Category: Kent Materia Medica

Laurocerasus
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 109 of 180
Source pages 2111–2116 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The many strange constitutional symptoms indicate feeble circulation and weak heart.

Great general coldness, that is not ameliorated by external warmth. It is like wrapping up a dead man. Yet if he approaches a warm stove nausea comes on. If he is in a warm room the sweat breaks out on the forehead and the forehead is cold; but if he moves about slowly in the open air the sweat ceases and the forehead warms up.

Want of animal heat. Want of reaction. Remedies act only as palliatives, act only as short acting remedies in constitutional disease, or the symptoms partially subside but the patient does not react. The patient does not convalesce.

It often cures the heart failure due to Digitalis in Old School hands, or when convalescence is attended by weak heart if there is cold skin and external heat is objectionable. It should be compared with Camph., Am. c. and Secale.

A prolonged fainting spell; twitching of the limbs, gasping for breath. Complaints after deep sorrow or fright. Chorea after every excitement. Spells of profound sleep with snoring or stertorous breathing.

In the spells of suffocation, he must lie down (Psorinum) but the dry hacking cough comes on as soon he lies down.

Weakness of body and mind. Fainting. Motionless. Apprehensiveness.

Vertigo in the open air; he must lie down.

Coldness of the forehead in a warm room, ameliorated in the open air.

Stupefying pains in the head, with pulsation.

Stitching pains in the head.

Periodical paroxysms of aching pain under the frontal bone.

Sensation as if brain fell forward on stooping.

Tension in the brain. Headache is sometimes ameliorated by eating. The scalp itches.

Dim vision. Veil before the eyes. Objects larger.

The face is blue, sunken, bloated, and expressionless; jaundiced yellow spot.

Formication of the face. Lockjaw.

Mouth and tongue dry. The tongue is dry, cold and numb; stiff and swollen.

Spasmodic contraction of throat and oesophagus; drink rolls audibly down the oesophagus and through the intestines.

Emptiness in stomach after eating (Dig.) as if he were still hungry.

Violent thirst. Loathing of food. Nausea on coming near a warm stove. Vomiting of food with the cough.

Eructations, tasting like bitter almonds. Violent pain in stomach, with cold skin.

Coldness in stomach and abdomen. Contractions like cramps in stomach and cutting in abdomen. Pain in liver as though an abscess were forming. Stitching pain in liver on pressure. Rumbling in bowels.

Diarrhoea, with green mucus, and green watery stools, with tenesmus.

Constipation, with difficult stool. It cures cholera infantum with green watery stools when drinks gurgle down the oesophagus and there is general coldness, blueness, and fainting spells.

The whole urinary apparatus is in a paralytic state. Suppression of urine or retention, or urine passed in a very feeble stream. Involuntary urination. Pain, in stomach when passing urine. These urinary symptoms sometimes come with palpitation and suffocation, and fainting spells, or other cardiac symptoms and Laurocerasus must be consulted.

Menses too frequent, profuse, thin, with tearing in vertex at night. Uterine hemorrhage, with flow dark and clotted during climaxis. Fainting spells with coldness during menses. Pain in sacrum during menses.

Heart patients that often suffer much from constriction of the larynx are helped by this remedy. Laryngismus stridulus.

Difficult breathing. Suffocation, oppression of chest, gasping in heart complaints, ameliorated by lying down. Clutching at the heart and palpitation. It has cured mitral regurgitation many times,

Short, hacking, dry, nervous cough. Cardiac cough.

Whooping-cough in puny children when there is a history of feeble heart, blue cold skin, and laryngeal spasm. Paralytic chest symptoms.

Irregular action of the heart, slow pulse, fluttering heart. Sitting up causes gasping; lying ameliorates the oppression. Feeble pulse, cold blue surface, twitching of muscles of face and limbs. Slight exertion aggravates all the symptoms. Cyanosis neonatorum.

Burning in chest on inspiration.

The veins of the hands are distended. Cold clammy feet and legs. Painless paralysis of limbs. Stinging and tearing in limbs. Feet numb from lying with limbs crossed.

Ledum Palustre
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 110 of 180
Source pages 2117–2130 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Surgeon: This remedy comes up well after the study of Lachesis, for we find in the pathogenesis many features similar to those in Lachesis.

It has the mottled aspect and the same puffed and bloated appearance of the face. It is antidotal to Lachesis, to the poison of insects, to the poison of Apis and to animal poisons.

Ledum is a remedy for the surgeon, and is closely associated in traumatism with Arnica and Hypericum. The symptoms very much resemble such as follow certain kinds of injury, for instance an injury from stepping on tacks, from puncturing with needles, wounds that bleed scantily but are followed by pain, puffiness and coldness of the part.

Causation: Stepping on a nail and it pierces the sole of the foot or the heel, or he receives such a wound in the palm of the hand from a splinter, or he runs a splinter under the nail.

If, after such punctured wounds, the part becomes cold and then pale, paralyzed and mottled think of Ledum. The horse sometimes steps on a nail. If that nail goes through and strikes the margin of the coffin bone, tetanus will follow. It is known to be almost sure death. Put Ledum on the tongue of that horse and there will not be any trouble, for it prevents such conditions.

When tetanus comes on from punctured wounds in the palms or soles, or in other parts, think of Hypericum, or when you have a punctured wound to treat, give Ledum at once and you will prevent tetanus.

When the finger nails have been torn, or the nerves in sentient parts like the ends of the fingers have been torn and lacerated, Hypericum becomes the remedy.

For bruising of various parts, and when the patient feels as if braised all over, no matter how extensively he is bruised, Arnica is generally the remedy.

It may be said, for punctured wounds study Ledum; for lacerated wounds of sentient nerves, study Hypericum; for bruises, study Arnica; for open lacerations and cuts, study Calendula.

The conditions that come from the external, ought to be remedied to a great extent by external means. A solution of Calendula is excellent in conditions that come from the external, and it should be applied externally. When you have lacerated wounds and cuts with knives or other sharp instruments, apply Calendula, because the injury is external without internal effects.

The symptoms that arise from internal cause, treat with internal remedies, and symptoms that arise from external cause, when all that there is of the case is external, treat locally; in other words, for local causes use local means, and for internal or dynamic causes, use internal means.

Let internal wrongs be treated by the homoeopathic remedy and external or local conditions be treated by such soothing dressings as are most comfortable. Always protect surfaces that are exposed, and raw, and bleeding with something of a bland and superficial character.

Wounds must be dressed with as simple a means as possible, and there is no simpler dressing than Calendula, one part to four or six of water. The tincture will smart too much. Your open wounds will granulate most beautifully under Calendula, and you will have no constitutional effects. When the constitutional state is orderly and there is an open injury let the constitution alone, but put on some soothing application externally. In doing this there is no law to govern the action of the physician.

Air is an irritant to a raw part and will keep up an unnecessary discharge of pus, even from a perfectly healthy sore.

Calendula will keep it protected. The sides of a cut must be drawn together, and if it is perfectly tight it will heal itself by first intention. If it does not, then you may know there is a constitutional condition that you must ferret out and find the remedy for. Local treatment must then be suspended.

These remedies that I have mentioned, to a great extent, cover the management of wounds, and it is simple. Anyone has sense enough to draw together and close up a yawning wound, and to properly dress it. The muscles that naturally draw a wound open have to be overcome by stitches or by strappings. They do not belong to prescribing, they belong to the surgeon.

Coldness: The Ledum patient is very often subject to what may be called constitutional coldness, coldness to touch, coldness in the lady and coldness in the extremities with hot head, and again we see the other extreme, where the whole body is overheated, and the head also is in a state of great heat. There is throbbing and pulsating all over the body; the skin is purple or is too highly colored; he wants the covers all off at night. It is not uncommon to hear a patient, who has a Ledum headache, say that she wants the head out in the cold air, wants to put it out of the window, does not want any covering upon the head; delights to bathe it with very cold water.

Ledum has a bloated condition of the hands, face, and feet; bloated and purple from the knees down in certain dropsical conditions. With this purple, mottled, bloated condition from the knees to the feet the swelling as big as the skin will allow, and the pain excruciating.

The only relief that patient gets is by sitting, with the feet in a tub of ice cold water. I remember the first time I ever saw this in a patient. He was an old syphilitic, whose nasal bones had been eaten cut by syphilis, and his nose was a flabby piece of skin; it had no stiffening in it. He was a drunkard, and was extremely abusive to his family when drunk.

He had been for several years unwilling to work, having lost his ambition, and he would sit in the house and allow his wife to wait upon him. He had practically become a tramp, only he could not tramp, for this dropsical condition had come on and his feet were so badly swollen and sensitive that he sat in the house day after day. When I first saw him he had before him a good-sized old-fashioned wash-tub, and there he sat with the ice water two-thirds up to his knees and pieces of ice floating around on the top of the water, which he liked to have coming in contact with the skin.

When that ice was out he would put in more. The wife described his sufferings by saying he “suffered agonies something; dreadful.”

Ledum took his feet out of the ice water so that he never used it afterwards. It caused the purpleness to disappear, the bloating went out of his feet, and he quit drinking. Ledum cured him of his syphilitic trouble, and he never had a return of that original state.

Pulsatilla and Ledum are the two principal remedies that want the feet in very cold water. But Ledum suited that man.

Bleeding: Where there are inflamed surfaces the tendency in Ledum is to bleed, and the blood is black. Ledum patients are full-blooded and plethoric, of a robust character. Such plethoric patients bleed easily, have red faces; they are fleshy, strong and of robust constitution. Hemorrhages sometimes occur in the chamber of the eye, hemorrhage of the nose, hemorrhage in cavities, bloody urine. Old painful ulcers that spread, that are mottled round about, in a constitution that always wants to be cold. The ulcers are relieved by cold,

Rheumatism: This remedy is of a rheumatic nature, rheumatic and gouty. It is a gouty medicine, having complaints in persons who suffer from gout, and have chalk stones in their joints, deposits in the wrists, fingers and toes.

The deposits go from below upwards. The gouty joints become suddenly inflamed and are relieved by cold. Ledum especially singles out the knee; it is suitable in old prolonged cases of inflammation of the kneejoint, of rheumatic knee-joint. You will find such patients sitting with the joint exposed to the cold, fanning the joint, or putting evaporating lotions upon the joint, such as chloroform, or ether, which give relief to the joints while evaporating to dryness.

Rheumatic and gouty extremities with pain and swelling; pain worse from motion, worse at night and from warmth of bed; better from cold applications with copious pale urine. The pains and swelling go upwards and the heart becomes affected.

Face: The face I have already described as puffy or bloated like the Lachesis face. It is a besotted face and looks very much like the face of an old drunkard. Ledum counteracts the effect of whiskey, and takes away the appetite for whiskey. Ledum is to whiskey what Caladium is to the smoking habit. You can break patients from the habit of smoking so that they go to the other extreme, and have an aversion to it.

It has erysipelas, as you might expect. It has a blue, mottled and puffed and sometimes oedematous appearance. It takes on an acute character and becomes burning. Phlegmonous erysipelas of any part of the body, but particularly of the face, or the injured part.

Urines: You might naturally suppose that a medicine that has such a gouty nature in it would have more or less kidney symptoms.

“Urination frequent, quantity diminished or increased, stream often stops during the flow.”

“Burning in the urethra after urinating.”

“Itching redness and discharge of pus.”

It has red sand in the urine as marked as Lycopodium. It has great quantities of sandy deposit of various colors. When the patient is feeling at his best, there are great quantities of sandy deposits passing away. When there is little deposit in the urine, the gouty deposits in the joints become marked, and he does not feel so well.

It has another symptom that was verified by Lippe:

Copious clear, colorless urine, light in specific gravity and from its being light or deficient of salts in the urine we have an aggravation of the gouty manifestations.

Remember that the rheumatic tendency spreads upwards from the lower extremities, from the circumference to the centre.

“Menstruation too early, too profuse, bright red; absence of vital heat.”

Genitals: Great coldness of the body at this time, yet the patient wants the cold air. Copious menstrual flow. Old gouty subjects, with mottled face with the puffiness that is not oedema, simply a venous stasis, with copious menstrual flow, with great pain during menstruation.

The uterus is extremely sensitive to touch, and the pelvic organs are. so sensitive that any deep touch becomes painful to the patient. Dysmenorrhoea in gouty subjects. It turns the constitution into order and prevents the after formation of gout. When such cases are very deep-seated, the uterine troubles will be cured in middle life, and the gouty appearance will come separately. The better the internal is, in an incurable disease, the worse the external becomes, and, when this is so the external trouble is essential to health, and so long as the external manifestations are in the extremities, and the joints are being increasingly affected, so long the internal is in a state of order.

When the remedy works in that way, do not change it and try to get something that will drive the external away. So long as the patient is improving and the external is growing worse, that is the right direction. Ledum acts in this direction. Its tendency is to make the complaints go away from the centre, for its complaints begin in the circumference and go towards the centre. It is sometimes impossible to manage a gouty patient without giving him some sort of explanation.

Lycopodium also keeps conditions coming to the surface. It will send them back to their own place in the externals when they have a tendency to go in. Lycopodium often causes a return of the red sand in the urine.

“Emaciation of suffering parts.”

A nerve is injured by a puncture and a slight infection takes place, so that the wound becomes congested, with a mottled, oedematous appearance, and the part becomes cold, just such a condition as Ledum will cure. The nerve that supplies that part takes on an ascending neuritis, pains shoot along the nerve, the muscles that are supplied by that nerve dwindle and the part withers. We have in Pulsatilla a similar state.

“The diseased limb withers.”

Lilium Tigrinum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 111 of 180
Source pages 2131–2143 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

So far as proved Lilium Tigrinum has shown itself adapted to the complaints of women.

It is especially suited to hysterical women, who suffer from uterine troubles, cardiac troubles and various nervous manifestations; suitable to a woman who is extremely irritable, full of fanciful notions, insanity, religious melancholy and imaginations, with cardiac affections and prolapsus.

These conditions often alternate; when the mental symptoms are most marked the physical symptoms are relieved. The “dragging down” that is associated with prolapsus seems to be a dragging down from the region of the stomach, and even sometimes from the throat.

A bearing down, as if all the interior organs were dragging down. With this state of extreme relaxation there is great fidgetiness and most marked of all, palpitation. She can lie only on the back, and is aggravated from lying on either side. From every emotion the heart flutters, and is irregular and excitable. These mental symptoms and heart symptoms and uterine symptoms often rotate or alternate, and constitute the principal features.

