Category: Kent Materia Medica

Thuja Occidentalis
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 176 of 180
Source pages 3108–3122 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The general appearance of the Thuya subject, if he has a characteristic picture, is that of a waxy, shiny face, it looks as if he had been smeared over with grease; and is often transparent, he is a sickly looking individual, looks as if entering upon some cachexia.

This is often the case in the sycotic, constitution and the cancerous cachexia, weakly, cachectic, yellowish, or often very pallid.

Skin: The skin manifests many symptoms.

The perspiration is peculiar, it is sweetish honey, sometimes like garlic, strong and pungent.

A pungent odor emanates from the genitals, sweetish honey-like like odor to the sweat from the genitalia, he smells his genitals.

The odor is also like burnt horn, burnt feathers or burnt sponge. These peculiar strong odors are particularly present when there are fig warts upon the genitals such as Thuja cures.

The skin looks unhealthy everywhere about the body and there is a copious sweat on first going to sleep, like Arsenic. If you had only the waxiness such as Arsenic and Thuja produce, you might prescribe Arsenic. Arsenic is often the acute and Thuja the chronic. You remember that Arsenic is usually a chronic remedy.

Asthma: A peculiar asthmatic condition is found in sycosis and Arsenic appears to be indicated for the symptoms, but it only relieves, it does not control the predisposition, it acts like Aconite in acute diseases and only ameliorates for a moment. Asthmatic and many other sycotic conditions seem to call for Arsenic, but it will do nothing but palliate, the constitutionality is not reached by Arsenic, its fundamental symptoms are not similar.

In syphilis and psora Arsenic acts a long time and eradicates the complaints, when similar to them, but it is not similar to sycosis. Arsenic does not go to the bottom of the trouble, but Thuja and Natrum sulph. will take up the work and cure. Natrum sulph. and Thuja bring back the primitive manifestation that has been suppressed for years.

Warts: The tendency of the Thuja patient is to throw out wart-like excrescences which are soft and pulpy and very sensitive, they burn, itch and bleed easily when rubbed the clothing. Horny excrescences that form on the hands and split open form upon a pedicle and crack around the base.

Cauliflower excrescences upon the cervix uteri, about the anus (like Nitricum acidum), about the labia majora and mucous membranes generally.

Horny excrescences, more upon the skin. Warts of a brownish color, especially if upon the abdomen the body; great brown spots, like liver spots, form upon the abdomen.

Zona around the chest, herpetic eruptions everywhere, here and there, like Sepia, herpes labialis and preputialis. Zona is a herpetic formation, great vesicular patches come out upon the body called “shingles”, here we should compare Thuja, Rhus, Graph, Kali hydr., and Mezereum.

This condition is attended with a great amount of suffering and neuralgic pains. In cases that are sycotic, Thuya is especially a grand remedy.

You will have a class of cases where the warts have been caused to disappear by calomel, which makes them shrivel up and off, such is the old school treatment. Sometimes a patient comes to you with erratic symptoms and you may study for hours over these symptoms, and see very little order in them, you will realize that the leading features have been left out and that something is lacking.

Some one has applied Nitric acid, calomel or something else, and driven these fig warts away. These condylomata could not come without having some constitutional basis, these warts have a cause, and that cause seems to be less able to make the patient sick if he has the warts, he feels better when he has the warts. Strange to say; when these warts have been suppressed, we get symptoms of Nitric acid, Thuja, Mercurius and Staphysagria.

Thuja leads all medicines for symptoms coming from suppressed fig-warts.

Thuja is pre-eminently a strong medicine when you have a trace of animal poisoning in the history, as snake bite, small-pox and vaccination.

There are probably several varieties of urethral discharges, there is one that is sycotic, and when that has been suppressed, it produced a miasm with soreness in the bottom the feet and in the knees and particularly through the back and loins and sciatic nerves, in the knees and ankle joints. Sometimes it affects the upper extremities, but particularly the lower. Most violent aggravation when keeping still, like Rhus, great aching that increases so long as he keeps still, he is very often compelled to keep the bed, and then he constantly moves and turns. An antisycotic must be selected.

While this group of symptoms would be cured by Rhus when the case is not sycotic, when these symptoms come from suppressed gonorrhoea Medorrhinum or Thuja will cure.

Thuja enters into this particular sphere and takes hold of this particular case where sycosis is at the bottom. Sometimes when the discharge has been suppressed, orchitis comes on and then Pulsatilla will be the remedy, and very seldom Thuja.

Thuja affects the left testicle with intense squeezing pain, but most generally you will find Pulsatilla the remedy.

As we continue to study Thuja, we see that it has a profound action upon the glands, stitching, tearing pains in the glands, the pains are as if the gland were being torn to pieces. That may be true of glands in general, but one particular gland, the ovary, is more affected than any other and especially the left.

Women: This is so true, that if you meet a violent pain in the left ovary, coming on at the time of menstruation and continuing during the flow and extending down the thighs, but may be in every direction, it increases as the flow comes on, stinging, tearing, burning, bursting pains, as if the parts were being torn out, make her cry aloud, she goes into a hysterical state. This a very strong Thuja group. It has the opposite of Zinc., and Lachesis, for in these, relief comes with the flow.

Many women suffer from grumbling pains in the ovaries all the time, they have a sense of the organ, which they should not feel; pain from taking cold or in change of weather; the increase of the pain in the left ovary is the first sign; sometimes the pain is so severe that the right one suffers apparently, from sympathy. Where the ovaries have been affected for some time there will be mental symptoms, a most violent irritability, jealous, quarrelsomeness, ugliness.

This irritability is likely to been shown towards individuals about the house, toward the husband and the mother; she is yet able to control herself among strangers and the doctor may not be able to find out about it, because she has in her nature a disposition to cheat; she wants to be alone and takes upon herself fixed ideas; that she is pregnant, or that an animal is in her bowels, she is followed, or that someone is walking beside her, thinks that soul and body are separated.

Now, these are fixed ideas, and there is no use trying to reason them out of her. It seems to her that she is very delicate, that she is made of glass and that she will break. The idea is that she will break, and not that she is transparent.

Associated with this conditions, we have violent, intense, tearing headaches, tearing in the eye, ameliorated by heat. The eye-ball pains are better from heat and the rest are better in the cool open air.

Pain localized in small spots. A nail driven in the head, side of head and forehead, like Ignatia and Anacardium. These pains are intensified into tearing pains, and affect the eye-ball, making it so sore that it can hardly be touched; worse from heat and worse from lying down; worse in a warm room and better in the open air.

Rheumatic head symptoms are worse in damp air. They are worse from sour things and also from stimulating and exciting things.

Crude drugs do not impress the vital force, so lastingly, but an individual who is thoroughly sensitive and properly sensitive, as sensitive of contagion, then if you undertake to prove by giving it night and morning, you will rivet upon him a life-long miasm.

If you have given a medicine, wait for the symptoms to come and go in the natural manner. To a great extent t, this is the tendency with sycosis, the tendency is rather outward.

We see in the proving of a drug what we see in disease. When a gonorrhoea is contracted, it goes through the prodromal period and then comes the disease, which, if let alone, has in its nature a tendency to eradicate itself from the economy, and then the patients do not suffer from lasting conditions.

In the old school, they always suppress the discharge, and there are those in the new school who do little better.

The frequent repetition by which one is exposed, would not increase the gonorrhea itself, because the susceptibility is satisfied.

The taking of more of the drug to prove it does not do so much harm, provided the one who is directing the proving realizes when the symptoms begin to rise, and then stops the drug.

Now if we go on with the proving by repeating the doses after the symptoms come on, we force the drug into the economy when he is already poisoned, and by this means we get a confusion in the symptoms, the drug disease engrafted upon that individual for life.

Many of the provings of Thuja give us that kind of confusion, so that we see only now and then symptoms cropping out that are striking; in fact, the great bulk of the Thuja provings has been wasted, because there is so much confusion in the great number of symptoms, while the earlier provings brought out many of the characteristics, the Vienna provings, to a great extent, confused the image of Thuja.

So that, by clinical experience only, we have been able to draw out the finer features of Thuja. It requires more than a school boy to do that. The new provings must be carried on in a different manner.

Catarrhal conditions: Thuja has some striking bowel symptoms; gushing, watery morning diarrhoea, like water coming out of a bunghole.

There is also a general catarrhal condition running through the body; catarrh of the nose, ears and chest. In the catarrh of the chest it produces an intense hacking cough, with expectoration in the morning of greenish mucus, sometimes a copious expectoration. It is often suited to old cases of pneumonia, in such individuals as have suppressed gonorrhoea, fig-wart gonorrhoea.

The kidneys and urinary symptoms are also striking; congestion and inflammation of the kidneys, sharp pain in the kidneys; burning urine; inflammation of the bladder and urethra that is not gonorrhoeal; pus from the bladder; paralysis of the bladder, must wait a long time for the urine to start; retention of urine, continuous urging to urinate, tearing in the urethra, feeling as if the urine were constantly running along the urethra, like Kali bich. and Petros.

In the urethral disease of sycotic character, Thuja leads all other remedies. In the non-sycotic variety, Cannabis sativa is sufficient, but those cases that have proved to the sycotic Cann. sat. left uncured, it ameliorated the burning during and after urination and the thick yellowish green discharge, but some other remedy had always to follow, when they were shown to be sycotic. It is not so with Thuja, because it is capable of finishing the case.

In the most violent cases, with bloody urine, extreme salacity, great torment, bloody, watery discharge from the urethra and bladder, no rest day or night, Cantharis comes in, it is capable of finishing the case in a few days. Such a patient must be in excellent health, which is not generally the case. They are drinking men and smokers.

Tobacco is one of the most troublesome things you will run across, many cases will not recover promptly if they are tobacco users and great smokers, wine drinkers or convivial men, they run around a good deal mc and are high livers and with such you have a slow case on hand.

With the system so broken down front high living, you may not get a decided curative action until you have forced him to abandon his way of living. Put him on light diet, diminish his smoking, get rid entirely of the drinking, and put him on a perfectly bland living.

This is the first thing. If he is a man of family we have to contend with great mental distress, and not less so if a woman. So it may well be said, that usually the sycotic miasm is a troublesome one to begin with and one that will bother the young physician.

You cannot substitute the right method for a wrong one, which will make him a cripple for life.

The suppression of the disease, as usually tried, cannot be thought of by the sincere and earnest homeopath.

If he wants it checked suddenly, let him go somewhere else, but warn him what will take place, and he will have untold disease and suffering.

Senecio Aureus
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 161 of 180
Source pages 2836–2840 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

In some parts of the country where it grows it is called Golden Ragwort, in others Huckleroot.

It is an old domestic remedy and one only proved in a fragmentary way. Many of these medicines that have become household remedies should be properly proved. Only in this way can their power and influence be known, i. e., they can be used properly only when indicated by the symptoms they can produce.

Women: Senecio, is to be studied in relation to young girls with menstrual irregularities.

Those who have suppression of the menstrual flow from getting wet, from getting the feet wet, those who have menorrhagia, a copious menstrual flow which continues until they are anemic; and those also who suffer from dysmenorrhœa, the pains being most violent. In this remedy, with these general features, the young girl gradually tends toward catarrhal phthisis.

The menstrual flow is suppressed sometimes many months, she begins to look pale, has a dry, hacking cough, with bleeding from the lungs instead of the menstrual flow, a vicarious spitting of blood.

There is a catarrhal state throughout the chest. They are pallid and weakly girls. They tell you they have lost their menstrual flow, and have a chronic cough, are sensitive to every draft of air, are always taking cold and finally expectorate profusely.

The phthisis may go on as catarrh of the chest for years, but at last a miliary tuberculosis sets in and takes the patient off with what is known as acute consumption. Especially is this condition associated with disorder of the menstrual flow and a general catarrhal state.

“Phthisis, with obstructed menstruation.”

When the symptoms agree in this kind of a case Senecio is a most useful medicine for establishing the menstrual flow. You will know that it is acting well by the fact that the cough gradually diminishes. Of course a great many medicines will be suited to such general states, but this one has an unusually marked and special relation to these cases. In certain regions, Senecio has been used as a domestic medicine, an old woman’s remedy for bringing on the menstrual flow.

You will be struck on reading over this remedy with the tendency to hemorrhage from all the mucous membranes of the body. There is coryza with nose-bleed; spitting of blood from the throat and chest; hemorrhage from the lungs; a catarrhal condition of all the mucous membranes with a tendency to haemorrhage: congestion and inflammation of the kidneys with haemorrhage.

You know how commonly these cases end in dropsy. These waxy, anaemic, chlorotic girls, who have lost their menstrual flow, become dropsical after slow hemorrhage from the uterus, kidneys and bladder.

“Dropsy from anaemia.”

It is a medicine of the highest order for hemorrhages in catarrhal conditions.

Urinary: It has also in its proving many distressing symptoms of the urinary organs.

Painful urination. Uncomfortable heat in the neck of the bladder. Renal colic, the pains being so great that they produce nausea.

Renal dropsy. Intense pain over right kidney, etc. The whole urinary tract is painful and subject to bleeding. But bleeding especially in the absence of the menstrual flow is the feature of this remedy.

Wherever there is an inflammatory spot or catarrhal condition of the mucous membrane it will bleed in case the menstrual flow does not appear.

We have other medicines having the symptoms of vicarious haemorrhage, such as Hamamelis, Phosphorus and Bryonia, but Senecio has this condition strikingly and is one of the newer remedies for such condition.

“Dysmenorrhoea with urinary symptoms; cutting in sacral and hypogastric regions.”

