Category: Kent Materia Medica

Calcarea Arsenicosa
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 44 of 180
Source pages 1020–1025 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

As this remedy is a chemical union of two well proved deep acting remedies it would most likely appear at once to the mind as a long acting remedy, well suited to many chronic diseases.

In fact, it is deep acting enough to cure some of our most stubborn cases of epilepsy. It has made its record in this class of cases.

Great mental and physical weakness. Tremulous and paralytic weakness. Sense of lightness of the body as if floating in the air. Fainting spells. Epileptic convulsions where the aura is felt in the region of the heart. Marked lassitude. Pain and sinking in the region of the heart followed by spasms. Weakness, or vertigo, or momentary blindness.

Convulsions with valvular disease of the heart. Evening and night aggravations are common. The patient is sensitive to cold-a lack of vital heat. Aversion to the open air.

General physical anxiety. Many symptoms from ascending stairs. It has many burning pains like Arsenicum.. It has cured many cases of albuminuria in the early stages.

It is a useful remedy in chlorosis. Dropsy is a strong feature, as it is in Arsenicum and Calcarea. Complaints are worse from slight exertion; faintness, palpitation, dyspnea and weakness come on. The left side of the body is most affected.

Mind: The following mental symptoms are often a guide to its use. Anger and complaints from anger and vexation.

Anxiety in evening, at night, in bed, and during a chill, and on waking. Apprehensiveness; about the future, about his salvation, at night. Inclined to criticize.

Desire for company. Confusion of mind on waking. Inability to concentrate the mind. Delusions. Sees dead people, phantoms, images. Illusions of fancy.

Sees visions of fire, worse at night, and on closing the eyes. Despair of recovery, of salvation. Discontented. Excitable. Fear of death at night, of solitude, of insanity.

Becomes indifferent to pleasure. Insanity. Irresolution. Irritable. Lamenting. Loathing of life; weary of life. Weakness of memory.

Mischievous. Obstinate. Sensitive, easily offended. Extreme restlessness, especially at night, tossing about in bed; during heat; and during menses. Extreme sadness in evening, and during fever. Easily startled. Timidity. Weeping, at night.

Head: There is violent rush blood to the head with vertigo and general spasm. It has caused and cured many chronic headaches.

A very peculiar feature of the pain in the head is that it moves from the side lain on and goes to the side not lain on, and continues to change about by changing position.

Not all of its headaches do this way. It has many peculiar little symptoms. Pain in the head ameliorated during mental exertion, but much worse afterwards. Oedema of face, lids, temples and ears.

Eczema of face and scalp. Coldness of head. Pale, sickly, bloated face. Fluent coryza. Sneezing.

Loss of all desire for food, but thirst for cold water. Eructations and vomiting after food. Stomach easily disordered, especially after milk and cold food.

Pain in stomach after drinking cold water. Load in stomach after eating. Pain in groin after drinking wine. Waterbrash and spur stomach. Anxiety and burning in stomach. Stitching pain in stomach. Gnawing pain in stomach. Distension of stomach and abdomen. It has cured gastric ulcer.

Much soreness in region of kidneys. Scanty, burning urine, contains albumin and casts.

Pain in the spermatic cords, after exertion, and after drinking wine.

Excoriating, yellow leucorrhoea. Offensive, bloody leucorrhoea. For offensive leucorrhea, it compares with Kali ars. and Kali phos, it is useful in cancer of the uterus when there is burning and acrid offensive bloody flow.

It restores the menstrual flow, when the symptoms agree. Copious menstrual flow, or scanty flow, too frequent and protracted.

Pain at the approach of the menses. Metrorrhagia. Burning pain in uterus and vagina.

Drawing as with a thread from larynx backward. Dryness in larynx. Loses the voice before an epileptic convulsion. Suffocation and palpitation at night in bed.

Burning heat in chest and pain in region of heart before an epileptic convulsion.

Orgasm of blood in region of heart. Throbbing in the blood vessels, especially in head and back; it drives him out of bed. Pain in heart with palpitation. Angina pectoris.

Grasping pain in heart. Palpitation, with heat of face. Palpitation from least excitement or exertion; worse evening and night. Every fourth beat of pulse omits. Rapid pulse.

Violent headache between scapula and sacrum. Pain in back extends to arms. Pain in chest extends to arms. Oedema of the hands and feet. Weakness of lower limbs.

The sleep is disturbed by violent dreams. Palpitation and suffocation. Latter part of night wakeful, and much sweat.

If this wonderful remedy is studied with the mind on Arsenicum and Calcarea, a broader knowledge will be gained. It needs further proving in potencies.

Calcarea Fluorica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 46 of 180
Source pages 1026–1029 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

This chemical union of lime and fluoric acid gives us a remedy with a new nature and properties. However conversant one may be with either or both of these elements, he could not predict the curative powers held in this double remedy.

I refer to its ability to cure indurated infiltrations of glands, cellular tissues and bony formations.

A nodule in the course of a tendon and exostosis, a stony bard gland, bony infiltration in the periosteum, rice bodies in cartilages have been cured by this remedy wonderful to tell, when there was a paucity of symptoms. It will cure of course when symptoms agree, but it needs proving in order that individualization may be oftener possible.

A recurrent fibroid in the hallow of the knee was removed once by the knife, but returned, and grew to the size of a fist. The leg was drawn up to forty-five degrees, and the knee became immovable.

This wonderful remedy was prescribed on the symptoms of the case and the hardness of the tumor.

The tumor gradually dwindled, the limb became normal and as good as ever; this patient has since born a healthy child is still perfectly free from the trouble. It is now ten years since she was cured.

The patient is sensitive to cold, to drafts, to changes in the weather, and to damp weather. The symptoms are ameliorated by heat and by warm applications. The symptoms are worse during rest.

This is a useful remedy in gout, with copious pale urine and diarrhea. The patient is sad and miserable. This remedy has cured a fluctuating tumor on the cranium of infants known as Cephalaematoma.

Blur before the eyes after exerting the vision. Cataract. It cures ulceration of the cornea if the edges are hard; also hard, small spots and conjunctivitis. It has cured adenoids and thick, yellowish green discharge from the nose.

Offensive catarrh of long standing. Scanty enamel of the teeth.

Pain, ulceration and granulation of the throat, worse from cold, and better from warm drinks. Pain worse at night. Large indurated tonsils will be cured after Baryta carb. has failed.

Pain in the liver at night, worse lying on the painful side, better from motion. Cutting pains in the liver, better walking.

Diarrhea in gouty subjects. Itching of anus and hemorrhoids, painful and hard bleeding. Fissure of anus. Constipation.

Copious watery urine. Strong smelling urine. Urine causes smarting when passing.

Indurated testes. Nodular testes.

Varicose veins of the vulva. Uterine fibroid.

Hard nodules in the mammae.

Dryness and tickling in the larynx. Desire to clear the vocal cords. Hoarseness after reading aloud. Hacking cough after eating, and in cold air, from tickling in the larynx. Spasmodic cough.

It cured an exostosis at the angle of the eighth rib.

It cured a lumbago, worse during rest, and better from heat, after Rhus had failed. Pain in back, extending to the sacrum. Indurated cervical glands.

Vivid dreams, and unrefreshing sleep. jumps out of bed in a dream. it is similar to Silica in suppuration.

Calcarea Phosphorica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 47 of 180
Source pages 1030–1041 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

During the growing period many children need this remedy. if the head bones are slow in forming, or do not keep pace with the growth of the child, this remedy is often called for.

Where the child is losing flesh, slow learning to do things, slow learning to walk, or the legs are not strong enough to support the body, or it is behind in mental development, this remedy is one to be examined (like Baryta carb., Borax, Ph. ac., Nat. m., Calc.).

Flabby, shrunken, emaciated children. Non-union of fractured bones, swollen condyles, are symptoms accepted by all text-books as strong symptoms of this remedy. It has cured polypi of nose, rectum and uterus. It has cured enlarged glands of the neck, groin and abdomen.

Rachitis, with fontanelles open, and diarrhea, in emaciating children. Rheumatic pains in the joints and limbs, worse from cold weather, or in every cold change of weather. Pale, waxy skin; anaemia.

Growing pains nights in fast growing children. Phtisical subjects. Diseases of bone. Easy ulceration. Itching, burning, eruptions. Sensitive to cold. Sensitive to a jar.

The pains are shooting, drawing, aching, burning, pressing. It has a shaking chill that spreads downward. Dry heat in evening. Copious night sweats.

