The patient will say she cannot burry
the flow of urine. The urine is slow to start and slow to flow, and
sometimes only dribbles. At times it is retained and dribbles involuntarily.
This slowness is observed also in the rectum. Its tone is lost and there is
inability to perform the ordinary straining when sitting at stool, and so
paretic is the rectum that it may be full and distended, and the quantity of
faeces enormous, and yet, though the stool is soft, there is constipation.
In this remedy there is often a hard stool, but we notice that the remedy
will do the best work where there is this paretic condition of the rectum
with soft stool. If the mental symptoms however, are present, such as I
have described, with large, hard and knotty or lumpy stool, Alumina will
cure.
Now, so great is the straining to pass a soft stool that you will sometimes
hear a patient describe the state as follows:
When sitting upon the seat she must wait a long time, though there is
fullness and she has gone many days without stool; she has the
consciousness that, she should pass a stool and is conscious of the fullness
in the rectum, yet she will sit a long time and finally will undertake to help
herself by pressing down violently with the abdominal muscles, straining
vigorously, yet conscious that very little effort is made by the rectum
itself.
She will continue to strain, covered with copious sweat, hanging on to the
seat, if there be any place to hang on to, and will pull and work as if in
labor, and at last is able to expel a soft stool, yet with the sensation that
more stool remains.
Of course a number of other remedies have this straining to pass a soft
stool, but they have their own characteristics. Take for example an
individual who cannot keep awake; she says that it is impossible for her to
read a line without going to sleep; that she can sleep all the time; she
suffers night and day from a dry mouth, and the tongue cleave to the roof
of the mouth.
Now let her describe this state of straining and struggling to expel a soft
stool, and you hardly need to go any further before you know the
remedy.
If that patient in addition to what she has said tells you that she is in the
habit of fainting when standing any length of time, that she is disturbed in
a close room and has all sorts of complaints in the cold air, it is Nux
moschata.
Now you see how easy it is for remedies to talk; they tell their own story.
Suppose a woman should come to you who has been suffering from
haemorrhage, from prolonged oozing, who is pallid and weak and is
distended with flatulence, with much belching and passing of gas, and the
more she passes the worse she feels, and she has these same symptoms
of straining a long time to pass a soft stool, tremendous effort with
inactivity of the rectum. You could do nothing but give her China.
Now you know how easy it is for remedies to talk and tell their own story.
By allowing remedies to talk and tell their own story, individualization is
accomplished.
I have said all that to show that it is not upon the inactivity of the rectum
that you are to decide upon the remedy.
Individualization must be made through the patient. That is a principle
that should never be violated. You may have twenty remedies all
possessing a certain symptom but if you have a few real decided things
that you can say about the patient, the manner in which he does business,
the manner in which the disease affects the entire man, then you have
something to individualize by.
You have seen the Alumina patient, the China patient and the Nux
moschata patient. The sole duty of the physician is to treat the sick, which
means to study the patient himself until an idea of the sickness is
obtained.
Vertigo: This medicine is full of vertigo; he quivers, reels and "objects go
round" almost constantly. It corresponds to the vertigo of tired-out
people, old broken down patients, men worn out from old age.
Vertigo also that comes on when closing the eyes, as is found in spinal
affections, in sclerosis of posterior lateral columns.
Alumina has produced affections analogous to locomotor ataxia. It
produces numbness of the soles of the feet, the fulgurating pains, the
vertigo when closing the eyes, and produces staggering and disturbances
of coordination.
It is true that in an early stage of locomotor ataxia Alumina will check the
disease process by bringing into order the internal state of the economy.
With Aluminum metallicum I have, stopped fulgurating pains in old
incurable cases, and improved the reflexes wonderfully, thus showing the
general improvement of the patient.
Modalities: Most of the symptoms are < on rising in the morning.
In the morning as I have mentioned it, the urine is slower to pass than
after, he has moved about and warmed up a little. His limbs are stiffer in
the morning and in the morning he has to whip up his mental state. He
wakes up confused and wonders where he is.