“Hacking cough at night.”

“Amenorrhoea from a cold; nervous irritability; lassitude; dropsy.”

“Menstrual irregularities in consumptive patients.”

“Mucous rattling with suppressed cough.”

Leucorrhoea especially in chlorotic girls. It is a marked remedy in chlorosis, in the anemic state with a green hue, called “green sickness” by the laity.

Tuberculinum Bovinum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 177 of 180
Source pages 3123–3146 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

I want to take up the study of Tuberculinum.

The preparation which I use is a little different from that which is generally found in the market. This preparation I procured through a Professor of Veterinary Surgery.

In Pennsylvania there came a time when a handsome herd of cattle had to be slaughtered because of tuberculosis. Through the Veterinary Surgeon of the Pennsylvania University I secured some: of the tubercular glands from these slaughtered cattle.

Dynamization: I selected from these the most likely specimen.

This was potentized by Boericke & Tafel as far as the 6th, and has since been prepared on the Skinner machine, the 30 th, 200 th, 1000 th and the higher potencies. This preparation I have been using for fifteen years. Many of my friends have been using if, as they have procured it from me.

From observing the effects of this preparation I have been gathering these notes in my interleaved Hering’s Guiding Symptoms, and, they now guide me in the use of Tuberculinum. I do not use Tuberc. merely because it is a nosode, or with the idea that generally prevails of using nosodes; that is, a product of the disease for the disease, and the results of the disease. This I fear is too much the prevailing thought in using nosodes.

In certain places it prevails and is taught that anything relating to syphilis must be treated with Syphilinum; that anything relating to gonorrhoea must be treated with Medorrhinum, anything psoric. must be treated with Psorinum, and anything that relates to tuberculosis must be treated with Tuberculinum.

That will go out of use some day; it is mere isopathy, and it is an unsound doctrine. It is not the better idea of Homoeopathy. It is not based upon sound principles. It belongs to a hysterical Homoeopathy that prevails in this century. Yet much good has come out of it.

It is hoped that provings may be made so that we may be able to prescribe Tuberc. on the symptoms of Tuberc. just as we would use any drug.

It is deep acting, constitutionally deep, because it is a product of disease from a very deep-seated constitutional condition, like Silica and Sulphur. it goes deep into the life; it is antipsoric; it is long acting, and it affects constitutions more deeply than most remedies; and when our deepest remedies act only a few weeks, and they have to be changed, this remedy comes in as one of the remedies-when the symptoms agree and brings a better state of reaction, so that remedies hold longer. It may well be considered a species of Psorinum.

One of the most prominent uses of this remedy is in intermittent fever. Some of our most stubborn cases of intermittent fever will relapse and continue relapsing, even when such remedies as Silica and Calcarea and the deeper-acting remedies have been indicated, have acted we have broken the fever, and in a few weeks, from exposure to cold, from sitting in a draft, from becoming fatigued, from mental exertion, from over-eating and from disordering the stomach this ague has returned.

Any of these circumstances will bring back these stubborn cases of intermittent fever when Tuberc. is needed. When a patient is traveling toward phthisis and he is exposed and intermittent comes out. He is of a feeble constitution and his complaints have a tendency to relapse, and remedies well selected do not hold long, though they act well at first, they must soon be changed-changing symptoms.

It is not an indication for Tuberc. when the well selected remedy fails to act. Well selected is a relative expression and involves too much of human opinion. It may be thought to be well selected when it is not related to the case. When, the well selected remedy has acted and the constitution shows a tendency to break down, and the well selected remedy does not hold, because of vital weakness and because of deep-seated tendencies; then it is that this remedy sometimes fits in.

Such a case is often tuberculous in inclination, even though no evidence is present, of a pathological character.

Burnett, dropped an idea, that has been confirmed many times. Patients who have inherited phthisis, patients whose parents have died of phthisis are often of feeble vitality. They do not throw off their inherited tendencies.

They are always tired. They take on sicknesses easily. They become anaemic; nervous; waxy or pale. These conditions are sometimes met, when the finer symptoms agree, although Burnett evidently used this medicine in a sort of routine way for this kind of constitution, which he called “Consumptiveness.” Persons who had inherited phthisis, who were debilitated and anaemic.

It seems from looking over the record of many cures that this remedy has been given many times for just that state on a paucity of symptoms, and if the records can be believed, it has many times balanced up to the constitution in that anaemic state, where the inheritance has been phthisis. It is not the best indication for Tuberc., but where the symptoms agree in addition to that inheritance, then you may have indications for the remedy.

Tuberculinum Bovinum be given in 10 M., 50 M.. and 100 M. potencies, two doses of each potency at long intervals, all children and young people who have inherited tuberculosis may be immuned from their inheritance and their resiliency will be restored. It cures most cases of adenoids and tuberculous glands of the neck.

Mind: The nodes that have guided me to in use I will attempt to explain.

The mental symptoms that I have seen give way while the patient was under treatment, and the mental symptoms that I have seen crop out under the provings, and the mental symptoms that I have so often seen associated when the patient is poisoned by the tubercular toxines are as belong to many complaints and are cured by Tuberc.

Hopelessness in many complaints. Aversion to mental work. Anxiety evening, until midnight. Anxiety during fever. Loquacity during fever. Weary of life. Cosmopolitan. Tormenting, persistent thoughts during the night.

Thoughts intrude and crowd upon each other during the night. These I will say are the common mental features, and have often yielded when the remedy has been prescribed. Anyone who has inherited phthisis, anyone who has been in a state of debility, who has had intermittent fever with continual relapses, and these mental symptoms are present, you may think of Tuberc. Loquacity during fever is a common feature in hectic fever when the patient, is decidedly affected by the toxines of tuberculosis.

A person gradually running down, never finding the right remedy, or relief only momentarily; has a constant desire to change, and travel, and go somewhere, and do something different, or to find a new doctor.

The desire to travel, that cosmopolitan condition of the mind belongs strongly to the one who needs Tuberc. It comes out so often in clinical experience; is found so often in the Calcareas and especially in Calc. Phos., always wanting to go somewhere. Such is the condition of those about to go into insanity, about to go into some lingering disease. Persons on the border land of insanity.

It is true that phthisis and insanity are convertible conditions, the one falls into the other. Many cases that are treated and cured, and phthisis of the lungs has just been turned aside, finally become insane. Persons who have been cured of insanity go into phthisis and die, showing the deep-seated character of their nature. The intellectual symptoms and the lung symptoms are interchangeable.

Head: Tuberculinum cures the most violent and the most chronic periodical sick headaches, periodical nervous headaches.

Coming every week; every two weeks; and the irregular periodicity coming under certain conditions, in damp weather, after overwork, from mental excitement, from overeating, disordered stomach. Tuberc. breaks up the tendency to this chronic periodical headache when the symptoms agree.

It has been observed in the hands of good prescribers that, when chronic constitutional headaches have been broken up sometimes the patient has a tendency to lose flesh and become feeble. An entire transformation scene takes place; a cough sets in; the headache has been removed, but the patient is feeble. Whenever that takes place Tuberc is a most useful remedy. A new manifestation comes; a new organ is affected.

Sore bruised feeling all over the body. Aching of the bones. Sore bruised condition of the eyeballs, sensitive to touch, and on turning the eye sideways. Persons who have long felt the weakness of tuberculosis, tubercular conditions, and are subject to cold sweat on the head. This was brought out in the provings of Calcarea, and those about to go into phthisis have many times been cured by Calcarea.

The relation ship between Tuberc. And Calc. is very close. They are interchangeable; that is, the one may be indicated for a while, and then the other. They are both deep-acting remedies – also Silica is closely related to Tuberc., on the same plane of action, going deep into the life in a similar way; Calcarea, Tuberc. and Silica, and the Silicates.

In the Guiding Symptoms is a record,

“Pain in the head, as if the head had a tight hoop of iron around it,” an iron band.

Headache, with frequent sharp cutting pains. Headache, worse from motion. In the Guiding Symptoms,

“A sullen, taciturn, irritable” condition of mind.

“Screams in his sleep.

Is very restless at night.

Sister died of tubercular meningitis.”

That symptom was given by Burnett. It has cured hydrocephalus.

Many years ago Doctor Biegler cured a case of tubercular meningitis with Tuberc. In many instances it has cured tubercular meningitis and tubercular diseases of the brain in the early stages. The face becomes red, even to purple, during the chill, and during the heat. Aversion to all foods. Such aversion to meat that it becomes impossible to eat it.

Thirst during the chill and heat, for large quantities of cold water. It has cured tubercular meningitis with effusion, where the head was greatly enlarged. Craving for cold milk. Emptiness in the abdomen, with faint feeling. Anxiety in the abdomen and stomach, much like the Sulphur sensation described. An all gone, hungry feeling, that drives him to eat. This has been cured by Tuberc. after Sulphur had failed.

All know what a marked feature emaciation is in persons who are going into phthisis. The emaciation often begins before there is any sign of phthisis, gradually losing flesh. A gradually growing weakness, a gradually increasing fatigue.

This is a prominent place for Tuberc., if the symptoms agree. Always let that stand out boldly, IF THE SYMPTOMS AGREE, and WHEN THE SYMPTOMS AGREE. Of course it will be said that Tuberc. has cured when there are few symptoms this is granted, but should not be lauded as a clinical practice.

Bowels and rectum: It is a common feature of tubercular affections of the brain and of the meninges to suffer from constipation.

Stool large and hard; or, constipation alternating with diarrhoea. It is a well-known clinical fact. Constipation is a strong feature of Tuberc.

“Constipation, stool large and hard; then diarrhoea.

Itching of the anus.

Sudden diarrhoea before breakfast, with nausea.

Inguinal glands indurated and visible.

Excessive sweat in chronic diarrhea.”

That symptom was brought out by Burnett. It was merely a clinical symptom. Burnett dwells on this phase of it;

“Tabes Mesenterica.”

“Swelling on left side, also on right; complains of a stitch in side after running; languid and indisposed to talk.

Nervous and irritable.

Talks in his sleep; grinds his teeth.

Appetite poor.

Hands blue.

Indurated and palpable glands everywhere.

A drum belly.

Spleen region bulging out.”

That was one of Burnett’s clinical cases. That was cured by Burnett’s Bacillinum. In most instances, I am informed, he used the Bacillinum 200 th.

It is a common feature of Sulphur to be driven out of bed in the morning by a diarrhoea. It is a very common feature in cases of phthisis, and patients going into phthisis. In advanced stage of phthisis, driven out of bed with a diarrhoea; or, diarrhoea worse in the morning than at any other time in the twenty-four hours. This is a common feature of phthisis that Tuberc. has cured, and it has been verified many times, although it is a clinical symptom.

General relaxation. Weakness and hanging down of the genitals. Relaxed scrotum.

Menses too early, too profuse, long lasting. Amenorrhoea. Dysmenorrhœa.

Cough before, and during chill.

Suffocation; worn in a warm room. Tubercular deposits in apices of lungs (left).

The uterus sags down and is heavy at the menstrual period, a relaxation, as if the inner parts would come out.

Dry hacking cough before the evening chill (Rhus t.). and the hacking cough lasts sometimes during the chill, and sometimes during the fever, but be knows the chill is coming by the cough. The patient has been cured perhaps a number of times by remedies. Intermittent fever has been cured a number of times by remedies well selected.

The fever goes away promptly under the action of the remedy; but from slight exposure, as was mentioned, it comes back again. Now at the end of three, four or five weeks – often two or three – he says, “I know my old chills are coming back again, because of the cough I have.”

The previous remedies have not been successful. They are not deep enough acting, they are not long enough acting.

When the homoeopathic remedy is really and truly able to cure the diseased condition it will hold that case, so that when the symptoms come back again the same remedy will be indicated, and only a changed potency, perhaps will be necessary.

The same remedy is called for; but it is an indication for Tuberc, when at every coming back of the case it calls for a new remedy. Calcarea breaks up the case once, and the next time it comes back it calls for something else, and the next time for something else, and it keeps turning around.

Perhaps a number of times it calls for the same remedies again. Changing about. That very changing and unsatisfied symptom image is a strong indication for this medicine.

Respiration: Suffocation in a warm room.

Can find easy breathing only when riding in the cold wind. When phthisical patients find no comfort except riding in the cold wind – which is a rare symptom, but has been noticed. This was a symptom specially marked in the lamented Gregg, of Buffalo. He would ride out in the cold winds by the lake for hours. Arg. nit. many times relieved that, but it is a strong symptom of Tuberc. He finally died of tuberculosis.

Desire for deep breathing. Longs for the open air. Wants the doors and windows open. Sits in the room covered with a cold sweat, but wants the air, wants fresh air. When covered with cold sweat he cannot have the wind blowing on him because he takes cold, he is sensitive to it, but he wants the fresh air, he wants the open air. Especially when the tubercular deposits begin in the apex of the left lung, which is the indication that has been verified by quite a number of observers.

“Hard, dry cough. Hard, dry, shaking cough,” were symptoms noticed by Boardman – regardless of phthisis. The expectoration is thick, yellow, often yellowish-green in catarrhal conditions. Hacking cough in young girls, where there is a suppression of the menstrual flow of the first menses.

They come on once or twice or three times, and the patient is yellow, is puny, is tired, has a hacking cough, and a suspicious chest. If the tubercular deposits have not gone too far, Tuberc. may arrest the progress of the disease. Tuberc. often gives immunity if taken before the tuberculosis begins in those who have inherited it. It immunes the constitution.