The complaints of this remedy are generally better during rest, come on during motion, and are greatly aggravated by exertion. Stiffness on moving in bed. General bodily weakness. Numbness of many parts. Trembling. Fear brings on complaints; palpitation.

Mind: Electric shock, so severe that the patient could not remain standing. Epileptic spasms. Convulsions of children; but the remedy must be given when not in the convulsion to secure the best effect. The mind shows above all a tired and weak brain.

Feeble memory, and inability to sustain mental effort. Suffering in the head from mental exertion. Dreads mental exertion. Sluggish mind. Imbecility.

Feeble minded children. The child grasps the head with the hands and screams. Thinking of complaints causes them to appear or increase. Extremely fretful.

Ailments from bad news, grief, unrequited affections, vexation. She seeks solitude to commune with her thoughts and to shun the exertion of society. Discontented with his own surroundings and goes from place to place.

Head: Vertigo in cold wind, from mental and physical exertion, when rising from sitting, when walking in cold air.

The head symptoms are still more striking. The dull headaches of school children-always come home from school with headache. The head is sensitive to a jar, to pressure, to the hat; wants it washed in cold water; wants to be quite and alone.

Throbbing and burning in the head. Rheumatic headache, seems to be in the whole head, in cold weather, being out in the cold wind; worse from walking, worse from exertion, worse at night. It has many times prevented hydrocephalus. Frontal headaches, and forehead and eyes worse from pressure of the hat. Perspiration of scalp; forehead cold to touch. Tearing pain in bones of head. Cold occiput. Eczema of scalp. Ulcers of scalp.

In children when coming out of brain congestion if there is strabismus, diarrhea, and losing flesh. Glittering fiery circles before the eyes. Pain in eyes from reading in artificial light. Eyes blurred. Soreness in eyeballs. Pains worse thinking about them. Ulceration of cornea. Eyes feel hot. Easy lachrymation.

Rheumatic tearing in the ears when the weather changes to cold. Ears very cold. Aching deep in ear. Enlarged, painful parotid glands.

Eruption about the ears. Noises in ears after stool. Dry catarrh of the middle ear. This remedy is useful in chronic catarrh of the nose when the general symptoms agree.

Polypi in the nose. Icy cold nose. Fluent coryza in a cold room, stopped in a warm room. Epistaxis.

Pale, waxy face, dirty skin. Rheumatic face ache in every cold spell of weather. Cold perspiration on face.

Neuralgia of face at night, in cold air; worse from exertion, ameliorated by heat; sensitive to pressure (Mag. p. is better by heat and pressure). Dark blotches and pustules on the face. Swollen upper lip, painful, hard and burning.

Teeth late coming in or decay soon. Teeth sensitive to touch, pressure, or when masticating. Complaints of teething children.

Foul taste in mouth. Bitter taste in the morning. Tongue coated in the morning. Tongue swollen, numb and stiff.

Growing children suffer from chronic throat troubles. Enlarged tonsils. Every cold settles in the tonsils (Baryta c., Alumen). Much mucus in throat. Dryness in throat at night.

Stomach and abdomen: Craves salt bacon and smoked meats. Strong appetite. Infants want to nurse all the time. Easily disordered stomach. Cold drinks, ice cream, fruits disorder the stomach, causing pain or diarrhoea. Pain in stomach after food. Eructations and nausea.

Soreness in the stomach. Sour eructations, nausea and vomiting. Burning in the stomach. Nausea from scraping the larynx or throat. Vomiting in infants, in children, and in pregnancy. Violent pain in the stomach; diarrhoea aggravated by the least food. Gnawing, empty feeling in the stomach.

After becoming chilled, pain in the liver, soreness, aggravated after eating and by motion; wants to keep quiet. Stitching pains in the liver from deep breathing or sudden motion. Pulsating in the liver. Cutting pains in the spleen. Sinking sensation in abdomen.

Burning in the abdomen, rising up into the chest. Pain in the abdomen ameliorated by passing flatus. Colic, followed by diarrhoea. Ulceration of naval in infants. Motion in abdomen from flatus as from something alive. Abdomen large and flabby.

Tabes mesenterica with diarrhoea. Green mucus and hot watery stools; white, mushy stools, copious, offensive flatus. Diarrhea from fruit, ice cream, cold drinks or vexation. Diarrhea in the morning in phtisical patients. Very offensive stools.

Stools and anus: Constipation, with difficult, hard stool. Bleeding from the rectum and anus during stool. Protruding piles so painful that he is kept in bed for weeks; the pain is intense standing, walking, from touch; ameliorated by heat; with general sufferings, every sudden cold change of the weather. Piles itch and burn and discharge yellow pus. Itching of the anus in the evening.

Stitching pain in the anus, with or without hemorrhoids. Boils and abscesses about and near the anus, discharging blood and pus. Fistula in tuberculous subjects. Fissured anus, with burning stitching pains.

Urines: Weak and irritable bladder. Catarrh of the bladder. Frequent urging to urinate. Copious flow of urine. Pain in the neck of the bladder before and after urinating. Aching in the empty bladder. This remedy has cured diabetes mellitus. Violent pain in the region of the kidneys.

Sexual desire increased. Painful erections. It has cured many cases of chronic gonorrhoea when the discharge is gleety and there are sharp pains in the urethra and prostate gland. Gonorrheal rheumatism when of long standing and worse in every cold change in the weather (Med.),

Women: The woman has no better friend than Calc. p.

Her sufferings at puberty when she is slow in maturing are often met by this medicine. From taking cold at first menstrual period often comes a painful menstruation that lasts during menstrual life, unless cured by this remedy.

Violent cramping in uterus and groin several hours before the flow starts, relieved after the flow has been fully established.

The pains make her cry out. Intense sexual excitement (like Platina, Gratiola, Origanum). Weak, sinking sensation in the pelvis.

Prolapsus of uterus during stool and micturition. Uterine polypus. Labor-like pains at the beginning of menstruation. Copious menstrual flow, with very dark clots and membranes.

Leucorrhea like white of egg day and night. Throbbing, titillating in external genitalia. Burning in the vagina and uterus during menses. Child refuses mother’s milk. It may be given to a woman who has brought forth one or two children that may be considered Calc. p. babies. The next child will be stronger and have a better constitution.

Voice and larynx: It is often observed that this patient scrapes, mucus from the larynx before he can talk or sing. Hoarseness, dry hacking cough day and night. Tubercular laryngitis.

Suffocation on slight exertion, or on ascending stairs. In thin, pale, sickly people with dry, hacking cough worse in cold, damp weather in rheumatic constitutions. Yellow expectoration.

Stitching pains in the chest. Emaciation of the chest. Difficult expectoration. It is a very useful remedy in phthisis and blood spitting. Much sweat on the chest. Rattling in the chest with difficult expectoration, like Caust.

Soreness of the chest to touch. Palpitation, with trembling of the limbs.

Back and limbs: The back pains are worse in cold, stormy weather, attended with stiffness, and worse in the morning. The back is sensitive to draft. Pain in the back from lifting or straining. Curvature of spine. Tearing, shooting; tenderness and aching in the spine. Soreness in sacroiliac symphysis. Pain in lumbar region and sacrum at the menstrual period.

Rheumatic pains in the limbs in cold weather, worse from motion, better during rest and from heat. Trembling in all the limbs. Stiffness after resting, and in the morning. Aching in the bones, like growing pains. Gouty fingers and toes that become painful in cold weather. Ulcerative pains in the roots of the nails.

The most severe tearing, shooting pains are in the lower limbs. The probable reason for this is that the lower limbs are always cold to the knees, and the cold parts are always the suffering parts in this remedy.

Sharp pains in tendons of the lower limbs. Intense aching boring pains in the knees, and long bones. Pains in the tibia with soreness. Drawing pain in the tibia. Cramp in the calves. Ulcers on the legs; weak, chronic; no granulation. Rheumatism of the ankles. Caries of the os calcis. Stringing and shooting in the toes.

Sleepy daytime and evening. Sleepless after going to bed until midnight or later. Very sleepy in the morning. Vivid dreams. Children cry out in sleep. Frightful dreams cause him to awaken with a start.

Calcarea Sulphurica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 48 of 180
Source pages 1042–1066 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Many years ago Schüessler introduced this remedy, and it has been used extensively upon the biochemic theory. Many excellent cures have been made in this way that most of us are able to recognize as homoeopathic cures, though it is a sort of crude homoeopathy.

