Category: Allen’s Keynotes

Coffee (Rubiaceae)

Tall, lean, stooping persons, dark complexion, sanguine choleric temperament. Oversensitiveness; all the senses more acute, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch (Bell., Cham., Opium). Unusual activity of mind and body. Full of ideas; quick to act, no sleep on this account. Ailments: the bad effects of sudden emotions or pleasurable surprises (Caust. – exciting or bad news, Gels.); weeping from delight; alternate laughing and weeping. Pains are felt intensely; seem almost insupportable, driving patient to despair (Acon., Cham.); tossing about in anguish. Sleepless, wide-awake condition; impossible to close the eyes; physical excitement through mental exaltation. (Compare, Senecio, for sleeplessness form prolapsus, uterine irritation, during climacteric.). Headache: from over-mental exertion, thinking, talking; one-sided, as from a nail driven into the brain (Ign., Nux); as if brain were torn or dashed to pieces; worse in open air. Hasty eating and drinking (Bell., Hep.). Toothache: intermittent, jerking, relieved by holding ice-water in the mouth, but returns when water becomes warm (Bis., Bry., Puls., Caust., Sep., Nat. s.).

Relations. – Compare: Acon., Cham., Ign., Sulph. Incompatible: Canth., Caust., Coc., Ign.

Aggravation. – Sudden mental emotion; excessive joy; cold, open air; narcotic medicines.

Cocculus Indicus (Menispermaccae)

For women and children with light hair and eyes, who suffer severely during menstruation and pregnancy; unmarried and childless women. Adapted to book-worms; sensitive, romantic girls with irregular menstruation; rakes, onanists and persons debilitated by sexual excesses. Nausea or vomiting from riding in carriage, boat or railroad car (Arn., Nux m.), or even looking at at a boat in motion; sea- sickness; car-sickness. Headache: in nape and occiput; extending to the spine; as if tightly bound by a cord; with nausea, as if at sea; at each menstrual period; < lying on back of head. Sick-headache from carriage, boat or train riding. Diseases peculiar to drunkards. Loss of appetite, with metallic taste (Mer.). Time passes too quickly (too slowly, Arg. n., Can. I.). Great lassitude of the whole body; it requires exertion to stand firmly; feels too weak to talk loudly. Bad effects: from loss of sleep, mental excitement and nigh watching; feel weak if they lose but one hour’s sleep; convulsions after loss of sleep; of anger and grief. Trembling of arms and legs; from excitement, exertion or pain. Vertigo, as if intoxicated upon rising in bed; or by motion of the carriage (Bry.). Sensation: in abdomen of cutting and rubbing on every movement, as of sharp stones; of hollowness in head and other parts (Ign.). During the effort to menstruate she is so weak she is scarcely able to stand from weakness of lower limbs (Alum., Carbo an.); after each period haemorrhoids. Leucorrhoea in place of menses, or between periods (Iod., Xan.); like the washings of meat; like serum, ichorous, bloody; during pregnancy. Cannot bear contradiction; easily offended; every trifle makes him angry; speaks hastily (Anac.). When fever assumes a slow, “sneaking,” nervous form, with vertigo; with disposition to anger.

Relations. – Compare: Ign., Nux, in chorea and paralytic symptoms; Ant. t. in sweat of affected parts. Has cured umbilical hernia with obstinate constipation after Nux failed.

Aggravation. – Eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking, talking, carriage riding, motion or swing of ship; rising up during pregnancy.

For persons who are wearing out under the physical and mental strain of a busy life; who suffer from exhausted nerves and brains (compare, Fluor. ac.). Melancholy, from nervous exhaustion; bashful, timid, ill at ease in society. Sad, irritable; delights in solitude and obscurity. Longing for alcoholic liquors and tabacco; for the accustomed stimulants. Want of breath: in those engaged in athletic sports; shortness of breath, in old people; in those who use tabacco and whiskey to excess. Haemoptysis, with oppression of chest and dyspnoea. Sleepy, but can find no rest anywhere. Violent palpitation: from incarcerated flatus (Arg. n., Nux); from overexertion; from heart strain (Arn., Bor., Caust.). Bad effects: from mountain climbing or ballooning (Ars.); of stimulants, alcohol, tabacco. Prevents caries of teeth.

