Category: Materia Medica

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).

Fluoricum Acidum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 85 of 180
Source pages 1636–1656 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

It takes a long time for this remedy, in the proving, to develop its symptoms. It is a very deep-acting medicine, and an antipsoric, antisyphilitic and anti-sycotic.

It is insidious in its action and its symptoms are slow in approach; it is like the deepest and slowest and most tedious diseases, the miasms, and hence it is suitable in the very slowest and lowest forms of disease.

While it has in its nature some febrile action, it is not for this purpose that it is oftenest called for its most typical febrile action is very slow and insidious. It corresponds to overheated states of the system, old cases of nightly fevers, coming on week after week and year after year.

It is an unusually hot-blooded remedy at times, and again it has conditions of coldness. In the evening and night great heat seems to evolve from the body without increase of temperature. The skin becomes very hot.

That patient is often < from warm things, < from covering, < from warm air; suffocates somewhat like Puls. in a warm room. He wants to bathe the face and head in cold water; such bathing is grateful.

The feet burn and are put out of bed in the night; he hunts around in bed for a cool place for the feet and bands. The soles perspire, and the palms perspire, and the sweat is acrid, making the parts sore; excoriation from the sweat between the toes.

The perspiration is offensive; offensive, acrid sweat between the toes. Burning, unusual heat and acridity are words that modify a great many symptom s; an acrid lachrymation or other discharge from the eye; acrid discharge from the nose, acrid sweat, etc.

Sensation of burning and burning pains in parts; heat evolved from the body as a chronic state. Aggravation from heat, from outward heat and from inward heat, belongs to this remedy. It is a strong feature, of this remedy to be worse from drinking tea and coffee. Warm, drinks bring on a diarrhea, or flatulence, or disturbance in the stomach, and cause indigestion to manifest itself in various way The symptoms are worse standing and sitting and better in the open air.

It is a remedy of great depth of action. It so disturbs the functions that there are peculiar outward signs in the nails, in the hair, in the skin; they are all imperfectly developed.

Skin: Whenever such is the case, we know that a remedy has great depth of action and that it is very long acting. It forms like incrustations here and there upon the skin that seem to have no tendency to heal.

A crust forms, but there seems to be no healing beneath the crust. The hair loses its luster; it falls out, and if examined closely under the microscope it is seen to be necrosed; little ragged ulcers will be found along the course of the hair.

The ends of the hair are dry, the hair mats and splits and breaks, becomes ragged in masses and lustreless. The nails are crippled, likewise corrugations in the nails; the nails grow too fast and grow awkwardly; that is, they are deformed and crippled, too thick in some places, and too thin in others; break easily, brittle.

There is a tendency to breaking down of a slow character, where the circulation is very feeble and the skin is near bone or cartilage as in the cartilages in the ears, and in the cartilages of joints.

Ulcers develop over the tibia. There is feeble circulation in the hands and feet and they become cold. In the evening the extremities burn and are feverish, because that is the time of the feverish state; but in the morning and in the daytime there is coldness of the extremities.

The patient is pallid and sickly, and at times becomes waxy and dropsical; oedema of the extremities, and particularly of the lower extremities; oedema of certain parts; oedema of the prepuce.

When a debilitated subject, one suffering from bone and cartilaginous troubles, contracts gonorrhoea, with it he will have enormous swelling of the prepuce, and nothing seems to act upon it. Fluoric acid will cure oedema of the prepuce with gonorrhoea in such a subject. Cannabis sativa has the same symptom, but it is especially useful in robust cases.

Fluoric acid will prevent the manifestation of disease in sycotic subjects, will prevent formation of fig warts. It cures fig warts. It produces hardened, dry warts, and dry crusts upon the skin, and crusts not unlike rupia. It is useful in syphilitic rupia.

Bone affections stand out prominently. Necrosis, especially of the long bones, but also of the bones of the ear. It creates an offensive acrid discharge from the ear. It establishes an offensive oezena, an acrid discharge, with necrosis of the nasal bones.

It is very analogous to Sil., and it is one of the natural followers of Sil. where Sil. has been too frequently repeated by persons who do not know that Silicea does its best in a single dose and that it is a long acting and slow medicine.

It not only antidotes the abuse of Sil., but also follows Sil., After practicing a while you will be surprised to observe the Pendulum like -action between beat and cold in various complementary remedies.

To make that clear I will illustrate it by using the series in which this remedy is set and to which it naturally belongs. You take a patient who is hot-blooded, who is always suffering from the heat, from too much clothing and too warm a room especially in the evenings, a patient that is tearful and sad, and may be a blonde.

Why you say, I am trying to describe a Pulsatilla patient. Well, yes; anyone can see that. Puls. is a hot-blooded patient, but after using that remedy a while you notice that the patient goes to the other extreme and becomes chilly, and wants much clothing; the heat is taken out of the case. Sil. is the natural follower of Puls., and you would be astonished to know bow often a patient leaving Puls. runs toward Sil.

Sil. goes deeper into the case, it does more cutting, and it is the, natural chronic of Puls. Other remedies of course follow Puls., but Sil. more frequently than any other medicine. Now, that is the second step; the patient has gone from a warm to a cool state; the overheated state has been lost and he has gone into Sil., but when Sil. has been administered for a while it cures the cold state, and removes the chilliness of the patient (remember, however, that Sil. has at times something of Puls. in it; in some of its complaints it is < from being overheated) and the patient under Sil. goes back to the warm state again, becomes hot-blooded, wants the warm covers thrown off, wants to be lightly covered.

Then it is that this medicine comes in the series. Fluor. ac. follows Sil. as naturally as Sil. follows Puls. They exist in threes.

Series: There are other remedies that exist in threes, but the most common ones you will think of will be:

Sulph., Calc. and Lyc.;

Sulph., Sars. and Sep.; and

Coloc. and Caust. and Staph., which often follow each other and rotate in this way.

Do not let these facts make you give a routine remedy unless the symptoms agree, but it does help to remember that remedies are somewhat similar. It is true that Puls., Sil. and Fluor. ac. are similar all along the line as to the nature of their symptoms.

Puls. corresponds to more acute disturbances, or to the earlier stages of chronic disease, the more active or violent operations of chronic disease. It will take off the wire edge of the disease, and it will be followed by some medicine that is complementary to it, always to be determined by the symptoms that arise.

There are cases that would be greatly injured by so deeply acting a remedy as Sil. if given in the beginning, that is, the suffering would be unnecessary; but if you commence with Puls. you can mitigate the case and prepare it to receive Sil., providing the two would appear to be on a plane of agreement.

A very serious case had better first receive Puls., and the way being paved by that remedy follow it up with Sil.

Bones: Think of the remedy, then, in vicious bone diseases, in necrosis and caries, in fistulous openings, fistula leading to the teeth, fistula lachrymalis and fistula in ano; in calcareous degenerations; in deformity of the nails, hair and teeth; in affections of the thigh bones and leg bones, with chronic fistulous openings leading to bone discharging pus which excoriates the parts all around.

The patient is over-sensitive; is made worse if the bowels do not move regularly; is distressed if the menstrual flow is slightly delayed; suffers if the call to urinate cannot be immediately attended to, hence, as in the text, “headaches > by micturition.”

Headache: That symptom is all that is given in the text; but remember something that is analogous to it, viz.; If the call to urinate be not attended to the headache will continue to grow < until the urine is avoided.

That is a peculiar symptom, and it sometimes leads to the study of Fluor, ac. Violent congestive headache with beat and fullness. Violent occipital headaches, worse from motion.

Now, if we take into consideration its great depth of action, we will see furthermore that it is suitable in some brain diseases. In persons who have overworked, who have been working day and night to establish a business, or to keep it up, and when there has been constant use of the brain it is suitable.

Mind: In mental depression and melancholy, with great sadness, in young men who have destroyed the nervous system by vicious practices, by secret vice. It is particularly suitable for that disorder of the human economy where men have continuously changed their mistresses.

There is a state in which a man is never satisfied with one woman, but continually changes and goes from bad to worse until he is a debauchee. If a young man cannot keep away from women, he is not so bad off if he will only keep to one, but he goes from one to many, until he stands upon the street corners and, in his lust, craves the innocent women that go along the street.

Fluoric acid is suitable in that state, like Picric acid and Sepia, and these medicines are particularly suited to that condition of enfeeblement of the mind and that disorder of the human economy that makes man so low, that we have the state described as “low mindedness.”

It takes that form in one who is a sort of debauchee, running after alt sorts of things to tickle his fancy, but it takes another form in a man who stays at home with his good wife. He takes an aversion to his children and to his dearest friends and his wife, that is, he has lost that true and noble and orderly affection and friendship and companionship which ought to exist, and he fights against it.

An orderly man considers his wife his best friend and he would rather stay with her than go anywhere else. To him there is no place like home. Now, when man arrives at the state when he wants to go somewhere else, that he wants to go away from home, that be is disturbed at home, that everything annoys him at home, that be no longer loves his children as he once did, he needs Fluoric acid.

“Feeling of indifference towards those he loves best.”

The Sepia state is like this, but Sep. is more frequently indicated in women. The woman will say,

“Doctor, there is one thing that I regret very much, and that is, I do not seem to enjoy my children, my home, my companions, my husband and my friends.

There is a sort of alienation.”