You will see that in children especially-they wake up in the morning in a
bewildered state, such as you will find in Alumina, Aesculus, Lycopod.
He has to put his mind on things to ascertain whether they be so or not,
as to how things should look and wonders whether he is at home or in
some other place.
There are many headaches with nausea and vomiting. The headaches
come whenever he takes cold. This probably is due to the catarrhal state.
Mucous membranes: The Alumina patient suffers almost constantly from
dryness of mucous membranes, the nose is dry, stuffed up, especially in
one side, commonly the left.
Nose feels full of sticks, dry membranes or crusts, old atrophic catarrh
crusts in the posterior nares and in the fossa of Rosenmuller.
Large green, offensive crusts all through the nose. Now comes the
relation to the headache. Every time he catches cold the thick yellow
discharge slacks up and gives way to a watery discharge and be has pain
in the forehead over the eyes, going through the head, with nausea and
vomiting.
So when it says headache from chronic catarrh that is what it means. The
headache > lying down. He has sick headaches and periodical headaches.
You will see that Alumina corresponds to a constitution that may be
called psoric-old, broken-down, feeble constitutions, scrofulous
constitutions, such as are inclined to tubercles and catarrhal affections.
The catarrhal tendency of this remedy is marked. Catarrhs are found
wherever mucous membranes exist. Alumina affects the skin and mucous
membrane extensively, i. e., the external and internal skin, the surfaces of
the body.
The patient is always expectorating, he blows the nose much and has
discharges from the eyes. There is much disturbance of vision belonging
to this catarrhal state that may be spoken of now.
Dimness of vision, as if looking through a fog sometimes described as
through a veil. A misty dimness of vision.
There is also disturbance of the muscles of the eye, of the muscles of the
ball and of the ciliary muscle. Weak and changeable vision. The paralytic
weakness, such as belongs to the whole remedy, will be found in certain
muscles, or sets of muscles, so that it is with great difficulty that glasses
can be adjusted. The activity of the eye muscles is disturbed.
Naso pharynx: The catarrhal state extends over into the back of the nose
and the posterior nares are filled up with tough mucus and crusts, and on
looking into the throat you will see that the soft palate and the mucous
membrane of the tonsils and pharynx and all parts that can be seen are in
a state of granulation, are swollen, congested and inflamed.
The pharynx feels dry and there is a chronic sensitiveness and soreness.
When swallowing food there is stinging and sensation as if the throat
were full of little sticks, especially after a moment's rest, better by
moistening and swallowing. In the night air, after keeping still a while,
there in an accumulation of ropy mucus.
This extends into the larynx with soreness in the larynx and chest and
chronic dry, backing cough. The same catarrhal state proceeds down into
the oesophagus, so that it becomes sensitive and clumsy. He swallows
with difficulty.
The bolus goes down with an effort and he feels it all the way down.
There is soreness and clumsiness, paresis and difficulty of swallowing.
This paralytic weakness reminds the patient that he must put on a little
force in order to swallow and this swallowing is felt while the substance
goes down as if the oesophagus was sensitive. It has a catarrhal state of
the stomach, bowels and rectum so that with the soft and difficult stool
there is often an accumulation of mucus.
There is also a catarrhal condition in the bladder, kidneys and urethra and
an old gonorrhoea will be prolonged into a catarrhal or gleety discharge.
Sometimes it is not a gleet, but the discharge remains for many months
and instead of its being a light milky white, such as is natural in most
prolonged cases of gonorrhoea, it remains yellow and is painless. So it is
with the vagina.
The mucous discharge from the vagina is thick yellowish-white discharge,
sometimes excoriating. Thus we see, in the constitution we have
described, that an extensive catarrhal state belongs to the remedy.