By studying these cures many symptoms may be obtained not supposed to be of importance by these reporters. These symptoms often furnish a basis for further consideration or further clinical observation. Many fragmentary provings have also been made, furnishing many of the symptoms recorded in this article.

The author frequently made use of Schussler’s 12 th potency, later the 30 th and 200 th; at present much higher potencies. From all of these many valuable symptoms have been obtained.

Some of these symptoms have come out upon the sick while under the influence of this remedy, and have been since confirmed, so that the following symptoms must now furnish the best basis that we have to prescribe on. The best consideration that this remedy has ever received will be found in Boericke and Dewey’s Materia Medica of the Tissue Remedies.

The tendency to the formation of abscesses in the body in any place is a strong feature of this remedy, and is quite similar to Pyrogen.

An abscess that has ruptured and is slow to heal with a continuous discharge of yellow pus, is a strong indication for this remedy. The patient desires the open air; is sensitive to drafts; takes cold easily. It is very useful in the management of malignant growths after ulceration has set in. It is under such circumstances an excellent palliative.

It is a deep acting constitutional remedy, and anti-psoric, and if given early enough will prevent a malignant growth terminating in its usual way. It is useful in the affections of bone, caries of bone. While the patient is cold in general, he often requires to be uncovered because of particular conditions. For instance, in croup and in headaches he feels the heat too much, but the pains of the body are often relieved by heat.

He is sensitive to both cold and heat. After becoming cold, complaints come on. Tendency to take cold in drafts, or on slight occasions. He is sensitive to cold, wet weather. It cures the underlying basis of epilepsy, epileptiform and hysteric convulsions. The patient is aggravated from every motion. His muscles are flabby; he is disposed to hemorrhages.

When well selected remedies act only a short time, and the symptoms agree, this remedy is one that should be thought of along with Sulphur, Psorinum and Tuberculinum.

Complaints from straining muscles and tendons, from overlifting, etc. Lame back from such causes.

Throughout the chest and head, and sometimes extending into the limbs, there is a violent orgasm of blood, flushes of heat and pulsations. Onanism. and sexual excesses reduce the economy to a state whereby they feel their constitutional, disturbance, and this is one of the remedies that elevate the body to better state of order in such conditions.

Pain in the bones day and night. Pulsating all over the body. Standing aggravates many complaints, but especially the joints. Swollen and indurated glands. Twitching of the muscles all over the body. Many of the symptoms are aggravated on waking.

Many symptoms are aggravated walking and especially walking fast and becoming heated, Aggravation from being overheated. Wants to uncover. Aggravation from the warmth of the bed. A warm room aggravates. Warm wraps aggravate. Great bodily weakness.

Thick yellow discharges from the mucous membranes. Thick bloody discharges. Purulent exudations in serous sacs. Bloody pus from abscesses, ulcers and mucous membranes. Prolonged suppuration. Wants to keep still.

Mind: Now, it will be found that the above general symptoms prevail throughout the particulars in many instances, and it will appear that the bodily state is more or less penetrated with these symptoms.

The patient is absent minded; irritable; easily angered.

He becomes weak after anger and vexation. Aversion to answering questions. He is easily made anxious, especially in the evening in bed, during the night and when lying. Anxiety with fear during fever. Anxiety about the future, Anxious about his heart and his health in general. His anxiety is ameliorated in the open air.

He has anxiety about his salvation. He has anxiety in the morning on waking. Many changeable moods and capriciousness. Aversion to company. Confusion of mind in the morning on waking and Again in the evening. This is also ameliorated in the open air. Confusion of mind from, mental exertion. Contrary and contradictory moods.

He has many little delusions, whims and strange fancies. Frightful images in the night when trying to sleep. Has visions. Great despair of recovery during heat. Craves stimulants to overcome his tremulous weakness. He is discontented at all times. Great sluggishness of mind. Continuously in a state of apprehension. Fear of death. Fear that some evil will befall him.

Fear of insanity and fear of misfortune, and this comes on at night. Forgetful. Full of hatred of people who do not agree with him. Always in a hurry. Hysterical. Impatient. Feeble minded, even to imbecility. Indifferent as to his surroundings. Irresolution.

Extreme irritability in the evening. Irritable after coition. Lamenting because he is not duly appreciated. Loathing of life. Malicious, This remedy is especially useful in broken-down constitutions from drunkenness.

Weakness of mind, of memory and of body. Some of the mental states that are aggravated in the morning with sadness, on waking become mirthful in the evening, even to hilarity. He stumbles in speaking and misplaces words. Changeable moods. Morose. Obstinate. Easily offended or insulted. Prostration of mind. Quarrelsome. Restlessness.

Mental depression in the morning, with mirthfulness in the evening. Sadness during perspiration. Dullness of the senses. Sits and meditates over imaginary misfortune. Does not want to be talked to. Easily startled. Stupefaction. Suspicion. Suspicious. Indisposed to talk. Tormenting, persistent thought. While busily engaged thinking, his thoughts vanish.

Becomes timid, bashful and apprehensive, and in his conversation is extremely’ wearisome. Weeping during perspiration. An aversion to mental and physical work. Real indolence.

Vertigo: Vertigo is a common feature with this patient. In the morning on getting up, or again in the evening; but this is ameliorated in the open air. Vertigo With nausea. Vertigo with a tendency to fall. Epileptic vertigo. Vertigo on moving the head quickly, on stooping and on walking fast. Coldness of the head, especially of the vertex.

Hyperoemia of the brain, aggravated in the evening and at night. Aggravated after stimulants; especially on coughing; during menses; with suppressed menses, and in a warm room. Ameliorated in the open air.

Head: The head feels constricted, especially the forehead and occiput. Much dandruff forms upon the scalp. Eruptions upon the scalp with thick yellow – crusts. Eczema, also pimples. Coldness in the head, especially forehead. Formication of the scalp.

The hair falls out. Heat of the head morning and evening. Flushes of heat. Heat in the forehead and in the vertex. Heaviness in the forehead and occiput.

Itching, burning, of the scalp. Many inveterate chronic headaches and periodical headaches have been cured with this remedy. Headaches in the morning on waking. Headaches coming on in the afternoon, lasting through the evening and at night, ameliorated in the open air.

Catarrhal headaches. Pain in the head on coughing, after eating or disordering the stomach. Headache from becoming heated, and the pain is aggravated from jarring. Compels him to lie down. Aggravated looking upwards. Headaches in women before and during menses.

The headaches are aggravated from mental exertion, from moving the head, from motion, from noise. Periodical sick headaches with nausea and vomiting. Pressure ameliorates. Pulsating with nearly all the headaches. Reading aggravates. Rising from lying causes pulsating and increases the pain. Shaking the head aggravates. He wakes up out of sleep with the headache.

The headache is aggravated from spirituous liquors, from standing from stooping, from the heat of the sun, from talking, from walking, from washing. Aggravated in cold weather. The headache comes on from becoming cold, and yet the headache when on is ameliorated in the cool air. Many of the headaches are in the forehead in the morning, on waking, or come on in the evening after dinner.

These are aggravated on stooping and walking. Severe pain above the eyes. It. has occipital headaches; pain in the vertex and sides of the head. Many of these headaches are pressing and are aggravated from mental exertion. Stitching pains on coughing.

Stitching pains in the forehead and temples. Tearing pain throughout the head. Tearing pain around the head, ameliorated from lying. Pulsation in the head and temples. Sensation as if he had his hat on at 4 PM.

Eyes: There are numerous eye symptoms, catarrhal and psoric. The lids stick together in the morning. This remedy has partly cured several cases of cataract. It, has produced and cured double vision. Chronic inflammation of the eyes, with thick yellow pus.

Ulceration of the cornea. Itching, and burning, aggravated in the morning. Pressing pain in the eyes in the evening. Soreness to touch. Photophobia. Redness of the eyes, like raw beef. Redness of the- canthi. Fissures of the canthi. Twitching of the lids. Dim, often foggy, vision. Flickering before the eyes.

Ears: Discharge from the ears, offensive and purulent cases dating back to scarlet fever, with thick and bloody pus, soreness and enlargement of the right parotid.

Eruptions behind the ear. Itching in -the ear and behind the ear. Buzzing, humming, ringing, roaring and singing in the ear.

Aching pain in the car. Stitching, pulsating, stopped sensation. It cures, catarrh, of the Eustachian tube when the symptoms agree. Swollen parotid gland and swelling behind the ear.