Such is the way it is told where it is Sepia. In the man it is more commonly Fluoric acid, in the woman more commonly Sep., but this need not necessarily be so. Sepia corresponds more closely to the condition of the uterus and ovaries, and such conditions, as the woman alone can have. (Compare Calcarea.)

Men: Fluoric acid has with this state an overwhelming sexual erethism.

He is kept awake nights by erections. This state of desire forces itself upon him, not only when he is with the opposite sex, but at all times. At times, in the beginning of a gonorrhea, this condition of priapism and intense uncontrollable sexual desire, with swelling of the foreskin is overcome by Fluoric acid. There are times when this priapism demands Canth., but that remedy differs wholly in its nature from this.

Mind: Reticence and silence; sitting and saying nothing. This reticence is like Puls., and often belongs to the insane who will sit in the corner and say nothing all day, never uttering one single word, and hardly answering when spoken to.

A patient sits in the corner and says nothing and does nothing, eats when food is offered, is led to her room when the time comes, resists nobody, answers nothing; such a state is found in Pulsatilla, and is closely allied to this remedy.

There, is some insanity in it, but especially the fatigue and mildness of a the brain. Mental exhaustion from overwork or from vices.

It is suitable after Sil. in the spinal affections that are attended with paralysis, trembling and numbness in the soles of the feet. It will often stop the progress of structural nervous diseases and prevent the, case from getting worse.

Veins: An excellent and very useful feature of this remedy is its ability to produce varicose veins and varicose ulcers.

The veins become varicosed anywhere, but particularly upon the lower limbs, especially following pregnancy.

Hemorrhoids protrude after a stool; the anus and rectum protrude, and there is some bleeding, because of the hemorrhoidal condition. Varicose conditions with very old ulcers upon the lower extremities; the varicose veins ulcerate.

You might predict what kind of ulcer and what kind of a margin Fluoric acid would produce. We see the feebleness of its circulation, we see its tendency to create hard crusts, and hardened, horny skin and eruptions.

We might now easily assume that the inflamed borders of an ulcer would become indurated, hard and glassy. The margins of ulcers are indurated and the ulcer is an old, indolent ulcer. Parts once broken will not close up. Union will not take place between the broken ends of bones, there is no repair. From bones and from ulcers, we have the foetid, acrid, thin, watery discharges, or at times very scanty discharges, but acrid, burning the parts all around, raising eruptions and scurfs around the ulcers.

From the feebleness of the circulation one might suppose that numbness would naturally be present, and it is true.

The ears become numb, the scalp becomes numb, there is a sensation as if the back of the head were made of wood. The scalp loses its sensation, the hair falls out and crusts form. The extremities become numb and there is numbness of the feet and bands extending upwards; numbness, with or without dropsy; numbness in spinal affections; numbness in brain diseases. Numbness of the limb not laid on.

“Crusta lactea; dry scales; itches very much, bald places.

Caries of the temporal bone; discharges offensive smelling pus periodically.” “whole left side of the head retarded in growth, left eye seems smaller.”

Skin: That is a clinical state, but it is significant.

Its use in syphilis must not be overlooked. in old cases with exostoses, caries and necrosis, cases that have been mercurialized, and treated by other drugs until ulcers have developed or those affections of the nose that we have often observed in syphilitic states. He blows small pieces of bone out of the nose; great pain in the nose; nasal bones all destroyed, and the nose becomes flat as though only a soft piece of flesh with perforations.

The vulva is eaten off and the tonsils become honeycombed by syphilitic ulcers.

Lingering, low forms of ulcers and eruptions. The teeth decay or break off or ulcerate at the roots; fistulous openings from the root of the tooth, continuing to discharge.

Many a time has this remedy taken away that ulcer of the root, closed up that fistulous opening, cured the pain, saved the tooth.

“Craves cold water and is continually hungry.”

Often that “all gone” sensation in the stomach. Is always eating and is relieved from eating, but like Iodine it does not last long, for soon be becomes hungry again. Such medicines are very deep. We see that they go, to the very root of assimilation and nutrition.

Chronic ulcers of the throat not necessarily syphilitic, but it is particularly useful in the old forms of syphilis; not generally so suitable in the earlier ulcers as in those that are associated with the tertiary forms, with debilitated states, with brain disease, with nervous symptoms that go on for years when the patient is supposed to be cured.

Very often the trouble will come back in the throat, and the ulcers consist of little gummatous growths. Sil. especially covers such a condition, and Sil. is also one of the most useful medicines for rooting out Mercurius.

In potentized form sil. and Merc. are inimical, yet the high potencies of Sil. will antidote crude Mercury.

This patient craves pungent, highly seasoned things. The appetite must be tickled; there must be some inducement to eat. At times the appetite is changeable in spite of the fact that he is overwhelmingly hungry; he cannot eat, yet he is > when the food is in the stomach, > after eating.

The most vicious kind of chronic diarrhea with this low feeble constitution, in insidious complaints.

“Morning diarrhoea.”

The itching of the anus is sometimes intense; protrusion of the anus during defecation; profuse haemorrhage after stool; constipation with piles; itching around and in anus, in perineum, etc,

This drug is also suitable in the dropsy of drunkards. They are very often liver dropsies. Old cicatrices become red around the edge surrounded by itching vesicles, itching violently; squamous eruptions upon the body; dry, cutaneous eruptions upon the body, very scaly.

“Sensation as if a burning vapor were emitted from the pores of the body.”

Especially under the covers there is this sensation of great heat, tremendous, like steam. It is not in fever. He has no fever but it is a chronic state of giving out heat without thirst, or increase of temperature.

Gelsemium
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 86 of 180
Source pages 1657–1672 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Weather: If you will observe the weather conditions in sharp climates, such as Minnesota, Massachusetts and Canada, you will find that the cold spells are very intense and that people when exposed, come down with complaints very rapidly and violently.

That is the way the Bell. and Acon. cases come on, but Gelsemium complaints do not come from, such causes nor appear that way. Its complaints are more insidious and come on with a degree of slowness.

A Gels. cold develops as symptoms several days after the exposure, while the Acon. cold comes on a few hours after exposure. The Aconite child exposed during the day in dry, cold weather will have croup before midnight. But in the South diseases are very slow. Like the people themselves, their organs are very slow, and their reaction is slow.

Their colds are not taken from the violent cold, but from getting overheated. Hence, they take colds and fevers of a low malarial type; they have congestive headaches and congestive complaints that do not come on suddenly. When we think of the climate, and consider the people, and the pace of remedies, we see that Gels. is a remedy for warm climates, while Acon. is a remedy for colder climates.

Certain acute complaints in the North will be like Aconite, while similar complaints will have symptoms in the warmer climate like Gels. The colds and fevers of the mild winters will be more likely to run to this medicine, whereas the colds and fevers of a violent winter will be more likely to run to Bell. and Acon.

It is true that Acon. has complaints in hot weather, fevers and dysentery of hot weather, but they are different from the complaints of winter.

Gels. has been used mostly in acute troubles. In lingering acute troubles and in those resembling the chronic it is very useful, but in chronic miasms it is not the remedy. It is only a short-acting remedy, though slow in its beginning. In this it is like Bryonia. Bry. complaints come on slowly, and hence it is suitable for fevers coming on in the southern climate, but it also has sudden violent complaints, though not to the extent we find in Bell.

Complaints: The complaints of Gels. are largely congestive. Cerebral hyperemia, determination of blood to the brain and to the spinal cord. The extremities become cold and the head and back become hot. The symptoms are manifested largely through the brain and spinal cord. In connection with brain affections there are convulsions of the extremities, crampings of the fingers and toes and of the muscles of the back.

Coldness of the fingers and toes; sometimes the extremities are icy cold to the knees, while the head is hot and the face purple. During the congestion the face is purple and mottled. The eyes are engorged, the pupils dilated (sometimes contracted), the eyes are in a state of marked congestion with lachrymation and twitching.

The patient feels dazed and talks as if he were delirious; incoherent, stupid, forgetful. It is like this in intermittent fever that gradually develops towards a congestive chill. Great coldness running up the back from the lower part of the spine to the back of the head. Shuddering, as if ice were rubbed up the back.

The pains also extend up the back. With the coldness of the extremities, the very dark red countenance, the dazed condition of the mind, the glassy eyes and dilated pupils, we have the neck drawn back and rigidity of the muscles of the back of the neck, so that the neck cannot be straightened, and there are violent pains up the back and coldness in the spine.

This state would remind one of cerebro-spinal meningitis. Pain in the base of the brain and in the back of the neck. With all states there is a very hot skin and a high temperature, with coldness of the extremities. Sometimes the troubles are ushered in with a violent chill.

This is a very important remedy to study when such symptoms are present in intermittents and in a few days the tongue begins to coat, nausea comes on, ending in vomiting of bile, and instead of there being an intermission a continued fever extends from one paroxysm into another, with a higher temperature in the afternoon.

The chill practically subsides, leaving a state which has the appearance of typhoid, with dry tongue, not much thirst and marked head symptoms, dazed in mind. If this continues many days delirium and all the features of typhoid will come on and the fever will change its type altogether from the intermittent to the continued.

In congestive chill with high temperature occurring in the afternoon, the chill part of it subsiding and the fever becoming continued, Gels. is a useful remedy. It is also a very important remedy in afternoon fevers without chill in infants and in children. You will find in malarial districts that it is a common thing for the infants to have remittent attacks, while the adults are having intermittents. it is only occasionally that you will see a child or infant shake with a distinct chill, but they often go into a remittent fever, an afternoon fever which will subside along towards morning, to be followed the next afternoon by fever. With Gels. the child will lie as still as in Bry. but there is more congestion to the head there is the dark red face and duskiness like Bry.