Another marked feature recorded by Burnett was ringworms. Burnett was of the opinion that ringworms commonly formed upon those who had inherited phthisis. He thought it was a sign of approaching phthisis, that it was a very common feature of those who have inherited phthisis; and he used the Bacillinum 200 th. He used it somewhat as a routine remedy on every child with ringworm.

Patients who suffer from weakness in the evening. Rapid pulse in the evening. Every evening for years he has noticed the pulse has been rapid. Palpitation after the evening meal.

Jerking of the muscles or going to sleep, and during sleep. Rheumatic pain in the right elbow. Sore bruised condition of the bones and periosteum. Aching, drawing pains in the limbs during rest, better by walking. A strong feature of this remedy is that its pains and aches are better by motion. I have seen this aching distress in the limbs many times where Rhus has acted only temporarily or has failed; where Rhus seemed to be the remedy, but was not deep enough to hold its action.

Where Rhus was superficially indicated – or the deep action of the disturbance, the deep inheritance – the tired constitution, the chronic nature of the case prevents the action of Rhus, and Tuberc. cures these cases.

Especially in girls that are bookkeepers, and shopkeepers, who have inherited phthisical constitutions, who have aches and pains during damp weather, in rainy weather, during a storm, when the weather changes, when the weather becomes cold; then it is that Tuberc. cures after such remedies as Rhus have failed; these patients are better by motion, better by walking; worse during rest.

While sitting the pains become so severe that be is driven to travel, driven to walk. Aching, drawing pains in limbs during rest, better walking. Coldness of left foot and leg, evening in bed. Stitching pains in limbs during rest. Wandering pains in limbs – in joints. Pains all over the body, but mostly lower limbs.

Aching, drawing, tearing, as if in bones, and nerves, during rest; better walking. Pains in bones lower limbs. Stiffness on beginning to move. Sore bruised joints. Pains all ameliorated by heat. Drawing pains in thighs. Stitching pains in limbs. Restless. Stiffness of lower limbs, evening. Physical exertion aggravates.

Complaints worse standing; must move. This is as marked in this remedy as in Sulphur.

Intermittent fever, with drawing in limbs during rest. Chill 7 P.M.

Chilliness, evening; better in bed. Chill 5 P.M., with thirst. Cough before chill, during chill, and vomiting during fever. Wants to be covered during all stages. Extreme heat, with chilliness. Relapsing intermittents

Drawing in the limbs in the evening before the chill, and during the chill. He knows the chill is coming on because of the drawing in the limbs. Chill at 11 o’clock at night. Must be covered up during all stages, the chill, the fever and the sweat. The chilliness extends into the fever and into the sweat if there is any uncovering.

Aching in the bones of the head, with soreness of the periosteum and these are better by traveling about, like Rhus. Better by motion worse keeping still.

Skin: Perspiration from mental exertion.

Perspiration stains the linen yellow. Heat and perspiration during sleep. We know what a common feature it is in phthisis to have night sweats. Formication in the skin.

This remedy has cured tubercular eruptions of the skin. This remedy has cured red purplish eruptions that are nodular in character; the patient wants to sit all the time by the fire – itching in cold air, better by going to the fire, worse from scratching. Sensitive to every change of the weather, especially to cold, and to damp weather, and sometimes to warm damp weather, and to rainy weather. Always worse before a storm.

Can feel every electric change in the weather. Becoming cold brings on all the symptoms pains, aches, distresses and sufferings. A large list of symptoms of patients that have been cured in all their varying conditions may be found by looking up the Guiding Symptoms.

Periodicity, then, is a strong feature of this remedy, and sensitive to weather changes. Fainting fits, Weakness after a short walk.

It has cured constitutional headaches, periodical headaches, that existed forty-five years. It cures even old people of these periodical complaints.

The pains will sometimes travel. Stitching; pinching, cramping, wandering; and always worse from cold, and from cold damp weather.

Editorial notes

• “Guiding'Symptoms” corrected to “Guiding Symptoms” (transcription error in the digital source text).
• “continual replases” corrected to “continual relapses” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Senega
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 162 of 180
Source pages 2841–2851 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Senega is an old lung tonic, and I suspect it has been an ingredient in most of the lung medicines for the last one hundred years.

It has been only partially proved, and needs further proving to bring out its particulars. When a medicine has been fully proved, it can be said of it that its symptoms are so well known that they can be examined as an image, i. e., the drug has affected all portions of man in such a manner as to stamp itself upon all of his natural actions and functions in a way peculiar to itself. This remedy has done some wonderful things, and these results in many instances can be only attributed to mere guesswork. This is about all that can be said in favor of careless and loose. prescribing.

Chest: Senega is more especially a chest medicine. It is full of chest symptoms and its relation to the air passages makes it worthy of consideration, although many of the individualizing symptoms have not yet been brought out.

From its most striking action on the mucous membrane of the air passages, its chief use has been in chest complaints, asthmatic complaints, in various forms of dyspnoea, cardiac and asthmatic. There are violent pains in the chest, especially like those of pleurisy. It has also symptoms like pneumonia; one of its most useful spheres is in pleuro-pneumonia. The pleuro-pneumonia of cattle has almost found its specific in Senega.

The finding of specifics is more likely to be true of animals than of human beings, as a remedy that is only partially indicated – may cure an animal, but it requires much finer discrimination among remedies in dealing with human beings.

A violent attack of pleurisy associated with pneumonia, too deep and too vicious for Bryonia, often finds its remedy in Senega. Senega is a sort of cross between Bryonia and Rhus tox. The violent symptoms are those of Bryonia, yet it is worse from rest, unlike Bryonia. The symptoms of Senega are not so much like Rhus tox., but it has an amelioration like that of Rhus tox., better from motion, the pains being worse when at rest.

The chest pains, rheumatic pains and inflammatory pains are worse during rest, but the cough is made worse from motion and the asthmatic troubles are made worse from the slightest motion. The Senega patient cannot walk up hill; he cannot walk against the wind, because it brings on chest symptoms and dyspnoea.

The rattling in the chest is as marked as in Antimonium tartaricum the tenacious mucus is as copious, as gluey and stringy as in Kali bichromicum, so much is this the case that he can get it only part way up, and with a spasmodic effort he swallows it, like Spongia and Causticum.

Senega is a remedy of deep action, as well as an acute remedy. It is filled with sharp and acute sufferings, sufferings that come on with rapidity, from taking cold, or from a cold that involves the whole chest.

Eyes: There are some eye symptoms in the text that are worthy of attention.

“Paralysis of the muscles of the eyes.”

“Iritis and specks upon the cornea.”

“Paresis of the superior oblique.”

“Aching over the orbits.”

“Eyes pain as if pressed out.”

“Blepharitis.”

It has cured opacity of the vitreous humor.

Larynx: Of the larynx the text says,

“Aphonia from severe cold or excessive use of the voice.”

“Constant tickling and burning in the larynx, leaving the patient not a moment’s rest and preventing him from lying down; fear of suffocation.”

When Senega is indicated there is a dryness in the mouth and throat, and the cough is incessant; there is a constant metallic coppery taste in the mouth and throat, as if he were coughing up pulverized copper.

Mouth: A very little of this medicine in proving will produce such a dryness and metallic taste in the mouth, and such a tickling at the root of the tongue, the pharynx and larynx, and it will finally end in a copious, thick, gluey discharge.

“Grippe, with stitches in right eye when coughing.”

“Laryngeal phthisis.”

“Copious accumulation of tough mucus in air-tubes, which causes the greatest often ineffectual, efforts at coughing and hawking for its expulsion.”

This thick, tough mucus will lead most routine prescribers to give such medicines as Kali bichromicum, Lachesis and Mercurius corrosivus, entirely overlooking the usefulness of Senega.

It is a remedy of very wide range in complaints of the chest, larynx and trachea, in the severe “colds” that settle in these parts, especially when associated with tenacious mucus, so tenacious that he cannot cough it up; it seems at times that he will strangle; he will cough and vomit in the effort to expel the mucus, but it seems to disappear and he does not know where it goes.

“Sensation as if the chest were too narrow.”

“Most violent suffocation with asthma.”

“Short breathing and oppression of chest when going up stairs.”

“Dyspnoea especially during rest.”

“Dry cough with aphonia; worse in cold air and from walking,” is like Phosphorus and Rumex.

Those two remedies cause a cough, which commences when he first goes into the air. Senega, has another feature like Phosphorus, in that the cough is so violent that it makes him shake from head to foot; it brings on a tremulous feeling all over the body. He coughs from inhaling cold air; the cough is violent and the expectoration most difficult. In old, chronic catarrh of the chest for the earlier stages of which Bryonia was the most similar remedy, with this thick, tough, ropy mucus,

Senega is most suitable, and even when the patient is in the last stages of consumption. The symptoms become most troublesome, the gagging and coughing and effort to expectorate because of the thick, ropy mucus, are very distressing.

He breaks out in a cold sweat, especially on the upper part of the body. The chest is full of coarse rales from the tough mucus which he cannot expectorate. We think in such a case of remedies like Antimonium tartaricum, Pyrogen, Kali bichromicum, etc., but this remedy is just as suitable, especially when there is a great amount of dryness in the throat and larynx, dryness in the throat during sleep and observed on waking, and inability to expectorate the tough ropy mucus.

“Shaking cough,” i. e., the cough is so violent that it shakes the whole frame.

The concussion from the cough causes discharge of urine involuntarily and causes violent pains in the head and over the eyes. Senega, is called for especially in those cases where the pleura has been involved at one stage or the other.

The pains are increased and it seems as if the chest would be torn on coughing.

“Walls of the chest sensitive or painful when touched.”

“Profuse secretion of mucus in lungs of old people.”

Senega is one of the leading remedies for the tough mucus and coarse rales in old people without any other symptoms. It very often clears the throat and helps to patch up an old man when he is breaking down.

“Great rattling of mucus in chest and flying pains in chest-“

It has sometimes cured pleuro-pneumonia when there was the extreme exhaustion of Phosphorus and Arsenicum. In such cases Senega has caused reaction; it has such weakness. Especially is it suited in the advanced cases of phthisis, when those symptoms that I have mentioned are present.

It acts as a palliative. It does excellent patch work without serious aggravations, as it relates more especially to superficial conditions. It is not as deep acting as Sulphur and Silicea. We give such remedies only when we have a reasonable assurance that we can cure, when the patient is yet curable.

But when we have given up all hope, then we pay more attention to the most painful parts; we pay more attention to the local symptoms, to the group which causes the most suffering and attempt to do patch work.

If the sufferings in the chest and the exhaustion become most severe it is true that Arsenicum will patch him up a little and make him feel more like life, and he will go on to the end with more comfort. If the pains in the chest are most severe such medicines as Senega or Bryonia will help him; if he is sore and feels as if bruised and he most move from side to side Arnica will relieve; but these are not the remedies to go deep into the life and eradicate a deep-seated disease like phthisis.

Yet with these one may take a consumptive patient in comfort to the very grave, by simply patching him up and prescribing for his immediate sufferings. Homoeopathic remedies give these incurable sufferers much greater comfort than sprays and anodynes.

The pains of the chest are worse during rest and on inspiring. Stitching pains in the chest when lying on the right side. Great soreness in the walls of the chest. Pain under right scapula when coughing. The chest pains are better while walking in the open air.

Sepia
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 163 of 180
Source pages 2852–2882 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Sepia is suited to tall, slim women with narrow pelvis and lax fibers and muscles; such a woman is not well built as a woman.

A woman who has the hips of a well-built man is not built for child bearing, she cannot perform the functions of a woman without becoming relaxed in the pelvic organs and tissues. Such a build is a Sepia build, very tall, slim, narrow, straight from the shoulders all the way down.

Mind: One of the strongest features of the Sepia patient is found in the mind, the state of the affections. To a great extent, the remedy seems to abolish the ability to feel natural love, to be affectionate. To illustrate it in the language of the mother:

“I know I ought to love my children and my husband, I used to love them, but now I have no feeling on the subject.”

The love does not go forth into affection, there is a lack of realization, a lack of ability to register such affections; the love does not manifest itself. Upon reflection it will be seen that the love itself cannot be so changed, but the affections can be as they are the expression of the love.

It is a striking feature of this remedy that the affections are stilled; all things seem strange; she does not realize; she may even be estranged and turned aside from those she loves. This is on the border land of insanity; it is quite a different state of affairs from that when a woman abused by her husband knows in her rational mind that she does not love him.

This state is brought out in a woman during confinement, after uterine and other hemorrhages, after prolonged indigestion; high living with disturbance in the circulation, pallor, enfeeblement of body and mind. It is seldom manifested in a man, but it is a striking feature in the woman. It often comes on when nursing a child, from nursing an over-vigorous child or twins who require much lacteal fluid and drag her down. It may be brought out in a woman who has an overvigorous husband. Excessive sexual excitement and over-indulgence brings on coldness and she becomes a cold woman.

She who has been excitable, nervous, and fidgety becomes the opposite, cold, takes on a stoical state of mind. Yet Sepia has all the excitability of any medicine, aggravated by noises, excitement, company, extreme irritability of tissue and mind; an excitable suicidal patient; melancholy, sits and says nothing; taciturn; answers questions in monosyllables when pressed to answer.

An absence of all joy, inability to realize that things are real; all things seem strange; no affection for the delightful things of life; no joy; life has nothing in it for her. She is worse in company yet dreads to be alone; and when she is in company she is spiteful, in the midst of her dullness of mind she is spiteful; she vents her spite on those she loves best. The Sepia woman permits no opposition to her opinions. The best impression of her is lost if controversy arises.