Nose: Most inveterate catarrh of the nose has been cured by this remedy. Coryza, with discharge, ameliorated in the open air. Dry coryza. The discharge from the nose is bloody, excoriating, offensive, purulent, thick, yellow and greenish yellow. Clinically it has cured the one-sided cases best.

Crusts form in the nose. Crusts form upon the margins of the nose. A sensation of great dryness in the nose, Epistaxis in the morning. Offensive odors from the nose. Itching in the nose and of the end of the nose. Obstruction of the nose, so that it is impossible for him to breathe through it. Keeps the mouth open. Caries of the bones of the nose. Loss of smell. Sneezing, ameliorated in the open air. Swelling of the nose.

Face: Cracked lips and flushes of heat of the face. Pale, sickly, face. Many eruptions upon the face, boils, eczema, herpes; itching; pimples; pustules; scurfy eruptions; vesicles.

Itching of the face. Pain in the face from becoming cold. Cutting pain. Cold sweat on the face. Swelling of the glands. Swollen sub-Maxillary.

Dryness of the mouth and tongue. Hot mouth. Inflammation of the mucous membranes of the mouth, inflammation of the tongue, with swelling. Much mucus in the mouth in the morning. Offensive odor in the mouth. Rawness and burning inside of the lips.

Burning of the tongue. Flow of saliva from the mouth. The speech is difficult on account of the stiffness and swelling of the tongue. Swelling of the mucous membranes of the mouth. Gums swollen. Taste bad, bitter, metallic, sour, sweetish. Ulceration of the mouth, tongue and throat. Vesicles in the mouth. Thick yellow coating at the base of the tongue.

Throat: Choking is a characteristic of this remedy as it is of Hepar. Redness and swelling of the throat. Dryness and inflammation of the mucous membranes of the throat and of the tonsils. A sensation of a plug in the throat. Mucus in the throat. Mucus drawn from the posterior nares, thick and yellow. Pain in the throat on swallowing.

Pressing pain. Rawness in the throat. Soreness of the throat. Stitching pain in the throat. Scraping mucus from the throat. Swallowing is difficult. Swelling of the tonsils, with suppuration. Ulcers in the throat. The external throat is swollen; the glands are enlarged and painful.

Stomach: Increased, appetite. Ravenous appetite. Or appetite entirely wanting. Aversion to coffee, to meat and to milk. Desires, fruit, cold drinks, acids, salt things; sweets. Thirst extreme. Distension after eating.

Emptiness in the stomach. Eructations after eating. Empty eructations. Eructations acrid, bitter, foul, sour. Eructations of food. Waterbrash. Fullness of the stomach after eating. Heartburn. Heaviness in the stomach, as of a load. Subject to indigestion on the slightest provocation. Nausea in the evening. Nausea with headache and with vertigo.

Pain the stomach in the evening. Pain in the stomach after eating. Burning pain, cramping, cutting, gnawing, pressing, after eating. Tenderness to pressure. Stitching pains.

Throbbing in the stomach. Sensation of a stone in the stomach. Vomiting, at night after eating, with headache, Bile, bitter, blood, food, mucus sour vomiting.

Abdomen: In the abdomen there is great coldness, with distension, after eating. Fullness after eating. Heaviness. Many of the pains in the abdomen are like colic and come on at night.

Burning pain. Cramping, cutting, dragging, drawing. Soreness. Stitching. There is pain in the liver, pressing, soreness, stitching. There is pulsating, rumbling and distension of the abdomen.

Inveterate constipation. Difficult stool. Insufficient stool. Fistula in ano. Painless abscesses of the anus. Like Sulphur, it has cured morning diarrhoea, but has also an evening diarrhea, and is very useful for diarrhoea in children.

Aggravated after eating ever so little. It has a painless diarrhoea. In the rectum there is formication and intense itching. Hemorrhage from the rectum and anus. External piles. Inactivity of the rectum. Involuntary stool. Moisture about anus, causing smarting and itching.

Pain during and after stool. Burning pain during stool. Pressing, stitching and soreness in the anus. Tenesmus at stool. Prolapsus of the rectum. Ineffectual urging to stool. The stool is bloody, dry, hard, knotting, large; lienteric, soft, white, yellow and purulent.

Bladder: This is a valuable remedy for catarrh of the bladder, with copious yellow pus. It has cured chronic inflammation of the kidney. It is a valuable remedy in urethral discharges, when the discharge is yellow, bloody, and often gleety.

Burning in the urethra during urination. It is an excellent remedy for impotency, when other symptoms agree.

In women who have had several abortions, when the symptoms agree. Excoriation of the labia. Inflammation of the labia, with suppuration. Itching of the genitals from leucorrhoea. Thick, yellow, bloody, leucorrhoea. Itching of the labiae during menses. Itching after menses. Itching high up in the vagina.

The leucorrhoea is excoriating, bloody, burning, copious, thick and yellow. Leucorrhea before and after menses. Absent menses. The menstrual flow is copious, dark, too frequent or too late. Irregular. Sometimes pale, protracted, scanty, suppressed.

Delayed first menses in girls. Hemorrhage from the uterus. Pain in the uterus during menses. Dragging down in the pelvis during menses, as if there were prolapsus. Burning in the genitals.

Prolapsus of the uterus. Swelling of the labia. Fibroid tumors of the uterus. Ulceration of the genitals and os uteri.

Larynx and trachea: Catarrh of the larynx and trachea. Dryness and inflammation. Copious expectoration of mucus, which is yellow and sometimes bloody.

Rawness and soreness. Patients threatening to go into Phthisis. Much scraping of the larynx. Obstinate hoarseness. It has now long been a valued croup remedy.

Croupy cough, where there is much choking, when an experienced practitioner might well think of Hepar, but it will be remembered that in Hepar, uncovering a hand or throwing off the covers from the chest will increase the croupy tendency and aggravate the croupy cough, and that the patient in Hepar is very sensitive to a draft and to the air.

In this patient uncovering is grateful. The patient throws off the covers and wants the air and seems to breathe better and croups less. It may seem strange that such a great difference should come between the sulphide and the Sulphate of lime.

Respiration is difficult in the evening and night; aggravated on ascending, lying and walking. The respiration is rattling, is short. There is suffocation, and even wheezing. This is an excellent asthmatic remedy, when the symptoms agree.

Cough and chest: The cough is aggravated in the evening and night. Ameliorated in the cool air – unlike Hepar, Asthmatic cough, croupy in morning on waking and after siesta. Dry cough at night. Hacking cough. Hoarse cough. Loose, rattling cough. – The cough racks the whole body. Short dry cough. Spasmodic cough and cough coming in paroxysms.

The expectoration is copious in the morning. The expectoration is bloody, greenish, purulent, thick, viscid and yellow.

Abscess in the axilla. Anxiety in the region of th heart. Catarrh of the trachea and bronchial tubes. Hemorrhage from the lungs. Badly treated pneumonia or results of pneumonia. Hepatization of the lungs. Oppression of the chest.

Rawness in the chest. Soreness in the chest on coughing, or inspiration. Burning pain in the chest. Cutting in the chest. Palpitation at night; anxious; aggravated ascending, in persons going into phthisis.

Suppuration in the chest. Weakness in the chest. Itching, burning of the external chest. Sensation of coldness in the back. This has been a valuable remedy in the treatment of curvature of the spine in the lumbar region, making it difficult for him to sit up.

Extremities: The symptoms of the extremities make a gouty constitution. Gouty joints. Awkward, clumsy fingers, from gouty finger joints. Coldness of the extremities, of the hands, legs and feet. Cramps in the calves.

Eruptions, pimples and vesicles. Heat of the hands. Heaviness of the lower limbs. This remedy has been of great service in many cases of hip joint disease. Itching of, the, skin of the extremities. Often itching and burning.

Burning of hands and feet; burning palms and soles. Numbness of hands and also of the lower limbs and of the feet.

Pain in the extremities during chill; rheumatic pain. Pain in the joints, gouty and rheumatic. Pain in upper limbs at night. Pain in the shoulder; elbow, wrist and fingers.

Pain in the lower limbs; sciatica; rheumatic pains. Pains in the hip, thigh and knee. Burning pains in the feet. Pains in the lower limbs; drawing, stitching and tearing. Paralysis of the limbs, upper and lower.