Running through the febrile complaints, in the spinal meningitis, in congestion of the brain, in intermittents or remittents that change to a continued fever, and even in a cold when the patient is sneezing and has hot face and red eyes, there is one grand feature, viz., a feeling of great weight and tiredness in the entire body and limbs.

The head cannot be lifted from the pillow, so tired and so heavy is it, and there is such a great weight in the limbs. The Bry. patient lies quietly because if lie moves the pains are worse. He has an aversion to motion, because he is conscious that it would cause an increase of suffering.

The heart is feeble and the pulse is feeble, soft and irregular. There is palpitation during the febrile state. Palpitation, with weakness and irregularity of the pulse. There is a sense of weakness and goneness in the region of the heart, and this weakness and goneness often extend into the stomach, involving the whole lower part of the left side of the chest and across the stomach, creating a sensation of hunger, like Ignatia and Sepia. There is a hysterical element running through Gels. and it has the nervous hunger, or gnawing.

There are cardiac nervous affections like Digitalis, Cactus and Sepia. Sepia is not known to be as great a heart remedy as Cactus, but it has cured many cases of heart troubles. Sepia has cured endocarditis, and a remedy that will take hold in endocarditis and root it out must be a deep acting remedy. He feels that if he ceases to move the heart will cease to beat.

The headaches are of the congestive type. The most violent pain is in the occiput, and it is felt sometimes as a hammering. Every pulsation is felt like the blow of a hammer in the base of the skull. These headaches are so violent that the patient can not stand up, but will lie perfectly exhausted, as if paralyzed from the pain. There is an occipital headache that compels walking or rolling the head.

There is commonly relief from lying in bed, bolstered up by pillows, with the head perfectly quiet The face is flushed and dusky and the patient is dazed. After the headache progresses a while, the whole head seems to enter into a state of congestion, there is one great pain, too dreadful to describe, and the patient loses his ability to tell symptoms and appears dazed; lies bolstered up in bed, eyes glassy, pupils dilated, face mottled, and extremities cold.

Gels. has also headaches of a neuralgic character in the temples and over the eyes, with nausea and aggravation from vomiting. The headache is relieved by passing a copious quantity of urine; that is, the urine which has probably been scanty becomes free and then the headache subsides.

There is much nervous excitement. Complaints from fear, from embarrassment, from shock that is attended with fear, from sudden surprises that are attended with fright. A soldier going into battle has an involuntary stool; involuntary discharges from fright and surprises accompanying fright. On becoming suddenly overwhelmed by some surprise he becomes faint, weak and exhausted, he becomes tired in all the limbs and unable to resist opposing circumstances. His heart palpitates. This is similar to Arg. nit. Arg. nit. has the peculiar condition that when dressing for an opera a sudden attack of diarrhea comes on, causing more or less sudden exhaustion, and she must go several times before she can finish dressing.

They who are to appear before an audience are detained because of a sudden attack of diarrhoea. A lady has an attack of diarrhoea when about to meet friends over whom she expects to become excited at the meeting. The anticipation brings on the diarrhoea. Such a state is Arg. nit. These medicines are so closely related to each other that there are times when they will appear to do the work of each other.

Then we have paralytic affections of the sphincters, and so with the febrile conditions there is involuntary loss of stool and urine. There is also paralytic weakness of the extremities and of the hands. With paralytic states there is aching along the spine and in the muscles of the back; drawing, cramping in the muscles of the back and aching under the left shoulder blade.

There are many disturbances of vision; double vision, dimness of vision, appearance of a gauze before the eyes; confusion of vision and blindness. These symptoms come on before going into attacks, in connection with chill, at the coming on of sick headaches and congestive headaches. All sorts of objects are seen; the field of vision appears full of black spots, or full of smoke or little waves of various colors. It is useful in inflammation of all the tissues of the eye and of the eyelids. The eyeballs oscillate laterally when using them.

Drooping of the eyelids or ptosis is a marked feature and is in its paralytic nature.

The muscles are relaxed, they do not hold the lids tip. The lids close when he is looking steadily; they simply fall down over the eyes.

The patient in general is thirstless, and it is the exception that there is much thirst. It has a profuse, exhaustive sweat and is aggravated from motion, or rather motion seems to be impossible. It seems that he is unable to move, that be is too weak to move, and this runs through all complaints. At times it is a remedy for coryza, with sneezing and running of water from the nose, with coldness in the extremities, and the trouble will go down into the throat and produce sore throat, with redness, tumefaction, enlargement of the tonsils, hot head and congested face.

With this, as with the other febrile conditions, there is heaviness of the extremities. The red face, the heaviness of the extremities and sore throat that has come on gradually, a little worse from day to day, until it has become a severe throat, will lead you to Gels., especially if there is paralytic weakness all over, and as the throat trouble progresses the food and drink come back through the nose.

This is due to a paralysis of the muscles of deglutition. The tongue also becomes paralyzed and don not perform its work in an orderly way. There are times when the paralytic weakness is not sufficiently marked to account for things seen, but there is an incoordination of muscles and he is awkward. He undertakes to, take hold of an article and takes hold of something else. When he does grasp his hands feel weak. He is awkward and clumsy and the muscles do this and that and something not ordered to do.

The trembling incoordination and paresis are especially noticed during high excitement and afterwards, and these states occur with the febrile condition and remain sometimes after. Useful in paralytic cases that begin with fevers. Tearing is felt in the nerves all over the body and seems to be due to an inflammatory condition. It has cured sciatica, with tearing pains, associated with great weakness of the limbs.

Loss of sensation is sometimes found; numbness of the end of the nose, of the ears, of the tongue, of the fingers, of the hands and feet, numbness, here and there, of the skin.

In the male, the sexual organs arc in the same condition as the patient in general. The semen dribbles away; there is impotency, no ability to perform the sexual act; the sexual organs are relaxed.

The sleep is greatly disturbed. He cannot go to sleep; every excitement keeps him awake. During marked febrile conditions he has a profound sleep or coma. When he is not in this comatose sleep during congestion he is in a state of nervous excitement in which he lies awake thinking, and yet thinks of nothing in particular, because his!mind will not work in an orderly way.

The symptoms of Gels. may be present in inflammation of any organ, uterus or ovaries, stomach, the lungs and of the rectum. It has congestion of organs, but it has also high grade inflammation. There is nothing peculiar in the inflammation itself that would indicate Gels., neither should Gels. ever be given because there is inflammation, but when the mental symptoms are present, the delirium, the flushed face, the determination of blood to the head with the cold extremities, the great heaviness of the limbs, the disturbance of sensation, the paralysis of sphincters, then Gels. would be good for inflammation of any organ of the body.

In a most distressing and violent, rapidly spreading erysipelas that seems destined to cause death in a few days all the symptoms point to Gels., and though Gels. may not have produced erysipelas, it will stop the progress of the disease in a few hours and the patient will go on to a quick recovery.

Many times when erysipelas has spread over the face and scalp and in the most dangerous manner with the dusky red color that belongs to Gels., and other symptoms such as I have described in a general way, Gels. has taken bold of the erysipelas and cured. If we master thoroughly the Materia Medica we do not stop to see if a remedy produces certain kinds of inflammation, etc., but we consider the state of the patient.

Glonoinum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 87 of 180
Source pages 1673–1690 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Head: The most common feature in this remedy is the surging of blood to the head and to the heart. A patient often describes the state as a feeling as if all the blood in the body must be rushing around the heart, with a sense of heat or a boiling sensation in the region of the heart, or in the left side of the chest.

Again he complains of a surging in the head, a warm glowing sensation in the head or a feeling of intense glowing from the stomach or from the chest up into the head, attended at times with loss of consciousness.

There are also wave-like sensations in the head, as if the skull were being lifted up and lowered, or as if it were being expanded and contracted. Along with this there is most intense pain, sometimes as if the head would burst, sometimes great soreness in the head, or a sense of soreness felt in the skull. Another accompaniment of the surging is great throbbing, synchronous with the heat of the heart, and when the skull has this soreness then the throbbing is like the beating of hammers, and every pulsation is painful, so that there are painful pulsations and sometimes painless pulsations.

The pulsations are tremendous and when they are greatest in the head they are felt also in the extremities. The fingers and toes pulsate, there is pulsation throughout the back, and it seems that the whole body throbs. If this continues a while the soreness in the skull is likely to come on and with it the painful throbbing, every throb is a pain. In this state, with every jar in stepping, and every motion, it seems as if the head would be crushed.

Throbbing: The throbbing becomes more painful from motion. The vomiting which attends this condition relieves. The head is relieved in the open air, it is worse in the warmth, and is often relieved from the application of cold. It is made worse by lying down, or lying, with the head low. In the extremities we have great coldness. The extremities cold, pale and perspiring, the head hot and the face flushed and purple or bright red. The pupils are dilated and the eyes red. Now, if this progresses only a little while, the tongue becomes dry, red and then brown. There is no great thirst, but the mouth is very dry. The eyelids become dry and stick to the eyeballs. At times the skin becomes dry and hot, and the face is red and glistens. All degrees of confusion of mind, even loss of consciousness, will be present.