Mind: She can hardly speak a decent word to anybody. She will snap even when spoken to kindly. She is so irritable that her friends cannot pacify her. Even consolation aggravates. When spoken to she is irritable. She lies awake nights, and is tormented either by fanatical religious ideas, or a religious melancholy, and seems inclined to dwell upon insane, ideas concerning religion and modes of life unreasonable, illogical and fanciful.

Has wrong ideas concerning everything. Receives wrong impressions and everything is inverted. It is impossible to please her. Now these states are present with a state of irritability of the sexual organs, nymphomania; violent sexual excitement associated with spasms, with palpitation, with sweats, with periods of exhaustion. She sits alone and broods over imaginary troubles, and when spoken to is crabbed.

“Ideas not clear; they become more so if she exercises her will.”

“Makes mistakes in writing, in speaking, cannot apply the mind steadily; tormented about her salvation.”

The patient tries to describe an indescribable feeling by saying she has a “crazy feeling” in the head, as if the ideas scattered, and the more she attempts to think rationally the more irrational she becomes. The more she attempts to think of something the less likely she is to recall it. When putting the mind upon something else it comes back again. This remedy has all kinds of symptoms from sexual excesses in overwrought and nervous women, from sexual excitement, causing confusion of mind with palpitation.

It says in the text:

“Listless, inert, yet does not want to sit still.”

This patient will sit still and brood and think over the past, and when spoken to will jump up and run hastily and excitedly and slam the door without any cause; when spoken to kindly by members of the family, or a friend, it seems that she will go wild. A patient once under an aggravation from this remedy said to me:

“I was spoken to to-day in a street car, and I was so mad I wanted to fling something at his head.”

She was thinking over something about herself, and did not want to be disturbed. It is a violent state of temper, a violent state of irritability, a loss of balance. She says:

“It seems as if I must fly when spoken to or disturbed.”

When coming in contact with her friends she has these feelings. The contact seems to arouse her out of a state of lassitude and quietness. Strange things occur in this remedy. The sensations described in the text are so vague and so varied that you can see that it is an effort on the part of the provers to describe what they feel. The sensations are numerous and indescribable.

This patient very commonly is a warm-blooded patient.

She is like the Pulsatilla patient; warm-blooded, wants a cool room, likes to walk in the open air, except at times when the prolapsus is aggravated by walking. The head is generally relieved by moving about in the open air, > when walking in the open air. The headache and most of the complaints are relieved from cold, or from a cool room, and aggravated from a warm room. The dyspnoea comes on in a warm room. The patient suffocates in a crowded room, in the theatre, in church, like Apis, Iodine, Kali i., Lyc. and Puls.

Head: A crazy feeling comes up from the back of the head to the top of the head.

What that is only one that feels it can describe. It is described sometimes as a tingling, or an electric sensation. A slight tingling comes up the back of the head and goes to the top, and is associated with vertigo. When you come to sift that thought it really brings nothing to mind. Very often you have to get those things clinically, and think about them to get at the idea.

The pains in the forehead are very marked, and they are associated with great disturbance of vision, a loss of vision, the room looks dark, or the eyes are unable to focus. Nervous disturbance of vision, photophobia, twitching of the lids, jerking about the eyeballs, and inflammation of the mucous membrane of the eyes, of the lids and balls, conjunctivitis. Very often with the complaints of the head the eyes are turned in, a convergent strabismus, or there is threatened syncope, with the pain in the forehead.

By all these things mentioned it may be known what an over-sensitive, extremely nervous, hysterical person the Lilium tig. patient must be. These things are commonly associated with patients who are extremely nervous, who have fluttering of the heart, who have pain down the spine, and more or less prolapsus, with a great sense of dragging down. When one condition is present, the other is commonly absent; they alternate, or they may exist all together.

“Wild feeling in the head, as tho’ she would go crazy, with pain in the right iliac region.”

These provers seemed to like the expression, “crazy feeling in the head, as if she would go crazy”.

That crazy feeling is a confusion of mind, as if the mind were quite unable to concentrate itself. That is what is interpreted by this crazy feeling the patients have. It is sometimes like a vertigo, as if things were going round, or as if she would lose her mind. Then it comes again as a terrible, tearing headache, described as a crazy headache in the forehead. Headache in which there is confusion of the mind, or as if the mind would go crazy.

Abdomen: The abdomen, stool, urinary and sexual organs, furnish us a field for the use of this medicine.

The whole abdominal viscera seem to be dragging down from the stomach. The patient wants to hold up the abdomen, pendulous abdomen. It seems as if the pelvic organs would protrude. The patient must lie down, wants to wear a T bandage. Wants to grasp the abdomen from the sides and lift up for support. It is a sensation of weakness or bearing down in the pelvis as if everything were coming into the world through the vagina.

This remedy has a very urgent diarrhoea, driving out of bed in the morning; he must make great baste. You may get this confused with Sulphur, because Lilium tig. has great heat in the head, emptiness in the stomach, and great burning of the palms and soles. It has also a dysentery that you will hardly be able to distinguish from Merc. cor., so marked is the tenesmus, mucus and blood.

The stool is merely mucus mingled with blood, and the tenesmus is as great and the burning in the anus as marked as in Merc. cor. It is especially suited for those attacks of dysentery that come on as an occasional chronic manifestation in nervous patients such as I have described. Now, do not think that because this patient is nervous that she is weak, or liliputian, or lean; for it is especially suitable for those with full veins; apparently plethoric, full blooded, fleshy, rotund women who are very nervous, and especially at the change of life.

Recurrent dysenteric attacks with every cold in those who suffer from pelvic and abdominal relaxation, mental irritability as described, palpitation and fluttering of the heart, with nervous constitutions. You do not see Merc. cor. in such a picture. If it were a dysentery alone I would not be able to tell which it was.

All of these dysenteric manifestations have been left out of the Guiding Symptoms, yet I have seen them verified over and over. Again, it has a most inveterate and troublesome constipation.

It has also a tenesmus of the bladder and rectum. Teasing to urinate, as well as urging to stool. Sit a long time with much urging, and after long straining no stool.

Frequent urging, with a sensation as if a ball were in the rectum. When the fundus of the uterus is turned back to the rectum it gives a sensation as if the rectum were full of faeces; it brings on urging to stool and the patient will sit and strain, and the tenesmus of the bladder and rectum is unbearable. Constant urging to stool, and no stool in the rectum. You will be astonished to know that the remedy that is indicated with such symptoms will relieve the patient of all distress in a short time.

But you ask, will this remedy put the uterus right again? Well, the patient will get relief of her sufferings and will not feel this uncomfortable state after the administration of the remedy. The bowels become regular, the disturbance of micturition is relieved and the patient gradually returns to health and later the uterus will be found in place.

“Pressure in the rectum, with almost constant desire to go to stool.”

Lilium tigrinum has cured the most inveterate protruding hemorrhoids with burning.

“Haemorrhoids after delivery, sore to touch, bearing down after stool as if all would protrude from the vagina.”

It does not mean that we shall apply that simply to hemorrhoids that come after delivery, but it has cured hemorrhoids in such a constitution, and not only hemorrhoids, but relaxed uterus and vagina.

A paralytic relaxation is present in all the abdominal tissues. I have mentioned the uterine symptoms incidentally in connection with other parts.

“Menses scanty, flow only when moving about.”

This will make you think of Puls., the menses being so scanty, and because the Puls. patient is of similar nervous temperament. Puls. has scanty menstruation and relief in the open air. It has also much dragging down in the pelvis, though not so extreme as a rule as in this medicine. But there is much in this medicine quite different from Puls.

The come the heart symptoms.

“Seems as if the heart were grasped or squeezed in a vise, hard, as if violently grasped.”

“Constrictive pain in the heart.” “In fresh air, chilly, but vertigo is >.”

Pain in the back and down the spine; irritable and sensitive spine with trembling. It competes very closely with Platina.

Dulcamara – Bitter Sweet
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 80 of 180
Source pages 1547–1572 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

This medicine seems especially to affect the mucous membranes. It appears to have a tendency to establish or ultimate discharges, both acute and chronic.

Modalities: The Dulcamara patient is disturbed by every change in the weather, from warm to cold, from dry to moist, and from suddenly cooling the body while perspiring. He is ameliorated in dry, even weather; cold and damp aggravate all the conditions. He is worse evening and night and during rest.

Diarrhea: Dulcamara produces catarrh of the stomach, intestines, nose, eyes, cars, and inflammatory conditions of the skin with eruptions. If you go through any of these in detail, you will be astonished to find how disturbed is the constitutional state of this patient by weather changes.

It is a medicine wonderfully useful in diarrhoea, at the close of the summer, hot days and cold nights, with changeable stool; diarrhoea of infants. There seems to be no digestion; yellow, slimy stool; yellow-green stool, with undigested stool; frequent stool, blood in the stool and quite a mass of slime, showing a marked catarrhal state.

This gets better and worse; this gets better under ordinary remedies; it will often get better from Pulsatilla, because Pulsatilla symptoms seem to predominate, and sometimes it is relieved by Arnica; but every time the child takes cold, it comes back again, and soon the physician will realize that he has not struck the remedy belonging to all the symptoms. It is very often an annoying condition, because the symptoms are not recognized until two or three attacks have come. It is not easy to discover that the attacks come on from cold.

Babies: Every year women bring their babies back from the mountains, at the end of the season, and then we get some Dulcamara cases. One needs to be in the mountains at the close of the summer season to know what the condition is.

If you go into the mountains at such a time, either in the North or West, you will notice that the sun’s rays beat down during the day with great force, but along towards sunset if you walk out a draft of cold air comes down that will chill you to the bone.

This will make the baby sick; it is too warm to take the child out in the middle of the day, and so he is taken out in his carriage in the evening; he has been overheated in the house during the day, and then catches this draft in the evening.

Dulcamara is suitable for conditions that would arise from just such a state. So with an adult who has been out in the beat of the sun and catches the cold draft by night, which means hot days and cold nights, such as occur in the fall of the year, at the close of the summer and coming in of the winter; this intermingling of hot air and cold drafts.

You go up towards the foot of the hills after a hot day, you will walk through a stratum of air that will make you perspire and the next minute a cold air that will make you want your overcoat on, and then again a stratum of hot air and so on.

Such a state will bring out a sweat and then suppress it. The symptoms that come from Dulcamara seem to be like symptoms that arise from just such causes. And we are free, then, to infer from such an experience that Dulcamara cures these cases.

I have been puzzled in times past over these babies that have been brought home from the mountains, and have prescribed upon the visible symptoms, until I thought about the matter carefully and figured it out that they had come from these hot and cold regions.

Babies have to be hurried home at times, because of the diarrheas that cannot be cured in the mountains, but a dose of Dulcamara will enable them to stay there and live right in that same climate. Chronic recurrent dysentery from cold. If they have a dose of Dulcamara it fortifies them against the continual taking of cold.

Diarrhea: There are people in a certain kind of business that really constitute a Dulcamara state. Suppose we look at our ice-cream men and our ice handlers and cold storage men; in a cold room they are handling ice; the summer weather is hot, they must go out and take some of the heat, and then they go back into their cold rooms and handle the ice. I have seen these things and have had occasion to follow them out. These men are subject at times to bowel troubles, and other catarrhal affections, but generally to diarrheic affections.

Their business cannot stop because it is their means of living. Dulcamara cures such chronic diarrheas when the symptoms agree. Arsenicum is a medicine that would be suitable for such patients if the symptoms agreed, but the symptoms at times agree with Dulcamara, for that is the nature of the remedy, to take cold from cold, damp place flora suppressing a sweat, from going out of a hot atmosphere into an ice house, into icy rooms; into cold rooms; in this climate such complaints as come on from overexertion, overheating, and then throwing off the clothing and becoming chilled, suppressing the sweat; fevers may come on, aching in the bones, trembling with the aching, trembling in the muscles, and as the fever goes on, he is in a distressed state, cannot remember, forgets what he was about to speak of, forgets the word that would naturally express his idea, and he enters into a dazed state, a state of confusion.

It suits these colds that have this sluggish circulation of the brain, with trembling and chilliness, coldness as if in the bones.

Rheumatism: Dulcamara is full of rheumatism, full of rheumatic pains and aches, sore and bruised all over, the joints are inflamed, become red, sensitive to touch and are swollen. It is suitable, in cases of inflammatory rheumatism, due to suppressed perspiration, induced by changing from a high to low temperature, or from cold wet weather. Worse evening and night and during rest.

Now, it has many chronic complaints. A catarrhal condition of the eyes, purulent discharges, thick, yellow discharges, granular lids; eyes become red every time he takes cold;

“every time he takes cold it settles in the eyes,” is a common expression of the patient. The patient will often ask the question,

“Why is it, doctor, that every time I take cold it settles in my eyes? If I get into a cold atmosphere, or take off my coat after being heated, I have to look out.”

If it becomes cold in the night and he has thrown the clothes off, he takes cold, or, if a cold rain comes on, he takes cold and then has sore eyes.

Such eyes are very often effectually cured by Dulcamara. As to the eye itself, it is only an ordinary catarrhal state, but the manner in which it comes on is the important thing. That is the nature of the patient to have sore eyes whenever he takes cold; it belongs to some other remedies as well, but this one particularly.

Nose: Dulcamara has also catarrhal discharges from the nose, with bloody crusts; blowing out thick, yellow mucus all the time.

In infants and children who have sniffles, they are always worse in cold, damp weather. When the patient says:

“Doctor, in cold, damp weather I cannot breathe through my nose; my nose stuffs up;” or,

“I must sleep with my mouth open.”

Dulcamara is a very useful remedy to know in catarrhal cases that always stuff up when there is a cold rain.

It is markedly an autumnal remedy. The Dulcamara patients go through the summer very comfortably; their catarrhal conditions to a great extent pass away; the warm days and warm nights, because of the even temperature seem to agree with them, but as soon as the cold nights come on and the cold rains come, all their difficulties return; there is an increase of the rheumatism and of the catarrhal discharges.

This medicine has been used a long time by our mothers. They used to make ointments out of Dulcamara. You will find that the old lady, in almost any rural district in which Dulcamara grows, gather it and make it into a salve for ulcers. Well, it is astonishing how soothing it is when applied externally to smarting wounds, whether in solution or salve or any other way. But it is a better medicine, of course, when indicated by symptoms of the constitutional state; it is a better medicine if used internally.