Skin: The next most general state is a peculiar sallowness which you will need to see to fix in your mind.

Sepia has jaundice, yet this peculiar sallowness is a waxy, anaemic appearance, mottled with yellow, a yellow, sallow tint across the nose and the cheeks described as a yellow saddle across the nose and down the sides of the face.

It is also common for the whole face to be covered with enormous freckles, great brown patches as in pregnancy, brown spots on the cheeks, brown warts, warts that have been red or pink become pigmented; liver spots on the face, chest, and abdomen.

The skin of the face is sallow and doughy, looks as if the muscles were flabby; you will seldom see Sepia indicated in the face that shows sharp lines of intellect; a person who has been thinking a long time has the lines and sharp angles of a thinking person, of one who possesses will and intellect. The Sepia subject is one who is rather stupid and dull, thinks slowly and is forgetful; the mind is anything but active and we see it in the face.

Face: In many instances, however, the Sepia patient is a quick patient, but the dullness of intellect is the most striking feature and it reflects itself upon the face.

The face is generally puffed, often smooth and rounded and marked by an absence of intellectual lines and angles.

This patient is anemic, pale lips and ears, pale, sallow face, fingers and hands become shrivelled, sallow, waxy, bloodless. Sepia establishes a progressing emaciation of the body and the skin becomes wrinkled; the person looks prematurely old; wrinkles intermingled with sallow spots on the face in one who is 35 years of age, making him look as if he were fifty. A child looks like a shrivelled dried up old person.

Bowels: With all complaints there is constipation.

The bowels lose their ability to expel their contents and the patient is always constipated; constipation during pregnancy; slow, difficult stool; stool like sheep dung. Always has a feeling of a lump in the rectum, never able to empty the bowels; though he goes to stool there is always a sensation of a lump remaining in the rectum. When the stool passes into the lower bowel, it is not expelled until there is an accumulation, which presses the stool out.

Hunger: Another feature present in most Sepia patients is a gnawing hunger, seldom satisfied; even though he eats plentifully he feels a gnawing, empty, hungry feeling in the stomach, not relieved by eating or relieved only for a moment. This is striking especially when associated with the constipation and the peculiar state of the affections.

When these symptoms are associated with prolapsus, Sepia will certainly cure, no matter how bad the prolapsus has been or what kind of displacement there is. It is the result of the state of relaxation of all the internal parts as if they were let down, wants a bandage to hold the parts up or wants to place the hand or napkin on the parts; a funneling sensation, better sitting down and crossing the limbs.

When these symptoms group themselves together, the gnawing hunger, the constipation, the dragging down, and the mental condition, it is Sepia and Sepia only. One is not sufficient but it is the combination.

Sepia has a marked catarrhal tendency, tendency to milky discharges from mucous membranes. Long after digestion has ceased and the stomach is empty comes nausea and sometimes vomiting.

It is a catarrhal state of the stomach and when it persists with the milky vomiting, Sepia is very valuable. This is not an uncommon feature in the vomiting of pregnancy. Vomits up food and after emptying the stomach of its contents, vomits or eructates a milky fluid; morning vomiting, first of food, then a milky substance. Do not confound this with vomiting of milk. Some medicines vomit milk alone and Sepia does this also.

Whitish, milky discharges from the posterior nares, from the vagina, excoriating, milky leucorrhea, which at times takes on the appearance of curds, thick, cheesy, and horribly offensive; it has also thick, green and yellow discharges; it has dry crusty formations on mucous membranes.

Nose: Prolonged inveterate catarrh of the nose, thick, green, and yellow crusts are blown from the nose and sometimes are hawked from the posterior nares, thick, leathery formations.

Loss of taste and smell. The smell of cooking food, meat and broth causes nausea. Catarrh of the chest with thick, tenacious, yellow expectoration, accompanied with a violent cough, retching, gagging, violent prolonged retching, vomiting; dry cough and yet there is rattling. Whooping cough; asthmatic cough with retching and loss of urine.

Cough: The cough is a violent one.

Cough during first sleep (Lach., in irritable children Cham.). Tuberculosis. Quick consumption after a suppressed gonorrhea; if given soon enough it will check. Spasmodic dry cough in the evening until midnight; holds the chest during the cough (Bry., Natr. sulph., Phos.)

Skin: Eruptions of the skin.

Tendency to produce herpetic eruptions about the genitals, lips and mouth; ring-worm upon the face and body. It has cured zona, and herpetic eruptions of the labia and foreskin. Vesicular eruptions in the axilla, upon the tip-s of the elbows; eruptions that pile up in great crusts on the elbows; thick crusts form upon the joints; eruptions between the fingers; moist eruptions that pour out a watery fluid, or thick, yellow, purulent fluid.

Sepia produces the induration that belongs to some forms of eruption like epithelioma; indurations will form on the lips and crack and bleed. The scaly eruption that looks like epithelioma is especially Sepia. When the scales come off a yellow, green, ichorous base remains, and as soon as one crust peels off, another forms; finally if torn off prematurely, it bleeds. Sepia has cured epithelioma of the lips, wings of the nose, and eyelids It has cured old indurations caused by the use of a clay pipe, where it continues to form, and beneath it is seen this thick, yellow, purulent exudation.

It is indicated in lumps and lupoid formation on the skin, where there is infiltration; sometimes healing from the centre to form a ring; this is a typical Sepia condition. The hardness and purple color are what are peculiarly Sepia. Sepia stands on a par with Lach. for this purple aspect.

Mind again: Sepia has a hysterical diathesis.

Breaks out in spells of weeping, is sad one minute, gentle, yielding, and in another she is disagreeable, excitable, obstinate. You do not know what she is going to do next. She says and does strange things, makes errors, no dependence can be placed on her; no mental endurance; no affection for her family; whole Mind weak and disordered, not when there is fever, but it is a chronic manifestation of psora or sycosis.

Fear of ghosts; that something unusual will happen; atmosphere full of figures, not seen, but she knows that they are there; departed friends or other forms and very often in accordance with religions belief.

Never happy unless annoying some one; relating her grievances; sarcastic; insulting fear of insanity, poverty.

“Fears to starve, is peevish and feels mortified, easily frightened and full of forebodings.”

“Passionate, irritable; the greatest irritability from slight causes, very easily offended.

Vexed and disposed to scold.”

Head: The headaches are nervous, bilious, periodic, violent, involving the whole head; congestive.

Generally better lying down, keeping perfectly quiet; worse from ordinary motion, but relieved by violent motion, like most Sepia symptoms in general; she can walk off her sufferings. Stasis of the brain, slowness of thought, mind will not work and, mental labor aggravates the headache. A good substantial sleep relieves it, but if she is awakened after sleeping a short time, the headache is worse.

The same is seen in regard to motion; moving the eyes, head, or body, moving about in a warm room aggravates the pain, but a good, long walk in the open air until she becomes heated up, relieves. It is a sluggish state of the body which requires exercise, and violent exercise to keep it in a state of comfort.

The Sepia symptoms are worse in the open air unless combined with continued motion, better from exercise in the open air and worse in the house. The headache is worse from stooping, motion, coughing, going up stairs, jarring, light, turning the head, lying on the back and from thinking, but continued, hard exercise relieves, as does a tight bandage, and the application of heat, though worse in a warm room.

There are Sepia headaches that particularly affect the occiput, worse in the morning; great pain through the eyes and temples; relieved by sweat, worse on beginning to move; throbbing felt on stooping, worse on going up s airs.

The Phos. headache is relieved by sleep, but continued, rapid motion aggravates. Cannot endure it. Sepia is suited to the old fashioned bilious headaches. It is better from vomiting; the pain gradually increases, loathing of food, then nausea, vomiting and the patient falls asleep and wakens without the headache. Sang. resembles it, is better vomiting, better in a dark room; the direction is different, however.

Neuralgia of the head; periodic sick-headaches in gouty people; violent, congestive headaches in young women sensitive to noise, women of extremely delicate fiber, especially those with dark eyes, dark skin, and who become sallow from sickness. Jaundice often sets in with the headaches; at the close of the headache vomiting, and in a few days jaundice, which passes away but returns again with the next headache.

Headache every morning with nausea; the smell of food repulsive. Sepia takes on a stupid state of mind as mentioned above; will not work; will not answer questions; as if intoxicated, benumbed; eyes and face swollen, sclerotics yellow and jaundice.

This sometimes ends in violent vomiting spells. Craves spicy, pungent, bitter things like beer – in old drunkards with headache; threatening apoplexy.

“Apoplexy in men addicted to drinking and sexual excesses, with a disposition to gout and hemorrhoids, etc.”

“Threatening apoplexy in a dissipated, middle-aged man, who is subject to arthritic and hoemorrhoidal complaints; they have usually passed through several light attacks of apoplexy and are frequently visited with prodromic symptoms!”

Under external head we have eruptions and falling out of the hair yellow crusts; oozing of pus and other fluids; vesicles eczema of infants.

Face: Eyes; catarrhal symptoms with vesicles and pustules granular lids ulcers and psoric manifestations; various infiltrative conditions of the eyes and about the eyes; pustules on the margins of the lids, pustules on the globe of the eye, seems as if looking through a gauze; tarsal tumors, agglutination of lids, styes, etc.

The ears discharge thick, yellow pus; offensive.

The nose is a favorite locality; loss of smell; yellow or green thick crusts fill the nose and cannot be blown out; inveterate discharge of thick yellow pus.

“Large offensive-smelling plugs from the nose, often so large that they have to be drawn back into the mouth and expectorated, causing vomiting.

Dry coryza especially of left nostril, following of large lumps of yellow or green mucus or yellow-green crusts with blood from the nose.”

This is descriptive of the worst forms of catarrh; very few will let it run on thus far, they apply local treatment and heal the nose up, and, the process at once going to the chest, phthisis pituitosa comes on.

The gums settle away from the teeth. Toothache and neuralgia from taking cold.

Sensation of a lump in the throat (like Lach.), but the latter is better from swallowing. (The same in worm troubles indicates Cina.) Uneasiness of the collar and corsets like Lach. Worse in the first, sleep like Lach.

Stomach: Sepia brings out many things in connection with the appetites, thirst, eating, drinking and stomach, etc.

The Sepia patient is generally conscious of a spoiled stomach, sour and bitter eructations of food, of mucus and bile, sour and bitter vomiting of food and mucus; all-gone, hungry, empty feeling in the stomach sometimes not relieved by eating.

At times a gnawing pain, a sinking, a gnawing hunger which is not always relieved by eating. Almost constant nausea, especially in the morning, nausea and eructations and vomiting of milky fluid; when the stomach is empty, vomiting, spitting up, eructations of milky fluid.

Aversion to food, to the smell of food cooking, like Colch. and Ars. The patient gets up in the morning with an all-gone feeling, distress and fullness in the stomach followed by belching and uprisings of mucus, and milky fluids; vomiting of pregnancy; vomiting of milky water in the morning; this is a characteristic of Sepia.

Acrid, burning eructations; heartburn; rancid eructations, excoriating the throat; pyrosis which is another form of eructation; acrid, sour fluids burning all the way up, causing contraction, tingling, smarting.

Nausea violent; deathly sinking accompanied with an awful anxiety in the stomach.

Phos. has more of the typical hunger which is relieved by eating. The Ignatia patient is always sighing; cannot get rid of “that feeling.”

Oleander has an all-gone empty feeling as if he would die; food does not relieve, is not digested, but panes undigested the next day.

Lyc. has an all-gone feeling sometimes not better by eating, felt as markedly before as after eating, and after eating there comes a throbbing.

Kali carb. has it also, without the amelioration from taking food; it is even intensified by eating, which is followed by a sensation of fullness and throbbing.

In severe liver and heart affections the stomach is not able to keep up assimilation; palpitation, great weakness, liver congested, white stool.

Digitalis comes in here with its deathly sinking not better by vomiting. In Sepia this symptom is associated with the loss of affections, the lump in the rectum, with the constipation, etc.

“Pain in the stomach after the simplest food.

Stitches and burning in the stomach.

Pain in the stomach worse by vomiting.”

This is peculiar, for vomiting usually relieves the distress. The Sepia stomach becomes like a leather bag, fill it up and the food comes up just as eaten or at times sour or mixed with bile. Inflammation of the liver, enlargement with jaundice, pain, fullness, distension, distress in the region of the liver.

Abdomen: distended with flatus, rumbling and distension. These disturbances are often chronic as in pot-bellied mothers; abdomen covered with brown spots. Sepia has removed tape-worm.

Chronic diarrhea, stools jelly-like, lumpy; alternating diarrhoea and constipation; a great amount of mucus with the stools, whether constipated or diarrheic; hard stool covered with a great quantity of jellylike mucus.

Goes for days without a stool and then sits and strains until a copious sweat breaks out and yet no stool, but after assistance with the finger and prolonged strain a little stool is passed, followed by a cupful of jelly-like mucus, yellow or yellow-white and very offensive.

The acute diarrheas and dysenteries with jelly-like stools are more in keeping with Kali bi. and Colch. This is chronic diarrhoea or in constipation with stool covered with or followed by jelly-like mucus is Sepia.

Do not confound with Graph., which has an enormous stool with much straining and sweating, and coated with and mixed with a substance looking like the cooked white egg, as if covered with albumen.

In Sepia there is much offensiveness; the odor of the stool is unusual, loose stools horribly offensive, foetid; the sweat is foetid, the urine is foetid.

“The stool has a putrid, sourish, foetid smell, expelled suddenly and the whole of it at once.”