Headaches: Have I not described to a great extent that which is seen in a typical sunstroke? It is noticeable also that Glonoine symptoms are worse in the heat of summer and relieved in winter. The dull headaches and the continuous headaches are aggravated from warm weather and ameliorated from cold.

They are worse in the sun and better in the shade. All sorts of contrivances will be resorted to by Glonoine patients to keep the sun’s beat from the head. When he has had these troubles for years, and it has become a chronic state, he will never go out in the warmth of the sun without an umbrella.

Glonoine corresponds to congestive states in the head that come on suddenly, especially from heat, but also from gaslight, or from any bright light.

The headaches that book-keepers are subject to, especially in those that have at their desk, or over the head, a hot gaslight. The bright light accompanied by the heat so close to the head will make this individual subject to headaches. These headaches are relieved by going into the cold air. The head aches all day when he is at his books, and when he goes home at night and lies down the headache comes on again, and he has to be bolstered up in bed.

He wants the head high, and cold applications to the head; the headache is relieved from a long sleep, not generally relieved from siesta. From lying down and taking a nap the headache is sometimes aggravated, but from a good long sleep, a night’s sleep, he is refreshed.

His feet and hands become warm, the feverish state, and the throbbing all over the body subsides and he wakes up in the morning comfortable; but if he goes out in the sun, or goes to the gaslight, he comes home with the headache again. Since electric lights have been brought into use there is not so much heat in the light, but gas throws out an immense amount of heat in its light,

The child comes down with cerebro-spinal meningitis, the neck is drawn back, the face is intensely hot, red and shiny, the eyes congested or glassy, the head and upper part of the body are very warm, the feet and hands and lower portions of the body and the extremities are cold and covered with cold sweat.

It is a most violent congestion to the brain and spinal cord. Convulsions come on, convulsions throughout all the limbs, the neck and whole body drawn back, opisthotonos. Cold feels good to the head; heat feels good to the extremities. The warm room increases the convulsions. When the lower limbs are covered with clothing in a cool room and the windows open the convulsions are relieved and the patient breaths more easily. With this head congestion there is difficulty in breathing and audible palpitation.

The head is made worse from shaking or jar, from stooping, from bending head backwards, after lying down, when ascending steps. It is aggravated in damp weather, and in the sun, while working under the gaslight, after overheating with copious sweat, and from the touch of the hat.

The weight of the hat is a very common aggravation in headaches in school children. The little ones work all day in a hot stuffy room and feel better in the open air, but the weight of the hat seems an encumberance as in Nitric acid and Calc. phos.

The Glonoine patient is also worse from wine and from stimulants, and from mental application. When the headache is on he cannot think, and he cannot write. An additional hindrance to writing is that he trembles so that he cannot write. Trembling and throbbing of the fingers so that he is unable to do his work or perform any delicate work with the fingers or hands.

We have puerperal convulsions with such an appearance as I have described. We may have the same violence in congestive chills, or in any type of congestion of the brain.

Brain: There is a milder form of trouble that calls for its use, a condition corresponding to the chronic types of disease. This milder form exists where the patient has simply what might be called a hyperemia of the brain, a rush of blood to the head when able to be about. It comes in spells, comes in moments when be least expects it; while walking on the street he feels a surging to the brain like a flush of heat and a flush on the face, his hands tremble, and the hands and feet become cold, he breaks out in a sweat; he looks around him and does not know which way to go home, he does not know where his dwelling is.

He looks in the faces of friends and they seem strange, he loses his way when be is near home. It is a confusion which soon passes away, and he feels better again. But these spells come closer together, and constitute the earlier stages of softening of the brain. This surging of blood to the brain is attended with dizziness; he rolls and staggers, and must take hold of things, and especially does he suffer in this way from a warm day, or from the heat and light of the sun.

In threatened apoplexy, and when apoplexy has taken place, if the violent pressure keeps on, think of this remedy. The clot may not be at first in the place to take life, it may be outside of the life line, but if the congestion continues that blood clot will increase.

Such medicines as Opium and Glonoine relieve the blood pressure when the symptoms agree. They equalize the circulation, and the patient may not die. A paralytic condition in one arm or leg may go on for a while, and at the end of many weeks or months the motion may be regained, and the patient recover; whereas if the suitable remedy had not been administered to reduce that blood pressure the continued congestion would certainly have ended in death in a few days.

The stertorous breathing, the coma, the history, and the general appearance of an apoplectic patient are found in this remedy, but the intense heat that comes on in many cases of apoplexy along with the shiny skin and coldness of the extremities are the guiding features.

Opium is the most frequently indicated medicine, but it must not be administered in large doses. The highest potencies are the best and one single dose is enough.

In a case noted it says, “frantic attempts to jump from the window.”

The headache was so intense that the patient became violent and attempted to jump from the window. You may rest assured that with his headache there was all this determination of blood to the head. It is enough to make one frantic to feel this continued hammering upon every fraction of the skull. He cannot lie down, and he cannot walk, because every step increases the jar, so you see why it is that the word “frantic” is wed there. The patient becomes frantic with the pain.

Another expression used is “disinclination to step around.”

The patient wants the room perfectly still. If sitting up in bed, you will often find a Glonoine patient with both hands pressing upon the head with all the power possible until the arms are perfectly exhausted. He wants the head pressed upon all sides. Wants it bandaged, or a tight cap fitted down upon it.

The headache is worse from bending backward and from stooping forward. There are times when the headache is so severe that lying back upon the pillow cannot be tolerated. There is a sense of great heaviness in the head. You will notice, in reading over these congestive headaches as reported, that each patient has a different way of describing his headache and yet all have the same story to tell, that of violent determination of blood to the head.

“Some months after being violently jarred by being thrown from a carriage, a sensitiveness of the upper part of the back and neck came on.”

There are two strong characteristics of Glonoine in that cure, viz:

“< from wine and the < from lying down.”

The other symptoms might have pointed to other remedies, but these two features are there. It is interesting when reading a case, if you have first a knowledge of the Materia Medica, to note what symptoms are verified when you do not know the Materia Medica then the case is confusing.

Now, as we glance over that description we see at once these two things verified and the rest is fairly consistent. Very commonly the pain begins in the occiput and goes to the forehead, but the whole head is in a state of throbbing.

But, we notice more particularly, the “aggravation from motion and the least noise.”

This patient will sit in perfect quietude and silence for hours. You will be astonished to, know how long a Glonoine patient can sit without moving a muscle, because motion is so painful.

Also “aggravation from lying with the head low and after sleeping.” it is important for you to know what that sleeping means. As I have said before, the patient very often is worse after a little sleep, but the common state is relief after a prolonged sleep. If he can sleep long enough it will subside, unless it be the congestive sleep, or coma, and then it is a different thing.

“Amelioration from cold and external pressure.”

“Vertex burning hot, likewise upper part of back.”

The whole crown of the head feels as if it were covered by a hot iron, as if an oven were close by. Hot, especially in the back of the neck and between the shoulders.

The burning heat seems to appear at the top of the head and extend down between the shoulders; a sensation of heat, as from a band.

“Face bluish, with a heavy, stupid expression.”

The face is bright red, but if the condition becomes severe the face assumes a dusky appearance, and the longer this state lasts the more dusky it becomes; that is true with apoplexy and also with sunstroke. When the sunstroke first comes on the face is bright red, intensely hot and shiny, but as the heat increases the face grows dusky, even to purple. In all of these cerebral congestions there is a stupid, heavy expression, even going on to coma.

“Frequent deep inspirations.”

With this congestion of the head there is commonly vomiting, palpitation of the heart, pain in the stomach, great difficulty in breathing and finally loss of consciousness. In another clinical case reported we read:

“Every pulsation is felt as if the head would burst.”

Now, suppose the head bones were already intensely sensitive and sore and the head filled as full as possible with blood, and then you commenced hammering upon the blood column you can understand that the pain would be most intense and would soon end in stupefaction.

“Sunken eyes, bluish pallor under the eyes.”

“Red eyes, with photophobia; optical illusions.

Black specks before the eyes; blindness.”

“Face pale, in spite of high fever.”

In all of these cerebral congestions of great violence the pulse fluctuates; it even becomes fine and wiry and hard; sometimes becomes irregular and also slow.

Another common accompaniment of these congestions is tumefaction about the neck. The neck feels full. The collar must be opened as it causes choking, as if he would suffocate. Even in the chronic state in the one who stands upon the street corner not knowing his way home because of the surging of blood in the head, that state is accompanied by choking and the collar causes uneasiness about the neck like Lach. He chokes and swells up under the ears. There is not only a sensation, but with the sensation there is actual swelling. Tumefaction about the neck and throat, under the chin, and the glands become swollen.

The next circumstance in the text that brings forth the general aspect of the remedy is in connection with the catamenia. The menstrual flow does not appear, it is delayed, with violent congestion to the head, violent headaches and these symptoms already described. These congestions may also come on during the menstrual period. Again, if a uterine hemorrhage stops suddenly, or a copious flow from any part stops suddenly, the patient comes down with great violence and the blood rushes to the head.

There are many conditions and complaints in life where we have surging of blood to the head, when this will be the remedy wanted. Persons who are subject to palpitation with dyspnea, upon any effort, he cannot go uphill, he cannot walk along the pavement without bringing on palpitation and dyspnea; any little exertion or excitement brings on the rush of blood to the heart and fainting spells; fainting, spells in women, who are not supposed to be subject to fainting. Great weakness, palpitation, trembling of the limbs, shaking of one or both hands as with palsy.