Ulcers: It produces ulcers and a tendency to ulceration of the mucous membranes and this condition will become phagedenic. Sometimes it starts as nothing more than an herpetic eruption, but it spreads and finally yellow pus forms and then the granulations that should come, do not come; an eating condition appears and the surface does not heal.

Especially along the shin bone there will be raw places, which even extend to the periosteum, to the bone, producing necrosis and caries; so we have affections of the mucous membranes or skin, first becoming vesiculated and then breaking open and eating.

It is especially related to very sensitive, bleeding ulcers with false granulations, phagedenic ulcers. This is not generally known; it is a matter of experience with those that have watched this medicine; and again, strange to say, Arsenicum, which I have already mentioned once or twice, has this state. Arsenicum leads all other medicines for ulcers that eat, phagedenic ulcers. Arsenicum is a typical remedy for spreading sores, for spreading ulcers, and especially those that come from a bubo that has opened and will not heal.

Skin: Another feature of this medicine is its tendency to throw out eruptions over the body. It is a wonderfully eruptive medicine, producing vesicles, crusts, dry, brown crusts, humid crusts, herpes. Dulcamara produces eruptions so nearly like impetigo that it has been found a useful remedy in that condition. i.e., multiple little boil-like eruptions; it produces little boils, and the boils spread.

Enlargement and hard ness of the glands. Eruptions upon the scalp that look so much like crusta lactea that Dulcamara has been found a very useful medicine. Extreme soreness, itching, and the itching is not I relieved by scratching, and the scratching goes on, until bleeding – and rawness take place.

Eruptions that come out upon the face, upon the forehead, all over the nose, but especially on the cheeks, which become completely covered with these crusts; eczema of infants. Children only a few weeks old break out with these scalp eruptions, and Dulcamara is one of the medicines that you will need to know.

It is about as frequently indicated as any of the medicines. Sepia, Arsenicum, Graphites, Dulcamara, Petroleum, Sulphur and Calcarea are about equally indicated, but of these, in this climate at least, I think Sepia is probably more frequently indicated.

All of these catarrhal symptoms, the rheumatic symptoms, the eruptions upon the skin, are subject to the peculiar aggravations of the constitutional state. No matter what the symptoms are, the constitutional state is worse in cold, damp weather.

“Catarrhal and rheumatic headaches in cold, damp weather.”

Headache: When the headache is the main trouble, the catarrh takes a different course from what it does when the catarrh is the principal ailment. There are two ways in which that conducts itself. In some Dulcamara patients, whenever he takes cold from the cold, damp weather, he commences to sneeze, and to get a coryza, and soon comes a copious, thick, yellow flow from the nose.

On the other hand, Dulcamara has a dry catarrh in its first stage, and a fluid catarrh only in the second stage.

One who is subject to Dulcamara headaches, has the dry catarrh; whenever he takes cold instead of the usual catarrhal flow with it, he at first sneezes and then feels a dryness in the air passages, a slacking up of the usual discharge, which would give him relief, and then he knows that he must look out, for along will come the neuralgic pains, pains in the occiput, and finally over the whole head. Congestive headaches, with neuralgic pains and dry nose.

Every spell of cold, damp weather will bring on that headache. The catarrh is not always acute enough for him to pay attention to it. He does not say very much about it. The Dulcamara headache is very severe, is accompanied by tremendous pains, and he may go to the doctor with the idea of getting rid of the headache, but it is a catarrhal state that is suppressed, that has slackened up, and the nose becomes dry.

As soon as the flow starts up his headache is relieved. Then headache of this catarrhal kind that comes on from every cold, damp spell, or from getting overheated, from getting into a cold draft after being overheated, or get ting overheated with too much clothing, and then throwing the coat off, will also belong to the Dulcamara state.

A form of eruption that is very likely to be a Dulcamara eruption is the ringworm, herpes circinatus. It comes sometimes upon the face and scalp. Children sometimes have ringworms in the hair. Dulcamara will nearly always cure these ringworms in the hair.

Ear: The Dulcamara child is very susceptible to earache.

“Coryza dry, relieved by motion, worse during rest, and renewed by the slightest exposure, and worse in cold air.”

Some coryzas cannot tolerate the warm room, and others want a warm room. The Dulcamara coryza is worse going out in the open air and better from motion. The Nux vomica coryza is better in the open air. The patient feels much aching distress in the nose. The Nux vomica patient ordinarily wants warmth and warm air and a warm room, but with the coryza he is the very opposite; he wants motion in the open air, he looks for cool air, for it relieves the distressing sensation.

In the warm room there is a tickling sensation in the nose, and the nose will drip, night and day. The Nux vomica coryza is worse in the house, and worse in the night, and worse in the warm bed, so that the discharge will run all over the pillow.

In Dulcamara it is more fluent in the house, in the warmth, and less fluent in the cold air in a cold room. With the Dulcamara coryza, if the patient should go into a cold room pain will commence in the nasal bones and he will begin to sneeze, and water will be discharged from the nose. That very state would relieve a Nux vomica patient. Allium cepa is made worse in a warm room; like Nux vomica, is better in cold, open air. Commences to sneeze as soon as he gets into a warm room. So that we see the meaning of such things, the necessity of going into particulars and examining every case.

Here is a state that you will often find in the fall of the year, somewhere about August 20 th. They sometimes call it hay fever. Every year as the nights become cold, and there is cold, damp weather and fall rains, he has a stuffing up of the nose with constant sneezing and wants the nose kept warm.

I have known these cases at times to sit in a warm room with cloths, wrung out of hot water, over the face and nose to relieve the distress, the catarrhal state of the eyes and the stuffing up of the nose. Heat relieves the stuffing up of the nose.

These patients can sometimes breathe with these hot cloths over the nose, but if they go out into the night air, or a cold place, and especially if there is a damp, fall rain, they suffer much. Other cases of hay fever suffer during the day, and they go to as cold a place as they can find, and are even driven to the mountains for a cool place.

These things are indicative of a state of the constitution; the state gives out signs and symptoms to lead the intelligent physician to cure. If that state had no means of making itself known by signs and symptoms, there could be no curing it by remedies.

“Profuse discharge of water from the nose and eyes, worse in the open air,” “better in a closed room, on awakening in the morning, ” etc.

The Dulcamara patient is so sensitive to newly mown grass and drying weeds, that he is obliged to absent himself from the country where they are found.

Hay-fever: For hay fever we have especially to look up such remedies as have complaints worse in the fall of the year. There are other conditions that are just as much hay fever, for instance, “rose cold” that comes on in June.

There are other conditions that come on in the spring, sometimes cured by Naja and Lachesis. So that we have to observe the time of the year, the time of the day, night or day aggravations; the wet and the dry remedies, the hot and the cold remedies. We have to study the remedy by circumstances.

The Dulcamara patient often becomes a sickly patient, with threatening of the catarrhal discharges to centre in the bronchial tubes, i.e., in the mucous membrane of the breathing apparatus. Many adults die of acute phthisis that might have been cured by Dulcamara, and you will find very commonly among this class of patients those that are worse from every cold, damp spell of weather. Such enter right into the Dulcamara sphere. They are better by going South where there is a continuously warm climate. The Dulcamara patient is a sickly patient, threatened with acute phthisis; pallid face, sickly yellow and sallow. This shows that it goes deeply into the life, creating such disorders as are found in very sick patients, i. c., those chronically sick, in persons whose vital economy is so much disordered that it cannot keep the body in repair.

Throat: The throat comes in for its share of trouble. Persons who in every cold damp spell have a sore throat, from getting overheated, throwing off the wraps, getting into a cold place. The Dulcamara patient says:

“Well now, I know I am fixed; I am now chilled; I begin to feel hoarseness in my throat.”

On comes the sore throat; it fills with mucus, with yellow slime; the tonsils become inflamed; even quinsy comes on.

Or it may affect the throat uniformly; it may become red and inflamed and dry at times, and at other times filled with mucus, and at night the throat fills with thick, yellow, tough mucus, which is hawked up in great quantities. These colds that settle first in the nose and throat, post-nasal catarrh, of the very worst sort, gradually creep on until the whole respiratory apparatus is in a state of catarrhal Inflammation.

Every cold that be taker aggravates his catarrh wherever that may be. If it be in the nose, then the nose is aggravated; if in the chest, then those parts are aggravated. A continual rousing up. Every experienced physician must have met with many cases where for a time he felt unable to cope with the case because of his inability to reach the constitutional state that underlies this continual taking cold.

So he puzzles, for a long time, and prescribes on the immediate attack and palliates it. For instance, the immediate attack might look like Belladonna or Bryonia, Ferrum phos. or Arsenicum, etc.: he treats that attack without taking into consideration the underlying constitutional state of the patient It is quite a profitable business for one who has not much conscience and not much intelligence.

But a conscientious physician feels worried and knows he is not doing what he ought to do by his patient, unless he reaches out for the remedy which touches the constitution. It is far more useful to keep people from taking colds than to cure colds.

Bright's disease: There is a form of acute Bright’s disease that Dulcamara cures. You can probably now surmise from what we have said of the nature of the remedy, that in cases of Bright’s disease following scarlet fever, or from malaria, or in any acute disease that has ended badly, i. c., the patient has been exposed to the cold too soon, and has taken “cold,” or from sudden change of weather, damp and cold, the feet commence to swell, there is albumin in the urine, the limbs are waxy, the face becomes waxy and sallow, and there is constant urging to urinate. Dulcamara, with other constitutional symptoms, will be suitable.

In bladder catarrh, where there is a copious discharge of mucus, or muco-pus in the urine; when the urine stands, a thick, purulent sediment, yellowish-white, and a constant urging to urinate; every time he takes a little cold, the urine becomes bloody, the frequency of urination is increased, the urine becomes irritating, the catarrh of the bladder rouses up like a flame, all the symptoms are worse in cold, damp weather, and from getting chilled; better from becoming warm. So you see whether it is a catarrh of the kidney or a catarrhal state of the bladder, or an attack of dysentery, or an attack of sudden diarrhea, every cold spell of the weather brings on an increase of the trouble.

There is another Dulcamara symptom which will often be expressed suddenly in the midst of a lot of other symptoms. After you have been hunting for a long time, the patient will say:

“Doctor, if I get chilled, I must hurry to urinate; if I get into a cold place, I have to go to stool, or to urinate.”

So we see that the symptoms come on when the patient is cold, and are better when he is warm. Any catarrhal trouble of the bladder that is better in the summer and worse in the winter.

In dry, teasing coughs that are winter “colds,” that go away in the summer and return in the winter. Psorinum has a dry, teasing, winter cough. Arsenicum has a winter cough.

“Rash comes out upon the face before the menses.”

“As a forerunner of catamenia, with extraordinary sexual excitement, herpetic eruptions.”

Its “cold” sores are very troublesome.

The patients are subject to these “cold” sores upon the lips and upon the genitals.

Every time he takes “cold,” herpes labialis, herpes preputialis.

“Catarrhal ailments in cold, damp weather.”

“Mammae engorged, hard, sore and painful.”

“Mammary glands swollen, inactive, painless, itching, in consequence of a ‘cold’ which seems to have settled in them.”

“Cough, from damp, cold, atmosphere, or from getting wet.”

“Cough, dry, hoarse and rough, or loose, with copious expectoration of mucus and dull hearing; catarrhal ~fever.”

The cough is worse lying and in a warm room and better in the open air.

Rheumatic lameness and stiffness in the back from taking cold better by motion. Drawing pain in the lumber region extending to the lower limbs during rest. Stiff neck from every exposure to cold.

Stitching, tearing, rheumatic pains in limbs after exposure to cold, better by motion, worse at night or in the evening, with some fever. Sore, bruised feeling all over the body.

Warts on hands, fingers and face.

Iodine
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 97 of 180
Source pages 1824–1846 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Anxiety: This remedy in all of its complaints whether acute or chronic, has a peculiar kind anxiety that is felt both in mind and body.

It seems also that this state of anxiety is attended with a thrill that goes throughout his frame unless he removes it by motion or change of position. The anxiety comes on when trying to keep still, and the more he tries to keep still the more the anxious state increases. While attempting to keep still, he is overwhelmed with impulses, impulses to tear things, to kill himself, to commit murder, to do violence.

He cannot keep still and so he walks night and day. This remedy carries the same feature with it into the Iodide of Potassium, so that it makes the Iodide of Potassium patient walk. But there is this difference, the Kali iod. patient can walk long distances without fatigue, and the walking only seems to wear off his anxiety, whereas in Iodine there is great exhaustion; he becomes extremely exhausted from walking and sweats copiously even from slight exertion.

Iodine corresponds to those cases in which it seems that there is some dreadful thing coming on; the mind threatens to give out. Insanity threatens, Or the graver forms of disease are threatening, such as are present in the advanced stages of suppressed malaria, in old cases of chills, in threatened phthisis, especially abdominal.

Hypertrophy: runs through the remedy.

There is enlargement of the liver, spleen, ovaries, testes, lymphatic glands, cervical glands, of all the glands except the mammary glands. The mammoe dwindle while all other glands become enlarged, nodular and hard.

This enlargement of the glands is especially observed among the lymphatic glands of the abdomen, the mesenteric glands.

There is this peculiar circumstance also in Iodine, viz., that while the body withers the glands enlarge. That is peculiar and will enable you to think of Iodine, because the glands grow in proportion to the dwindling of the body and the emaciation of the limbs. We find this state in marasmus. There is withering throughout the body, the muscles shrink, the skin wrinkles and the face of the child looks like that of a little old person, but the glands under the arms, in the groin and in the belly are enlarged and hard.

The mesenteric glands can be felt as knots. We see the same tendency in old cases of malaria coming from the allopaths in which Quinine and Arsenic have been extensively used and the chills have kept on; the face and the upper part of the body are withered, the skin looks shriveled and yellow; a diarrhoea has come on, the liver and spleen are enlarged and the lymphatic glands of the belly can be felt. Even in the earlier stages, when these states are only threatening, we may look forward and see that the case is progressing toward an Iodine state.

Now take a patient that is suffering from intermittent fever brought on from malaria, or damp cellars. The patient grows increasingly hot; it is not always a febrile heat, but a sensation of heat; he wants to be bathed in cold water, wants the face and body cooled by cold sponging; he suffocates and coughs in a warm room, dreads heat, sweats easily and easily becomes exhausted. It is in this kind of a constitution that acute complaints will come on, such as acute inflammatory conditions of the mucous membranes and gastritis, inflammation of the liver, inflammation of the spleen, diarrhoea, croup, inflammation of the throat.