Relations. – Compare: patient desires light and company, Stram.; desires darkness and solitude, Coca. Was first used as a tobacco antidote.

Gold (The Element)

Sanguine, ruddy people, with black hair and eyes; lively, restless, anxious about the future. Old people; weak vision; corpulent; tired of life. For constitutions broken down by bad effects of mercury and syphillis. Pinning boys; low-spirited, lifeless, weak memories, lacking in “boyish go;” testes undeveloped, mere pendent shreds. Constantly dwelling on suicide (Naja – but is afraid to die, Nux). Profound melancholy: feels hateful and quarrelsome; desire to commit suicide; life is a constant burden; after abuse of mercury; with nearly all complaints. Uneasy, hurried, great desire for mental and physical activity; cannot do things fast enough (Arg. n.). Ailments from fright, anger, contradictions, mortification, vexation, dread, or reserved displeasure (Staph.). Oversensitive: least contradiction excites wrath (Con.); to pain; to smell, taste, hearing, touch (Anac.). Headache of people with dark olive-brown complexion; sad, gloomy, taciturn; disposed to constipation; from least mental exertion. Falling of the hair, especially in syphillis and mercurial affections. Hemiopia; sees only the lower half (sees only the left half, Lith. c., Lyc.). Syphilitic and mercurial affections of the bones. Caries: of the nasal palatine and mastoid bones; ozaena, otorrhoea, excessively fetid discharge, pains worse at night; drive to despair; of mercurial or syphilitic origin (Asaf.). Prolapsed and indurated uterus; from over-reaching or straining (Pod., Rhus); from hypertrophy (Con.). Menstrual and uterine affections, with great melancholy; < at menstrual period. Foul breath; in girls at puberty. Sensation as if the heart stood still; as though it ceased to beat and then suddenly gave on hard thump (Sep.). Violent palpitation; anxiety, with congestion of blood to head and chest after exertion; pulse small, feeble, rapid, irregular; visible, beating of carotid and temporal arteries (Bell., Glon.). Fatty degeneration of heart (Phos.).

Relations. – Aurum follows, and is followed well by Syphillinum. Similar: to, Asaf., Cal., Plat., Sep., Tar., Ther., in bone, uterine disease.

Aggravation. – In cold air; when getting cold; while lying down; mental exertion; many complaints come on only in winter.

Amelioration. – In warm air, when growing warm, in the morning and during summer.

Star-fish (Radiata)

For the sycotic diathesis; flabby, lymphatic constitution; irritable temperament. Easily excited by any emotion, especially by contradictions (Anac., Con.). Heat of the head, as if surrounded by hot air. Sanguineous congestion to the brain. Apoplexy; face red, pulse hard, full, frequent. Cancer of mammae; acute lancinating pain; drawing pain in breast; swollen, distended, as before the menses; breast feels drawn in. A livid red spot appeared, broke and discharged; gradually invaded entire breast, very fetid odor; edges pale, clevated, mamillary, hard, everted; bottom covered with reddish granulations. Gait unsteady: muscles refuse to obey the will (Alum., Gels.). Epilepsy: twitching over the whole body four or five days before the attack. Constipation: obstinate; ineffectual desire; stools of hard, round balls, like olives. Diarrhoea: watery, brown, gushing out in a violent jet (Crot. t., Grat., Gum., Jatr., Thuja). Sexual desire increased in women (Lit.).