“Laborious action of the heart” is a strong feature of the remedy; pulsation all over.

Fluttering in the region of the heart. Pulse quick, irregular, slow or quick and wiry. There are some persons that are apparently plethoric; very much affected by the slightest exertion and who have pulsation all over; pulsation in a warm room. They are sometimes relieved by opening the window if it is cool, by fanning, by cold air, by cold applications to the head. In keeping with the remedy, this is clinical application of it:

“Children get sick in the night after sitting up at an open fire or falling asleep there.”

“Bad effects from having the hair cut.”

Bell. is generally thought of for taking cold in the head from having the hair cut.

“Bad effects from being exposed to the sun’s rays.”

“Bad effects from sunstroke.”

Editorial notes

• “and he bas” corrected to “and he has” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Graphites
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 88 of 180
Source pages 1691–1714 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The complaints of Graphites are worse morning, evening and during the NIGHT, especially before midnight. It is useful in people who are morbidly fat, or have been fat and are now emaciating; with constipation more commonly than diarrhoea; in women in these conditions whose menstrual habit is pale, late, short and scanty; catarrhal discharges that are albuminous and viscid represent to the mind some peculiar general states of the sick man not explainable and not common to diseased conditions nor to many remedies; hence, strange, rare and peculiar. Raw surfaces upon the skin are generally marked by such viscid glutinous discharges.

It is a very deep acting remedy, like all carbons, and is accompanied with induration and burning in the base of the ulcers, inflamed tissues and old cicatrices; hence, its great usefulness in cancerous growths and ulceration.

Cancerous development in old cicatrices is a strong feature of this remedy. Contraction of tendons, especially behind the knee. It has hemorrhagic oozing of pale blood. In the higher sense the patient is anaemic and chlorotic. From eruptions, catarrhal discharges, menstrual flow, ulcers, breath and perspiration there is marked offensiveness (like Carbo v., Psorinum, Kali phos., Kali ars.).

When eruptions or discharges have disappeared suddenly from any cause and grave chronic phenomena have followed Graphites is one of the medicines to be studied. Scrofulous conditions and swelling of glands; recurrent herpes upon all parts of the body and especially about the anus and genitals; burning in many parts and especially in old cicatrices; general dropsical tendency; weakness in muscles and tendons after straining them by overlifting.

Modalities: The patient is very sensitive to cold and needs warm clothing; he is sensitive to the cold in winter and to the heat in summer; he is sensitive to a warm room and desires open air which is grateful. Worse in a warm bed; complaints come on from becoming cold or heated; the headaches are worse in a warm room and better in the open air. Graphites has cured deep seated spinal complaints, and in such cases the patient delights to lie heavily covered in a cold draft from an open window.

It is easy to see in this, the resemblance to Carbo veg., which often cures when the patient wants to be fanned. Craving for air is strong in the carbons, yet often easily chilled and just as easily overheated and complaints that come from overheating are related to the carbons. This one becomes ill from being overheated; exertion makes all symptoms worse.

Motion increases all symptoms except the numbness and general feeling of stagnation which come on during rest. Extreme weakness. Weakness and desire to lie down. Paralysis in any part but especially in the lower limbs; sensation of paralysis or stagnation creeps over the body and limbs.

He is made sick by bathing and is sensitive to cold, damp weather. What there is in the general life to cause eruptions to come out in the bends of the joints must be left for others to explain, but such is the case with this wonderful remedy.

Convulsions: The same may be said of rawness and excoriation in the same regions. Cataleptic conditions are very marked in which the patient is conscious but without power to move or speak; tremulous sensation throughout the body; sudden sinking of strength; sudden weakness. Constriction in many parts. It has cured many kinds of convulsions. It is not the remedy for the convulsion, but in chronic sickness where the convulsion is but one of many elements it is often suitable. It has cured epilepsy and hysterio-epilepsy and epileptiform spasms many times when the totality of symptoms furnished the basis for the prescription.

A careful comparison of the symptoms shows that this remedy acts predominantly on the left side of the body. The patient is oversensitive to pain and outer parts are very sensitive.

Pains: The pains are burning, drawing, pressing. Soreness. Stitching and tearing. Numbness is more characteristic than pain. The formation of fissures in all the commissures and in the anus with cracked and bleeding skin in many parts with much hardening; the tendency to grow wens on the scalp and elsewhere are features of this remedy not to be overlooked, and when coupled with the mental symptoms form such a strong and striking image of perverted vital action that the neophyte should not overlook Graphites.

It is as broad and deep as Sulphur, showing the great similarity to this great remedy in chronic cases.

Mind: The patient becomes very restless when attempting close mental work and there is a marked dread of mental work. The mental depression is extreme, and it is made worse by music; her sadness is so great that she thinks only of death and salvation. Grief and vexation cause of recurrence of all her distressing mental sufferings.

Her moods are constantly changing; while she may recall all the events of youth, recent events are forgotten; slow of thought and weakness of mind worse in the morning; often excited, hurried and exhilarated in the evening; extremely fretful and impatient; irritable about trifles and very critical. Irresolution is a marked symptom.

She cannot make, up her mind to do or not to do. Extreme activity of mind in the evening and first half of the night, which, prevents sleep until midnight; apprehensive and distressed in the. morning and excited. in the evening; extreme anxiety even to desperation.

Vertigo in the morning on waking; in the evening; on looking upwards; on rising from stooping; compelled to lie down; with inclination to fall forward.

When the above general symptoms strongly predominate in any given sickness the following particulars will be cured by this remedy.

Hyperaemia of the brain in the evening in a warm room; frequent moments of congestion to head and face with faint feelings; numbness felt in whole head; burning spot on the vertex; drawing, pressing and tearing in forehead over the eyes; stitching pains in the temples; pain from temples to side of face and to shoulders; one-sided headaches in the morning on waking; tearing in one side of head extending to teeth and side of neck; pressing pain on the vertex and occiput; compressing, constricting pain in occiput and back of neck; pain as though the head were numb; violent headaches during menses.

Head: The headaches are brought on from becoming cold and from looking into a bright light; are worse in a warm room, and better in the open air. There is marked soreness in the scalp; itching of the scalp with or without eruptions; eczema of the scalp oozing a glutinous fluid; eczema behind the cars; fissures that bleed behind the ears; scaly eruptions on scalp; falling out of the hair; bald, shiny patches on the scalp.

Eyes: Extreme photophobia in the sunlight with copious lachrymation. No remedy has photophobia more marked than Graphites. Pain in the eyes and over the eyes by looking long toward a sun lighted window; complaints from eyestrain.

Letters appear double when writing, letters run together when reading; flickerings and fiery zigs-zags just outside the field of vision in the evening; misty vision; vanishing of sight during menses.

Burning, pressing, stitching pains in the eyes. It has cured ulceration of the cornea. Recurrent pustular inflammation of the cornea. Keratitis pustulosa in children with fissures in the canthi, extreme photophobia and eczema on the face.

Marked congestion and injected veins of the conjunctiva. Chronic lachrymation in open air, tears acrid. The fissured canthi bleed easily and itch violently. Purulent discharges from the eyes; the lids are stuck together at night; the eyes feel hot; the lids are much swollen and the margins are red, raw and bleed easily-sometimes hard; ulcers on the; margins of lids; the lids are covered with crusts; eczema of the eyelids and about the eyes; dry mucus in the lashes, styes on the lids, with drawing pain, especially when they recur frequently. Cystic tumors on the lids.

Ears: Discharge from the ear of sticky, viscid pus; bloody, offensive.

Noises in ears; cracking; bumming; hissing; ringing; rushing, roaring; reverberations. Violent roarings at night and the ears feel stopped; thundering, rolling sounds in ears.

Deafness in various degrees and he hears better in a noise. He can hear better when riding on the cars, in the roaring of the train.

Deafness with eczematous eruptions on and behind the ears. Stitching pains in ears in cold air. Marked swelling of the ears.

Nose: Smell very acute; she cannot tolerate flowers; loss of smell with dryness in the nose; with coryza. Discharge from nose bloody mucus or pus, very offensive, viscid, thick, sometimes yellow.

It is a most useful remedy in chronic nasal catarrh. Very painful dryness in the nose. The bones and cartilages of the nose become very sore to touch. Sneezing and fluent coryza as marked as in Carbo veg.

Frequent attacks of coryza all winter, worse in cold air; the coryza extends to larynx, like Carbo veg; the excoriated, sore, cracked nostrils are plugged with scabs and hard mucus far up in the nose. Ulcers in the nose. Fissures in the nostrils that burn and indurate.

Face: The face is pale, waxy and sickly.

Eczema and herpes are found on the face with glutinous moisture. Itching with or without eruptions. A sensation as of a cobweb on the face. The commissures of mouth are fissured and the fissures ulcerate and the edges become bard and there is great burning in them. The skin chaps and cracks and often becomes excoriated and bleeds. Erysipelas of the face, spreading from right to left. The beard falls out.

Crusts form on the lips and the chin is covered with eczema. The submaxillary gland is swollen and indurated.

Mouth: The gums are settling away from the teeth; the teeth burn and sting; drawing pain in teeth in cold wind; tearing in teeth worse from warmth.

Taste in the mouth is bitter, salty, sour and like spoiled eggs; nauseating taste in the morning; sour taste after eating. The tongue is coated white; burning blisters on lower lip and on tip of tongue, painful ulcers on under surface of tongue, putrid odor from gums and mouth; breath smells like urine.