Perspiration of the hands and feet. The perspiration of the feet is cold and offensive. Stiffness of the arms. Stretching out the lower limbs aggravates the pain. Rheumatic swelling of the knees and legs. Oedematous swelling of the feet and legs.

Tingling in the fingers, as if asleep. Trembling of the hands and of the lower limbs. Ulcers on the legs. Burning, itching scales. Varicose veins. Weakness of the upper limbs. Weakness of the lower limbs, knees, legs and ankles.

Sleep and dreams: Sleep restless. Dreams anxious and frightful. Sleepiness during the evening. Sleepless before midnight and after 3 P.M. Sleepless from thoughts.

This remedy has cured many cases of chronic intermittent fever with evening chill. Chill beginning in the feet. Shaking chill. Fever evening and night. Evening fever intermingled with chilliness followed by fever, but no sweat follows fever, with pain in lower limbs, better by walking. Flushes of heat. Hectic fever. Perspiration at night. Cold. Slight exertion brings on the perspiration. The perspiration is profuse and sour.

Skin: There are numerous skin symptoms, as might be expected from a study of Sulphur and Calcarea.

Burning and itching. Desquamation. Cracked skin. The skin is cracked after washing in winter, especially of the hands, like we find in salt rheum.

Liver spots; pale skin and yellow skin, even to marked cases of jaundice. Dryness of the skin. The eruptions are boils, burning moist or dry eczema, herpetic pustules, scabby scaly vesicles. Itching, burning eruptions.

This remedy cures psoriasis when the symptoms agree. Rash. Suppurating eruptions. Tubercles. Urticaria. Excoriation and intertrigo. Formication. Itching in bed; itching, burning; itching, crawling. Itching, ameliorated by scratching. Sensitive skin. Ulceration of the skin. Wounds heal slowly. Unhealthy skin. Ulcers bleed, burn; are scaly, crusty and deep.

Ulcers discharge bloody pus, offensive, thick, yellow. Fistulous ulcers. Foul indolent ulcers. Indurated ulcers. Pulsating ulcers. Painful ulcers. Warts.

Editorial notes

• “after 3 P-m- Sleepless” corrected to “after 3 P.M. Sleepless” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Camphor
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 49 of 180
Source pages 1067–1078 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The camphor bottle is, a great mischief in the house, as camphor antidotes most of our remedies. Camphor in potentized form will cure many complaints.

It is suitable in some acute complaints attended with nervous excitement, even to frenzy, with spasms and convulsions and finally exhaustion. The Camphor state is one of convulsions or coldness.

In the most acute period of the Camphor excitement, the excitability and frenzy of the patient are extreme, or he goes into the other extreme, in which the irritability is lost and there is loss of sensation, unconsciousness and coldness.

The two extremes may be seen in one patient, one earlier and the other later. He may go from the extreme of mental excitement and violence to one of prostration and exhaustion, in which the body is blue and cold and yet must be uncovered.

Mind: In the mental state, there is anxiety and extreme fear; fear of persons, of strange spheres, of the dark; the dark is filled with imaginary specters; he dare not get out of bed in the dark; everything that moves is a specter and the inanimate things of the room become alive and terrify him.

Frenzy. Coupled with this, there is kidney and urinary trouble, like that of Cantharis, and because of this similarity, the two remedies are both complementary and antidotal to each other. If a woman has poisoned herself with Cantharis, and there is present the frenzy and excitement, Camphor will act as an antidote.

The details of the mental symptoms are worthy of much consideration. The patient goes into a state not unlike imbecility, and the appearance is as if it had come on slowly. The mind and memory are gone. He closes the eyes, seemingly asleep, and answers no questions. Delirious with the heat, rage and mania, wants to jump out of bed or out of the window. Screams and calls for help. Tosses anxiously in bed.

Anxiety and almost loss of consciousness. These symptoms will indicate Camphor in puerperal fever, in congestion of the brain, or in shock from violent inflammation of organs. Confusion comes from the shock and comes with violence.

The more violently the patient suffers, the sooner he is cold, and when he is cold, he must uncover even in a cold room. This is somewhat like Secale. In Secale the patient, when cold, wants to uncover and to be in a cold room, and it also has frenzy, and so there is nothing in what we have yet seem to distinguish Secale from Camph.

But there is another thing that runs through Camph., by which a distinction can be made. The coldness, frenzy and heat very often intermingle. When the Camphor patient is becoming cold, he has spells of heat which come over him; flashes of heat intermingle with rending, tearing, burning pains, either in the inflamed organ or along the nerves.

The patient is a most troublesome patient to nurse; nobody and nothing suits. If an inflammation of the bladder comes on, there is intense pain and tenderness, and from the shock of the suffering the mind is in a state of frenzy.

Coldness then comes on and the patient wants to be uncovered, wants cold air, wants the windows open, but before all this can be done, a flash of beat comes on and then he wants the covers on, and the register turned on, and wants a hot iron and hot bottles; but this stage now passes off, and while the nurse is bringing the hot irons he wants her to open the windows and have everything cool.

You will see at once that these are serious cases. This occurs with opisthotonos, convulsions, inflammation of the brain, liver, kidney, bladder, coming on from violent shock and cold with great exhaustion. You will see this in one who has worked for hours for his life, and when the excitement is over reaction sets in and it is like a whirlwind; he has worked until he is exhausted and now he is prostrated, cold and blue; here is the sphere where the old woman with her Camphor bottle has established a reputation, but potentized Camphor will do more for him than the Camphor bottle, it will put him into a refreshing sleep.

Menopause: It is useful in the climacteric period with flushes of heat and sweat in a warm room; the limbs and abdomen are very cold and she suffers from cold when uncovered and sweats copiously when covered. She cannot endure covering to warm her limbs though she suffers from cold.

Head: The head is full of pain; throbbing pain. Contractive feeling as if laced together in the cerebellum. The whole back of the head and neck throb like hammers, worse from bending head forward; burning and stinging. Frontal headaches.

Cholera: We have heard about Camphor in cholera, which is a disease that brings the patient down quickly. The face is cold, blue and shriveled, without much sweat, in the cases that would make one think of Camphor.

There is not much discharge from the bowels, not much vomiting and not much sweat; but suddenly he becomes cold, blue and collapsed, as it were paralyzed and goes into a stupor.

Convulsions with frothing at the mouth. Blue lips, lockjaw, tetanus. Cold sweat on the face with vomiting. Erysipelatous appearance of face.

There is a desire to drink without thirst. There is also insatiable thirst; he is not satisfied with incredible quantities of cold water. Cannot get it cold enough, and cannot get enough, but he soon vomits it up.

The gastric irritation is marked. Everything is vomited. The tongue is blue and cold and the breath is cold. Everything coming out of the body is cold. The air as it leaves the chest feels like that from a cellar, like Carbo v. and Verat.

The tongue is cold and trembling. Such states are found in cholera. All through the cold stage there is burning. The inside of the body seems to burn, or there is a sense of internal smarting like a rawness or a sense of burning without heat.

The pain in the stomach in gastritis is so violent that the anguish on the face is equal to that in Arsenic; a deathly anguish is felt in his stomach and he feels that he must die. Burning, rending, tearing pain in the stomach, with retching and vomiting.

Cramps in stomach and bowels and spreading to other parts of the body until there are convulsions and opisthotonos.

Anguish at the pit of the stomach drives him to despair. Heat in the stomach, Cold feeling in the stomach. Abdomen is full of colic and burning. Cold feeling in the abdomen.

Cholera stools; rice water discharges, with anxiety, restlessness, spasms of the muscles, cramps of the chest, prostration, increasing coldness and blueness; wants to be uncovered and he is going into collapse.

The old Camphor, Cuprum and Veratrum still hold together for Asiatic cholera. In Camphor there is prostration, blueness, coldness and yet he wants to be uncovered and the body is cold and dry.

The other two remedies have all there is in cholera, but in Cuprum there is not so much coldness, more cramping, more convulsive tendency and not so much prostration.

The more cramping there is the more it is Cuprum. The more copious the discharge from the bowels and the more profuse the vomiting and sweat, the more we would think of Veratrum. Cold and dry: Camphor. Cold and copious discharge Veratrum.

After taking cold there is cutting, with involuntary discharge of dark brown faeces like coffee grounds. Tenesmus. At times the cholera patient, with the coldness and blueness, is retching and straining to vomit and suffering with horrible tenesmus to get rid of a little stool and has convulsions here and there. These bowels symptoms gradually increase until there is no ability to strain at stool, a paralytic condition. Rectum seems contracted and painful.