Skin: When we come to the skin we find that it takes on a similar state of
affairs. The patient is subject to all sorts of eruptions. The skin withers,
becomes dry and is subject to eruptions, thickening, indurations,
ulcerations, cracking and bleeding.
The eruptions itch worse in the warmth of the bed. The skin itches, even
when there is no eruption, when becoming warm in bed, so that he
scratches until the skin bleeds. This presents an idea as to eruptions that
you will have to consider. A patient comes to you covered with crusts,
and he says:
"When I get warm at night I have to scratch, and I scratch until the skin
bleeds."
Now in Alumina it is very important to find out whether these crusts were
produced by the scratching or whether the eruption, came out as an
itching eruption, for in Alumina in the beginning there is no eruption, but
he scratches until the skin is off and then come the crusts.
You must here prescribe not for the eruption, but for the itching of the
skin without eruption. Now in Mezereum, Arsenicum, Dolichos and
Alumina the skin itches and he scratches until it bleeds, and then he gets
relief.
Of course after this there is an apparent eruption because crusts form. As
soon as the healing begins the itching begins, and he is only relieved when
the skin is raw. With the bleeding moisture of the skin there is relief of
the itching.
Now some of the books do not make the distinction between itching
without eruption and itching with eruption, and hence mostly all young,
doctors get to thinking that itching of the skin must always be associated
with eruption, and make a mistake in figuring out what kind of an
eruption it is.
The skin thickens and indurates and ulcerates, and there are indurations
under the ulcers. There is a very sluggish condition of both mucous
membrane and skin with a tendency to induration.
Thickening of the mucous membrane will be found anywhere; after the
thickening come little ulcerations, and in the course of time indurations
are formed at the base of the ulcers. The same thing is true of the skin.
Dryness and burning through everything and may be said of all the
mucous membranes and the skin in general.
Chronic granular lids. It we turn the eyelids down we will see that the
mucous membrane is thickened. Sometimes this thickening or
hypertrophy causes a turning out of the lids like ectropion.
"The eyelashes fall out;" that is in keeping with the general state.
The hairs all over the body fall out. Parts become entirely denuded of
hair; the hair of the scalp falls out extensively. All sorts of sounds in the
ears, buzzing, etc., and derangement of hearing; purulent otorrhoea.
"Point of nose cracked" is in keeping with the remedy.
Induration here and there so that it favors lupus and epithelioma in one
who is subject to these swellings and eruptions.
Alumina and Alumen, like Ars., Lach., Sulph. and, Conium, are medicines
that relate to these troubles. Some of these have made brilliant cures
where there is infiltration.
Upon the skin of the face and other parts of the body there is crawling
Itching especially when getting warm. Sensation of tension. Peculiar
sensation about the face and other parts not covered by clothing, a
sensation of dried white of egg on the face, of dried blood or cobweb on
the face.
If you have ever been going through a place where there are cobwebs and
a little cobweb has strung across your face you will know what a peculiar
sensation of crawling it produces, and you cannot leave it alone until it is
removed.
That sensation particularly belongs to Alumina, Borax, Bar. c.
Little, crawlings and creepings in the skin. Itching of the face. These
symptoms are so irritating that the patient will sit and rub his face all the
time.
You will think that he is nervous. He has the appearance of being nervous
as he sits rubbing the back of his hands. It is well to find out whether he
does this because he cannot keep his hands still or because of the itching.
Because of this itching sensation in the face he carries the hand to the
face as though to brush away something.
Throat: Perhaps I have not said as much as should be said about the
throat.
"Ulcers in the fauces, spongy, secreting a yellowish brown, badly smelling
pus."
It may be said that the patient is often a victim of chronic sore throat.
There is this about Alumina, it has a special tendency to localize itself
upon mucous membranes.
You will find in an Alumina subject bleeding from all mucous membranes.
He has catarrh of the nose and red eyes, and his nose becomes stuffed up
and he has many acute colds; very severe throat trouble.