Relations. – Similar: to, Murex, Sepia. Compare: Carbo an., Con., Sil. in mammary cancer; Bell., Cal., Sulph. in epilepsy

European Snake Root (Arsistolochiaceae)

Nervous, anxious people; excitable or melancholy. Imagines he is hovering in the air like a spirit (Lac. c.); lightness of all the limbs. Cold “shivers” from any emotion. Oversensitiveness of nerves, scratching of linen or silk, crackling of paper is unbearable (Fer. Tar.). Sensation as if ears were plugged up with some foreign substance. When reading, sensation in eyes as if thy would be pressed asunder or outward; relieved by bathing them in cold water. Cold air or cold water very pleasant to the eyes; sunshine, light, and wind are intolerable. Nausea: in attacks or constant (Ipec.); < after eating, tongue clean (Sulph.); of pregnancy. Unconquerable longing for alcohol; a popular remedy in Russia for drunkards. “Horrible sensation” of pressing, digging in the stomach when waking in the morning (after a debauch). Great faintness and constant yawning.

Relation. – Similar: to, Caust. in modalities; to Aloe, Arg. n., Mer., Pod., Puls., Sulph. ac. in stringy shreddy stools. Followed: by, Bis., Caust., Puls., Sulph. ac.

Aggravation. – In cold and dry, or clear, fine weather (Caust.).

Amelioration. – Washing face or bathing affected parts with cold water; in damp, wet weather (Caust.).

Indian Turnip (Araceae)

Coryza; acrid, fluent; nostrils raw. Nose feels stopped up in spite of the watery discharge (compare, Am. c., Samb., Sinap.); sneezing < at night. Acrid, ichorous discharge, excoriating inside of nose, alae, and upper lip (Ars., Cepa). Constant picking at the nose until it bleeds; boring with the finger into the side of the nose. Picks lips until they bleed; corners of the mouth sore, cracked, bleeding (with malignant tendency, Cund.); bites nails until fingers bleed. Patients pick and bore into the raw bleeding surfaces though very painful; scream with pain but keep up the boring (in diphtheria, scarlatina, typhoid). Children refuse food and drink on account of soreness of mouth and throat (Mer.); are sleepless. Saliva profuse, acrid, corrodes the mucous membrane; tongue and buccal cavity raw and bleeding. Aphonia: complete, after exposure to northwest winds (Acon., Hep.); from singing (Arg. n., Caust., Phos., Sel.). Clergyman’s sore throat; voice hoarse, uncertain, uncontrollable, changing continually; worse from talking, speaking or singing; orators, singers, actors. Desquamation in large flakes, a second or third time, in scarlatina. Typhoid scarlatina, with apathy, scanty or suppressed urine; threatened uraemia. The sore mouth and nose are guiding in malignant scarlatina and diphtheria.

Relations. – Useful: after Hep. and Nit. ac. in dry, hoarse, croupy cough; after Caust. and Hep. in morning hoarseness and deafness, and in scarlatina. Should not be given low or repeated often as bad effects often follow. – Dr. L. The higher potencies most prompt and effective.

White Oxide of Arsenic (As2O3.)