The throat even becomes covered with white spots and is tumid and red, and ibis extends down into the larynx; it may even have a deposit upon it like diphtheria. Iodine has cured diphtheria, when the exudation resembling the diphtheria exudations, was present in the stool. A constitution tending this way may bring on croup with an exudate, and we can see that it is going towards Iodine. In every region of the body peculiar little things come out. If we do not see to the full extent the constitution of the remedy, we will not recognize the tendency of the patient, when progressing unfavorably.

Mind: The mental state of this patient is that of excitement, anxiety, impulses, melancholy; he wants to do something, wants to hurry; he has impulses to kill. In this it is very closely related to Arsenicum and Hepar.

The Arsenicum and Hepar patients also have impulses to commit murder without being offended and without cause. The sensitiveness to heat will at once decide, for while Iodine is warm-blooded the Arsenicum and Hepar patients are always chilly.

The impulse to do violence is sudden. There are remedies that have peculiar impulses, impulses without any cause. These impulses are seen in cases of impulsive insanity; an insanity in which there is an impulse to do violence and strange things, and when the patient is asked why he does these things he says he does not know.

The patient may not be known to be insane in anything else; he may be a good business man. Remedies also have this. These things are forerunners. It is recorded under Hepar that a barber had an impulse w cut the throat of his patron with the razor while shaving him.

The Nux vomica patient has an impulse to throw her child into the fire, or to kill her husband whom she dearly loves. The thought comes into her mind and increases until she becomes actually insane and beyond control and the impulse is carried into action.

A Natrum sulph. patient will say, “Doctor, you do not know how I have to resist killing myself.

An impulse to do it comes into my mind.”

Iodine has the impulse to kill, not from anger, not from any sense of justice, but without any cause. An overwhelming anger is often a cause for violence but the impulses are not of that sort in Iodine.

While reading; or thinking placidly at times a patient may have an impulse to do himself violence, and this finally grows until the end is a form of impulsive insanity.

The Iodine patient becomes weak in mind as well as in body; he is forgetful, cannot remember the little things, they pass out of the mind. He forgets what he was about to say or do; goes off and leaves packages he has purchased.

The forgetfulness is extensive. But with all these states, do not forget one thing, that the patient is compelled to keep doing something in order to drive away his impulses and anxiety.

The anxiety is wearing and distressing unless be keeps busy. Though mentally prostrated, he is compelled to keep busy and to continue the work, which increases the prostration of mind. You tell a man who is threatened with softening of the brain, from overwork, from anxiety and labor in literary work,

“You must stop working, you must rest.”

“Why,” he will say,

“If I do I would die or go mad.”

Such a state comes under Iodine and Arsenicum, but there is one grand distinction by which the two remedies are seen to part company at once.

The Iodine patient is warm-blooded, wants a cool place to move in, and to think in, and to work in, whereas the Arsenicum patient wants heat, wants a warm room, wants to be warmly clothed, and suffers from the cold.

Iodine suffers from the heat. So that while the restlessness and anxiety, which are both of body and mind in each remedy, loom up before the mind as one, if the patient is a hot-blooded patient we would never think of Arsenicum; if a cold-blooded and shivering patient we would never think of Iodine.

Among the generals we first mentioned was the tendency to enlarged glands. Iodine has often cured a group of symptoms coming in the constitution that I have named, viz.; enlargement of the heart, enlargement of the thyroid and protruding eyeballs.

Now, if you have one of these patients (suppose it has been sent to you by somebody who knows no better than to call it exophthalmic goitre), those things that are so essential to the name of the disease, as they call it, would not be an indication for the remedy, but the indications would be found among those circumstances that I have given you that are outside of the projection of the eyes, the enlargement of the thyroid, the hypertrophy of the heart and the cardiac disturbances.

If the patient is emaciated, is sallow, suffers from heat, has enlarged glands, and the other symptoms of this medicine, you may expect after its administration an ultimate cessation of the group of symptoms that are selected to name the disease by. Brain troubles, acute and chronic, sometimes call for Iodine.

Head: The head throbs, the body throbs, there are pulsations all over, and the throbbing extends to the finger ends and the toes; throbbing in the pit of the stomach, heavy pulsations felt in the arms, pulsations in the back, throbbing in the temporal bone. There are congestive head aches with violent pain.

The head pains are aggravated from motion, but the patient is relieved from motion. The patient moves because his anxiety is relieved by motion, but every motion increases the head pains and the pulsation. Such distinctions are necessary. To distinguish between what is predicated of the patient and what i s predicated of a part is an essential in the study of the Materia Medica.

Everything that is predicated of the patient is general, everything that is predicated of a part is particular. The two may be opposite, and hence the student of the Materia Medica will sometimes be worried because he will find aggravation from motion and relief from motion recorded under the same remedy. It is only from the source of the Materia Medica, i. e., the provings, and from the administration of the remedy that we may observe what is true of a part and what is true of the whole.

We find at times a patient wants to be in a hot room with the head out of the window for relief of the head. In that case the head is relived from cold and the body is relieved from heat. This is a typical symptom of Phosphorus, which has relief from cold as to the head and stomach symptoms, but aggravation from cold as to its chest and body symptoms.

Eo, if the Phosphorus patient has vomiting and head symptoms, he says:

“I want to go out in the open air and I want to take cold things into my stomach;” but if he has chest symptoms and pain in the extremities, he says:

“I want to go into the house and keep warm.”

And just as we see this in patients it is so in the study of a remedy; we must discriminate.

Eyes: As you may except, all sorts of eye troubles are present in this debilitated constitution.

The so-called scrofulous affections of the eyes, with ulceration of the cornea, catarrhal troubles, discharge from the eyes, enlargement of the little glands of the lids, come along with the emaciation and yellow countenance in the constitution described. Optical illusions in bright colors. An oedematous state is in keeping with Iodine.

There is oedematous swelling of the lids and oedematous swelling of the face under the eyes. Iodine has also oedema of the hands and feet, and carries this tendency with it into the Iodide of Potassium, which has oedematous swellings like those we find in kidney affections. it is capable of putting a stop to cases of Bright’s disease in the early stages.

Hunger: Another grand feature that runs through the complaints of Iodine is hunger.

He is always hungry. The eating of the ordinary and regular meals is not sufficient. He eats between meals and yet is hungry. Moreover the complaints are better after eating.

All the fears, the anxiety and distress of Iodine increase when he is hungry. There is pain in the stomach when the stomach is empty, and he is driven to eat. While eating he forgets his complaints, because it is like doing something, it is like moving, his mind is upon something else. He is relieved while eating and he is relieved while in motion. In spite of the hunger and much eating he still emaciates.

“Living well yet growing thin,” was one of Hering’s key-notes of Iodine.

As in Natr. mur. and Abrotanum, he emaciates while he has at the same time an enormous appetite. The nutrition is so disturbed that there is no making of flesh, and hence the emaciation.

Nose: The catarrhal condition of the nose is worthy of notice.

The Iodine patient has loss of the sense of smell. The mucous membrane is thickened; he takes cold upon the slightest provocation; is always sneezing and has from the nose a copious watery discharge.

Ulceration in the nose with bloody crusts; he blows blood from the nose. The nose is stuffed up so that he cannot breathe through it.

This increases every time he takes cold, and he is continually taking cold hence he becomes a confirmed subject of catarrh. I have described the general state. The patient is the first to be thought of. His constitution is the first thing to know, i. e., what is true of the patient as a whole. After that we can find out what is true of each of his parts.

The mucous membrane of the nose is constantly in a state of ulceration, or has a tendency to ulceration. Sometimes these little ulcers are deep.

There are aphthous patches along the tongue and throughout the mouth. The whole buccal cavity is studded with aphthous patches.

I have mentioned already the tendency to exudation; white velvety, or white-grayish or pale ash-colored exudations come upon the sore throat, all over the mucous membrane of the nose and all over the pharynx.

The pharynx seems to be lined with the velvety, ash colored appearances. With these throat symptoms and the tendency to ulceration it has a wide range of usefulness in throat affections. It is useful in enlargement of the tonsils when the tonsils are studded with exudations and in the constitution described.

Enlarged tonsils in hungry, withered patients. We often see one who is subject to quinsy progressing toward the Iodine state. He is always suffering from the heat like a Pulsatilla patient; at times in the earlier stages, before any organic changes have taken place, you may mistake Iodine for Pulsatilla. But if you watch the patient you will observe the tendency to emaciation and see that the two remedies soon part company.

They are both hot, they are both irritable, they are both full of notions. The Pulsatilla patient is far more whimsical, more tearful, has greater sadness, and has constant loss of appetite, while the Iodine subject wants to eat much.

The Pulsatilla patient often increases in flesh, although growing increasingly nervous. The Iodine patient becomes thin, has a ravenous hunger, cannot be satisfied, suffers from his hunger; he must eat every few hours and feels better after eating; he has also great thirst. If he goes long without eating, no matter what the complaints are, the suffering will increase. Any of the complaints of iodine will likely be increased by fasting.

Iodine has also an indigestion that comes from overeating. The food sours, he is troubled with sour eructations, with much flatulence, with belching, with undigested stools, with diarrhoea, watery, cheesy stools, and he digests less and less. The digestion becomes more and more feeble until he digests almost nothing of what he eats, and yet the craving increases. He vomits and diarrhoea comes on and so he increasingly emaciates; because it is like burning the candle at both, ends. It is not surprising that he is extremely weak because lie is assimilating very little of what he takes.

The articles of food act as foreign substances to disorder his bowels and stomach. Now, with this trouble going on, the liver and spleen become hard and enlarged, and the patient becomes jaundiced. The stool is hard, lumpy and white, or colorless, or clay colored, sometimes soft and pappy; there seems to be little or no bile in it.

This stage gradually increases until hypertrophy of the liver comes on. Finally the abdomen sinks ill and reveals this enlargement of the liver and the enlarged lymphatic glands.

These are very knotty and as hard as in tabes mesenterica. Iodine is indicated in the tubercular condition of the mesenteric glands with diarrhoea, emaciation, great hunger, great thirst, withering of the mammary glands, a dried beef-like or shriveled appearance of the skin and sallow complexion. If the remedy is given early enough, before the structural changes have occurred, it will check the progress of the disease and cure.

Diarrhea: This is a very useful remedy in the chronic morning diarrhea of emaciated, scrofulous children.

When the constitutional state is present it is primary to the varying kinds of stools that it is possible for the patient to have.

So if you have a marked state of the constitution, a case in which there are a great number of general symptoms for you to associate the remedy with, the little symptoms of the diarrhoea cease to be important. The constitutional state in that patient is that which is “strange, rare and peculiar.”

Almost any kind of diarrheic stool will be cured if the constitutional state is covered by the remedy.

When it is an acute diarrhoea and it occurs in a vigorous constitution, and there is nothing but the diarrhoea, then it is necessary to know all the finer details, and the characteristics of the diarrhoea become the rare,

“strange and peculiar” features.

Incontinence of urine in old people. In the male with all these constitutional symptoms iodine is especially suited when the testes have dwindled, when there is impotency, when there is flowing of semen with dreams, when there is loss of sexual instinct or power, or with an irritated state, an erethism of the sexual instinct; also when the testes are enlarged and hard, indurated and hypertrophied like the other glands, or when there is an orchitis, an inflammation and enlargement of the testicles.

Swelling and induration of the uterus and ovaries. Iodine has cured tumors of the ovaries in such a constitution as I have described. It has cured the dwindling of the mammary glands and caused them to grow plump with an increase of flesh upon dwindling patients.

Its nature to produce the catarrhal state is illustrated in the leucorrhea that it produces. Uterine leucorrhoea with swelling and induration of the cervix. Uterus enlarged, tendency to menorrhagia. Leucorrhea rendering the thighs sore.

The discharges of Iodine are acrid. The discharges from the nose excoriate the lip, the discharges from the eyes excoriate the cheek, the discharges from the vagina excoriate the thighs. The leucorrhoea is thick and slimy and sometimes bloody; “chronic leucorrhoea, most abundant at the time of the menses, rendering the thighs sore and corroding the linen.”

This remedy has a cough that is violent; it has grave and severe difficulties of respiration, dyspnoea, with chest symptoms.

Croupy, suffocating cough in this delicate constitution. Again we say if you do not hold in mind the constitutional state while reading these very numerous respiratory symptoms, you will not be able to apply them because they are extensive and include a great many so-called complaints and would give you difficulty in individualizing them.

Now, there is one more complaint that I wish to call your attention to. In old gouty constitutions, with enlargement of the joints, the history is that the patients were once in a good state of flesh, but they have become lean, and although they are hungry, the food does not seem to do them good. The joints are enlarged and tender.

Many gouty constitutions want a warm room, but the Iodine patient wants a cool room. His joints pain and are aggravated from the warmth of bed. He cheers up in a cool place and likes to be in the open air.

He is growing increasingly weak; he is generally ameliorated on moving about and eating, he has the anxiety of body and mind.

Iodine will put a check on his gouty attacks and cause him to go on comfortably for a while.

Editorial notes

• “threatened phtysie” corrected to “threatened phthisis” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Eupatorium Perfoliatum (Boneset)
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 81 of 180
Source pages 1573–1591 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

History: Every time I take up one of these old domestic remedies I am astonished at the extended discoveries of medical properties in the household as seen in their domestic use.

All through the Eastern States, in the rural districts, among the first old -settlers, Boneset-tea was a medicine for colds. For every cold in the head, or running of the nose, every bone-ache or high fever, or headache from cold, the good old housewife had her Boneset-tea ready. Sure enough it did such things, and the provings sustain its use. The proving shows that Boneset produces upon healthy people symptoms like the colds the old farmers used to suffer from.

Winter colds: The common winter colds through the Eastern States and the North are attended with much sneezing and coryza, pain in the head, as if it would burst, which is aggravated from motion, chilliness with the desire to be warmly covered; the bones ache as if they would break; there is fever, thirst, and a general aggravation from motion. Such common everyday colds correspond sometimes to Eupatorium and sometimes to Bryonia. These two remedies are very similar, but the aching in the bones is marked in Eupatorium.

If this state goes on for a few days the patient will become yellow, the cold will settle in the chest, a pneumonia may develop, or an inflammation of the liver, or an attack commonly called a bilious fever. Such fevers frequently call for Bryonia and Eupatorium, each fitting its own cases.

These remedies are especially useful throughout New England, New York, Ohio, the North and Canada. They do not have this kind of a cold very frequently in the warmer climates, but Eupatorium is often indicated in the warmer climates for fevers, yellow fever, bilious fever, break-bone fever and intermittent fever. It seems to be useful in one kind of complaints in one climate and in another kind of complaints in another climate.