Dryness of the mouth in morning on waking; also in the night on waking; saliva flows from the mouth during the night.

Throat: Chronic sore throat with ulceration and swelling; swollen tonsils; nightly pain in throat; copious white, viscid mucus; a continuation of the nasal and post nasal catarrh.

Constant choked feeling or constriction in the throat that makes swallowing difficult. Constant spasms in the throat compelling swallowing.

Stomach and abdomen: Ravenous appetite.

Violent thirst in the morning with dry mouth and internal fever. Aversion to meat; to cooked food; to fish; to salt, to sweets. He is driven to eat to relieve a feeling of suffocation and burning gnawing in the stomach.

Pain in the stomach, relieved by eating. Eructations bitter; sour; putrid; tasting of food eaten; of greenish water. Rancid heartburn after eating; nausea much of the time during menses, with trembling; vomits all she eats; vomiting, purging and cold sweat.

The stomach feels constantly in a spoiled state or as from indigestion. Flatulence is as marked as in Carbo veg., and the relief from belching is just as great. Burning, constriction, pulsation and cramping are frequent symptoms. Fullness, distension, pressure are constant features of Graphites.

Retching on swallowing food (like Merc. c.). Gastric catarrh with internal heat drive him to eat and drink. Gastric pains worse from cold drinks and better by warm milk; periodical gastralgia with vomiting of food soon after eating. It is a wonderful remedy for old drunkards when the gastric symptoms agree (like Carbon bisulphide).

It is a most useful remedy in hard, swollen, sore liver with weight and distress in the liver; stitches in both hypochondria, burning in left hypochondrium when lying on it; sensitive to clothing in the liver region. Great suffering in the abdomen from flatulence; incarcerated flatus causes cramping pains, distension, and a continual source of distress.

Everything eaten seems to ferment and turn to gas; rumbling and movements felt in the abdomen; there is great burning and griping; cramping in the abdomen soon after eating; the clothing distresses the abdomen. The slightest indiscretion in eating causes increased flatus, rumbling and diarrhoea; the abdomen is distended with dropsy. Herpes zona oil the side of abdomen; herpes over lower abdomen and groin; hard swelling of inguinal glands; oedema of the abdominal walls.

Anus and stools: From the anus there is copious discharge of very offensive flatus day and night. While diarrhoea is not so common as constipation, yet it is a marked condition in some patients, The diarrhoea is painless with much flatus, with watery, brown, putrid, lienteric stools; excoriating stools, extreme soreness of the anus; fissures of the anus; great burning. Chronic diarrhoea; from the slightest indiscretion in eating on comes a renewed attack.

With the loose stools, and with the constipated stools copious white jelly-like mucus is often found. Discharge of mucus from anus and a constant moisture about the outside parts. Large hemorrhoids extremely sore with fissures.

Constipation with large, hard, knotty, difficult stools passed with extreme pain from soreness and fissures of the anus. Long narrow stools (like Phos.). Violent burning in the anus, prolapsus of the anus.

It has cured many cases of bleeding piles of long standing where there was extreme soreness and fissures and great burning. Violent pains during stool. No desire to go to stool for many days. It requires a long time with hard straining to pass the stool.

It often suits patients who have no stool except by injection or cathartic. Violent itching of the anus; eczema and herpes near the anus or involving the anus. It has cured the stomach and abdominal conditions that favor the tapeworm.

Genitals and urines: The urine flows in a feeble stream, becomes very putrid after standing and deposits much red or white sediment; after standing the urine is covered with an iridescent cuticle.

After urination there is some dribbling; burning in the urinary passages and neck of the bladder when not urinating; pain in the sacrum and coccyx when urinating.

Violent sexual excitement and nightly emissions; the excitement is so strong that ejaculation comes instantly after intromission. The opposite state is also found where there is aversion to coition and erections are wanting. It is a most useful remedy for impotency following secret vice and sexual excesses. Emissions with feeble erections.

Herpes on the prepuce; excoriated and fissured glans penis; dropsical swelling of the scrotum and penis, hydrocele in small boys and baby boys. Itching and moist eruptions on the scrotum. It has cured gleety, viscid discharge from the urethra. It has cured swollen testes.

In the female it causes aversion to coition; enlarged, hard ovaries great tenderness in uterus and ovaries. It has cured ovarian tumor. Pain in the uterus when reaching high with hands; bearing down in uterine region.

It cures cauliflower excrescence of the uterus; it has restrained the growth of cancer in the cervix uteri, when there was burning and putrid bloody discharge; in this it resembles Carbo an. Menses late, irregular, scanty, pale or mixed with scanty dark, small clots, short duration. Menses six or eight weeks apart.

Menses suppressed or very late in chlorotic girls. First menses delayed. Leucorrhoea instead of the menses (Cocculus). Oedema of the vulva. Leucorrhoea in gushes day and night. Dryness and heat in the vagina; coldness in the vagina.

Extreme lassitude during the menses. Many symptoms come during menses; dry cough, copious sweat; oedema of feet; hoarseness; coryza; headache; nausea; morning nausea. Violent itching of the vulva before menses; marked excoriation of the genitals and between the thighs during menses; excoriating leucorrhoea before menses.

Leucorrhea white; yellowish-white; thin; viscid; offensive. Sore, cracked nipples in nursing women. Cancer of the breast coming in the cicatrix of an old cancer.

Larynx and cough: sensitive to touch.

Hoarseness in the evening (like Carbo veg.). Dryness in the larynx in the night; copious glutinous mucus in the daytime.

He suffocates when falling asleep (like Lachesis) and often wakes up in the night gasping for breath; constriction of the chest.

Paroxysmal cough like whooping cough, cough is followed by expectoration of copious white viscid mucus; paroxysms come at any time It has cured whooping cough. Cough from tickling in the larynx or trachea; violent night cough; deep inspiration causes cough.

Rawness in the trachea; stitching pains in the chest.

Constriction of the heart; electric shocks in the heart; palpitation on motion or exertion with strong pulsation all over the body and in the extremities, pulse full and heard, slow during day but fast in the morning; fast pulse in evening after eating, with fever. Itching herpetic eruption on the chest; herpes zona on left side of chest with pain. It is a useful remedy to ward off phthisis.

Enlarged hard painful glands of neck. Painless swollen glands of neck. The spine is very sensitive to the jar of the bed; pain in lumbar region as if “spine were broken “; pain in sacrum with numbness down the limbs; pain in sacrum and coccyx while urinating; itching and moisture over the coccyx.

Drawing and tearing pains in limbs; weakness of all limbs; sensation of paralysis of limbs; herpes and eczema on the limbs; marked numbness of the upper limbs, during rest and when lain on; numbness and coldness of fingers and hands.

Skin: Rheumatic and tearing pains in shoulders, worse in left.

Herpes in axilla and bend of the elbow; horny callosities on the palms; skin of the hands hard, fissured, hot and bleeding. Psoriasis of the hands and fingers; raw, moist places between the fingers; the finger nails thick and brittle; the finger nails become black and fall off. Great heat of palms.

Smarting and sore between the nates; excoriation from walking. Many eruptions on the thigh, but especially herpes and eczema; eruptions that ooze a glutinous fluid. Numbness of lower limbs during rest; the legs are weak and heavy as if paralyzed; oedema of the legs and feet.

Herpes in the groin and hollow of the knee. Cold feet in evening in bed; copious, offensive sweat of the feet; ulcers on the feet and legs; tearing in thighs, legs, feet and toes; burning heat in soles and heels; gouty-tearing in the toes; spreading blisters on the toes that become ulcers; the toenails become black; thick; and crippled toenails the nails are painful; ingrowing toenails.

Dreams vivid; anxious, horrible, vexatious. Sleepless before midnight; sleepiness during the day. Nightly pains in sleep. Frequent waking. Unrefreshed in the morning.

Graphites should be used more frequently in chronic recurrent intermittent fever. Chill in the evening with tearing in the limbs chill intermingled with the fever; wants to be covered in all stages chill worse after eating, better after drinking and in open air. Nightly fevers with chilliness but no sweat; dry beat evening and night, especially before midnight; anxiety and restlessness during the fever, hands and soles very hot; even burning heat.

It has chill with fever followed by sweat; sweat from slight exertion; sweat on front of body; the sweat is offensive, cold and stains yellow; copious night sweats in weakness and during phthisis; entire inability to perspire, in many chronic complaints.

Itching of the skin all over the body, with or without eruptions itching worse at night in the warm bed; itching and burning with eruptions; the skin is very hot at night; excoriation of the skin in the bends of joints.

Every injury festers. Fissures on ends of fingers, on nipples, labial commissures at anus and vulva, between the toes. Itching blotches. Erysipelas beginning in face and spreading to other parts; erysipelas beginning in face and going from right to left.

Itching over varicose veins; itching piles. Herpes and eczema oozing a glutinous moisture. Crusty and scabby ulcers. Hard, painful cicatrices; old ulcers with proud flesh and burning, itching and stinging ulcers with indurated base and margins.

Gratiola
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 89 of 180
Source pages 1715–1720 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

It is a great remedy for nervous prostration; marked lassitude, with mental and bodily weakness. It is closely related to Coffea and Nux vomica and especially useful for the weakness of the will and neuralgic pains in coffee drinkers. In hypochondria and in the female it has melancholia and nymphomania. Convulsive conditions without loss of consciousness.