Great prostration, with rapid sinking of the vital forces; fainting: The disposition is:
   a – Depressing, melancholic, disparing, indifferent.
   b – Anxious, fearful, restless, full of anguish.
   c – Irritable, sensitive, peevish, easily vexed.
The greater the suffering, the greater the anguish, restlessness and fear of death. Mentally restless, but physically too weak to move; cannot rest in any place: changing places continually; wants to be moved from one bed to another, and lies now here now there. Anxious fear of death; thinks it useless to take medicine, is incurable, is surely going to die; dread of death, when alone, or, going to bed. Attacks of anxiety at night driving out of bed, < after midnight. Burning pains; the affected parts burn like fire, as if hot coals were applied to parts (Antr.), > by heat, hot drinks, hot applications. Burning thirst without special desire to drink; the stomach does not seem to tolerate, because it cannot assimilate cold water; lies like a stone in the stomach. It is wanted, but he cannot or dare not drink it. Cannot bear the smell or sight of food (Colch., Sep.). Great thirst for cold water; drinks often, but little at a time; eats seldom, but much. Gastric derangements; after cold fruits; ice cream; ice water; sour beer; bad sausage; alcoholic drinks; strong cheese. Teething children are pale, weak, fretful, and want to be carried rapidly. Diarrhoea, after eating or drinking; stool scanty, dark-colored, offensive, and whether small or large, followed by great prostration. Haemorrhoids: with stitching pain when walking or sitting, not at stool; preventing sitting or sleep; burning pain < by heat; fissures make voiding urine difficult. Breathing: asthmatic; must sit or bend forward; springs out of bed at night, especially after twelve o’clock; unable to lie down for fear of suffocation; attacks like croup instead of the usual urticaria. Rapid emaciation: with cold sweat and great debility (Tub., Ver.); of affected parts; marasmus. Anasarca, skin pale, waxy, earth-colored (Acet. ac.). Excessive exhaustion from least exertion. Exhaustion is not felt by the patient while lying still; when he moves he is surprised to find himself so weak. Symptoms generally worse 1-2 p. m., 12-2 a. m. Skin: dry and scaly; cold, blue and wrinkled; with cold, clammy perspiration; like parchment; white and pasty; black vesicles and burning pain. Bad effects from decayed food or animal matter, whether by inoculation, olfaction or ingestion. Complaints return annually (Carbo. v., Lach., Sulph., Thuja).

Relation. – Complementary: Allium s., Carbo. v., Phos., Pyr. Ars. should be thought of in ailments from: chewing tabacco; alcoholism; sea bathing; sausage poisoning; dissecting woulds and anthrax poison; stings of venomous insects.

Aggravation. – After midnight (1 to 2 a. m. or p. m.); from cold; cold drinks or food; when lying on affected side or with the head low.

Amelioration. – From heat in general (reverse of Sec.) except headache, which is temporarily > by cold bathing (Spig.); burning pain > by heat.

Leopard’s Bane (Compositae)

Nervous women, sanguine plethoric persons, lively expression and very red face. For the bad effects resulting from mechanical injuries; even if received years ago. Especially adapted to those who remain long impressed by even slight mechanical injuries. Sore, lame, bruised feeling all through the body, as if beaten; traumatic affections of muscles. Mechanical injuries, especially with stupor from concussion; involuntary faeces and urine; After injuries with blunt instruments (Symph.). Compound fractures and their profuse suppuration (Calend.). Concussions and contusions, results of shock or injury; with laceration of soft parts; prevents suppuration and septic conditions and promotes absorption. Nervous, cannot bear pain; whole body over-sensitive (Cham., Coff., Ign.). Everything on which he lies seems too hard; complains constantly of it and keeps moving from place to place in search of a soft spot (the parts rested upon feel sore and bruised, Bap., Pyr.; must move continually to obtain relief from pain, Rhus). Heat of upper body; coldness of lower. The face or head and face alone is hot, the body cool. Unconsciousness; when spoken to answers correctly but unconsciousness and delirium at once return (falls asleep in the midst of a sentence, Bap.). Says there is nothing the matter with him. Meningitis after mechanical or traumatic injuries; from falls, concussions of brain, etc. When suspecting exudation of blood, to facilitate absorption Hydrocephalus; deathly coldness in forearm of children (in diarrhoea, Brom.). Apoplexy; loss of consciousness, involuntary evacuation from bowels and bladder; in acute attack, controls haemorrhage and aids absorption; should be repeated and allowed to act for days or weeks unless symptoms call for another remedy. Conjunctival or retinal haemorrhage, with extravasation, form injuries or cough (Led., Nux.). Gout and rheumatism, with great fear of being touched or struck by persons coming near him. Cannot walk erect on account of a bruised sort of feeling in the pelvic region. Tendency to small, painful boils, one after another, extremely sore (small boils in crops, Sulph.). Paralysis (left-sided); pulse full strong; stertor, sighing, muttering. Belching; eructations; foul, putrid, like rotten eggs. Dysentery; with ischuria, fruitless urging; long interval between the stools. Constipation: rectum loaded, faeces will not come away; ribbon like stools from enlarged prostrate or retroverted uterus. Soreness of parts after labor; prevents post-partum haemorrhage and puerperal complications. Retention or incontinence of urine after labor (Op.).