Urinary and sexual organs: There is suffering in the urinary and sexual organs. Burning urination. Strangury. Frequent urination.

Frequent desire, with difficulty. The same state arises in the bladder as in the rectum, and there is retention with horrible torture. The patient sits on the commode and strains to pass the urine, but there is a paralytic condition of the bladder. The urine is red, bloody, and comes by drops like Canth. Tenesmus of the neck of the bladder.

Camphor increases the sexual erethism to an unbearable degree. In some cases from large doses this is seen in the extreme, and in other cases the reverse takes place.

It has both sexual erethism and impotency in its provings. I once knew a French woman who had an insane desire to keep her boys always at home with her, and she thought she could accomplish this if she could only keep them away from the girls; and to destroy their sexual desire she kept a bag of camphor under their pillows. All of them were made impotent. But in some provers it establishes sexual erethism. It has this like Canth.

Nose: Camphor produces a coryza, with a profuse discharge from the nose and from the air passages, from the nose to the bronchi. Bronchitis of children and old people. Old withered up people take cold at every exposure to weather and become cold and chilly.

Ant. crud., Am. carb. and Camph. are wonderful remedies in octogenarians. Every cold seems threatening. Old people don’t come down with cold the same as young people; they are prostrated, sinking, have rattling in the chest and the family think it is the death rattle and that it is grandpa’s last spell.

These three remedies fit the case, they are like the advanced stage of pneumonia. Ant. t., Ant. c., Am. c. and Camph. cover these cases in which the hot stage is omitted.

Camph. has very little heat; it has the sensation of heat; but not a marked hot stage. There are other symptoms in this medicine such as you will find in old people.

Jerking of the muscles, trembling and jerking. Spasmodic conditions with trembling. Trembling of the tongue.

The general constitutional state of a Camphor patient is coldness and extreme sensitiveness to cold. In acute inflammatory conditions he is cold and wants the covers off.

In acute complaints there is violent thirst, in chronic complaints thirstlessness. It is the same in Arsenic, in the acute thirsty, but in the chronic thirstless.

In Camphor an important thing to recall in the acute is that during the heat and when the pains are on he wants to be covered up. The coldness is relieved by cold, he wants more cold.

Cannabis Indica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 50 of 180
Source pages 1079–1083 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Mind: A strange ecstatic sensation pervades the body and senses. The limbs and parts seem enlarged. A thrill of beatitude passes over the limbs. The limbs tremble. Great weakness spreads over the body.

The symptoms resemble catalepsy. Anaesthesia and loss of muscular sense. Complaints ameliorated by rest. Exaltation of spirits with mirthfulness. Wonderful imaginations and hallucinations. Wonderful exaggerations of time and space. He seems to be transported through space. He seems to have two existences, or to be conscious of two states, or to exist in two spheres. Delusions. Incoherent speech.

Laughs at serious remarks. Laughs and weeps. Spasmodic laughter, jesting. Moaning and weeping. Fear of death; of insanity; of the dark. Anguish and sadness. Mental symptoms ameliorated by walking in the open air.

An opposite phase prevails with his weakness. He loses his sense and falls. Passes from the rational to the irrational in rapid succession, back and forth. Forgets words and ideas. Unable to finish his sentences.

Thoughts crowding upon each other in such confusion prevent rational speech. His mind is full of unfinished ideas, and phantoms. Wonderful theories constantly form in the mind. Loquacity.

He cannot control the mind to reason rationally upon any subject. Any effort to reason is interrupted by flights of wild, imagination and theory. Vision upon vision passes before the perception. Hears voices, bells, music, in ecstatic confusion.

Feels as if the calvarium were opening and shutting or being lifted and lowered into place. Pulsating pain through the head. Weight in occiput with pulsation.

Shocks in the brain on regaining consciousness, and on waking from sleep. Stitching pains in temples. Tension of scalp. Tenderness of scalp. Dimness of vision. Visual clairvoyance. Letters run together.

Hearing acute. Singing and buzzing in ears; pulsating. Face pale and sunken. Insane look. Stupid look. Sickly, expressionless look. Grinding teeth during sleep. Stammering. Metallic taste. Desire for, and dread of water.

Flatulence, distending abdomen, ameliorated by eructations.

The urinary symptoms are numerous. Inflammation in the kidneys, with burning pain. Soreness in the kidneys, and dull aching. Stitching pains in the kidneys.

Constant or frequent urination. Urine burns on passing. Burning, stinging in urethra, before, during and after urination. This remedy has cured many cases of gonorrhea.

It is useful in the first stage, and cures the symptoms set for Cannabis sativa. Must wait for urine to start. Urine dribbles after urination. Much mucus in the urine. It is useful in chordee during gonorrhoea. The discharge in gonorrhoea is yellow.

Sexual desire increased in both sexes. Erections mechanical and painful.

Menstruation profuse and fluid; painful; paroxysmal pains, like labor pains. Uterine spasms. Threatened abortion, threatened with gonorrhea. Menses come every two weeks.

Spasmodic oppression of the chest with suffocation. Palpitation during sleep. Pressing pain, in the heart with suffocation during the Whole night. Stitching pains in the heart. Pulse, slow or rapid and irregular; fluttering; a nervous pulse.

Pain in the back at the menstrual period. Pain across the dorsal region preventing walking erect.

Paralytic weakness of the limbs with trembling and thrilling. Numbness of limbs and soles. Pricking of soles. Rest ameliorates, and motion aggravates. Violent pains through the lower limbs on walking.

Sleepy, but cannot sleep. Starting of limbs during sleep. Dreams of dead bodies. Dreams prophetic. Nightmare.

Prickling of the skin. Formication and itching all over. The skin feels drawn tight over the body. Anaesthesia.

Cannabis Sativa
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 51 of 180
Source pages 1084–1087 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The resemblance of this remedy to Cannabis Indica is remarkable and has led to a belief that they are identical.

The one has often been substituted for the other, and has cured symptoms produced by the other. Their mental and urinary symptoms are very similar. The sensation of opening and shutting has been cured by both remedies.

Things seem strange and unreal. He seems as though in a dream. Confusion is to his personal identity. Makes mistakes in writing and speaking, and misunderstands what he reads and hears said.

Sounds in the room seem to come from a distance. When he speaks it seems as though some one else were speaking (Alum). Seems as though her senses would vanish.

Despondent in forenoon, lively in the afternoon. Fear of going to bed. Hysterical feeling in the throat. Anxiety in the stomach. Confusion of mind and vertigo.

Rush of blood to the head, as though it came from the stomach. Opening and shutting of the vortex begins on waking, lasts all day, and is worse from noise. Sensation of drops of cold water on scalp. Formication.

Inflammation of the conjunctiva and varicose veins. Sensation of sand in the eyes. Noises in the ears.

Sensation of enlargement of the nose. Epistaxis. Pressure on the root of the nose. Dryness in the nose. One cheek red, the other pale. Nasty taste. Difficult speech. Dry mouth and throat. Aversion to meat. Eructations, bitter, sour, empty.

Inflammation of the kidneys. Ulcerative pains in the kidneys. Oedema of the prepuce with gonorrhoea. Thick yellow gonorrhoeal discharge. Burning in the urethra during and after urination. Stitching in the urethra while the urine flows. Urethra sensitive, swollen.

Chordee. Burning at starting and closing of urination. Stitching in urethra when not urinating. Most difficult and painful urination. Pain that extends from meatus back along the urethra while urine flows.

Pressing out feeling at the orifice of the urethra after urination in a woman. Violent urging to urinate. Constant or frequent urging to urinate. Involuntary urination. Violent pain at the close of urination. Bloody urine.

Spasmodic closure of the neck of the bladder at the close of urination. Inflammation of the urethra. Inflammation and much swelling of the orifice of the urethra with burning pain during urination in the female.

Intense sexual excitement in both sexes. Much dropsical swelling of the prepuce. To the female it has a reputation for sterility. Menses profuse. Leucorrhoea in the little girls (Sepia). Gonorrhoea. Uterine haemorrhage after labor. Threatened abortion.

Catarrh of the chest. Bronchitis with wheezing. Asthma must have window open. Green viscid expectoration. Salty sputum. Cough, with blood spitting. Stitching pains in the pleura. Asthma with bladder troubles. Palpitation.

Pressure as with a sharp point in the coccyx. Drawing pains in tendon Achilles. Stitching in the skin all over while perspiring. Numbness of finger tips.