Complaints are better in the open air, but he is chilly in a warm room (like Pulsatilla); complaints predominate on the left side; constant vaporous exhalations from the body. Catarrhal conditions of the stomach and intestines with spasmodic ailments.

There is a lack of will power and aversion to work; mental depression and capriciousness; he is very irritable and hypochondriacal; fear of the future. Complaints from pride. Bad effects from coffee and alcohol; nervous complaints associated with stomach and bowel troubles.

Vertigo during and after eating; on closing the eyes; while reading; on rising from a seat; on motion; vertigo with cerebral hyperemia. Heat and fullness of the head; sensation as though the head grew smaller; pulsation in head; in temples; rush of blood to head, after rising from stooping.

The head symptoms are better in the open air and worse or come on in warm room. Pain in the occiput in the morning on waking, better rising or lying on the face. Sick headaches, nausea, vomiting or disgust for food, with vertigo, better in the open air.

Pain in occiput from sneezing. The head feels cold and is sensitive, to cold air. Cold sensation of vertex. Corrugated forehead during the headache. Itching of the scalp; itching of the eyes and ears. Mist before the eyes while reading and green objects appear white.

Pain in eyes as from sand; itching in the nose. There is a sensation of burning heat in the face, but it feels cold to the hand.

Swelling of the upper lip in the morning. There is a sensation of tension of the face and tingling and it feels swollen. The face is red; the teeth ache from cold things taken in the mouth. Grinding of teeth in brain affections.

Pain in the throat, compelling constant swallowing; much mucus in the throat, which he cannot eject. Violent thirst; emptiness in the stomach after eating; emptiness when he does not need or desire food. Craves nothing but bread.

Nausea better after eating and by eructations. Vomiting of bitter, sour water and mucus. A feeling of anxiety in the stomach. Cramping in the stomach after food and a heavy load that seems to go from side to side as he turns from side to side, with nausea and eructation. Distension after eating. Pressure in stomach, after eating. Marked coldness in stomach. Cramp and hard aching in stomach, pain grows rapidly worse and seems to extend to back and kidneys.

Cold feeling in abdomen. Cramping like colic with nausea. Rumbling in abdomen with distension in afternoon and evening. Swelling of mesenteric glands. Pinching in abdomen, better by passing flatus. Diarrhoea, with copious gushing, yellow or yellowish-green, frothy, watery stools; copious watery vomiting and purging, like. cholera morbus; copious green watery stools. The diarrhoea is brought on. from drinking large quantities of water, due to the violent thirst.

During the diarrhoea he is often sensitive to draft and open air which give him urging to stool. It has cured fully developed, rapid, Asiatic cholera. Green stools and green vomiting, unconscious stools.

Before stool, nausea; rumbling, cutting; tenesmus. During stool, nausea; burning in rectum straining. After stool, burning in rectum; tenesmus; pain in coccyx creeping chills; pain in abdomen.

Protrusion of stinging, burning hemorrhoids. Tearing and pricking in anus. Constriction in anus; itching anus. Ascarides. Burning in the urethra during and after urination; scanty urine becomes turbid on standing; unconscious discharge of urine. Stitching in left spermatic cord to abdomen and chest.

It is a most useful remedy in the female when there is marked irritability of the sexual organs, if the sexual desire is great excited; it is one of our best remedies for nymphomania. When the desire is so violent that it drives her to secret vice the remedies are Gelsemium, Gratiola, Origanum, Nux vomica, Phosphorus, Platina and Zincum.

The menses are too early and profuse; darting pain in right mamma when stooping and during menses worse on rising; leucorrhea with pains in sacrum.

Violent palpitation after stool (Conium) with oppression of chest heat in chest, head, hands, with red face.

Rheumatic pains in upper limbs; sore bruised pains in lower limbs, after walking, tearing in the tibia while sitting, better while walking.

Sleepiness after eating; deep sleep, Itching and burning of the skin, after scratching.

Guaiacum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 90 of 180
Source pages 1721–1727 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

This is a very deep acting remedy, even deep enough to cure the symptoms of and turn into order a constitution that is rheumatic, gouty, and has inherited phthisis.

Rheumatism: These patients are subject to diarrhoea; the tendons are too short, or they have abscesses, catarrhal troubles, bronchitis. Drawing, tension and contractions of muscular fibre. Sore swollen joints.

The rheumatic joints are more painful from warmth (Lac c., Led., Puls) and more comfortable when cool. Gouty abscesses of joints. The bones become spongy, or suppurate. The leg and ankle bones are especially affected. Sensitive periosteum.

Stitching pains are characteristic, and burning is as marked as in Arsenicum. Limbs contracted and stiff. The excretions are all offensive. Drawing, tearing pains. His cold settles in the limbs, and the joints become sore and the muscles draw. His suffering is increased by the slightest motion or exertion.

Gradually increasing exhaustion. Progressive emaciation. In the first stage of phthisis it is a wonderful remedy, when the symptoms agree. The progressive character of the sickness, the weakness of mind and body, and such symptoms as belong to deep constitutional troubles. In psoric cases complicated with syphilis and mercury and other violent drugs we find use for this most neglected remedy. It is closely related to Causticum, Sulphur, and Tuberculinum.

Absent minded in the morning. Indolent, and low spirited. Obstinate; fretful, and forgetful.

Vertigo on rising.

Rheumatic pain in one side of the head, extending to the face. Gouty headaches. Sensation of looseness of the brain. Stitching in the head. Pain in forehead, occiput, and deep in the brain. Tearing pain in the head. Sensation as if blood vessels were distended. Neuralgia on left side of face and head.

Pulsating pain, ameliorated by pressure and walking; aggravated by sitting and standing. This is an exception to the general rule, as most symptoms are aggravated by motion. Perspiration on head and face, when walking in the open air.

Sensation of protrusion of the eyes. Swelling of the eyes. Dilated pupils.

Tearing in left ear. Paroxysmal pain in ear.

Pain in the bones of the nose. Nose swollen. Fluent coryza.

Pain in the bones of the face, nose and teeth. Face red and swollen, spotted. Heat in the face in the evening. Sharp pain in right malar bone. Paroxysmal pain in face, head and neck, every day at 6 P.M., lasting until 4 A. w. Dull ache in left side of jaw. Tearing, stitching in teeth. Pain in teeth when biting jaws together. Inflammation of the tonsils, worse from drinks, and there is much burning. Perverted taste. Tongue coated thick white, or brown.

Burning in throat. Tonsillitis; it prevents suppuration.

Aversion to food, to milk. Much thirst.

Vomits a mass of watery mucus, followed by exhaustion. Nausea from sensation of mucus in throat.

Burning in stomach and abdomen.

Constrictive sensation in stomach, with anguish and dyspnea.

Much flatulence in abdomen.

Morning diarrhoea (Sulph.). Stools watery. Constipation, with hard, crumbling, offensive stool.

Urging to urinate, even after micturition. The urine is profuse, and foetid. Cutting in urethra while urine flows.

Stitching in neck of bladder after ineffectual urging to urinate. Emissions without dreams. Discharge from urethra.

Chronic inflammation of ovaries. Menses absent. Membranous dysmenorrhoea. Shuddering in mammae, with gooseflesh.

Spasms of larynx. Difficult breathing. Palpitation.

Dry, hard cough with fever, finally relieved by expectoration. Copious, putrid expectoration, like pus. Expectoration of blood.

Rheumatism of the muscles of the chest, with great pain on motion. Stitching pains in chest from motion and breathing. Stitching pains seem to be in the pleura. Chronic bronchial catarrh with putrid expectoration, when rheumatism extends to chest. Phthisis pituitosa in rheumatic and gouty patients. Chest pains after riding in open air.

Palpitation of the heart. Rheumatism of the heart; frequent weak puke.

Rheumatic stiffness of back of neck and back. Stitching in neck and back. Drawing pains in back between scapulae. All pains aggravated from motion and ameliorated during rest; aggravated from heat.

Drawing, tearing, stitching pains in upper limbs. Rheumatic pains in upper arm and shoulder. Pains in finger joints, and then in whole band. Hot bands. Stitching in right thumb. Pains all aggravated from motion; aggravated from heat.

Shortening of the hamstrings. Pain in thighs extending to knees. Tearing, drawing pains in legs. Pains in the tibia. Gouty abscess of knee. Shooting pains in legs from feet to knees. Softening of tibia and ankle bones. The knee is flexed from the contraction of hamstrings. The right leg swollen and drawn close to the thigh. Pains in all the limbs, aggravated from motion and heat. Weakness of arms and legs. Numbness of lower limbs.

Stiffness of limbs. Weakness of limbs after exertion. Rheumatism of joints, aggravated from heat and motion. Pain in limbs after taking cold.

Restless sleep. Sleeplessness. Wakens from sleep as if falling. Nightmare while lying on the back. Unrefreshing sleep.

Chilliness followed by fever in the evening. Burning fever. Hot hands. Night sweats. Copious perspiration.

The provers that perspired had no urinary symptoms.

Helleborus Niger
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 91 of 180
Source pages 1728–1742 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Brain and mind: in all the complaints of Helleborus stupefaction occurs in greater or less degree. Sometimes it is a complete stupor, sometimes a partial stupor, but it is always stupefaction and sluggishness.