Sepia is given in a routine way for constipation, when there are few symptoms.

Rectum: There is always a sense of fullness in the rectum after stool; ineffectual straining and sweating in the effort because the patient is weak and exhausted.

Sepia has the ineffectual urging like Nux. She may go for days with no urging and then the effort is as if she were in labor. Prolapse of the rectum. Weight as of a ball in the anus not relieved by stool.

Soreness of the anus. Expulsion of ascarides. Oozing moisture from the rectum, soreness between the buttocks.

Hemorrhoids soon form when the rectum is so packed with feces, and they give additional trouble.

Urinary: There is much urinary trouble; involuntary urination as soon as the child goes to sleep at night.

Sepia is compelled to keep the mind on the neck of the bladder or she will lose the urine; urine is lost when coughing, sneezing, laughing, the slam of a door, a shock, or when the mind is diverted.

Frequent, constant urging to urinate with milky urine that burns like fire and after standing a while a milky, grayish deposit will form which is hard to wash off the vessel. Bloody urine scanty and suppressed, great pain in the kidneys and bladder with great bearing down; sudden desire with tenesmus as if the uterus would come out. Sudden desire to urinate with cutting like knives and chill all over the body, if unable to pass it, as a lady in company.

I remember a pitiable case. A saleswoman was obliged to go to the closet every few minutes; a violent pain like a knife cutting came with the desire to urinate, and if the urine was not passed this pain would hold right on. She was compelled to keep her mind on the urine or she would lose it. She was tall, slim, with sallow face, distressed look, worn and tired. Sepia cured her and she was never troubled again.

The Sepia patient aborts at the third month. All sorts of ulcerative conditions, displacements, dragging down and relaxations. Retained Placenta. Sub involution, all the pelvic organs are tired and weak. Metrorrhagia during the climacteric or during pregnancy, especially at the fifth and seventh months.

Genitals: Both male and female have aversion to the opposite sex.

In the female there is a state as if she had indulged to excess, when this is not the case. No endurance, tired after coition, sleepless nights, sleep full of dreams, jerking of muscles, twitching, leucorrhoea, congestion of the pelvis.

A woman who has been normal in her relations with her husband brings forth a child, and then the thought of sexual relations causes nausea and irritability.

The menstrual symptoms are of all sorts, no particular derangement characterizes Sepia. At one time it was thought that scanty menstruation was the more striking feature, but this is not necessarily so; from provings and clinical observations, it has cured profuse as well as scanty flow. Most violent dysmenorrhoea in girls of delicate fiber, sallow girls.

Sepia comes in when the woman ought to menstruate when the child ceases to nurse; sometimes the child dies and menses ought to be established but do not appear, and the mother runs down, pines away; Sepia will establish the flow.

Calc. is the opposite; the menses come on while the child is nursing. Thick greenish acrid or milky leucorrhea. Leucorrhoea in little girls.

In the male, old sycotic discharge that has resisted injection. Profuse yellow, or milky discharge from the urethra, or the “last drop” painless.

Gonorrhea after the acute symptoms have subsided. Urine loaded with urates, stains everything red and often excoriates, very foetid, associated with prostatitis.

“Gleet; no pain; discharge only during the night, a drop or so staining the linen yellowish; yellowish discharge, no burning or urinating; painless; of a year and a half’s standing; orifice of urethra stuck together in the morning, particularly when the sexual organs are debilitated by long continuance of disease or through frequent seminal emissions.”

Warts on the genitals; Sepia is useful when these organs have been overused and take on such an appearance. Impotence in the male, loss of sexual feeling in the female.

The close relation between this remedy and Murex is worth considering. The muscular relaxation, dragging down in the abdomen and pelvis, aggravated from exertion and walking, ameliorated by sitting with the limbs crossed and ameliorated by pressure on the genitalia would be like both remedies; but add to this copious menstrual flow and violent sexual desire and Murex must be considered and Sepia eliminated.

Both have extreme empty feeling in the stomach. Sepia has diminished sexual desire and often aversion. Murex has great soreness and congestion of the uterus, and she is constantly reminded of the uterus. Murex has acute pain in right side of uterus which crosses the body diagonally upward to left side of chest, or left breast, It cures violent dysmenorrhoea. It has been useful in cancer of the -uterus. Watery, greenish, thick, bloody leucorrhea, causing itching.

Back: One of Sepia’s most general characteristics is the amelioration from violent exercise; worse on beginning to move but better by getting warmed up. This condition is closely related to the back symptoms. There is a great amount of soreness in the back, the spine aches all the way down. Pressure on the spine reveals sore places, spinal irritation.

Aching in the back mostly from the loins to the coccyx, often coming on from sitting, and ameliorated from violent exercise. A peculiar feature is amelioration from hard pressure. The patient commonly puts a book low down on the chair and presses the back against it. Sepia does not seem to get the amelioration from lying upon the back as Natrum mur. does. Stooping aggravates the backache.

”Backache worse from kneeling.”

Under symptoms of the lower extremities we find great numbness of the feet.

“Coldness of the legs and feet especially in the evening in bed when the feet get warm the hands get cold; icy coldness of the feet profuse sweat of the feet or sweat of unbearable odor causing. soreness between the toes. Swelling of the limbs better while walking.”

The sleep is full of dreams and distress; cannot sleep upon the left side because of palpitation of the heart. Palpitation in sleep, with pulsations and trembling all over the body, pulsations to the finger tips.

In old cases of suppressed malaria, Sepia brings back the chill, but its most useful sphere is after a bad selection of the remedy and the case becomes confused. Where a remedy has been selected for only a part of the case and changed it a little but the patient gets no better.

It will be seen that the fever, chill, and sweat are just as erratic as can be. Natrum mur. is one of the greatest malarial remedies, but it is full of order like China, Sepia is full of disorder.

In a case confused by remedies think of Calc., Ars., Sulph., Sepia and Ipecac. Never give China or Natrum mur. for irregular symptoms and stages.

Sepia is complementary to Natrum mur. Aside from the stupid condition of the mind it has an excitable condition of the general nervous system that is often marked in Natrum mur. as, for instance, being disturbed by a noise, the slam of a door, etc. It produces jerking of the muscles in sleep; constantly wakes from imaginary noises, thinks someone has called her; the last disturbance about the house wakens her.

Worse before and during menses; during pregnancy; after eating during first sleep; change of weather; during a thunderstorm; overwhelming fear.

Editorial notes

• “full of forbodings” corrected to “full of forebodings” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Silicea
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 164 of 180
Source pages 2883–2915 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The action of Silica is slow. In the proving, it takes a long time to develop the symptoms. It is, therefore, suited to complaints that develop slowly.

Generalities: At certain times of the year and under certain circumstances peculiar symptoms will come out.

They may stay with the prover the balance of his life. Such are the long-acting, deep-acting remedies; they are capable of going so thoroughly into the vital order that hereditary disturbances are routed out. The Silica patient is chilly; his symptoms are developed in cold, damp weather, though often better in cold, dry weather; symptoms come out after a bath.

Mind: The mental state is peculiar.

The patient lacks stamina. What Silica is to the stalk of, grain in the field, it is to the human mind. Take the glossy, stiff, outer covering of a stalk of grain and examine it, and you will realize with what firmness it supports the head of grain until it ripens; there is a gradual deposit of Silica in it to give it stamina. So it is with the mind; when the mind needs Silica it is in a state of weakness, embarrassment, dread, a state of yielding.

If you should listen to the description of this state by a prominent clergyman, or a lawyer, or a man in the habit of appearing in public with self-confidence, firmness and fullness of thought and speech, he would tell you he had come to a state where he dreads to appear in public, he feels his own selfhood so that he cannot enter into his subject, he dreads it, he fears that he will fail, his mind will not work, he is worn out by prolonged efforts at mental work.

But he will say that when he forces himself into the harness he can go on with ease, his usual self-command returns to him and he does well; he does his work with promptness, fullness, and accuracy. The peculiar Silica state is found in the dread of failure.

If he has any unusual mental task to perform, he fears he will make a failure of it, yet he does it well. This is the early state; of course there comes a time when he cannot perform the work with accuracy and still he may need Silica.

Another case is illustrated in a young man who has studied for years and is now nearing the end of his course. He dreads the final examinations but he goes through them all right, then a fatigue comes upon him and for years he is unable to enter his profession. He has this dread of undertaking anything.

Irritable and irascible when aroused; when let alone he is timid, retiring, wants to shirk everything; mild, gentle tearful women. The Silica child is cross and cries when spoken to. It is the natural complement and chronic of Puls. because of its great similarity; it is a deeper, more profound remedy.

Religious melancholy, sadness, irritability, despondency. Lyc. is stupid, the dread of undertaking any thing in from a general knowledge of inability. In Silica it is imaginary.

Silica is not suitable for the irritability and nervous exhaustion coming on from business brain-fag, but more for such brain-fag as belongs to professional men, students, lawyers, clergymen. A lawyer says,

“I have never been myself since that John Doe case”

He went through a prolonged effort and sleepless nights followed. Silica restores the brain.

Skin: The remedy produces inflammation about any fibrinous nidus and suppurates it out.

It acts upon constitutions that are sluggish and inflames fibrous deposits about old imbedded missiles. Slow nutrition; if the individual receives a slight injury it suppurates and the cicatrix indurates, is hard and nodular.

Along the track of a knife-cut, is a fibrinous deposit due to inferior and slow nutrition. An old ulcer heals with induration. Where cicatricial tissue forms, it is indurated, shiny, glassy. If Silica is given in such cases, it will throw out abscesses in these cicatrices and open them out. It will open up old ulcers and heal them with a normal cicatrix.

In ordinary people if a splinter lodges in the tissues, a suppuration will slough it out, but in these feeble constitutions a plastic deposit takes place about it and it remains. This is not the highest state of order. Suppuration takes place about a bullet and pushes it out, that is the best state that can be asked for.

Silica, therefore, hastens the formation of abscesses and boils. It suppurates out old wens and indurated tumors. It has cured recurrent fibroids and old indurated tumors.

It there is a deposit of tubercle in the lungs, Silica establishes ail inflammation and throws it out, and if the whole lung be tubercular a general suppurative pneumonia will be the result; hence, the danger of giving such remedies and the danger of repeating them in advanced stage of phthisis. Not only Silica but many other remedies have the power to suppurate out deposits, the result of poor nutrition.

Warty growths on the skin, moist eruptions, pimples, pustules, abscesses. Suppurating cavities. It establishes healing in old fistulous openings with indurated margins. Catarrhal suppurations; copious muco-purulent discharge from the eyes, nose, ears, chest, vagina, etc.

Suppression: Complaints from the suppression of discharges; suppressed sweat.

These suppressions produce a state in the economy that threatens what little order is left. An offensive foot-sweat ceases after getting the feet wet, and is followed by chills and violent complaints.

Silica cures long lasting foot-sweat when the symptoms agree, or complaints that have lasted since the suppression of a foot-sweat. Thick, yellow catarrhal discharges.

They say,

“I have had this discharge so many years,” and when you investigate, you find that there has been some, shock, a cold, that suppressed the foot-sweat and it has not appeared since. Silica will bring back that sweat, cause the catarrhal discharge to cease and in time cure the foot-sweat.

Catarrhal discharges from the nose and other places, indurations, tumors, chronic gastritis, brain- fag, all dating back to the suppression of foot-sweat or otorrheoa, or to the healing up of a fistula.

Head: Chronic sick-headache attended with nausea and even vomiting.

Headache commencing in the back of the head in the morning or towards noon going to the forehead, worse towards night, from noise; better from heat; supra-orbital neuralgias; better from pressure and heat and attended with profuse head-sweat.

Cold, clammy, offensive sweat on the forehead. When a Silica patient exerts himself he sweats on the face, the lower part of the body is dry or nearly so. It requires great exertion to produce general sweat. A striking feature is the sweat about the upper parts of the body and the head.

Headache once a week (Gets., Lyc., Sang., Sulph.). Headache up through the back of the neck and especially to the right side of the head. Resembles Sang. Weight in the occiput as if it would be drawn back, with a rush of blood to the head, like Carbo veg. and Sepia.

Headache worse from cold air. Psor. wears a fur cap even in summer. Magn. mur. is better from wrapping up the head but still wants to be in the air. Rhus sweats on the body; the head is dry. Puls. sweats on one side of the head.

Vertigo to fainting; with nausea; vertigo creeping up the spine into the head.

It is especially necessary for the Silica patient to avoid the cold air, must have the head well wrapped up, especially the part that is painful, and this part perspires copiously.

“Headache worse from mental exertion, excessive study, noise, motion, even jarring from foot-steps, light, stooping, pressing at stool, talking, cold air, touch.”

Skin again: Moist, scaly eruption on the scalp, eczema capitis.

Silica is suited to the phagedenic ulcers of syphilis, eating and spreading ulcers on the scalp. Inflammatory conditions between the scalp and skull, tumors forming, filled with a grumous fluid; as in infancy, it will remove blood tumors.

Cephalatoma neonatorum, enchondroses. Silica is especially of use in the treatment of affections of the cartilages, growths about the joints, about the fingers and toes.

The complaints of Silica are associated with hardened glands, but especially about the neck, the cervical, salivary, and particularly the parotid glands; large, hard parotids. The parotids enlarge from every cold and get hard. (Bar. carb., Calc., Sulph,)

Puls. suits the acute inflammation of the parotid, but Silica is indicated in the more chronic forms due to psora, “scrofulous glands.”

Eyes: Many inflammations and conditions of the eyes.