Discharges from all of the orifices. It is not a medicine that would be
selected for a cold settling in the throat, not a remedy for acute sore
throat, but it is a deep acting anti psoric, and act for months.
Its greatest usefulness is as a remedy for taking cold.
In this respect it is like Sil., Graph. and Sulfur. It effects tissue changes,
and it does this slowly, for it is a slow-acting medicine.
While the patient himself with these deep seated psoric affections feels
better generally after the remedy, it will be months before his symptoms
go away.
He may say: "I feel better, but my symptoms all appear to be here. I can
eat better and sleep better."
Then it would be unwise to change the remedy. You need not expect to
get immediate relief of the catarrhs and pains in the back and other
symptoms for which you gave this remedy.
You may be satisfied if you get the results after many weeks. You will find
the same thing in the paralytic weakness produced by Plumbum.
There is a new drug that is coming into use, the proving of which is very
full and rich, and it is analogous to the symptoms of this remedy. It is
Curare.
Curare: I wish we had a finer proving of it, but it is rich with a great many
things similar to Alumina and Plumbum, and especially in the weakness of
the hands and fingers of pianists.
An old player will say that after she has been playing-for some time her
fingers slow down. The weakness seems to be in the extensors. Lack of
ability to life the fingers; the lifting motion is lost.
Curare to a great extent overcomes that, causes quickness to that lifting
power of the fingers. But this remedy also runs through in general way
such paretic conditions; while Curare is especially related to a paralytic
condition of the extensors more than the flexors, the paralysis in Alumina
is of both flexors and extensors.
Alumina: This medicine is one of the few that have been found to be
aggravated from starch, especially the starch of potatoes.
Aggravation from eating potatoes. It has indigestion, diarrhea, great
flatulence, aggravation of the cough from eating potatoes.
It has also aggravation from salt, wine, vinegar, pepper and from
spirituous drinks.
Alumina is a spinal remedy and aggravation from spirituous drinks is in
keeping with some other spinal remedies.
You find it in Zincum. The Zincum patient cannot drink wine, for all of his
complaints are aggravated by it.
This medicine is so sensitive and so easily overcome by a small amount of
liquor that he is obliged to abandon it. He is not only intoxicated by it, but
it aggravates his complaints.
Stomach and digestion: Now the digestion has practically given out in this
medicine. He is subject to catarrh of the stomach, to ulceration of the
stomach, to indigestion from the simplest food. Sour and bitter
eructations.
Vomiting of food, mucus or bile. Nausea, vertigo, heartburn, much
flatulence. Vomits mucus and water. Stomach is distended with gas. The
liver is full. of suffering. Both hypochondria are full of misery, but
especially the right.
When going over Alumen I called attention especially to its antidotal
relation to Lead.
This remedy also will overcome the poisonous effects of lead and
sensitiveness to lead. Colic and paralytic weakness in lead workers,
painters and artists and in those who are so sensitive to lead that from
using hair wash containing lead they are paralyzed.
Not many years ago the acetate of lead was commonly used by women
for leucorrhoea, but it was found that so many were sensitive to it that it
was abandoned, Alumina is the most prominent antidote to the affections
which have come about through that sensitive state.
Fissures: There is so much under stool and rectum that belongs to the
general state that there is scarcely anything left to be presented except
some important particulars. As you might suppose, this remedy has
fissures; you would naturally expect these when you consider what kind.
of mucous membranes and tissues this patient manufactures. He suffers
greatly from constipation, he does much straining, the mucous membrane
is thickened and swollen, and hence we have a fissure.
When you see a remedy manufacturing and producing such a state upon
the economy, growing that kind of mucous membrane that would favour
fissures, you do not have to wait until you have cured a fissure with that
remedy to find out if it will suit the case.
You do not have to resort to the repertory to see what this remedy has
done in fissure. From your general knowledge of the medicine, you will
see that it ought to cure the patient, as it produces such a condition of the
mucus membrane and skin as would be naturally found in one who has a
fissure.