In the Southwest and the West, in the valleys of the great river Eupatorium. cures complaints beginning as if the back would break, great shivering from head to foot spreading from the back, great sensitiveness to cold, congestive headaches, flushed face, yellow ski and yellow eyes, pain in the abdomen, and in the region of the live inability to retain any food, nausea from the sight and smell of food the bones ache as if they would break, the fever runs high, the un is of a mahogany color, the tongue is heavily coated yellow, and the is nausea and vomiting of bile.

That gives the picture of Eupatorium in the Mississippi Valley, in the Ohio Valley, in Florida and Alabama and all through the Southern States. The most prominent symptom are the vomiting of bile, the aching of the bones as if they would break, the pains in the stomach after eating, and the nausea from th thought and smell of food.

The stomach is very irritable; the thought of food gags him. The patient desires to keep still, but the pain is s severe that he must move and so he appears restless. These are among the acute manifestations, and are things only very general th we must take up and apply to sick people.

Eupatorium has been a very useful remedy in intermittent fever when epidemic in the valleys. Among the first signs is nausea sometime before the attack, and there are sometimes spells of vomiting bile. About seven or nine o’clock in the forenoon, he commences to shudder, the shivering runs down the back and spreads from the back to the extremities; he has violent thirst, but the shiverings are mad worse from drinking so that he dare not drink cold water. There is soreness and pulsation in the back of the head, violent pain in th occiput and back before and during the chill. During the chill he wants to cover up and the clothing needs to be piled on.

The thirst extends through all the stages. At the close of the chill there is vomiting; often it does not occur until the heat, but before the sweat fairly sets in, he vomits copiously, first the contents of the stomach and then bile. When the heat is on he seems to burn all over, sometime as though with electric sparks.

Intense heat, burning in the top the head, his feet burn and his skin burns. The burning is more intense than the heat would justify. It is characteristic of this remedy, for the sweat to be scanty; a violent chill, intense fever which passes off slowly, and very scanty sweat. The bones ache as if they would break.

During the chill his head aches as if it would burst, it throbs it tears, it stings, it burns; he describes the headache in terms expressive of violence, as if probably a congestive headache. One would think after the fever subsides and he commences to sweat a little that he would get relief, which is true excepting the headache, which often gets worse clear through to the end of the attack, and. sometimes it will last all day and night; then he will have a whole day free from the headache, but on the third day at seven or nine o’clock on will come the same trouble with increasing violence.

At times these attacks are prolonged, the one will extend into the other, that is enter into a sort of remittent character with no intermission. The longer this runs the more the liver becomes engorged, and finally the urine is loaded with bile, the stool becomes whitish, the fever increases, the nausea increasing, the tongue becomes pointed and elongated, and is dry, the headache is extremely painful, and a state of masked fever comes on.

In those intermittent fevers that begin with violent shaking, and the headache continues without sweat, or, if with sweat the headache is made worse, thirst during all stages, vomiting of bile at the close of the heat or during the heat, with the awful bone aches, the Western men, who study their Materia Medica, know that they have a sure cure in Eupatorium.

The time for the administration of this dose is at the close of the paroxysm. You get the best effect when reaction is at the best, and that is when reaction is setting in, after a paroxysm has passed off. That is true of every paroxysmal disease, where it is possible to wait until the end. You cannot mitigate them very much during the attack, indeed, if the medicine is given then it very often increases the difficulty, but if you wait until the close of the paroxysm you get the full benefit of your medicine, and the next paroxysm will not develop, or will be lighter, or, if another attack is brought on immediately you may rest assured there will be no more.

It is not an uncommon thing in intermittent fever, when the remedy has been administered at the close of the paroxysm, for the next paroxysm to come within twenty-four hours after the administration of the medicine; these mixed cases are often in a state of disorder.

One who does not know this would immediately show the white feather, would be alarmed, would be afraid the patient was getting worse, but you have only to wait for the subsidence of the attack and you will see that you have broken its cycle and periodicity.

When this remedy has been apparently indicated by intermittents, and it has not proved of sufficient depth to root out the intermittent, there are two remedies, either of which is likely to follow it, and these are Natrum muriaticum and Sepia. These two remedies are very closely related to Eupatorium, and take up the work where it leaves off, when the symptoms agree.

Gout: This medicine has also a chronic constitutional state, viz.: its gouty nature. It is a very useful medicine in gout. It has gouty soreness and inflamed nodosities of the finger joints, of the elbow joint, pain and gouty swelling of the great toe, red tumefaction of the joint of the great toe. It establishes, in persons who are subject to chalk stone deposits around the finger joints. These gouty subjects take cold, the bones ache, the joints become inflamed, the patient will say he is chilly, the skin becomes yellow, the urine is charged with bile, the stool becomes whitish, and he becomes weak.

In many instances these patients have been for years resorting to Burgundy for relief of their gouty joints and the weakness. Some one of our homoeopathic remedies will relieve the suffering, but in those old gouty subjects who have been always drinking wine, you cannot take the wine away from them at once; you cannot do it while they are having the attack, because they have become so accustomed to it.

Burgundy is the kind of wine very commonly used by the gouty, but the Scotchman with his gout thinks he must always have a little Scotch whiskey and in the attack it is quite impossible to take it away from him. What has been his custom must be followed out for a while because he would grow weaker, but it is damaging him, and hence it is difficult to contend with gouty subjects who have been taking stimulants. You do not get the full benefit of Homoeopathy and you cannot stop his stimulants because weakness will follow. Persons who have not taken wine as a regular beverage can and should do without it, as it interferes with the action of the homoeopathic remedy.

These gouty patients have terrible sick headaches. Pain in the base of the brain and back of the head, associated with gouty joints. These are often referred to as arthritic headaches, that is, gouty headaches, headaches associated with painful joints. Or the headaches may alternate with pains in the joints. Congestive headaches, the pain being in the base of the brain, with more or less throbbing; the pain spreads up through the head and produces a general congestive attack.

Sometimes these headaches come on when the joints are feeling better, and the more headache he has the less pain he has in the extremities; and again, when the gout affects the extremities, then the headaches diminish. Headaches, having a third and seventh-day aggravation, coming with more or less periodicity.

With the headache there will be nausea and vomiting of bile, nausea at the thought and smell of food. This gouty individual is also subject to vertigo, and the sensation as if he would fall to the left is especially noted with the coming on of the headache. The vertigo comes on in the morning; when he gets up he feels as if he would sway to the left, and he has to guard himself in turning to the left. Sometimes in intermittent fever this symptom of swaying to the left and vertigo ending in nausea and vomiting, violent pain in the back of the head and pain in the bones, are the first threatenings.

We have in this remedy also other gouty manifestations: shooting through the temples, shooting from the left to the right side of the head; shooting all through the head; stitching, tearing pains in the limbs as well as the bone aches.

The headaches are so violent that they make him sick at the stomach. In gouty headaches, in intermittents at the close of the intense heat, in periodical headaches, the course is the same, the pain is so intense that nausea is soon brought on and then he vomits bile. Eupatorium has not been used on its symptoms in gouty states as often as it might have been. In intermittent fever it is well known; in headaches it is only occasionally used.

Only occasionally does a man realize its great benefit in headaches and in remittent fevers. In gouty and rheumatic affections it may be suited to the symptoms and is more useful than is generally known. It is not the purpose of our talks to point out ultimates of disease. I do not look upon gout as a disease, but as a great class of symptoms of a rheumatic character that occur in the human family; a great mass of symptoms that may be called gouty, a tendency to enlargement of the joints and gouty deposits in the urine. The ordinary so-called lithaemia is a gouty constitution.

The gouty state of the economy is the superficial or apparent cause; the real cause rests in the miasm. So when I speak of gout I do not mean the name of a disease, but a class of manifestations that are met in large cities especially, less frequently in the country where the people live on farms and take plenty of exercise and have wholesome food and are not housed up. It is supposed to be due to wine drinking. Often when I say to patients that the symptoms arc somewhat gouty, they reply,

“I am not in the habit of drinking wine. I have not been a high liver.”

Such conditions of course bring on a tendency to gout.

Painful soreness in the eyeballs like Bryonia and Gelsemium. The eyeballs are very sensitive to touch and sore to pressure; feel as if he had been struck a blow in the eye; sore, bruised, pain in the eye. Coryza with aching in every bone.

Stools: With the bilious attacks there often may be an ending in a diarrhoea; copious green discharges, green fluid or semi solid stools, but after the attack has lingered until there is one grand emptying out of the bowels, this symptom will disappear and the secondary state comes on in which there is constipation and a light-colored stool, or bileless stool.

Cough: Boneset has a dry, hacking, teasing cough, that seems to rack the whole frame, as if it would break him up, it is so sore, and he is so much disturbed by motion. A great amount of tribulation is found in the respiratory tract, in the bronchial tubes.

We find a cough in capillary bronchitis that shakes the whole frame, analogous to Bryonia and Phosphorus. The subject is extremely sensitive to the cold air, as much so as in Nux vomica. Nux vomica has aching in the bones as if they would break; he wants the room hot, and wants to be covered with clothing which relieves; often the slightest lifting of the covers increases the chilliness, which is true also of Eupatorium, so they run close together.

Mind: In Nux vomica we have the dreadful irritability of temper; in Eupatorium we have overwhelming sadness. The Nux vomica patient is not likely to say much about dying, he is too irritable to go into the next world; not so with Eupatorium, he is full of sadness.

There are other states that comes on secondarily in this medicine. After malarial attacks and in gouty affections, etc., there is bloating of the lower limbs, oedematous swelling. It is not an uncommon thing for a malarial fever that has lingered a long time to be attended with swelling of the lower limbs. Eupatorium very strongly competes with Natrum muriaticum, China, and Arsenicum in such lingering malaria.

Dropsy: When the symptoms have largely subsided and left only this state of anaemia and dropsy of the lower extremities, in the badly treated case, it is very difficult to find what medicine to administer, and the course that the homoeopath must pursue is to go back and examine the patient to find the symptoms he had at the time of the intermittent fever, before he was meddled with. If now there is swelling of the extremities, and you get symptoms to show you that he needed Eupatorium in the beginning, Eupatorium will still cure the dropsy of the extremities.

It may bring back the chill, it may bring back an orderly state that you can prescribe on. If in the beginning he needed Arsenicum, that remedy will bring back the chill, turn it right end to and cure his symptoms. The trouble is that the symptoms were only suppressed, bad not been cured.

So the medicine he needed, but has never had for the chill, may be the medicine that he needs now. Then think of Eupatorium in dropsical swellings of the feet and ankles, and in gouty swellings also. The gouty swellings are all of an inflammatory character.

Very commonly these are closely related to hydrarthrosis, and here Eupatorium. is to be compared with Arsenicum. Gouty inflammation of the knee. All the way through this remedy you read about bone-aches and bone pains.

It is peculiar that medicines come around on time with an exactitude. Diseases do the same thing, and we must see that it is also peculiar that they come with a regular cycle, a regular periodicity. We meet with headaches that come every seven days, headaches also, that come once in two weeks, and there are remedies that have seven-day aggravations and fourteen-day aggravations and three-day aggravations, remedies that bring out their symptoms just in this form.

Do not be surprised when your patient is perfectly under the influence of Aurum if he has a characteristic aggravation every twenty-one days.

There are quite a number of remedies having fourteen-day aggravations, e. g., China and Arsenicum. Again, there are autumnal aggravations, spring aggravations, winter aggravations, aggravations from cold weather and aggravations in the summer from heat.

Some remedies have both the latter.

Ipeca
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 98 of 180
Source pages 1847–1864 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Ipecac. has a wide sphere of action among acute sickness. Most of its acute complaints commence with nausea, vomiting.

The febrile conditions commence with pain in the back between the shoulders, extending down the back, as if it would break, with or without rigors, much fever, vomiting of bile and seldom any thirst. This is the general aspect of the beginning of an Ipecac. fever or gastric. trouble or chill in intermittents or bilious attacks.

The stomach is disordered. There is a sense of fullness in the stomach, cutting pains in the stomach and below the stomach, going from left to right. The cutting pain in colic goes from left to right. The patient is unable to stir or breathe until that pain passes off. It holds him transfixed in one position, coming like the stabbing of a knife in the region of the stomach, or above the navel, going from left to right, and is attended with prostration and nausea.

Nausea: All the complaints in Ipecac. are attended more or less with nausea; every little pain and distress is attended with nausea. The sufferings seem to centre about the stomach, bringing on nausea.

There is continuous nausea, and gagging. The cough causes nausea and vomiting. It is a dry, hacking, teasing, suffocative cough, accompanied by nausea and vomiting. He coughs until his face grows red, and then there is choking and gagging. With every little gush of blood from any part of the body there is nausea, fainting and sinking.

Hence its value in uterine hemorrhages; bright, red blood with nausea; a little blood is attended with fainting or syncope, but the great overwhelming nausea runs through the complaints of this remedy. Though there is sometimes thirst, it is usually absent. When Ipecac. does its best work, there is thirstlessness.

With the Ipecac. fever, or with the chill, there is likely to be pain in the back of the head, a bruised pain through the head and back of the neck and sometimes down the back, and drawing in the muscles of the back of the neck. A congestive fullness in the head, a crushed feeling in the head and back of the head; the whole head aches and is full of pain.

Ipecac. is sometimes as restless as Arsenic., but the Ipecac. prostration comes by spells, whereas the Arsenic prostration is continuous. You will see Ipecac. patients tossing over the bed as much as they do when they need Rhus, turning and tossing, and moving the hands and feet, with restlessness.

This is especially the case when the spine is somewhat involved. Ipecac. has symptoms that look like tetanus it has opisthotonos, and it has been a useful remedy in cerebro-spinal meningitis with vomiting of bile, with pain in the back of the head and neck, and drawing of the muscles of the back, retracting the head.

Stomach: When cerebro-spinal meningitis has gone on until the patient is emaciated, when remedies have seemed but to palliate momentarily, and the whole body is inclined backwards, and there is vomiting of everything, even the simplest article taken into the stomach, the tongue is red and raw, and there is constant nausea and vomiting of bile, Ipecac. will cure.

Ipecac. cures inveterate cases of gastritis when even a drop of water will not stay down; everything put in the stomach is vomited, continuous gagging, sharp pain in the stomach, pain in the back, below the shoulder blades, as if it would break, vomiting of bile, continuous nausea and great prostration. Irritable stomach. It also cures when the abdomen is distended, and sensitive, a tympanitic state, when there is vomiting of bile.