Ulcers on the cornea; pustules on the lids, falling of the lashes, suppuration of the margins of the lids with burning, stinging and redness. Intense photophobia in all eye complaints.

Scrofulous cases with sore eyes, the most inveterate and chronic cases; suppuration; thin, watery, copious discharge, or bloody, thick and yellow like pus, with ulceration.

Syphilitic iritis.

“Perforating or sloughing ulcer on the cornea.

Spots and cicatrices on the cornea.

Fungus haematodes.

Eyes inflamed from traumatic causes; foreign particles have lodged in the eyes; abscesses; boils around the eyes and lids tarsal tumors, styes.

Affections appearing in the angles of the eyes fistula lachrymalis; stricture of lachrymal duct.”

This is a general survey of the eye affections in Silica.

Ear: There is no deeper remedy than Silica in eradicating the tubercular tendency, when the symptoms agree; most tubercular cases are worse from cold, wet weather; better in cold dry weather.

The most inveterate cases of catarrh of the ear; old offensive, thick, yellow otorrheoa; following scarlet fever; all sorts of abnormalities in hearing, even to deafness.

Roaring in the cars associated with many diseases and hardness of hearing; hissing, roaring like steam; like a train of cars, many times from mechanical cause and other times from a condition of the nerves.

It is commonly the beginning of a dry catarrh of the middle ear; the remedy is especially useful when, in catarrh of the middle ear and Eustachian tube, the deafness goes on for some time and the hearing returns with a snap, due to the escape of the accumulation of fluids somewhere and described by the patient as a snap or report.

Sudden reports in the ear like a cannon, distant noises with return of hearing.

“Otorrheoa, offensive, watery, curdy, with soreness of inner nose and crusts on upper lip, after abuse of Mercury, with caries.”

Caries of bone in any part of the body, but especially of the small bones of the car, nose and mastoid process,

“Scabs behind the cars.”

Rupture of the drum of the ear.

Catarrhal conditions of the internal car and Eustachian tube, with

“feeling of sudden stoppage in the ear, better by gaping or swallowing.”

Especially with ear troubles, there will be associated indurated parotid glands.

Nose: Accumulation of hard crusts in the nose, loss of taste and smell epistaxis, thickening of the mucous membrane; most vicious catarrh with discharge of bone from the nose.

Horrible, foetid ozaena, old syphilitic cases where the nasal bones are destroyed and the nose becomes a flabby bag, is sunken in or ulcerated away, leaving an opening. Silica may cure and an artificial nose be made afterwards.

Hepar competes with Silica in syphilitic nasal catarrhs where the parts are phagedenic; Hepar, Merc. cor. and Ars., are the principal antisyphilitics when there is phagedenic ulceration of the nose. Babies suffer from bloody nasal discharge. This is often Calc. sul.

Face: The aspect of the Silica face is silky, anemic, waxy, tired. Pustular and vesicular eruptions spread over the face, the wings of the nose crack, the lips easily fissure; crusts form on the margin between the mucous membrane and the skin; eruptions and crusts, indurations form under the crusts, they peel off and there is no healing.

These indurations are the same kind of inferior tissue that is found under lupus and epithelioma, a low tissue formation, a low state of eczema that favors infiltration. The small blood-vessels that lead to them become thicker and thicker until they become gristly. There is a tendency to make the soft tissues harder and the hard tissues harder.

In childhood the bones become softer and even necrose or there is an inflammation of the periosteum and a consequent necrosis. Caries of the shaft of the long bones, the head of the bones and the cartilaginous portions; abscesses in cartilages, enchondromata.

Bones break down and form fistulous openings. Necrosis of the jaw, the joints, the hip-joint, the tibia, necrosis of the spine, of the vertebrae, so that there is curvature of the spine, lateral especially. The homoeopathic physicians may treat these affections of the bones with the help of accessory contrivances or supports.

The Silica patient has rough lips, they crack and peel; rhagades. Scaly appearances at the margins of the lips, fissures in the corners of the mouth that indurate. There is often a line of fissure about the margin of the crust. Little crusts like epithelioma form upon the wings of the nose and when picked off leave a raw surface with no tendency to heal.

Crusty formations upon the ears.

The teeth break down, lose their enamel surface; the dentine is made up largely of the silicate of lime and the surface of the tooth becomes rough, loses its shiny appearance and caries sets in.

This often takes place at the margin of the gum; ulcers form on the tip of the fangs. The teeth suffer when it is cold or damp; toothache in wet weather, and the teeth are yellow, decay rapidly, and the gums settle away from. them.

All the neuralgias and toothaches are better in a warm room and from hot drinks. Abscesses about the gums and face, better by warmth. Severe pain in the jaw, rending, tearing at night, better from heat; these pains often end in abscesses about the teeth. Sometimes relieved by pressure unless the part is extremely sore from inflammation.

The tongue takes on inflammation of gouty character; inflammation with threatening abscess, it fills the whole mouth; rending, tearing pains, worse at night and better from heat.

Throat: In the throat and neck we have inflammation and swelling of all the glands, external and internal, all at once or singly.

Quinsy with great pain in the tonsils, one or both; threatening suppuration. Inflammation of the parotid, sublingual and much less frequently the submaxillary and cervical glands; painful, tumid and hard, with pain in the neck, shoulders and head, even in acute inflammations. But then we have the opposite state of affairs. In an old chronic case broken down with suffering the symptoms are worse after a bath, he wants warmth, dread the cold, is always shivering.

But when in the neck there is an acute inflarnmation the very opposite is present; he suffers from flushes of heat, an irregular, flushing fever, cold extremities while the upper part of the body is hot, sweat about the head and neck, sensation of heat and suffocation in a warm room. This will be present in quinsy and abscesses of the glands of the neck, if acute. Silica here shows its relation to Puls. The latter in its chronic manifestations is overburdened with heat, but in an acute trouble is chilly. They are reversed as to their acute and chronic states. Puls, in the beginning is chilly and sweating.

Silica is full of throat symptoms but is seldom indicated in acute forms because its pace is too low; it comes on after there has been a series of colds, such colds as are ameliorated a number of times by Bell. or other acute remedies but still continue to settle in the tonsils and in the glands of the neck.

Silica breaks up the tendency. There is a catarrhal state in the throat that is roused up by every cold into an increased flux, with hoarseness, settling back into the chronic state again; chronic catarrhs of the pharynx.

It competes with Natrum mur. in inveterate sore throat.

Stomach: Silica disturbs the stomach, causes hiccough, nausea and vomiting disturbs the liver.

All these symptoms are connected and are hard to separate. Decided aversion to warm food, desires cold things, wants his tea moderately cold, he is willing to have his food cold, dislikes warm food. Sometimes there is a decided aversion to meat, but if he does take it, he prefers cold, sliced meat. He likes ice cream, ice water, and feels comfortable when it is in the stomach; it is sometimes impossible for him to drink hot fluids, they cause sweat about the face and head and cause hot flushes. (Bar. c.)

Silica is disturbed by the extremes of heat and cold, easily affected, in changes even of a few degrees; he has complaints from being overheated; he gets overheated easily, sweats easily from a slight change in the temperature and comes down with a cold.

Case: A physician waiting on an obstetrical case, had a little difficulty in the last stage and he became overheated; putting on his overcoat and hat he went out on the porch to cool off and was taken down with asthma, violent cough, copious expectoration with gagging and vomiting which lasted him for months.

The acute remedies he had taken only palliated, but a dose of Silica cured him almost as quickly as he was taken down; he could not tolerate a warm room; the acute complaints of Silica are often worse in a warm room and from heat.

Silica has an aggravation from milk. Many times the infant is unable to take any kind of milk and, hence, the physician is driven to prescribe all the foods in the market if he does not know the right remedy. Natrum carb. and Silica are both useful when the mother’s milk causes diarrhoea and vomiting.

The routinist is likely to give such medicines as Aethusa, entirely forgetting Silica. The latter, as well as Natrum carb., has sour vomiting and sour curds in the stool.

“Aversion the mother’s milk and vomiting.”

“Diarrhea from milk.”

Put these two together.

Although the patient has an aversion to hot things and desires to eat cold things, yet in chest complaints cold water, ice cream and cold, things in general, increase the cough to gagging, and then the retching is dreadful; violent, retching, gagging cough. Retching from an endeavor to expectorate is usually controlled by Carbo veg., but Silica his it.

“Water brash, with chilliness, with brown tongue; nausea and vomiting of what is drunk, worse in the morning; water tastes bad; vomits after drinking.”

The Silica stomach is weak, in a do-nothing state; old dyspeptics that have been vomiting a long time, especially those who have an, aversion to hot food, who cannot take milk, are averse to meat, where, the mental and bodily symptoms agree.

Silica was one of the greatest remedies for the chronic diarrhoea in the soldiers of our Civil War. It cured a fair percentage of those sick from sleeping on damp ground, eating all sorts of food until the stomach and bowels were prostrated, from long marches, from going into the South from the cold North, from becoming overheated. It is like Sulphur in these symptoms.

Silica has some pain in the stomach and bowels, but there is more soreness to pressure; colic and flatulence and tenderness to pressure; a chronic soreness in the stomach and if it goes on too long, a tubercular state comes on.

Abdomen: Abdominal pain relieved by heat; distension of the bowels with flatulence and rumbling.

Enlarged abdomen in children and adults (Bar. c.); tightness across the abdomen. Disturbed by the pressure of the clothes and worse after eating; the decided feature is the amelioration from heat.

Constipation from inability of the rectum to expel the faeces. It is seldom that the stool lies in the rectum without urging like Alumina; there is much urging to stool but inability to expel. The stool may be in small balls or large and soft or large and hard, but there is much straining and sweating about the head and great suffering while straining; the rectum becomes impacted, he strains until he is weak and exhausted, the stool slips back; and he gives up in despair.

The only way he can relieve himself is by some mechanical method. Great straining at stool belongs to many remedies, but especially to Alumina, Alumen, China, Natr. mur., Nux vom., Nux mosch., and Silica.

Silica has removed tape-worm, when the symptoms agree(Calc., Sulf.)

It has also cured fistulous openings. Patients who have a tendency to phthisis are subject to abscesses about the region of the rectum, that break inside or out and form complete or incomplete openings.

These seem to take the place of what would otherwise come, and if healed by operation or other external means, the tendency is to end in chest trouble, either in form of a fixed catarrh or tubercular infiltrations.

Silica is one of the remedies that turns the constitution into order and in one to five years the opening ceases to be necessary and it will heal. Surgeons heal it up at once, and for a time the patient is comfortable, but in a few years he breaks down.

Caust., Berb., Calc. c., Calc. phos., Graph., Sulph., etc., are suitable; in such cases. Silica here follows Thuja well.

Urinary: Suppurative conditions in the urinary tract, catarrh of the mucous membranes; old inveterate catarrh of the bladder with pus and blood in the urine; copious, stringy, deposits in the urine.

Prostatitis, suppuration, thick, fetid pus from the urethra. Gonorrhea, pus, or pus like discharge from the urethra, slight, shreddy discharge, bloody, purulent discharge. It is sometimes thick, or is curdy; this is from any mucous membrane.

Men: Abscesses along the penis, in the perineum, prostate gland, testes.

Chronic inflammation and induration of the testes with much pain; testes feel as if squeezed, sensitive, painful. Hydrocele in boys or adults.

In the male, impotence, weakness of the genitals after coition, easily exhausted, lacks power; exhausted if he has coition with anything like ordinary frequency; it takes him a week or ten days to rest up (Agar.).

Much sweating of the genitals with exhaustion, tired out in the spine, weak back. Involuntary discharge of urine at night; enuresis in little boys and girls.

Women: In women a prostrated condition of the sexual functions.

Serous cysts in the vagina, fistulous openings and abscesses about the vulva, which heal with hard nodules or do not heal at all; little oozing fistulae, offensive, cheesy discharge. They heal in little nodules and then break out again in the same nidus. Women who are subject to these abscesses.

Bloody discharge between the periods. In Silica there is very easy flow of blood from the uterus; a hemorrhagic flow comes on before the menses from excitement, and especially when nursing; when the child is put to the breast a flow of blood starts.

Notice the distinction between Calc. and Silica. Calc. has a tendency to flow during lactation, but not when the child is put to the breast.

Silica cures hydrosalpinx and pyosalpinx, with copious, watery discharge from the uterus. Sometimes a woman has a lump on one or the other side of the uterus, which steadily increases and all at once there is a flooding of watery, bloody, purulent fluid and the lump disappears, soon to fill up again and empty in the same way in a gushing flow.

Such are the manifestations of hydrosalpinx and pyosalpinx. Entire absence of the menses for months; amenorrhoea.

Serous, cysts in the vagina as large as a pea or an orange, projecting from the vagina or projecting upwards and flattened out in conformation with it. Many little cysts like hickory-nuts grouped together. Rhod. and Silica have cured these even when there is a paucity of other symptoms.

“Leucorrhea, profuse, acrid, corroding, milky, preceded by cutting around the navel, causing biting pain, especially after acrid food; during urination; in gushes; with cancer of the uterus. Hard lumps in the mammæ.”

Threatened abscesses of the breasts. If the remedy is given in time, it will abort the entire trouble. Where the remedy has come too late and suppuration is inevitable, Silica comes in for its share. There may be throbbing, tenderness, and weight, yet the remedy controls the pain, hastens the conclusion, and the opening comes naturally, discharges little and closes at once. As sure as an anodyne is given, a hot poultice applied, you will fail with your remedies.