The skin indurates and ulcerates and becomes clumsy and unhealthy and
constipation is produced, and so, after studying the remedy in that way,
you are not surprised if it cures a fissure.
You can also think over what other medicines have this state of the
economy and see what other remedies you would expect to cure a fissure
with.
If you look into the nature of Nitric acid, Causticum and Graphites, you
will see why they have had a wonderful record for curing fissure. That is
the way to study your Materia Medica; see what it does to the man
himself, to his organs and tissues.
Bladder: "Frequent micturition."
"Urine voided while straining at stool, or cannot pass urine without such
straining"
That is a high grade symptom, it is a peculiar symptom, and may be called
a particular of first grade. He must strain at stool in order to empty the
contents of the bladder.
"Urine smarting, corroding."
"Feeling of weakness in the bladder and genitals."
"Swelling and discharge of light yellow pus from urethra."
"Burning with discharge of urine.''
Male: The symptoms of the male sexual organs are characterized by
weakness, impotency and nightly emissions; suitable when the sexual
organs are worn out from abuse or over use.
There is fullness and enlargement of the prostate gland and various
disturbances of the prostrate, with sensation of fullness in the perineum.
Unpleasant sensations and distress in the region of the prostate gland
after coition. Complaints at the time of, or after ejaculation, or after an
emission.
The sexual desire is diminished and sometimes entirely lost. Paralytic
weakness or paresis of the sexual organs; a state that is in keeping with
the whole remedy.
"Discharge of prostatic fluid during difficult stool."
"Painful erections at night."
Female: The female has a great deal of trouble that can be cured with this
remedy, but her troubles are mostly catarrhal.
An instance of this is the leucorrhoea; copious, acrid or excoriating,
yellow leucorrhoea; leucorrhoea so copious that it runs down the thighs,
making the parts red and inflamed.
Ulceration about the os. The mucous membranes are weak and patulous
and ulcerate easily. All the parts are in a state of weakness.
There is dragging down from the relaxed condition of the ligaments.
Sensation of weight; the pelvic viscera feel heavy. The discharge, stringy,
looking like white of egg, copious and acrid; transparent mucus.
" Leucorrhoea, corroding, profuse; running down to heels."
It is more noticeable in the day time, because these complaints are
generally worse when walking or when standing, which is not really an
important symptom, but a common condition.
After menstruation it takes the woman nearly until the next period to get
straightened up. All her muscles are weak; there seems to be no tonicity
about her. It is highly suitable to women drawing near the end of
menstruation, about forty years of age; the menstrual period prostrates,
the flow is scanty, yet prostrating; the sufferings are terrible and the
patient is miserable at the menstrual period. After menses, exhausted in
body and mind, is a strong feature of Alumina.
It is a suitable remedy again when the woman has a gonorrhoea which
has been prolonged by palliation. She has been made comfortable by
partly suitable remedies, but it seems that no remedy has been quite
deep enough to root out the trouble, for it keeps coming back.
In a discharge that keeps returning, better for little while on Pulsatilla,
and on this and that and the other thing, and even on Thuja, given more
especially because it is gonorrhoea than because she is a sick woman.
The patient is tired and worn out, and when you come to look at the
whole patient and you see the paretic condition, the continued return of
the discharge that has been palliated by remedies, think of this medicine
in both the male and female.
The discharge is a painless one in the male. The gonorrhoeal discharge has
lasted a long time, going and coming, until now there is left but a few
drops and it is painless.
The remedy has cured many of these old cases. Threatening chronic
catarrh. The mucous membrane everywhere is in a congested state and is
weak.
A pregnant woman has some trouble as well. A woman, who is not
naturally a sufferer from constipation, when pregnant becomes
constipated, with all the characterizing features of Alumina, i. e., the
inactivity of the rectum, no expulsive force; she must use the abdominal
muscles, must strain a long time.
Infant: Again, the infant has a similar kind of straining. You will see the
new-born infant, or the infant on few months old, that will need Alumina.