Cantharis
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 52 of 180
Source pages 1088–1097 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The most important feature of this medicine is the inflammatory condition, and the most important characteristic in the inflammation is the rapidity with which it develops into a gangrenous state. inflammation conditions usually follow a definite course for days, but when this medicine is put upon a part or taken internally the inflammatory state terminates in death of the part with great rapidity.

When taken internally it proceeds almost immediately to attack the urinary tract and establish a uraemic state which brings about the mental symptoms; the local inflammatory condition comes on with great rapidity, and this brings the patient down violently sick in a great hurry.

From strong doses in the poisonous effect we get startling and alarming symptoms; the whole economy is in disorder; grievous symptoms commonly of the urinary tract. The parts become gangrenous at an early stage.

Mind: The mental symptoms are striking. Among those that are guiding are sudden loss of consciousness with red face. Suddenly goes into stupor. Confusion of mind. Overwhelmed with strange ideas. Thoughts run riot, and go whatever way they will, as if possessed by outside influence.

Head hot, frenzy, delirium, with great excitement and rage, paroxysms renewed by dazzling or bright objects, by touching the larynx or by trying to drink water as in rabies.Fear and confusion of ideas. The mind often runs towards subjects that the inflamed parts would suggest.

Bladder and genitals: The bladder and genitals are inflamed and the excitement and congestion of the parts often arouse the sexual instinct, so that there are sexual thoughts and sexual frenzy. Violent amorous frenzy, an excitement such as accompanies inflammation attended with thoughts that correspond. The sexual instinct has gone mad, the erections in the male are painful and violent.

The penis is inflamed and sore and it would be painful to have coitus, yet there is this frenzy. Insolence. Blasphemy. Restlessness ending in rage. Restlessness causing him to move constantly, a rage and delirium intermingled with amorous frenzy.

This kind of mental conduct in Cantharis is similar to what will take place in Hyos., Phos., and Secale; a violent delirious state intermingled with sexual ideas and talk. In some instances he deliriously sings lewd songs and prattles on the subject of human genitals, urine and feces, a wild raving on subjects not talked about in health except among the depraved.

But in disease, chaste and modest persons, virgins, will speak so that it is surprising where they have picked up such language. in such cases it is well to exclude everybody from the room except the nurse and doctor. I have seen a dear old mother weep and wring her hands and say:

“Where did my daughter learn such language?”

The daughter is not to blame.

It is simply a condition of the urinary tract or the menstrual function, brought on from cold or exposure, or through the mother’s neglect to tell her daughter what she should know in regard, to her menstrual function, and how there is inflammation of the ovaries or uterus, or outside parts, and the urine burns and causes an inflammatory condition of the outer parts, or the urine is retained and there is frenzy. Such in Cantharis.

Violent, bursting, lancinating headaches as if stabbed with a knife an inflammatory condition that takes hold of the mind violently.

Running all through the remedy there is burning. In the head burning, throbbing and stabbing. Unconsciousness and delirium in the mental state. Burning in the side of the head. Stitches in the side of the head and occiput. Lancinating pains deep in the brain. Hair falls out.

It is seldom indicated in eye troubles alone, except such as come with head and mind symptoms.

Erysipelas of the face with large blisters. Burning in the eyes and the whole atmosphere looks yellow. Burning and smarting in the eyes.

Erysipelas of the eyes, with gangrenous tendency. Eyes hot, scalding tears. Erysipelas of the face, dorsum of the nose, involving the lids.

Rhus is more commonly. used in this condition, but when it is violent Canth. will often be indicated and preferable to Rhus, Rhus has the blisters and the burning, but in Canth. between your two visits the erysipelas has grown black, it is dusky, a rapid change has taken place, and it looks as if gangrene would set in.

Burning in the erysipelatous area and the skin around burns from the touch. In Rhus this is not so. In Cantharis the little blisters even if touched burn like fire.

Eruptions burn when touched, ever so lightly, i.e., those eruptions such as the remedy could produce.

This patient enters into a state of prostration, is pallid, has Hippocratic countenance and dies. It corresponds to the lowest forms of disease, even gangrene and violent inflammation of the bowels, bladder, brain, spine and lungs; sinking and hippocratic countenance.

Inflammation of the lungs, gangrenous type, prostration and the lung that is affected burns like fire, and immediately he expectorates cadaverous smelling expectoration, thin, bloody, watery; it has come on in an astonishingly rapid manner, and in a little while he will die; the nose is contracted, there is the hippocratic countenance, and the urine is suppressed.

I remember one patient who had just come out of a prolonged drunk. I left the patient in the evening in just such, a state as I have described.

He was drooling a bloody saliva from his mouth and be was dying. He had had this condition come on in one night from being nearly frozen in a drunk.

It would be Cantharis or death before morning, but by morning he was expectorating a rusty sputum and went on to good recovery.

Arsenic has the burning in the lungs and he spits up black sputum, pneumonia signs are present, with the restlessness and anxiety, and other symptoms of Arsenic, and Arsenic will stop it at once. These violent remedies are needed in those cases that will die.

Burning in the throat. Great thirst, with burning in the throat and stomach. Thirst, with aversion to all fluids, that is, the craving of the mouth and throat are antagonized by the mental state. Thirst in the throat and an aversion to water in the mind. Violent, burning in the stomach, pylorus, abdomen.

The abdomen is swollen and tympanitic; lancinating pains cutting and stabbing. Wherever there is a rapid inflammation in the bowels there is diarrhoea of bloody mucus or serum, watery, bloody fluids from the bowels and stomach.

The same watery bloody fluid from the eyes. And wherever this watery fluid comes in contact with the skin it burns and excoriates. Bloody urine.

Desire for stool while urinating. The patient will sit on the commode with violent tenesmus to pass urine and stool, feels that if he could only pass a few more drops of urine or a little more bloody stool he would get relief, but no relief comes. All the parts are inflamed and on fire. Tenesmus and urging not only when the bladder is empty, but often when the bladder is full.

Retention of urine. Passes none or only a drop or two. Violent tenesmus of the bladder. Cutting pains with tenesmus, lancinating, stabbing like knives, in neck of bladder.

Pains shoot off in different directions. Violent pains with frequent urging. Constant tenesmus. An anxious state and frenzy come on; most violent suffering and be has urging to pass urine and stool with sexual erethism tantalizing in the extreme.

The whole urinary organs and genitalia are in a state of inflammation and gangrene. Burning when urinating. This bloody urine burns like fire in the bladder and about the genitals. Retention or suppression of urine.

It is rare that one suffering from gonorrhea has this violent inflammation, with burning and tenesmus of the bladder and rectum, but in such a case this remedy is indicated. The intensity and rapidity are the features of this remedy. It brings on pain and excitement found in no other remedy. Next to it comes Merc. cor.

In the female there is oversensitiveness of all parts. Inflammation of the ovaries and uterus. Burning in the vagina. Membranous dysmenorrhoea. Menses too early, profuse, black.

Puerperal convulsions. Retained placenta. Burning pains. When there have been no expulsive pains present to expel the afterbirth, with the symptoms running all through this remedy, after it has been given, normal contractions of the uterus have come on with expulsion of the membranes.

Violent lancinating pains through the kidneys and back. Pains in the loins and abdomen. Pain on urinating so that he moaned and screamed on passing a drop.

Capsicum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 53 of 180
Source pages 1098–1111 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Most of the substances that are used on the table as seasoning in foods will in the course of a generation or two be very useful medicines because people poison themselves with these substances, tea, coffee, pepper, and these poisonous effects in the parents cause in the children a predisposition to disease, which is similar to the disease produced by these substances.

In the fat, flabby, red-raced children of beer drinkers and pepper eaters, with poor reaction, a relaxed and flabby constitution, red face and varicose condition, those that have been over stimulated, children of over stimulated men, we find the sphere of Capsicum very often.

Mind: In those constitutions in which the face looks rosy, but it is cold or not warm, and upon close examination the face is seen to be studded with a fine system of capillaries. Plump and round, with no endurance, a false plethora like Cal.

The end of the nose is red, the cheeks are red, redness over the cheeks, red eyes, easily relaxed individuals. These constitutions react slowly after diseases and do not respond to remedies, a sluggish state, a tired, lazy constitution.