There is too much blood in the part, and the application of a poultice increases the trouble; it causes an increased determination of blood to the part, and if suppuration takes place it causes more breaking down of tissue. Instead of a thimbleful of pus you will have cupfuls for days and half of the gland is destroyed

Women who are so weak they tend to abort, or no conception takes place. It would seem if the organs were tired out and unable to perform their functions.

The infant has all sorts of troubles. It grows up sickly; cannot tolerate its mother’s milk or indeed any kind of food; vomiting and diarrhoea. A healthy child will digest even unwholesome milk.

Chest: The Silica cough is a dangerous one; the remedy suits the early stage of phthisis, when the lung is not extensively involved; it suits cough of catarrhal character when the symptoms agree.

If there is small abscess in the lung with no tendency to heal, it brings about repair, causes contraction of its walls. Inveterate cases of catarrh of the chest with asthmatic wheezing, overexertion. After violent exertion and overheating, gets in a draft, or takes cold from a bath, becomes chilled.

Humid asthma, coarse rattling, the chest seems filled with mucus, seems as if he would suffocate. Especially the asthma of old sycotics, or in children of sycotic parents. It competes with Nat. sul. in such cases. The patient is pale, waxy, anaemic, with great prostration and thirst.

Asthmatic attacks from suppressed gonorrhoea, with liability to develop complaints from over-exertion and over-heating, as in most sycotics.

Dry, teasing cough with hoarseness, threatening tuberculosis of the larynx, peculiar cracked voice from thickening of the laryngeal mucous membrane or tubercular involvement; soreness of the chest threatening miliary tuberculosis, with aggravation from cold and amelioration from warm drinks.

Pulmonary affections in stone-cutters. The fine dust causes chronic irritation. Silica establishes a suppuration and throws off these particles of stone.

Expectoration profuse, foetid, green, purulent; only during the day viscid, milky, acrid-mucus, at times pale, frothy blood.

Chronic tendency for colds to settle in the chest and bring on asthmatic symptoms. Chronic bronchitis; inflammation of the lungs with suppuration. Silica especially suits the later stages of pneumonia and the old, chronic complaints following pneumonia.

Slow recovery after pneumonia (Lyc., Sulph., Phos., Sil., Calc.). Flushes, rattling in the chest. Flushes in the face during the day (Sulph., Sep., Lach.), rattling like Ant. tart., flushes like Sulph. and Lyc.

Phthisis; thick, yellow, green, foetid sputa, more pronounced coldness than Calc., and head sweat, pains in the lungs, sore lungs, stitches.

In the extremities we have inflammation of the periosteum. Corns (Ant. cr., Graph.). Ingrowing toe-nails. Rheumatism of the soles of the feet. Cannot walk (Ant. cr., Med., Ruta, Sil.). Begins to sweat as soon as he falls asleep (Puls., Con.).

Epilepsy; aura in the solar plexus creeping into the chest and stomach.

Complementary to Calc., Puls., and Thuja.

Spigelia Anthelmintica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 165 of 180
Source pages 2916–2925 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Pains: Spigelia is especially known by its pains.

It is indicated in persons who are debilitated from taking cold and who have become rheumatic, run down, victims of pain.

Hardly a nerve in the body escapes; shooting, burning, tearing, neuralgic pains; they are most marked about the eyes and jaws, neck, face, teeth, shoulders, burning like hot needles through the face and neck in any direction, stitching, tearing, worse from motion, from doing anything, even thinking, mental exertion, worse from eating.

Pains in the neck and shoulders are better from heat; those about the eyes are better from cold. Shooting, tearing pains in the extremities like hot wires.

Sometimes the pains are worse from lying down, but most commonly better from keeping still; worse from light, eating, motion, jarring; so sore in the painful region that any gentle exercise like going up or down stairs, or riding in a carriage that jar, makes the pain unbearable.

The Spigelia patient is sensitive to cold, to atmospheric changes, he is a rheumatic patient, but the nerves a-re attacked by neuralgia.

Eyes: Violent pains about the eyes.

Routine practice limits the use of the remedy to this region. Worse from hard pressure though sometimes better from it, if gentle and prolonged, firm pressure, but any movement of the pressing hand aggravates. The part is turgesced and inflamed. Eyes red and engorged.

Chest: Neuralgic affections of the muscles of the chest.

Many of the Spigelia pains in the chest are attributed to the heart, but there is intercostal neuralgia; tearing pains shooting into the shoulders and neck, especially the left side and down the arm. Pains shooting hither and thither.

Irregularity of the heart. Painful complaints associated with valvular troubles, especially growing out of rheumatism. Pericarditis and endocarditis of rheumatic character. Thrusting pains in the chest like a knife, in the eye like a knife.

Mind: This remedy needs further proving, its mental symptoms are scarcely known.

“Weak memory; disinclination to work; restless and anxious, solicitude about the future; gloomy, suicidal mood; afraid of pointed things, pins, etc.; easily irritated or offended.”

This is all that is thought worthy of admission into the Guiding Symptoms, showing that the mental state has not been well brought out.

Many complaints are manifested in the morning; tired in the morning and full of tearing pains.

Old anemic subjects where there has been a transfer of the complaints to the nerves; broken down, pallid, nervous, with neuralgia, palpitation, irregular pulse. Vertigo on rising; gets up with violent pains and dizziness. So nervous that she must “fly,” full of excitement, cannot keep still, cannot keep control of herself.

Head: Pulsating and stitching in the head; sometimes better lying with the head high; worse from stooping, motion, and from noise.

Sometimes better from washing in cold water when the pain is about the eyes and head, but worse after washing; better while the cold water is applied. With these headaches and neuralgias there is stiff neck and shoulders, an apparent stiffness in that he cannot move on account of pain.

He sits in a chair as if transfixed, is aggravated from noise, light, from seeing things move in the room, which he must follow with his eyes.

“Fine burning, tearing pains in the brain.”

It seems to be in the brain, but is more likely in the nerves of the scalp.

“Violent pain in the left parietal bone on motion or walking or making a misstep; toward evening – violent pressure and pressing outward in the forehead, worse from stooping, worse from pressure with the hand; tensive tearing pain in the forehead, especially beneath the frontal eminence, extending towards orbits.”

Notice the intensity of the pains. Burrowing, tearing pain in the occiput, in the left side of the vertex and forehead, worse from motion, from loud noise, and when he speaks loudly or even on opening the mouth slightly; better when lying down.

Pressive pain in the right side of the forehead, involving the right eye, in the morning in bed, but still more after rising; pain deeply seated, unaffected by pressure, very acute on motion, on suddenly turning the head, the brain seemed to be loose; worse from every joy, step, or straining at stool.

When moving the muscles of the face, there is a sensation as if the head would burst. Sensation as if a band were about the head. Neuralgic pain settles in and above the left eye, or below it, from cold in damp, rainy weather; hyperesthesia of the filaments of the fifth pair.

On the pain first beginning there is not so much hyperesthesia, but as it goes on this increases and the eye becomes congested. I have seen the pains so severe that they produced perfect prostration, cold sweat, vomiting.

The Hepar patient is so sensitive to pain that he becomes unconscious; faints with the pain. Cham. feels pain with such intensity that he gives way to violent frenzy, irritability, and outbursts of anger.

The Spigelia patient suffers intensely and the pain leaves its mark, the part becomes red and inflamed and sensitive. The head pains are worse from warmth; better temporarily from cold; the pains in other regions are the reverse.

The Phos. head and stomach symptoms are better from cold; the chest and body are better from warmth. In Ars. the head is often better by washing in cold water, while the patient himself is sensitive to the cold and wants warmth in the rest of his complaints.

Eyes again: Spigelia is full of visual symptoms; visual symptoms bring on complaints; at times he can do nothing but look straight ahead, for he has vertigo even when there is no pain, from looking downwards, every, thing goes round in a whirl.

Such a state is common to many people when they look down from a height, but Spigelia has it from looking down along his nose, so he sits and looks straight ahead.

Esophoria; exophoria disturbances in accommodation all sorts of tiny spasmodic conditions it is most difficult to fit glasses no settled focus, no fixed vision. Spigelia has from a mere neuralgic state what Ruta has from eye strain. Latent errors of vision.

Eyes that are always changing need a remedy. Stabbing pains in and around the eye, often radiating in every direction from one point. Eye-ball sensitive to touch. Eyes worse when thinking about them. Worse at night. Intolerable, pressing pain, worse on turning the eye, dizzy on attempting to move the eyes, must turn the whole head to see.

Pain radiates to the frontal sinuses and head. Sensation as if the eye were too large for its orbit. I remember a patient who had been traveling about from oculist to oculist, who had many visual troubles and no glasses would suit.

She had one sharp, stinging pain over the left eye day and night and she could only sleep when worn out. Lac fel. cured. Constant, fine, stinging pain over left eye was brought out by the provers of cat’s milk.

This medicine has cured a pterygium, probably a false pterygium, that came from violent neuralgia, prolonged and lasting for months.

Chest: Stitching pains in the chest, worse from the least movement, breathing, sensation of tearing in the chest; trembling feeling in the chest when moving the arms or from any movement.

Can lie only on the right side with the head high. Rheumatic troubles especially in the left side of the chest. Feeling as if the heart were compressed with a hand. Purring feeling over the region of the heart, wave-like motion not synchronous with the pulse.

Waving palpitation not synchronous with the pulse. Trembling of the carotids. Acute pericarditis with anxiety and weight in the praecordium. These troubles following a rheumatic attack, at its close or many months after the fever has subsided. Spigelia is seldom indicated in rheumatism of the heart in phlegmatic persons who do not feel intensely.

When a rheumatic affection attacks the venous side of the heart, and there is a sense of stuffiness, of fullness through the whole body, limbs swollen, but do not pit on pressure, face mottled, it is a serious case and may end in Bright’s disease and death.

Editorial notes

• “towards orbitis” corrected to “towards orbits” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Spongia Tosta
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 166 of 180
Source pages 2926–2936 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Mind: The mental symptoms of Spongia show that it is a heart remedy.

When a remedy produces the anxiety, fear, and dyspnoea found in Spongia, it will most likely turn out to be a cardiac remedy, unless these conditions are connected with irritation and inflammatory diseases of the brain.

In this drug we find without any cerebral symptoms, marked anxiety, fear of death, and suffocation, associated with palpitation and uneasiness in the region of the heart. It is especially related to cases where there is pain and a sense of stuffiness and fullness in the cardiac region, in the chest, with dyspnoea, anxiety, fear of death, feat, of the future, fear that something dreadful is going to happen.

Wakens at night in great fear and it is some time before he can rationalize his surroundings (Aesc., Lyc., Samb., Lach., Phos., and Carbo veg.).

Spongia is closely related to Aconite, which also excites the heart, brings on anxiety, fear, and restlessness, fear of death, predicts the hour of death, but this is associated with a marked febrile excitement. Spongia has febrile excitement in a minimum degree.

It is much deeper in its action than Aconite. Its cardiac diseases tend to develop slowly, with actual tissue changes, enlargement of the heart, it takes on a steady growth and the valves become changed, do not fit, hence, there are blowing and whizzing sounds, regurgitation with the mental symptoms. The two are similar in croup, but Spongia is deeper, slower in onset, taking several days for its development.

Cough: Aconite from exposure to a dry cold wind takes a cold to-day and, of course, comes down with croup to night in the first sleep. Before midnight has a dry spasmodic cough; hoarse cough; Spongia has taken a cold yesterday or the day before.

First there is roughness and dryness of the mucous membranes, sneezing. Both remedies have croup before midnight with dry, hoarse, barking cough, sawing respiration and dry air passages.

They are so similar that when Aconite only partially controls the condition and it returns the next night, or lasts on beyond midnight, Spongia becomes its natural follower. Spongia comes in because it was probably the remedy in the beginning.

Cases that grow worse each succeeding night, hoarse barking and crowing before midnight, though it also has a croup after midnight. It is a deep-acting remedy though its complaints sometimes come on suddenly.

Hepar is worse at night and in the morning. And when Aconite has apparently controlled, but the croup returns the next morning, Hepar comes in. Or if it comes on again the next evening with rattling Hepar will also be suitable.

Dry, with no rattling is Spongia. If the child wants to be covered or says that it is chilly, Hepar. If it says the room is too warm and kicks the covers off, it needs Calc. sul.

The Spongia patient is worse from a warm room, from heat. Wants to be cool like Iodine, but is better from warm drinks, like Ars., Nux, Lyc.

Glands: The tendency to affect the glands is striking.

As a matter of fact, all the glands are affected; they gradually enlarge and become increasingly hard. Glands that have undergone inflammation and, are increased in size become hard, or they take on hypertrophy.

Hypertrophy of the heart (Kalmia, Sepia, Naja). Spongia has cured endocarditis, cardiac croup and many other inflammatory diseases of the heart resulting from rheumatism. Hypertrophy of the thyroid, goitre, when the heart is affected and the eyes protruding.

Cervical glands enlarged; inveterate cases of enlarged testes; orchitis from a suppressed gonorrhea, a cold or other causes; gradually increasing hardness.

Chest: The whole respiratory apparatus is acted upon; cardiac dyspnoea and the most severe forms of asthma.

Dryness of the air passages with whistling and wheezing, seldom rattling, must sit up and bend forward; at times after great dyspnoea, white, tough mucus forms in the air passages, difficult to expectorate; it comes up and often has to be swallowed (Arn., Caust., Lach., Kali c., Kali s., Nux mos., Sep., Staph.)

Dyspnoea worse lying down.

Head and face: The modality is common to its other complaints; violent, basilar headache forces him to sit up in bed and keep still. Holding the head in the upright position relieves the dull pressure in the occiput.