It is a very common medicine for constipation in infants when you can
find nothing else; the child will strain and strain and make every effort to
press the stool out, and upon examining the stool it is found to be soft,
and should have been expelled easily.
It has hoarseness and loss of voice and paralytic weakness of the larynx.
That is not strange; it is only in keeping with the general state, the broken
down constitution. He has a weak voice and, if a singer, he is capable of
singing only a little while, only capable of slight exertion.
Everything is a burden. A paralytic condition of the vocal cords, which
steadily increases to loss of voice.
Cough and Chest: The most striking things we come to now are the cough
and chest troubles. There is expectoration in some of the coughs, but the
cough is usually a constant, dry, hacking cough one of those troublesome
lingering coughs that has existed for years.
It competes with Arg. met. in its character of the dry, hacking cough,
especially associated with weakness, but Arg. met. has the cough in the
day time, which is not so in Alumina.
The Alumina cough is in the morning. Here is a symptom that about
covers the Alumina cough:
"Cough soon after waking in the morning."
Every morning, a long attack of dry cough. The cough is hard, a continued
dry hacking, and she coughs until she loses her breath and vomits, and
loses the urine.
This symptom commonly occurs in the woman.
"Dry, hacking cough with frequent sneezing."
It says in the text "from elongated uvula," but it should read "from
sensation of elongated uvula."
It is a sensation as if there were something tickling the throat; a tickling as
if the uvula were hanging down a long distance, and he will tell you that
his palate must be too long.
Another expression which is the same thing is "cough from sensation as of
loose skin hanging in throat."
Some times those who do not know about the palate will talk of
something loose in the throat, while those who know they have an uvula
will generally call it the palate. But it is the same idea. Tickling in the
larynx, too.
Singers: This is always quoted in singers. We would think of Alumina
when singers break down in the voice from paralysis or from overwork of
the voice.
The voice lets down and becomes feeble, and, when taking cold, there
starts up a peculiar kind of tickling.
Alumina is very useful in these cases. Arg. met. was the remedy used by
the earlier homoeopaths for singers and talkers with much trembling and
letting down of the voice before the value of Alumina was known in such
conditions.
Let me tell you something here about Rhus, as I may not think of it again.
Many old singers, after taking cold, have a weakness left in the voice,
which they notice on beginning to sing.
On beginning to sing the voice is weak and husky, but after using it a little
while it improves. Give Rhus to all these patients, prima donnas, lawyers,
preachers, etc.
They must warm up the voice and then they are all right, but they say:
"If I go back into the green room and wait a little while, when I commence
to sing again I am worse than ever."
The voice is better if they stay in a very hot room and keep it in use. This
fits into the general state of Rhus.
Hoarseness: There is a kind of hoarseness that you may discover to be a
little different from the paralytic hoarseness of Alumina and Arg. met.
This hoarseness of which I speak belongs to this same class of people; on
first beginning to use the voice it seems that they must get rid of some
mucus by clearing the throat until the voice can get to work.
The vocal cords on beginning to work are covered with mucus and on
getting rid of it they can do very good work, so long as they keep at it.
That is Phosphorus. In such cases the use of the voice becomes painful.
The vocal cords are painful after motion and the larynx is painful to touch.
Some times this is so marked that it is like stabbing with a knife on trying
to use the voice. So we must individualize hoarseness very extensively.
Homoeopathy is a matter of discrimination. Soreness of the chest which is
much increased by talking. There is weakness of the muscular power of
the chest. The lungs seem weak and the chest has a sensation of
weakness in it. Jar increases the misery of the chest.
Back and limbs: The next most striking features will be in connection with
the back and limbs, and I have spoken of these in general way.
Burning in the spine; much pain in the back. Burning and stitching pains in
the back. He expresses it as follows:
"Pain in the back, as if a hot iron was thrust through lower vertebrae."