Ipecac. has proved a useful remedy in epidemic dysentery, when the patient is compelled to sit almost constantly upon the stool and passes a little slime, or a little bright red blood; inflammation of the lower portion of the bowel, the rectum and the colon. The tenesmus is awful, burning, and continuous urging with the passage of only a little mucus, and blood. With this there is constant nausea; while straining at stool, the pain is so great that nausea comes on, and he vomits bile. At times, whole families are down with it. It runs through a whole valley and may be epidemic, but it commonly relates to endemics.

In infants, it is indicated when a cholera-like diarrhoea has been present and it ends in a dysenteric state, with continued tenesmus, and the expulsion of a little bloody mucus, the child vomiting everything it takes into the stomach; nausea, vomiting, prostration and great pallor. It is also useful in such conditions when the stool is more or less copious, and is green, and the child passes, frequently, copious quantities of green slime. Much crying when at stool, much straining, with passages of green slime, vomiting of green slime, and vomiting of green curds; milk turns green and is vomited.

Chest: The chest complaints of Ipecac. are interesting. Ipecac. is especially the infant’s friend and is commonly indicated in the bronchitis of infancy. The usual bad cold that ends in chest trouble in infants is a bronchitis.

It is very seldom that an infant gets a true pneumonia, it is generally a bronchitis with coarse rattling. The child coughs, gags and suffocates, and there is coarse rattling which can be heard throughout the room, and the trouble has come on pretty rapidly. The child is pale, looks dreadfully sick, and sometimes looks very anxious. The nose is drawn in as if dangerously ill, and the breathing is such as appears in a dangerous case. Ipecac. will sometimes modify this into a very simple case, break up the cold, and cure the child.

In the old books, the pneumonia of infancy had a distinct and separate description, and the typical symptoms were those of Ipecac. You will see a great similarity of symptoms when you study Ipecac. and Ant. tart. together in chest troubles. If you have been studying them together, you will say,

“How do you distinguish them; they both have rattling cough and breathing, and both have the vomiting?”

Well, the Ipecac. symptoms correspond to the stage of irritation, while the Tartar emetic symptoms appear in the stage of relaxation. That is, the Ipecac. symptoms come on hurriedly, come on as the acute symptoms, whereas the Tartar emetic complaints come on slowly. The latter is seldom suited to symptoms that arise within twenty-four hours, or at least the symptoms of Tartar emetic that arise in twenty-four hours are not of this class.

This group comes on many days later, comes on at the close of a bronchitis when there is threatened paralysis of the lungs; not in the state of irritation, not the dyspnoea from irritation, not the suffocation of that sort, but the suffocation from exudation, and from threatened paralysis of the lungs.

When the lungs are too weak to expel the mucus the coarse rattling comes on. Then there is the great exhaustion, deathly pallor of the face and sooty nostrils.

We see now that these two remedies do not look alike. If we observe the pace of the two remedies, we see that the complaints differ. It is not so much. that they belong to stages, although they do, but rather that Ipecac. brings on its symptoms rapidly and effects a crisis speedily, and that Ant. tart. brings on its symptoms slowly and effects a crisis after many days.

You can readily see the value of Ipecac. in whooping cough, for it has the paroxysmal character, the red face, and vomiting and gagging with the cough. The red face, thirstlessness, violent whooping, with convulsions, with gagging and vomiting of all that he eats are the symptoms that you will generally find.

Haemorrhages: I have hinted at the haemorrhages, and these open out a great field for Ipecac. I could not practice medicine without ipecac., because of its importance in hemorrhages. When I say haemorrhages, I do not mean those from cut arteries, I do not mean haemorrhages where surgery must come in; I mean such as uterine haemorrhages, haemorrhages from the kidneys, from the bowels, from the stomach, from the lungs.

You must know your remedies in haemorrhages; if you do not, you will be forced to use mechanical means; but the homeopathist who is well instructed is able to do without them. In the severest form of uterine hemorrhages, the homeopathic physician is able to do without mechanical means, except when mechanical means are causing the haemorrhage.

This does not relate to hourglass contractions, it does not relate to conditions when the after birth is retained, or when the uterus has a foreign substance in it, because under such circumstances manipulation is necessary.

A distinction must be made. But when we have simply the pure dynamic element to consider, simply and purely a relaxed surface that is bleeding, the remedy is the only thing that will do the work properly. When the uterus is continuously oozing, but every little while the flow increases to a gush, and with every little gush of bright red blood the woman thinks she is going to faint, or there is gasping, and the quantity of the flow is not sufficient to account for such prostration, nausea, syncope, pallor, Ipecac. is the remedy.

When with the gushing of bright red blood there is an overwhelming fear of death, Aconite. If your patient while going through the confinement has had a hot head, an uncontrollable thirst for ice cold water, and after the confinement, everything has gone on in an orderly way, and the placenta has been delivered, and although you have no reason to expect such haemorrhage it comes on, Phosphorus will nearly always be the remedy.

In those withered women, lean and slender, who are always suffering from the heat, who want the covers off and want to be cool, who have had a tendency to ooze blood from the uterus, and now have a haemorrhage that is alarming either with clots, or only an oozing of dark liquid blood, you can hardly do without Secale. A single dose of any one of these medicines on the tongue will check a haemorrhage more quickly than large doses of strong medicine.

The haemorrhage will be checked so speedily that in your earlier experiences you will be surprised. You will wonder if it is not possible that it stopped itself. In copious menstruation Ipecac. is often indicated When the woman has taken cold, or has a shock. In cases where she is not especially subject to copious uterine flow at the menstrual period, she is naturally alarmed, for it is something she has never bad before, and the flow is likely to continue for many days, attended with this weakness. All her power seems to go with a little gush of blood. Ipecac. will cure and end the menstrual flow normally. A fortunate thing in nature is the tendency to check haemorrhage, which is always good.

There are a large number of medicines that control haemorrhage, and these you must keep at your finger’s ends. They belong to emergencies. You must know the remedies that correspond to violent symptoms and violent attacks. Ipecac. is full of hemorrhage. Vomiting of great clots of blood, continuous vomiting of blood in connection with ulceration. In persons who are subject to violent attacks of bleeding, who bleed easily, who have a haemorrhagic tendency, Ipecac. will control temporarily the haemorrhage when the symptoms agree.

Urines: Severe pain in the back in the region of the kidneys, shooting pains, frequent urging to urinate, and the urine contains blood and little clots of blood. The urine is extremely red with blood, which settles to the bottom of the vessel, and lines the whole commode with a layer of blood the thickness of a knife blade. Every pint of urine that it contains will have that coating of blood in the vessel; every attack of pain in the kidney is attended with that condition of the urine. Ipecacuanha will stop that bleeding. It is true that when patients have bled until they have become anaemic, and are subject to dropsy, Ipecac. ceases to be the remedy; its natural follower then is China, which will bring the patient in a position to need an antipsoric remedy.

Colds: Then there are the “colds.”

Simple, common coryzas among the children. When a cold settles in the nose, and the nose is stuffed up at night or when the adult has a coryza, with much stuffing up of the nose, blowing of mucus and blood from the nose, much sneezing, and the cold goes further down and is followed by hoarseness, extending into the trachea with rawness, and finally into the bronchial tubes with suffocation and settling in the chest, think of ipecac.

The Ipecac. colds often begin in the nose and spread very rapidly into the chest. With these colds in the nose there is copious bleeding of bright red blood. Every time he takes cold in the nose he has copious bleeding; a tendency to nosebleed with the colds. The inflammation that comes upon the mucous membrane in Ipecac. is violent.

The irritation comes on suddenly, and the mucous membrane inflames so rapidly that the parts become purple, turgescent, and bleeding seems to be the only natural relief. Stoppage of the nose and loss of smell; the nose becomes so stuffed up that he cannot breathe through it.

With the head symptoms, with the colds, with the whooping cough, with the chill, and with many of the inflammatory complaints, the face becomes flushed, bright red, or bluish red, and the lips blue; with the chill the lips and the finger nails are blue. The chill is violent, sometimes congestive in character and often a rigor. The whole frame shakes, and the teeth chatter.

There are old incurable cases of asthma that are palliated by Ipecac. and carry around a bottle of it from which they say they get much relief. It is useful in cases of humid asthma, in cases of asthmatic bronchitis, when they suffer from the damp weather and from sudden weather changes; every little cold rouses up this bronchial attack, and he suffocates and gags when he coughs, or spits up a little blood.

He has to sit up nights to breathe, and the attacks are common and frequent. These patients say they get relief front Ipecac., and it is not surprising that Ipecac. relieves that state of asthmatic breathing, because it has such symptoms. Some of these cases are incurable, they are people advanced in life.

This remedy, more wisely administered, will give more relief. A powder of Ipecac. will break up the attack, so that the patient is comfortable, and then will go on in an ordinary sort of asthmatic way, until catching another cold. The cough is rattling and asthmatic.

Convulsions: As a convulsive medicine Ipecac. is not well enough known.

Convulsions in pregnancy. Convulsions in whooping cough; frightful spasms, affecting the whole of the left side, followed by paralysis; clonic and tonic spasms of children and hysterical women. Tetanus, rigidity of the body, with flushed redness of the face.

These are strong features of Ipecac., and they have not been sufficiently dwelt upon, and the remedy is not sufficiently known as having these states so prominently. Medicines like Belladonna are more frequently spoken of in the books and in treatises of spasms, yet Ipecac. is just as important a remedy to be studied in relation to spasms, and its action upon the spine.

Skin: In suppressed eruptions, the symptoms will very commonly point to Ipecac.

When the eruption does not come out, or an eruption has been driven back by cold, sometimes acute manifestations of stomach and bowels follow and colds settle in the chest from suppressed eruptions, Ipecac. will also cure erysipelas, when there is the vomiting, the chill, the pain in the back, the thirstlessness and the overwhelming nausea.Ipecac. is often sufficient for the nausea and vomiting when the scarlet fever rash is slow to come out. Instead of the rash coming out as it should, Ipecac. symptoms come on in the stomach with nausea and vomiting. Ipecac. will check the nausea and vomiting, will bring out the eruption, and the disease will run a milder course.

Euphrasia
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 82 of 180
Source pages 1592–1597 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Head: Euphrasia is a short acting remedy of great usefulness in acute catarrhal affections with or without fever. Headaches that occur with coryza and eye symptoms, head aches in the evening as if bruised. Stitching pain in the head.

Headaches; as if the head would burst with dazzling of the eyes from sunlight. These are catarrhal headaches with profuse watery discharge from the eyes and nose. The eye symptoms of Euphrasia are its most prominent feature.

Catarrh condition of the eyes with copious, acrid, watery discharge with or without coryza. Cutting pain in the eyes extending into the head, pressure in the eyes as if caused by sand. Sensation of dryness, burning, biting in the eyes. Sensation of dust in the eyes. Violent itching of the eyes obliging rubbing and winking, with copious lachrymation. Pupils much contracted and much tumefaction of the mucous membrane with redness and enlarged blood vessels and smarting.

Iritis: from rheumatism or in connection with rheumatic joints. Copious thin or thick discharges. General inflammation of all the tissues of the eyes. Ulceration of the cornea. It has cured Pannus. Pustular inflammation. Opacity of the cornea after injuries of the eye. It is suitable in the most violent acute conjunctivitis. Amblyopia with inflammation of conjunctiva and lids.

Copious lachrymation and burning. The mucous membranes of the lids and eyeballs are injected, red, and vascular. agglutination of the lids in the morning. Copious, acrid lachrymation with fluent discharge from the nose during coryza. Dryness of the lids and the margins of the lids red swollen, and burning. The lids are very sensitive and swollen. The margins of the lids itch and burn.

Suppuration of the margins of the lids. Much swelling of the lids with inflammation. Fine rash about the eyes with puffiness of the lids. Blurred vision. Paralysis of the third nerve.

The next most important group of symptoms is in connection with the nose. Sneezing and fluent coryza. The discharge is bland and this occurs with acrid lachrymation. The nasal mucous membrane is swollen.

Profuse, bland, fluent, coryza. After this coryza has existed for a day or two it extends into the larynx with a hard cough. The coryza is worse during the night while lying down. The cough is worse in the daytime and ameliorated by lying down.

The remedy has a rash like measles and it has febrile symptoms; therefore, when these symptoms are duly considered, it will be seen that Euphrasia is similar to the symptoms that occur in measles. It is a wonderful medicine in measles though not so frequently indicated as Pulsatilla, owing to the fact that this combination of symptoms does not often come.

Larynx and cough: Hoarseness in the morning. Irritation in the larynx compelling him to cough, followed by pressure beneath the sternum. Abundant secretion in the larynx causing loose cough with rattling in the chest.

Deep inspiration is difficult. The cough, considered by itself, furnishes a very rare group of symptoms. Cough with copious expectoration along with or following coryza. Difficult respiration ameliorated at night while lying down.

Worse in the morning when moving about with copious expectoration. Violent cough from tickling in the larynx. No cough at night causes the remedy to resemble Bry. and Mang. The dyspnoea and cough are ameliorated by lying down. The coryza symptoms, otherwise, are worse at night and from lying down. When these symptoms occur in grippe or influenza, this becomes a very suitable remedy.

The abundance of mucus scraped from the larynx and trachea is often like the ending of bad colds. The expectoration is easy and almost without cough. It comes up without much effort. Pressive pain beneath the sternum showing that the trachea is especially involved in the catarrhal condition. The pain in the eyes is worse in the open air. The coryza is worse in the open air. The cough sometimes comes on in the open air.

Windy weather causes fluent coryza. Cold air and windy weather cause lachrymation. He is a chilly patient and cannot get warm in bed.

There is chill, fever, and sweat in this remedy. This chill predominates. The fever occurs mostly during the day with red face and cold hands. The heat descends the body. The perspiration is often confined to the front part of the body. Perspiration during sleep at night. Strange odor sometimes very offensive and most profuse upon the chest. It is especially suitable in catarrhal fever, influenza and measles.

When the symptoms agree, it will make a violent attack of measles turn into a very simple form, making the patient feel better, bring out the eruption, control the fever, and relieve the cough, coryza, and other catarrhal symptoms. Streaming, hot, burning tears with rash, photophobia, running from the nose, intense throbbing headaches, redness of the eyes, photophobia from fever, dry cough during measles.