There are many headaches. In the occiput, in the forehead, congestive headaches, but most of them are associated with goitre, cardiac affections and asthma; they are due, probably, to sluggish circulation in the brain.

Face distressed in croup; anxious; livid; pale and bloated; blue, pale with sunken eyes; red with anxious expression; alternating red and pale; cold sweat.

These symptoms are the natural effects of difficult breathing and are, therefore, not essential in the selection of a remedy. As primary symptoms, they would probably indicate Ars., but when due to cardiac difficulties, they are unimportant.

“Sore throat worse after eating sweet things.

Thyroid gland swollen even with the chin; at night, suffocating spells, barking cough, with stinging in the throat and soreness in the abdomen.”

Throat: Enlargement of the tonsils. Difficult swallowing.

Spongia is the remedy when dyspnoea and cough are relieved by warm food; may be better from warm drinks.

Laryngeal troubles with great hoarseness, in individuals tending towards phthisis, with tubercular heredity, cachectic aspect, weak lungs, but no deposit of tubercle. But all at once hoarseness sets in.

There is a tendency for the larynx to become involved in phthisical patients that need Spongia. This patient takes an acute cold and it settles in the larynx with hoarseness. Look out for that patient, for there is a tendency for tubercles to deposit where there is inflammation, and the infiltration instead of being fibrinous may become tubercular. Tendency for the larynx to be first involved in phthisical patients.

In Spongia do not look for the exsudative, but the infiltrative form of croup. Hoarseness with loss of voice, great dryness of the larynx from a cold; coryza, sneezing, the whole chest rings, is as dry as a horn; voice hissing, croupy, nose dry.

There is very little accumulation of mucus, but at a late date ulceration begins and then there may be a copious expectoration of mucus. In proportion to the extent of rattling, this remedy is decreasingly indicated. Hepar has the coarse rattling with much mucus.

At times an adult takes cold and rawness of the larynx and trachea is the result. On going to bed she is taken with a spasmodic constriction of the larynx.

Laryngismus stridulous is commonly found in women. Ign., Gels., Lauroc. and Spongia. Ign. and Gels. will cure eight out of ten cases.

The larynx is sensitive to touch in croup, etc., like Phos.

Dry, spasmodic cough, troublesome cough; cold things taken into the stomach aggravate. (Veratr. is better from cold water, but the cough is worse.) If the room becomes too warm, there is a dry, tickling, teasing, croupy spasmodic cough.

In cardiac and asthmatic troubles it resembles Lach., in the rousing up from sleep in suffocation; after the sleep the dyspnoea is worse.

The Phos. dyspnoea is often increased after sleeping, with suffocation. Lach. has it in a marked degree; in phthisis when the patient is about to die, there is sweat on going to sleep; dyspnoea on going to sleep and on waking. Lach. palliates and must be repeated.

Cardiac affections accompanied with thick, green or yellow expectoration like pus and dyspnoea on falling to sleep so that he must keep awake as long as he can, fear of sleep in advanced chest troubles. Grindelia robusta will palliate such a case and if the condition is only catarrhal and not tuberculous, it will cure.

Study especially the cardiac symptoms.

“The symptoms of circulation are worse; from mental lassitude, from coughing, from lying on the right side, before menses, after lying down, sitting bent forward, from smoking, from going up stairs.

Awakens in fright and feels as if suffocating.

Falling asleep early at night, suffocation awakens.”

I have mentioned these symptoms, but read them for emphasis.

Ebullitions, distended veins; dropsy in cavities of the body. Especially suits young persons of tubercular parents, who remain weak, are pallid and do not thrive. Tubercular diathesis.

Itching but no eruption. Seems always ready for an eruption to appear. Has only simplest herpetic eruptions. Itching all over and no visible eruption.

In acute endocarditis, the principal remedies are Spongia, Abrot., Sepia, and Kalmia. Naja in valvular diseases.

Squilla
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 167 of 180
Source pages 2937–2940 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Squilla was given in the olden times by the old school in all lung, bronchial, and kidney affections; pneumonia, asthma, scanty urine and dropsical affections.

Cough: Has a loose morning cough and a dry evening cough (Alum., Carbo veg., Phos. ac., Sep., Stram., Puls., Squilla).

Puls. and Squil, being strong here, but Squil. has a hard cough; coughs, gags, sneezes; urine escapes and quite frequently faeces; the patient coughs until be is covered with sweat; he gags and coughs and finally succeeds in raising two or three little lumps of white, tenacious mucus; it is a spasmodic cough caused by mucus in the trachea or a tickling, creeping sensation in the chest.

The loose morning cough is worse than the dry evening cough. Patient chilly cannot have the least draft; wants plenty of clothing and is very sensitive to cold; not so in Puls. Urine is generally copious, watery, colorless.

About 11 A.M. to 12 or 1 P.M. there is the most dyspnoea from filling up of the chest with mucus; this same feeling returns during the hour, but it is from cardiac weakness.

Copious, colorless urine is one of its important symptoms and resembles Ign., but Squil. is not a hysterical patient like Ign.

Quite similar to Can. Ind. or Gels. in brain affections, but Squil. has not many brain affections nor many febrile symptoms. Phos. has inflammation of the brain and when the dangerous turn comes this increase of urine is a bad sign.

Puls, tearful, then copious urine. Squil. copious colorless urine in diabetes; when this seems to disappear and chest symptoms appear, these troubles disappear and kidney troubles appear, these would disappear and dropsy comes up; when the urine would get copious again these dropsical symptoms would disappear and Squil. acts a long time.

There is a copious, colorless flow from the nose, more especially in the morning; the cough is similar to Tart. emet.

Squil. in its internal nature is quite like Thuja in regard to its spurting urine and its spasmodic cough; with the escape of urine there is more or less of escape of faeces of a dark brown or black fluid in frothy bubbles, very offensive, painless, involuntary.

Respiration difficult with stitches in the chest when breathing and coughing. Great dyspnoea, the child cannot drink; seizes the cup eagerly, but can drink only in sips; frequently obliged to take a deep breath which provokes a cough; shortness of breath on every exertion.

Chest: Pains in the chest aggravated in the morning. Dull rheumatic pains aggravated when exercising; ameliorated while at rest. Evening dry cough with sweetish expectoration. Great heat in the body. Follows well after Bry. Absolute lack of sweat is a characteristic.

Dry cough at 11 P.M. worse from cold water and cold air (Rumex). Bell. has cough at 11 P.M. worse from uncovering, red face, congestion in head. Lach. soon after going to sleep, which may be 11 P.M.

Nasal discharge acrid, corroding, worse in the morning; violent sneezing. Stool dark brown or black.

Seldom much cough during day.

Pneumonia: Stitches when inhaling, jerking pains; always right side; catarrh of the chest and threatened pneumonia after hemorrhage from the lungs. Soreness in the chest, worse from motion. Bry. will often palliate and the case will go into Squilla.

Stannum Metallicum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 168 of 180
Source pages 2941–2950 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Stannum is especially suited to persons who have long been growing feeble.

This is so striking that it may be said that some deep seated constitutional state must be present. There is a history of increasing weakness, cachexia, catarrhal conditions, and neuralgia dating back over years. There is sensitiveness to pain and an increasing aversion to doing anything, aversion to business in a man, and in a woman, to going about her housework; always tired, all work becomes irksome.

The countenance becomes increasingly sallow, even to a waxy, cachectic aspect. Once who has been growing weaker and develops neuralgia of the face, eyes, stomach, and intestines; not the shooting, tearing pains often described, but a pain beginning gradually, increasing steadily and then diminishing gradually.

Pains: The pain sometimes begins with sunrise, increases until noon and gradually diminishes, and ceases with sunset. On the other hand, it may begin at any time, as often at 10 A.M. and increasing for ten or twenty minutes, then gradually diminishing, but especially worse at noon.

Cactus has a sun headaches, Kalmia has a similar headache, not so regularly increasing and diminishing, but especially worse at noon. Cactus has a sun headache. Natrum mur. has never been known to cause it, but has cured it especially when beginning at 10 A.M. and worse from 2 to 3 P- m. Sang. headache coming and going with the sun.

The phthisical tendency of Stannum is closely allied to the neuralgias. If these patients settle down into a neuralgic constitution, the deposit of tubercles is postponed, but most of them then seek palliation with the inevitable result of hastening the end. If the Stannum neuralgia is suppressed, we will see phthisis making its appearance, particularly phthisis pituitosa.

Nature seems to be able to throw off effects through mucous discharges. If the neuralgia is not permitted to, have sway the patient becomes oversensitive to cold, takes cold easily. When let alone every cold settled in the nerves and every draft caused neuralgias about the eyes, sensitive to every change in the weather, the hydrogenoid constitution of Grauvogl.

But when palliated in any way by Quinine and inappropriate homoeopathic remedies that have the tendency to, catch cold in the chest like Phos., he after a while does not get over his cold, but there is a continuous catarrh of the chest, and later he will die of miliary tuberculosis. Stannum is useful in warding off phthisis, and is a wonderful palliative in that disease.

The pain has been likened to the pulling of a string, gradually increasing and gradually letting up. The Puls. pain is somewhat similar in its first half; it gradually becomes intense, but suddenly lets up with a snap; comes gradually and stops suddenly.

Remember what is said about the Bell. pain. It comes suddenly and reaches its intensity at once, where it may remain for hours, but ceases suddenly.

The Stannum pain is at times so severe that there is a throbbing pulsating intermingled with it, and the mind seems stunned.

“Headache every morning, over one or the other eye, mostly the left, gradually extending over the whole forehead and increasing and decreasing gradually, often with vomiting.”

“Violent, glowing, beating pain.” It is sometimes attended with burning.

“Felt as if the head would burst with inward blows.

Neuralgia of the left eye gradually increasing from 10 A.M. to noon, then gradually decreasing, with lachrymation during pain.

Intermittent supra-orbital neuralgia from 10 A.M. to 3 or 4 P.M., gradually increasing and attaining its acme, and then again gradually decreasing, after the abuse of quinine.”

This is when the body is weak, with sallow countenance and tendency to phthisis, full of pain, and the earlier history shows that instead of taking cold in the chest or nose, as others take cold, every cold settles in the nerves.

Finally he begins to take cold in the chest, with dyspnoea, violent, racking cough, gagging, retching, vomiting, and the most intense sufferings.

Copious, thick, yellow-green, bloody expectoration, which tastes sweetish (Phos.). Retching when coughing is marked; thick, white, yellow or green tenacious mucus. Cannot walk, cannot do anything without cough.

Always tired; it is an effort to work. Wakens in the morning with the chest filled with mucus, and coughs and expectorates, and yet some remains; he gags, retches and vomits, and it strings out of the mouth tasting sweetish, sometimes salty or sour.

Voice: This great weakness is manifested in the voice; hoarseness, loss of voice; the vocal cords will not respond; a paralytic weakness. Talking makes him feel weak, especially in the chest.

“Hoarseness, weakness, emptiness in the chest on beginning to sing, so that she was constantly obliged to stop and take a deep breath; at times a few expulsive coughs removed the hoarseness for a few minutes.

Rawness in the larynx.”

Rawness in the trachea and smarting all the way down when coughing. Irritation to cough, as from mucus in the trachea; or breathing, with cough either loose or dry, felt more while sitting bent over than when walking.

“Accumulation of great quantities of mucus in the trachea, easily thrown off by coughing.

Oppressed breathing from ascending, from the slightest movement when lying down, in the evening, from coughing.”

“Cough in fatiguing paroxysms; epigastric region painful as if beaten; violent, shattering, deep, short, from time to time, as from weakened chest, with a hoarse.

Weak sound.

Cough caused by talking, singing, laughing, lying on the side and from drinking anything warm.”

“Sputa like white of egg; yellow, green pus; sweetish, putrid, sour or saltish during day.

Chest so weak that he cannot talk; empty feeling in the chest,”

This remedy is frequently indicated in cases where the routinist would prescribe Bry., etc., in low potencies to loosen the cough. Stannum is not dangerous in phthisis, and will palliate the case if it is incurable.

It will not rouse up the whole economy like Silica, but there may be an aggravation of the nervous symptoms; if there is anything to build on it will cause the patient to rally. If it brings back his old neuralgic pains, and you know he has not a long time to live, and seems to suffer much, Puls. is the natural antidote.

When a loose, easy cough is turned into one that is violent, dry and racking under Stannum, and seems to be inclined to be prolonged, Puls. will restore the loose cough. This is not a good action of the remedy; in incurable cases you can get the best results by not going too high.

Women: Another feature is seen in women.

If you ever meet with a case who has suffered with violent neuralgia and she says since the obliteration of these pains she has had a copious, thick yellow, green leucorrhoea, think of Stannum. There is great weakness, which seems to proceed from the chest. The leucorrhoea has saved her from consumption.

Menses too early and too profuse; bearing down in the uterine region; prolapsus uteri and vaginae.

Paralytic symptoms; writers’ cramp; women cannot let go of the broom (Dros. cures most cases).

“Constipation; stools hard, dry, knotty, or insufficient and green.”

Inactive rectum, i. e., a paralytic state; even though there is much urging there is inability to pass the stool, which at times is soft. Colic better from pressure, lying on the stomach (Coloc., Cupr.); worse from motion; better from bending double.

“Very much exhausted from talking or reading aloud.

Great lassitude from walking; weariness of the whole body, especially when ascending stairs great sense of weakness in larynx and chest, thence all over the body trembling worse from slow exercise.”