In myelitis this medicine does wonderful work when there is a
considerable amount of spasmodic condition of the back as well, showing
that the membranes are involved.
Another thing that belongs to this remedy that is a well known state in
myelitis is the hoop sensation; sensation of bandages here and there
about the limbs and body is a common symptom.
A sensation of a tight cord around the body characteristic of the most
marked state of irritation and myelitis. Irritation of the spinal cord with
sensitive places.
Burning places as if a hot iron were forced into the spine. Pain along the
cord, rending, tearing pains in the cord with paralytic weakness,
increasing paralysis and complete paralysis; paralysis of one side of the
body.
"Pain in sole of foot on stepping, as though it were too soft and swollen."
"Numbness of heel when stepping."
"Trembling of knees," this is a mere matter of the general weakness.
"Limbs go to sleep when sitting."
Whenever the limb is pressed again anything it will go to sleep. Feeble
circulation, feeble conductivity, feeble nerve action; everything is slowed
down.
Arms and legs feel heavy.
"Pains in limbs as if bones were squeezed narrower, with pressure in the
joints."
Now I will read some of the nerve symptoms which will corroborate some
of the things we have gone over.
"Want of bodily irritability."
"Great exhaustion of strength, especially after walking in open air."
"One-sided paralysis, especially of the extensors."
"Rheumatic and traumatic paralysis in gouty patients."
Gouty patients with nodules in the joints; old broken down constitutions
with paretic exhaustion.
"Excited condition of mind and body."
Tremblings here and there in the body.
"Slow, tottering gait as after severe illness."
He must make slow motions, he cannot hurry.
"Involuntary motions."
Sleep and dreams: There are all sorts of dreams and disturbances in sleep,
so that the sleep may be quite disturbed and restless.
Unrefreshing sleep, waking up with palpitation of the heart.
"Many dreams and frequent awaking; starts in affright; muttering or
crying."
"During sleep cervical muscles drew head backward;"
this is in cases of paralytic weakness; has to wake up as the muscles of the
back of the neck pull so. Jerks in the back of the neck during sleep.
Running through the remedy very often, there is a great lack of animal
heat, coldness, and yet the patient wants to be in the open air; must be
well clothed open and kept warm, but wants to be in the open air.
The patient takes cold continually from every change and draft.
Sometimes the patient will go to bed as cold as a frog, and when warm in
bed is so disturbed by itching and the warmth of the bed that there is no
comfort.
These are two extremes coming together. The circulation is so feeble over
the extremities and backs of the hands that in cold weather the hands are
constantly cold and covered with cracks and fissures that bleed.
Skin: The skin along the shin bone is rough, ragged and itching. It has been
said that dry weather and dry, cold weather increase the complaints of
Alumina, and that wet weather sometimes ameliorates.
The febrile condition of this remedy is not at all marked. There is not
much chill and not much fever, but the passive, slow, sluggish, chronic
elements and chronic symptoms are the ones that prevail most markedly.
In weak, broken-down cases there are some night sweats and sweating
towards morning. Slight chill in morning. Chill with thirst.
A striking feature of the remedy is the chronic dryness of the skin. Sweat
is rare and scant.
This is not especially suitable for this copious, exhaustive sweats. It is the
very opposite of Calcarea, which sweats copiously, but this remedy, with
spinal and paralytic affections, is tired out from exertion, very exhausted,
but does not sweat.
Pile on the covers to make him sweat if you will, but he only gets hot and
itching and does not sweat.
Scanty sweat. Entire inability to sweat. Chronic dryness of skin with
fissures. The skin becomes worn and ragged and fissured from its dryness.
Great dryness of the thick skin over the back of the hands, and in cold
weather the hands become cold and discolored.

Lectures On Homœosdasdpathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lectures On Homœosdasdpathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lectures On Homœosdasdpathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

LECTURES ON HOMOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA by JAMES TYLER KENT,

A.M., M.D. Late Professor of Materia Medica in Hering College,

You might also like