Ferrum Phosphoricum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 84 of 180
Source pages 1598–1617 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Great weakness, and desire to lie down. Nervous at night. Rheumatic conditions.

While it has been used by Schuessler’s followers for the first stage of inflammatory fevers, it is useful in the higher potencies in chronic diseases, and is a deep acting anti-psoric, It could not be less than the Ferrum and Phosphoric acid that form it.

For many years I followed the Schüessler indications, but by the aid of new provings, homeopathic aggravations, and clinical experience the present arrangement of symptoms furnishes my guide for this valuable homoeopathic remedy.

The time of aggravation: of some complaints is in the morning, some in afternoon; others come in the evening and night, and after midnight. The patient is sensitive to the open air, and many symptoms are aggravated in open air.

The most noticeable features are anaemia and chlorosis (like Ferrum). The general physical anxiety is more like Phos. acid. Lack of vital heat, and aggravation in cold air and from becoming cold. Always taking cold. Congestion of head and organs, with fever and red face.

The general weakness is like the low vitality of the phtisical inheritance. Dropsical conditions. Symptoms worse after eating, from physical exertion. Fainting spells. Cold drinks bring on symptoms. Sour food aggravates. Vascular fullness and distension of veins.

The haemorrhagic condition is a strong feature, as it is in Ferrum, Phos. acid and Phos. The nervousness of hysteria and hypochondriasis is found in this remedy. Soreness through the body, especially in congested parts; with aggravation from jar and walking. Complaints from lifting and straining muscles, and from sprains.

Many symptoms are worse lying in bed and from rest, and ameliorated by moving slowly about (like Ferrum), but the great lassitude compels him to lie down. Motion that is a real exertion aggravates, but slow. motion ameliorates. Numbness of parts and suffering parts. Surging of blood in body and head.

Stitching, tearing pains. Tearing downwards. False plethora. Strong pulsation over body, and in head. Strong, full, frequent pulse. Generally oversensitive, and sensitive to pain. Standing aggravates many complaints. Trembling limbs. All combine to give us a remedy broad and deep acting.

Mind: This remedy has marked anger, even to violence; producing weakness, headache, trembling, sweat, and other nervous manifestations. Anxiety at night, as if he had done a great wrong to somebody; after eating; with apprehensiveness; during fever; about the future; hypochondriacal. Cheerful, talkative and hilarious; unnatural excitement, mingled with sadness. This remedy has been used in delirium tremens.

Aversion to company and feels better when alone. He is unable to concentrate the mind, or reflect ordinary questions; can not study. Confusion of mind when trying to think, in the morning, in the evening, after eating; ameliorated by washing the face in cold water.

He is dissatisfied with everything he possesses, and with his surroundings. Very excitable in the evening. The fullness in his head makes him fear apoplexy. Fear of going into a crowd, or death, that some evil will come to him, of misfortune, of people. Forgetful. It is an excellent remedy for hysterical girls, when other symptoms agree.

His ideas are abundant, and there is unusual clearness of mind (Coff.). Again, extreme indifference to all pleasure and exciting events. Aversion to work. It might well be thought of for puerperal mania from the note,

“Sows eat up their young.”

It has plenty of cerebral hyperemia, then why not madness? Irritability. Alternating moods. Morose. Obstinate. Restlessness at night in bed, tossing about much during fever. Sadness in the evening before menses. Extremely sensitive to noise. Stupefaction. Indisposed to talk. Aversion to thinking. Weeping. Aversion to mental work.

Vertigo: Vertigo in afternoon from hyperaemia of brain, during chill, on closing the eyes; tendency to fall forwards; during headache; as if intoxicated; looking downwards; during menses; with nausea; on rising up; on rising from bed. Staggering when walking, with vanishing of sight. Sensation as if the head were pushed forward while walking.

The head: feels cold and the vertex is sensitive to cold air. Hyperaemia of the brain. Constriction of the scalp. Empty sensation in the head; during menses. Sensation of fullness in the head. The hair falls out. The head feels very hot. Flushes of heat, and red face. Heat in head; in vertex; during menses.

The head feels heavy during menses. Weight in forehead and occiput. Itching of the scalp. Headache, in morning in bed, in afternoon, in evening. Cold air ameliorates the general headaches; ascending steps aggravates; blinding headache; catarrhal headaches.

Headache during chill, aggravated, on closing the eyes; cold applications ameliorate; with coryza; aggravation on coughing, after eating, excitement.

Headache during menses, worse from light and noise. Hammering headaches. Headache, aggravated from a jar. He is compelled to lie down. Lying ameliorates. Headache during menses; on motion, and on moving the head; noise. Paroxysmal pains.

Pressure ameliorates. Pulsating pains. Riding in a carriage aggravates. Sitting. Stooping; walking. Wrapping up the head brings on or aggravates the headache. Pulsating in head and temples, worse on right side. Headache with hot, red face and vomiting food.

Severe frontal headache with epistaxis, which ameliorates. Predominance of suffering on right side of forehead, aggravated in the morning on waking, evening; ameliorated in open air; aggravated on coughing. Pain above the eyes.

Pain in the occiput, on coughing, jarring; during menses. Pain in sides of head and temples, in vertex. Pain in vertex during profuse menses. Boring pain in temples. Bursting pain in head. Pressing pain in whole head, pressing outward, forehead, in frontal eminence, temples; vertex like a stone.

Soreness of the scalp, of occiput, vertex. Stitching pains in head, in forehead, over eyes occiput extending to forehead, on stooping; sides of head, temples, vertex. Tearing pains in head. General pulsation in head, aggravated by motion, and stooping; strong in forehead; in occiput on coughing, in temples, in vertex. Shocks in the head.

Eyes: Discharge of mucus from the eyes. Conjunctivitis with photophobia. Can not see on stooping. Blood vessels enlarged. Lachrymation. Half open lids.

Pain in eyes; aching, burning; sand. Stitching. Sensation of protrusion. Redness of conjunctiva, of balls and lids. Sunken eyes. Swollen lids. Sclerotics jaundiced. Vanishing of sight as from fainting.

Ears: Purulent discharge from the ear. Itching in ear. Noises in the ear; roaring, buzzing, humming, ringing and singing. Catarrh of Eustachian tubes. Inflammatory pains in the ear. Otitis media. Pain deep in the ear. Drawing. Stitching. Pain and swelling of the parotid glands. Sensitive to noise. Impaired hearing.

Nose: Catarrh of nose.

Coryza; discharge bloody. Crusts form in the nose. Discharge excoriating, purulent. When this remedy has been given on the biochemical theory in the low potencies its use has been limited to the acute stage of coryza, but when used homoeopathically this limitation does not hold good.

Who would think of limiting Ferrum or Phos. acid or Phos. to the acute or first stage of an acute, disease?

Epistaxis with coryza, during fever, or headache when the head is hot and full. Epistaxis in the morning, on blowing the nose, with cough, Sneezing.

Face: Chlorotic face. Dark circles under the eyes. Earthy, pale, sallow face. Pale lips. Red face alternating with paleness. Circumscribed redness of cheeks. Red during fever; during headache. Yellow. Liver spots. Dryness of lips.

Heat of face; flushes; while sitting; with toothache; with pains. Hippocratic face. Inflammation of the parotid. Pain in face, from inflammation of teeth, neuralgia, ameliorated by cold applications, aggravated by motion. Pulsating pains. Stitching. Perspiration of face. Sunken face.

Mouth: Swelling oedematous, from toothache.

Swollen parotids. Bleeding from mouth and gums. Tongue dark red and swollen. Tongue white. Dry mouth. Inflammation of gums, fauces, tongue and tonsils. Pains in teeth, with red, hot, swollen gums; ameliorated by holding cold water in the mouth, and aggravated by warm things. Pains in the teeth after eating. Burning of the tongue. Salivation. Taste insipid, putrid, sweetish.

Throat: Constriction of throat.

Redness in throat and tonsils. Swollen tonsils. Heat in throat. Inflammation of throat and tonsils. Lumps in throat. Pain on swallowing. Burning. Soreness.

Stomach: Appetite diminished.

Ravenous appetite without relish of food. Appetite entirely gone. Aversion to food, meat, milk. Desires sour things. Distension of stomach after eating. Eructations, after eating, better, empty, of food, foul, sour. Water-brash. Fullness after eating.

Heat in stomach. Hiccough. Indigestion. Inflammation of stomach. Nausea after eating, during pregnancy. Sudden attacks of nausea, coming at any moment; sometimes waking her out of sleep, lasting a short time. Nausea felt in the throat.

Nausea while walking. Pain in the stomach after eating. Burning in the stomach. Cramping. Pressing after eating. Soreness. Great thirst for much water. Vomiting, morning, on rising, on coughing, after drinking, after eating, during fever, during headache, during pregnancy, riding in a carriage. Violent vomiting; blood, food, green, sour. Vomiting with inflammation and pain in the stomach.

Abdomen: The abdomen is distended, and the liver and spleen are enlarged.

Much flatulence, fullness and rumbling, gurgling. The abdomen is hard. Weight in the abdomen. Inflammation of the peritoneum. This remedy is curative in many complaints of the liver. Severe pain in the bowels, in the morning, evening, night; on coughing; during diarrhoea; after eating; during menses; as if menses would come on; paroxysmal, before stool, when walking.

Pain in hypochondria, in liver. Cramping, colicky pains. Dragging; pressing. Sore bruised pains. Tension.

Constipation; difficult stool. Constriction of anus. Diarrhoea, in morning, afternoon, night, after midnight; after eating; painless. Flatus.

Rectum and anus: Hemorrhage from anus, from piles.

Haemorrhoids, external. Involuntary stools. Itching of anus. Moisture about the anus.

Pain in rectum during stool; with dysentery, and fever. Burning during stool, after stool. Tenesmus. Pain in rectum from inflammation, constant, aggravation by pressure on stomach. Prolapsus of anus, during stool. Ineffectual urging to stool. Stool is excoriating, bloody, brown, frequent, hard, lienteric, slimy, green mucus, thin, watery, green watery.

Bladder: Hemorrhage from the bladder or urethra.

Inflammation of the bladder with fever. Pain in the bladder and neck of the bladder. Tenesmus. Urging; constant; frequent; with pain in neck of bladder and end of penis, must urinate immediately, which ameliorates the pain; aggravated standing; only in the daytime.

Sudden urging. Must hasten or urine will escape. Frequent urination. Involuntary urination in the daytime, ameliorated lying down; at night in sleep; on coughing; while walking. Pain in the kidneys with fever.

Men: Gleety discharge from the urethra.

Gonorrhea with heat in urethra in inflammatory stage; scanty, watery or mucous discharge. Haemorrhage from urethra. Burning in urethra during flow of urine.

Urine albuminous, bloody, burning, cloudy on standing, dark, red, copious with headache; amoniacal, scanty; much sediment, mucus, much uric acid; high specific gravity.

Troublesome nightly erections and seminal emissions. Erections feeble, or entirely wanting. Sexual passion increased, or entirely absent.

Women: In the woman there is slight change of symptoms; predisposition to abort, aversion to coition, or desire much diminished.

Leucorrhoea, excoriating, before menses, milky, thin, white.

Chlorotic girls. Menses absent. Menstrual flow bright red, clotted, copious, dark, too frequent, intermittent, irregular, late, painful, pale, protracted, scanty, suppressed, thin, watery.

Uterine haemorrhage. Pain in vagina during coition. Dysmenorrhoea with fever and red face. Bearing down in pelvis with dull pain in ovarian region. Prolapsus of the uterus. Sterility. Sensitive vagina.

Respiration: Acute catarrh of air passages.

Inflammation of the larynx, with mucus, raw feeling and rattling in chest, fever, red face. Mucus in larynx and trachea. Dryness in larynx. Burning in larynx. Roughness in larynx. Hoarseness during coryza. Voice lost, weak.

Respiration asthmatic. Spasmodic asthma. Dyspnea, evening, night, with cough, while lying. Rattling. Short. Suffocative respiration. Stitching in chest on deep inspiration.

Cough: Cough, daytime, morning on rising, evening, night; cold air aggravates; asthmatic; acute.

Short, spasmodic and very painful cough. Deep breathing aggravates. Constant cough, with coryza. Dry cough. Cough after eating; exhausting; with fever. Hacking cough. Cough from irritation in larynx and trachea. Loose cough. Lying aggravates cough. Cough in bed, Paroxysmal cough. Rattling cough.

Spasmodic. Talking aggravates. Tickling. Tormenting cough, aggravated on walking. Whooping cough. Touching larynx on bending head over. Increased cough from taking cold in phthisis.

Expectoration in daytime, morning, bloody, bright red, dark, copious, difficult, frothy, greenish, mucus, offensive, purulent, scanty, putrid, thick, viscid, whitish, yellow.

Anxiety in chest and region of the heart. Catarrh of the chest. Congestion of the chest. Constriction of chest and heart. Sensation of fullness. Haemorrhage of lungs. Heat.

Inflammation of bronchial tubes, lungs and pleura; oppression of chest. Pain in chest during cough, during inspiration; in sides of chest, during deep inspiration. Soreness in chest on coughing. Stitching in chest, in sides of chest, on coughing.

Right sided pleuritis. Stitches, aggravated coughing and breathing. Palpitation at night with anxiety, on exertion and motion, while sitting, walking rapidly. This is a valuable temporary remedy in the acute colds during the course of phthisis. In acute phthisis. Spasms of the chest with suffocation, fever and red face. Rheumatism in the upper thorax.

Back: Coldness in back.

“Crick” in the neck or back. Pain in the back at night, during menses, on motion, rising from a seat, while sitting, while walking, cervical region, between shoulders, lumbar region during menses. Aching. Stitching pains in back. Tearing. Stiffness in back of neck.

Cold extremities. Cold hands and feet. Cold feet evening in bed. Cold feet during headache. Contraction of fingers, result of rheumatism. Cramps in thighs, legs, calve, feet.

Limbs: Blueness of linger nails.

Hot hands, palms; soles. Heaviness of the limbs, upper limbs; legs. Inflammation of joints. Numbness of hands and fingers, legs and feet. Rheumatic pain in right shoulder and upper arm, of a drawing, tearing character, aggravated by violent motion of arm, ameliorated by gentle motion (Ferr.), part sensitive to touch.

Deadness of the right hand, could not lift with the hand. Acute rheumatism of right shoulder joint, red, swollen and sore.

Rheumatism of right deltoid. Rheumatism of wrist. Rheumatism of knee joint with fever. Gouty affection of joints. Sciatica. Pain in thighs. Sore bruised pain in limbs. Stitching pains in limbs, upper limbs; shoulders; hips.