Relation. – Complementary: to, Acon., Hyper., Rhus. Similar: to, for soreness as if bruised, Bap., China, Phyt., Pyr., Rhus, Ruta, Staph. Arnica follows well: after, Acon., Apis., Ham., Ipec., Ver., is followed by Sul. ac. In ailments from spiritous liquors or from charcoal vapors, Arn. is often indicated (Am. c., Bov.). In spinal concussion, compare, Hyper.

Aggravation. – At rest; when lying down; from wine.

Amelioration. – From contact; motion (Rhus, Ruta).

The Silver Nitrate (AgO,NO5)

Acute or chronic diseases fro unusual or long-continued mental exertion. Always think of Argentum nit. on seeing withered, dried-up, old-looking patients (thin, scrawny, Sec.). Emaciation, progressing every year; most marked in lower extremeties (Am. m.); marasmus. Apprehension when ready for church or opera, diarrhoea sets in (Gels.). Time passes slowly (Can. I.); impulsive, wants to do things in a hurry; must walk fast; is always hurried; anxious, irritable, nervous (Aur. Lit.). Headache: congestive, with fullness and heaviness; with sense of expansion; habitual gastric, of literary men; from dancing; hemicrania, pressive, screwing in frontal eminence or temple; ending in bilious vomiting; < from any exhaustive mental labor; > by pressure or tight bandaging (Apis, Puls.). Acute granular conjunctivitis; scarlet-red, like raw beef; discharge profuse, muco-purulent. Ophthalmia neonatorum: profuse, purulent discharge; cornea opaque, ulceration; lids sore, thick, swollen; agglutinated in morning (Apis, Mer. s., Rhus). Eye strain from sewing, < in warm room > in open air (Nat. m., Ruta); diseases due to defective accommodation. Craves sugar; child is fond of it, but diarrhoea results from eating (craves salt or smoked meat, Cal. p.). Belching accompanies most gastric ailments. Flatulent dyspepsia: belching after every meal; stomach, as it it would burst with wind; belching difficult, finally air rushes out with great violence. Diarrhoea: green mucus, like chopped spinach in flakes; turning green after remaining on diaper; after drinking; after eating candy or sugar; masses of muco-lymph in shreddy strips or lumps (Asar.); with much noisy flatus (Aloe.). Diarrhoea as soon as he drinks (Ars., Crot. t., Throm.). Urine passes unconsciously day and night (Caust.). Impotence: erection fails when coition is attempted (Agnus, Calad., Selen.). Coition: painful in both sexes; followed by bleeding from vagina (Nit. ac.). Netrorrhagia: in young widows; in sterility; with nervous erethism at change of life (Lach.). Great longing for fresh air (Amyl., Puls., Sulph.). Chronic laryngitis of singers; the high notes cause cough (Alum., Arg. m., Arum.). Great weakness of lower extremities, with trembling; cannot walk with the eyes closed (Alum.). Walks and stands unsteadily, especially when he thinks himself unobserved. Convulsions preceded by great restlessness. Sensation of a splinter in throat when swallowing (Dolch., Hep., Nit. ac., Sil.); in or about uterus when walking or riding. Chilly when uncovered, yet feels smothered if wrapped up; craves fresh air.

Relation. – Natrum mur, for the bad effects of cauterizing with nitrate of silver. Coffee increases nervous headache. Boys’ complaints after using tabacco (Ars., Ver.). Similar: to, Nat. m., Nit. ac., Lach., Aur., Cup. After Ver.; Lyc. follows well in flatulent dyspepsia.

Aggravation. – Cold food; cold air; eating sugar; ice cream; unusual mental exertion.

Amelioration. – Open air; craves the wind blowing in his face; bathing with cold water. The 200 or 1000th potency in watery solution as a topical application in ophthalmia neonatorum has relieved when the crude Silver nitrate failed.