In school girls who cannot study or work, who get home-sick and want to go home. In gouty constitutions, with cracking of the joints and gouty deposits in the joints, stiff joints, clumsy, weak, give out soon. There is sluggishness of the whole economy. They are chilly patients, are sensitive to air, and what to be in a warm room. Even in the ordinary weather the open air causes chilliness. They are sensitive to cold and to bathing.

In the mental state there is no more striking thing than this symptom: homesickness. A sickness like homesickness runs through the remedy and is accompanied by red cheeks and sleeplessness, hot feeling in the fauces, fearfulness. They are oversensitive to impressions, are always looking for an offence or slight; always suspicious and looking for an insult.

Obstinate to the extreme; it is a devilishness. Even if she wants a certain thing she will oppose it if is proposed by some one else. After emotions red cheeks, yet with the red cheeks lack of heat, even with increased temperature; or one cheek pale and the other red, or the cheeks alternate red and pale. Children are clumsy and awkward.

The Capsicum mind is almost overwhelmed by persistent thoughts of suicide. He does not want to kill himself, he resists the thoughts, and yet they persist, and he is tormented by these thoughts.

There are persistent thoughts in many remedies, and it is necessary to distinguish between impulses and desires.

If he desires to have a rope or a knife to commit suicide, that is altogether different from an impulse to commit suicide.

An impulse is sometimes overwhelming and overbalances the mind, and he commits suicide. You should always find out from a patient whether he loathes life and wants to die, or if he has impulses which he wishes to put aside. Some persons lie awake at night and long for death, and there is no reason for it. That is a state of the will, insanity of the will.

In another patient the thoughts jump into his mind and he cannot put them aside, and the thoughts are tormenting. The distinguishing feature of the remedy is often found by differentiating between the two. Desires are of the will; impulses come into the thoughts.

Head: Headaches as if the skull would split when moving the head, when walking or coughing. Feeling as if the head would fly to pieces; holds the head with the hand. Feeling as if the head were large, aggravated by coughing and stepping, ameliorated by lying with the head high.

Bursting pain and throbbing. Headache with pulsation in the forehead and temples. Headache as if the brain would be pressed through the forehead. On stooping, feeling as if the brain would be pressed out, as if the red eyes would be pressed out on stooping.

The senses are disturbed and are overacute; oversensitiveness to noise, smells, taste and touch, to impressions, to insults. The patient is excited.

Ears: Pains in the ears; itching pain; aching, pressing pain with cough, as if an abscess would burst. It has a peculiar action on the bones of the internal ear and mastoid process. Abscesses round about and below the car and caries; petrous portion of temporal bone necrosed. It has been a frequently indicated remedy in mastoid abscess.

Nose: Old catarrhs. The patient takes cold in the nose and throat and this is followed by a collection of mucus. Very often in stupid patients it is difficult to get symptoms, and you must depend on what you see, the character of the discharge and a few other things, and you will find that some of these cases will be cured and all the other symptoms will go away; but in some of these old catarrhs no reaction seems to come after the most carefully chosen remedies, and all at once the doctor observes that the patient has a red face and it is cold and the end of the nose is red and cold, and the patient is fat and flabby and yet has not much endurance, never could learn at school, and if she exerts breaks out into a sweat and freezes in the cold air.

He has a key to the patient and examines the patient by the key, that is, by the drug, a mad practice and never to be resorted to except as a dernier resort and in stupid patients. When he gives Capsicum to that patient it arouses her, it may not cure; but after it the Silicea or Kali bich. or other remedy which was perhaps given before and did not act takes hold and cures.

In the text it says, “Nose red and hot.”

The skin all over is red and burning, a capillary congestion.

Face: The cheeks are red and hot, and this alternates with paleness. Red dots on the face. Pains in the face like bone pains, from external touch. Pains are worse from touch. Pain in the zygoma, or the zygoma is sensitive. Sensitive to pressure over the mastoid. Swelling in the region of the mastoid.

Taste foul like putrid water. When coughing the air from the lungs causes a pungent offensive taste in the mouth. A hot pungent air comes up from the throat, tasting foul when coughing.

On the tongue and lips, flat, sensitive, spreading ulcers with lardaceous base. The mucous membrane of the lips and various parts of the body if pinched up with the fingers remain in the raised position, showing a sluggish circulation.

This is the flabbiness of Capsicum. It wrinkles on pressure. It is a feeble circulation. The parts you touch are loose and flabby, red, fat and cold. That child will not react well if it has measles, until it gets Capsicum.

The skin is moist and cold, and there is a fine measly condition of the skin due to capillary congestion. If the child is old enough, it will complain of feeling cold. There is slow reaction after eruptive diseases, after glandular diseases, after bowel complaints. The child was fat and flabby, but now does not take on flesh.

He takes cold in the throat and nose, and the throat looks as if it would bleed, it is so red, a fine rash-like appearance – it is puffed, discolored, purple, mottled, flabby and spongy-looking; dark red. Burning soreness with ulceration in the fauces. Uvula elongated. Stitching in throat. Enlarged tonsils, inflamed, large and spongy.

The throat remains sore a long time after a cold or sore throat. Burning, pressing pain in the throat, the throat dark red; relaxed sore throat; pain on swallowing, dysphagia. Throat sluggish for weeks, a do-nothing state, does not get very bad, but gets no better, a lack of reaction.

When the chill begins there is thirst. Thirst after every dysenteric stool, a sudden carving for ice-cold water, which causes chilliness. Craving for water before the chill and when taken it hastens the chill; it feels cold in the stomach.

He desires something warm, something stimulating, craves pungent things. This is seen in whisky drinkers; they crave pepper, and the pepper, on the other hand, turns round and craves whisky. These diffusable stimulants crave some stimulating thing, crave support. Dipsomania.

Let me give you a hint in Arsenic. In dipsomania the sinners who have been drinking a great many drinks in a day sometimes get to that state in which they must get up during the night for a drink or they will not be able to get up in the morning.

In the morning the first three or four drinks will be thrown up, but the next one will stay down; they must take a number until one sticks. They have got to that state in which they must keep on taking it. If they sleep too long the first few drinks will come up, and so they must get up in the night or the whisky will not stay down in the morning until they have taken a number of drinks.

You will see this in lawyers who do a great amount of work on stimulants. Nux, Ars., and Caps. will do something for them if they will co-operate with you. I remember saying to one old toper, who had kept up altogether on champagne, that he would have to stop it. He whined,

“I don’t think it is worth while.”

If he could not get his champagne he didn’t think life worth living. if these people want to get benefit they must co-operate.

Abdomen: Dysentery. After stool, tenesmus and thirst, and drinking causes shuddering. Smarting and burning in anus and rectum. Violent tenesmus in rectum, and bladder at the same time. Haemorrhoids; protruding, smarting, burning; smarting like pepper; they sting and burn as if pepper had been sprinkled on them.

Tenesmus of the bladder; strangury. Burning, biting pain after urination, in old cases of gonorrhoea, in which there no reaction.

The discharge is creamy. You take a picture, of his face, you notice the plethora, but also that he has no endurance, plump, flabby, sensitive to cold, red face. He does not react after cold. He has the, last drop or a creamy discharge with burning on urination.

Capsicum will sometimes stop it suddenly. Coldness of scrotum. Prepuce swollen, oedematous. Pain in the prostate gland after gonorrhoea.

Coldness of the affected part. Coldness in patches. Coldness of the whole body.

It is useful in perplexing and troublesome chronic hoarseness. He had had a cold and remedies for the acute condition have been given, perhaps two or three remedies, Acon., Bry., Hep., Phos., but all at once you wake up to the fact of his chronic constitutional state of hoarseness. He is rotund, chilly, red faced, and the hoarseness disappears under Capsicum.

It is the same with the cough. After making several blunders you wake up and see it is a Capsicum case and that you have never yet gotten at the root of the trouble. This shows the importance of getting at the things general first. If there is much acute suffering of course you must give an acute remedy, but if the patient has delayed recovery and convalescence is slow the next remedy should be the remedy for the patient.

Sometimes it is Sulph., Phos., Lyc., and sometimes it is Caps. If the patient has a good constitutional state he will get over the told on – the acute remedy, but the old gouty, rheumatic, flabby patients need a constitutional remedy.

Cough in sudden paroxysms convulsing the whole body. Cries, after the cough from the headache. Stitches in the suffering part with the cough. Every cough jars the affected joint. The constitutional state comes first and the particulars must agree i. e., prescribe according to the totality.

Bromium
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 38 of 180
Source pages 810–830 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

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 re 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.