Tearing pain in shoulders, upper arms, hips. Shooting pains in both knees, extending down legs, with fever. Restless legs. Stiffness of lower limbs, of feet. Swollen joints, upper limbs, forearm, hands; feet.

Dropsical and rheumatic swelling. Great weakness of limbs, of joints, knees, legs. The rheumatism goes from joint to joint, aggravated by the slightest motion.

Sleep: There are many dreams, anxious, confused, of failing, nightmare, vivid.

Late falling asleep. Restless sleep. Sleepiness in the evening. Sleepless before midnight, with sleepiness. After once waking up he is sleepless.

Chill afternoons; 1 P.M. daily. Chill at night in bed. Chilliness. Shaking chill. The fever predominates. Fever at any time with inflammation of organs, joints, or mucus membranes. Fever without chill.

Dry heat with thirst. Flushes of heat. Hectic fever and night sweats. Internal heat. Remittent fever. Heat after sleep. Perspiration in daytime, morning; clammy; with great weakness, on slight exertion, following the fever; copious; during sleep.

Skin: Burning skin.

Coldness. Desquamation. Pale, red skin. Dry skin, Formication. Great sensitiveness of the skin. Skin feels sore. Ulceration. Small withered warts.

Editorial notes

• “much dimished” corrected to “much diminished” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Ferrum Metallicum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 83 of 180
Source pages 1618–1635 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Iron: We will take up the study of Ferrum metallicum. The Old School has been giving Iron for anaemia throughout all tradition. They have given it in great quantities in the form of the tincture of chloride, and the carbonate.

Whenever the patient became anemic, pallid, waxy and weak, Iron was the tonic. It is true that Iron produces anemia, and it would be astonishing to any one who ever read the provings of Ferrum of the allopaths did not create additional bloodlessness with the doses of Iron they administer.

It is true that under the provings, and under those circumstances where Iron has been given in excess, the patient becomes greenish, waxy, yellow and pallid, with a sickly and anemic countenance. The lips become pale; the ears lose their pink color; the skin of the body becomes waxy, and there comes a tendency to hemorrhage, at times with clots, but commonly with copious, thin, liquid blood, very dark.

The clots will separate and the fluid parts look brown, dirty and watery. The patient gradually emaciates. He is pallid and waxy; his muscles become flabby and relaxed; he is incapable of endurance. All the muscular fibers become tired from any exertion. Rapid exercise, or, any unusual exertion. is impossible. Any rapid exertion or motion brings on weakness, dyspnea, sinking and fainting.

A strange thing running through all the constitutional conditions of Ferrum is that the pains and sufferings come on during rest.

The palpitation sometimes comes on during rest, the dyspnoea comes on during rest, and even the weakness. The patient is ameliorated by moving gently about, but any exertion tires and causes faintness.

Any rapid motion aggravates the complaints. The pains are ameliorated by moving about the house slowly, so that the exertion does not excite or fatigue. In many cases the patient is dropsical. The skin pits upon pressure and is pale, yet the face shows an appearance of plethora. From every little excitement the face becomes flushed.

During the chill the face becomes red. From taking wine or stimulant the face becomes flushed, and the patient, though flabby, relaxed and tired, does not get credit for being sick.

She fails to get the sympathy of her friends. She is feeble, she suffers from palpitation and dyspnoea, she has great weakness with inability to do anything like work, she feels that she must lie down-yet the face is flushed. This is called a pseudo-plethora.

The blood-vessels are distended, the veins varicose, and their coatings relaxed. On this account bleed ing takes place easily; capillary oozing; hemorrhage from all pass of the body, haemorrhage from the nose, the lungs, the uterus.

Women suffer much from haemorrhage from the uterus, especially during and after the climacteric period. Ferrum will be found of great value when the symptoms agree in that wonderful anemic state called “green sickness,” that comes on with girls at the time of puberty and in the years that follow it.

There will be almost no menstrual flow, but a cough will develop, with great pallor. So common is this sickness among girls that all mothers are acquainted with and dread it. In a large practice you will have a number of cases of chlorosis.

Sometimes the early menstrual period is attended with a copious, and then occurs, and this goes on for a number of years before anything like menstrual regularity is established.

In these cases the Old School always used to feed their patients Iron in great quantities, but the more Iron the patient took the worse she grew.

Congestion, tending upwards, with red face, hot head and coldness of the extremities. But the heat of the head and face is not at all in proportion to the red appearance. It will be found that this congestion upward in Ferrum will take place during a chill, in septic fevers or in other forms of fever, and the head is not always hot, but sometimes cool. The face may be red and cool.

Face: Another grand feature of Ferrum is that, like China, it has complaints from loss of animal fluids; from prolonged haemorrhage, with weakness remaining a long time. There is no repair, no assimilation. The bones are soft and easily bent; they take on crooks. Emaciated and feeble children. Dryness of the joints, causing cracking on motion. Sudden emaciation, with false plethora.

Redness of face – a healthy looking bloom – in one who is unable to walk fast on the street, or to stand any exertion. Yet some of the complaints of Ferrum are better from occupation, from doing something, from taking a little exercise, because the complaints come on during rest.

Over-excitability and sensitivity of the nerves; oversensitiveness to pain. The sensitive woman who needs Ferrum has a flushed face and is often complaining because she gets no sympathy. She does not look sick, yet she puffs on going up stairs; she feels weak and wants to lie down.

Restless when keeping still; must keep the limbs moving. Rending pains in the limbs; dull aching in the limbs. These pass off when moving about quietly and gently, like Pulsatilla. But Ferrum is a very cold remedy, and is ameliorated by warmth, except the pains about the neck, face and teeth, which are ameliorated by cold. But most of the pains are ameliorated by heat; the patient wants to keep warm and dreads anything like fresh air or a draught.

Weakness and prostration; weakness even from talking. Prostration with irregular pulse and rapid pulse, or with too slow pulse; palpitation. And then comes paralytic weakness; the limbs give out. Paralytic conditions from anaemia or haemorrhage. Fainting spells from haemorrhage. Jerking and twitching of the muscles; chorea; catalepsy.

Mind: You may easily imagine something of the character of the mental symptoms, for they are like the physical. The mind is confused and the patient tearful. Depression of spirits; mental weariness and depression. The highest degree of depression and despondency. Anxiety from the slightest cause; irritability.

The least noise, like the crackling of paper, sets the patient wild. It brings on nervous excitement and restlessness; she must get up and move.

Excitement from the slightest opposition. Any sudden or rapid motion, or the least hurry, causes blackness before the eyes; dizziness; things turn in a circle; she must sit down. And with all this the face is red. When alone and at rest, the face becomes pale and cold, but the least excitement brings a flush to the cheeks.

Headaches: The headaches are congestive in character, with mounting of blood upwards. There is a sense of fullness and distension, with red face.

Fullness and distension of the eyes; fullness of the neck. Palpitation of the heart. Exophthalmic goitre. The headaches are ameliorated by pressure. Ferrum wants to be pressed to support the veins. Throbbing like hammers in the head.

Every quick motion aggravates the headache. Coughing aggravates the headache; pain in the head and occiput from coughing. These pains are sometimes ameliorated by walking gently. Going up stairs, sitting down, rising from a seat unless it is done very deliberately – will arouse all the pains of Ferrum.

Any sudden motion will bring on hammering and a feeling of great expansion in the head. And then will come more or less shooting, tearing pains. Beating in the back of the head from rising or from coughing, because coughing is a sudden motion. Confusion of mind with hammering headache. Rush of blood to the head. Congestive headaches from excitement; from taking cold; from exposure; lasting three or four days or a week. The face is gushed and perhaps cold, the head somewhat hot, but not as hot as would be expected.

Redness of the eye; engorged vessels. Great weakness, dyspnoea and palpitation. Writing – a mental operation – causes the headache to reappear. Great sensitiveness of the scalp. The patient must let the hair hang down. Mental disorders and headaches accompanying or following haemorrhages, and in lying in women.

Bloated appearance about the eyes. All sorts of disturbance of vision from congestion. Venous stasis; swelling of the eyelids; pus-like discharge. Over-sensitiveness to sound; ringing in the ears.

The symptoms of the nose are numerous. Colds and catarrhal troubles, ending in nosebleed. Nosebleed on slight provocation, with headaches at the menstrual nisus.

Scabs form in the nose. Extreme paleness of the face; face becomes red and flushed on the least emotion. Flushed face with dropsy of the lower limbs; flushed face with chill. Thirst during the chill is a striking feature of Ferrum. During the menstrual period there are violent pains, and as soon as the pain starts the face becomes flushed. Nothing taken into the stomach digests, and yet there is no special nausea. It is the exception to find nausea in Ferrum. Food goes into the stomach and is vomited without nausea-simply emptied out. Sometimes there are eructations of food by the mouthful, like Phosphorus.

Food: Phosphorus was the remedy with all the old masters for spitting up of food by the mouthful until. the stomach was empty.

Canine hunger. It says in the next:

“Double the amount of an ordinary meal in the evening was hardly sufficient.”

All food tastes bitter; solid food is dry and insipid. After eating there are eructations. Heat in the stomach; regurgitation of food. Spasmodic pressure in the stomach after the least food or drink, especially after meat. Aversion to meat, to eggs, to sour fruit. Aversion to milk, and to his accustomed tobacco and beer. Sweet wines agree, but sour wines and all sour things disagree. The tongue feels as if burnt. As soon as the stomach is empty vomiting ceases until he eats again. Vomiting of food, immediately after midnight, Vomitus tastes sour.

Pregnancy: Ferrum is occasionally indicated during pregnancy. A few weeks after becoming pregnant the woman commences to throw up her food by the mouthful.

There is no nausea, but the face is flushed and the woman is flabby and weak. She vomits without becoming sick. Fullness and pressure in the stomach; pressure in the stomach after eating. Ferrum is an unusually interesting remedy because of this peculiar stomach. It is like a leather bag; it will not digest anything. Fill it up and it empties itself just as easily as it was filled.

Ferrum has a troublesome diarrhoea, with acrid watery excoriating stool. Morning diarrhoea. Many of these patients are old sinners with broken-down constitutions, who have suffered long from constipation. Chronic constipation with ineffectual urging and hard, difficult Stools.

Relaxation runs through the remedy. From this relaxation there is prolapsus of the rectum, vagina and uterus. Dragging down in the lower part of the body, as if the organs would come out-and sometimes they do come out.

Bladder: The bladder is also relaxed. Its sphincter is weak, and there is no regularity of its muscular action. Hence, we have involuntary urination from sudden motion, from walking, or from coughing. In little children the urine dribbles all day just as long as the child plays the urine dribbles and keeps the clothing wet, but this better while keeping perfectly quiet.

The bladder is so relaxed and tired that it cannot hold the urine, and as soon as it is partially filled it allows its contents to escape. This relaxation runs through the remedy and gives it character, just like a human being. You know what each one of your friends is likely to do on every occasion. So it is with a remedy. You ought to know what it is most likely to do, in order to know what it will accomplish in curing the sick.

Genital: Weakness and relaxation of the genital organs is common to Ferrum. The menstrual flow comes in for its share. Copious, watery flow; haemorrhage or suppression – amenorrhoea – no flow at all, only a leucorrhoea. Suppression of the menses with great nervous excitement; with flushed face; with weakness and palpitation. Prolapsus of the vagina. Insensibility of the vagina during coition. Metrorrhagia. Menses too soon too profuse and lasting too long.

Respiration: Difficult respiration; pains and disturbances in the chest. Difficult breathing, with a sense of a great load on the chest. Suffocating fits at night; catarrhal conditions of the respiratory tract; congestion of the chest; dyspnoea.

Spasmodic cough, such as we find in whooping cough, coming on in violent paroxysms. Cough after every meal, with gagging, emptying the stomach of its contents. Cough felt in the head. Cough worse from the abuse of brandy, tobacco or tea. Cough coming on after the loss of fluids, as after haemorrhages.

Chest troubles following uterine hemorrhage, and after other hemorrhages. Coughing up blood; bleeding from the lungs. Persons debilitated by secret vices, with a tendency to go into tuberculosis.

Palpitation of the heart from fear, excitement, or exertion. Rapid action of the heart, or sometimes slow action. Fatty degeneration of the heart. Pulse accelerated toward evening. Pulsations throughout the body, feeling like little hammers.

Rheumatic pains: in the extremities, ameliorated by heat and by gentle motion; aggravated by cold, by exertion, or by rapid motion. Pains through the deltoid muscles are spoken of more prominently than pains in other parts, but these pains are no more striking than the pains anywhere in Ferrum.

Tearing pains through the limbs. Inability to raise the arm; paralytic pains, – that is, pains that are benumbing. Pains that make him feel as if he were going to lose the power to move the part. Violent pains in the hip-joint are just as common as the pains in the shoulder.

Lippe says,

“Rheumatism in the left shoulder,” but it is just as common in the right. Rheumatic pains in the deltoid muscle of either side. Violent pain in the muscles and along the nerves. Pinching in the right deltoid; boring in the right shoulder; aggravated by motion and by the weight of the bedclothes; ameliorated by heat.

Tearing and stinging pains. The Ferrum pains come on in the night, because the patient attempts to keep still in bed. Rest brings on the Ferrum pains. When moving gently about in the daytime be will not have so much pain. Coldness of the limbs; and again, heat of the soles and palms, they change about. With all this weakness and prostration dropsical conditions come on, so that the feet and hands become bloated.

Evening chill or chilliness with fever, cold hands and feet and red face. Icy cold feet with the chill. Chill ameliorated after eating. Thirst with the chill. Copious sweat which stains yellow. All symptoms worse while sweating. Strong-smelling night sweats. All the febrile symptoms are better by slowly moving about. In intermittent fever after the abuse of quinine.

We read in the text that Ferrum is a remedy for diarrhea in the last stages of consumption. Well, sometimes it is, if the patient is prepared to die.

Ferrum will stop the diarrhea, but after it is stopped the patient will not live long. The diarrhea is not usually painful. It is annoying, but it is painless, and the night sweats are painless. Do not suppress them; they had better be let alone. Let the patient go on to a peaceful termination.

The best remedy for diarrhoea in the last stages of consumption is Saccharum lactis in the crude form, given in very small quantities and repeated as often as is required by the patient and the bystanders.

Editorial notes

• “and sensivity of” corrected to “and sensitivity of” (transcription error in the digital source text).