Hellebore is useful in affections of the brain, spinal cord, the general nervous system and mind, but especially in acute inflammatory diseases of the brain and spinal cord and their membranes, and in troubles bordering on insanity. There is a peculiar kind of imbecility or stupefaction of the body and mind.

The extreme state is unconsciousness. Complete unconsciousness in connection with cerebral congestion, or inflammation which has gone on to hydrocephalus, cerebro-spinal meningitis, or inflammation of the brain, with stupefaction.

Even early in the disease Hellebore lacks the wildness and acute delirium found is Stramonium and Belladonna. It is passive. Again, it fits in after the wildness of the delirium has passed away and, the patient has settled down into a state of stupefaction. The patient lies upon the back, eyes partly open, rolling the head, mouth open, tongue dry, eyes lusterless, staring into space. Staring at the individual talking. Waiting a long time to answer, or not answering at all.

Violent attacks of brain trouble frequently come to a sudden end, but those that are more passive linger, and that is where Hellebore comes in. The Hellebore case will linger for weeks and sometimes months in this state of stupefaction, gradually emaciating.

He lies upon the back with the limbs drawn up; he looks pale and sickly. When questioned he answers slowly. The text says:

“Stupefaction bordering on insensibility.”

Another common expression is:

“Diminished power of the mind over the body.”

The muscles will not act; they will not obey the will. It is a sort of paralytic state, but “stupefaction” expresses it. Cannot project ideas; cannot rivet the attention, cannot concentrate the mind. The patient appears semi-idiotic.

Delirium is not common, and when present it is muttering. There is more stupefaction, more “do nothing,” more “say nothing,” than delirium.

Yet there is evidently confusion of mind; he cannot think. In many instances, very late in the disease, the patient can be roused up, and he will act as if he were attempting to think, as if he were attempting to answer, attempting to move. But he simply stares at the doctor with eyes partly open, with a dazed expression on his face, and picks his finger ends.

When questioned the Hellebore patient is not able to tell you what he has in mind, unless considerably aroused and agitated. But when so aroused he will talk about spirits, or say that he sees devils. He sees in his imagination those images that he has read about, or seen pictured, as the devil, with horns and a tail. A young person who has never heard of the devil, or of spirits, would not have that form of hallucination in his delirium. The hallucinations are shaped in accordance with what he has been taught to imagine.

Hellebore has a peculiar quasi-hysterical condition – a form of insanity. She imagines she has sinned away her day of grace. Like Aurum, she believes that she is doing wrong, that she is committing an unpardonable sin. That is as near as the remedy approaches to insanity,

“An old woman having been accused of theft by the women around took it so much to heart that she hanged herself. This suicide produced such an effect on the women of the village that one after another accused herself of having caused the death of the old woman.”

Child: The most striking type in Hellebore is the sick child. It comes in especially in children between two and ten years of age. The staring – lying on the back and staring with half-closed eyes, is typical of the remedy. Sometimes the lips move without any sound. The lips move as if the child wishes to say something, but on further questioning the words he wished to speak are lost, forgotten.

In hydrocephalus there is a sharp scream, the brain cry. The child will cry out in sleep. He will carry the hand to the head and shriek, like Apis. But the Apis hydrocephalus is far more active and acute.

The Apis patient kicks the covers off; this patient does not mind the covers, he does not mind anything. He is not easily disturbed. He lies upon his back with the limbs drawn up; often making automatic motions with the arms and legs. Sometimes one side is paralyzed, but the other keeps up automatic motions.

Hellebore is useful in the low form of disease known as “apathetic typhoid.” These same symptoms guide to the remedy. Indifferent to all external impressions.

Rarely much disturbed by being touched, or by being covered too warmly, or by not being covered at all.

He does not seem to be sensitive to heat, or cold, or pricking, or handling or pinching. Listlessness. What is called in the text “stubborn silence” is more an apathetic silence, an inability to speak. It appears as if he refused to answer, but he does not; he does not know how to answer; he cannot think.

Fixed ideas in persons who are said to be just a little “off their balance,” a little queer. And that fixed idea will stay; there is no use trying to argue him out of it. The woman gets a fixed idea that she is going to die on a certain day, and nothing can get it out of her head. This is not like Aconit, because there is no fear of death.

Aconite has fear of death and fixes the time of death. Fixed idea that she has committed some sin, which she will at times name and describe, or perhaps only mention vaguely – but it is very real to her,

Mind 2: When able to be about the patient appears to be sad, because she sits and says nothing, and seems to be in a woeful mood. But there is not that great lamentation, with walking the floor and wringing the hands that we find in Aurum.

It is an apathetic state; she appears sad and melancholy, whereas perhaps she does little thinking. Any attempt at consolation, so long as the patient is able to think, only aggravates the trouble. Like Natrum muriaticum, the complaints are aggravated by consolation, but the complaints of Natrum muriaticum are not at all like these.

If the Hellebore patient is able to meditate upon his symptoms, they seem to grow better.

Sometimes there are convulsive motions in this remedy, but they are more likely to be automatic. Motions that seem to have nothing to do with the will. He simply makes motions, like one moving in an absent-minded state.

The Helleborus patient is benumbed everywhere. The whole sensorium is in a benumbed state, a stupefaction, a blunting of general sensibility. The text says:

“Vision unimpaired.”

Nevertheless he sees imperfectly; he does not regard the object his gaze is fixed upon; that is, his range of vision appears to be correct, yet if questioned a little as to what be saw, he has no recollection of it; it has made no impression upon his memory or his mind.

Vertigo and head: Vertigo, with nausea and vomiting. Vertigo from stooping. With the general stupefaction the head rolls and tosses. The child lies upon the back and rolls the head from side to side. The eyes are partly open, and he keeps boring the back of the head into the pillow. This is partly unconscious and partly to relieve the drawing in the muscles of the back of the neck. These muscles keep shortening, as the disease progresses, just as they do in cerebro-spinal meningitis; until the head is drawn back as far as it can go.

There is burning heat in the head; shooting pains; pressive pains in the head from congestion. Violent occipital headache. Dull aching in the occiput; benumbed feeling in the occiput. A feeling like wood fullness, congestion and pressure.

The headaches, the motions of the head and the appearance of the face are those occurring in congestion of the brain. I have seen children, after passing through a moderately acute but rather passive first stage, lie in this stupid state, needing Hellebore for weeks before they received it.

When it was given repair set in; not instantly, but gradually. The remedy acts slowly in these slow, stubborn, stupid cases of brain and spinal trouble. Some. times there is no apparent change until the day after the remedy is administered or even the next night, when there comes a sweat, a diarrhea, or vomiting – a reaction.

They must not be interfered with no remedy must be given. They are signs of reaction. If the child has vitality enough to recover, he will now recover. If the vomiting is stopped by any remedy that will stop it, the Hellebore will be antidoted. Let the vomiting or the diarrhoea or the sweat alone, and it will pass away during the day.

The child will become warm, and in a few days will return to consciousness and then what will take place? just imagine these benumbed fingers and hands and limbs, this benumbed skin everywhere. What would be the most natural, thing to develop as evidence of the rousing up of this stupid child?, it is necessary for you to know this.

It is not really a part of the teaching of the homoeopathic Materia Medica, but you must know what to expect after giving this remedy.

Clinical observation: It is a clinical observation which you will – see if you see Hellebore cases, and Zincum cases.

Zincum is, if possible, even more profound in its dreadful state of stupefaction than Hellebore. Well, that child’s fingers will commence to tingle. As he comes back to his normal nervous condition, the fingers commence to tingle, the nose and ears tingle, and the child begins to scream and toss back and forth and roll about the bed. The neighbors will come in and say,

“I would send that doctor away unless he gives, something to help that child;” but just as sure as you do it you will have a dead baby in twenty-four hours. That child is getting well; let him alone. You will never be able to manage one of these cases if you do not take the father into a room by himself and tell him just how the case will proceed.

Do not take the mother; do not tell her a word about it, unless she is an unusually excellent mother, because that is her child, and she is sympathetic, and she will cry when she hears that child cry; she will lose her head and will insist upon the father turning you out of doors.

But you take the father aside beforehand and tell him what is going to happen; explain it to him so he will see it for himself; and tell him that if this is not permitted to go on, that if the remedy is interfered with, he will lose his child.

It is not so much the awful pains, but it is the itching, tingling and formication that cause the appearance of extreme agony. Sometimes in every part of the child’s body it is a week before all these symptoms go away of themselves but they will go away, if left alone.

All this will make you nervous. Do not stay and watch the case too long, because if you do you will change the remedy. I never heard of one solitary cure like, these in the hands of an Old School doctor,

The face has a very sickly appearance; sunken, gradually emaciating. It has a sooty appearance, just as if soot had settled in the nostrils and in the corners of the eyes. You will say that the patient is going to die. Quite likely without Hellebore. The remedy fits the kind of cases that the allopath knows nothing about and has no remedy for.

His prognosis is always unfavorable. The face, of course, expresses the mental symptoms. Wrinkled forehead, bathed in cold sweat. Paleness of the face and heat of the head. Twitching, of the muscles of the face.

We find that knitting of the brow and wrinkling of the forehead in just this kind of brain trouble. We find a similar kind of wrinkling in Lycopodium, but the trouble is in the lungs. In this remedy the nostrils are dilated and sooty. Nor much flapping, but extremely dilated. The eyeballs are glassy and the lids sticky.

There is violent thirst in these fevers, and unusual canine hunger. The nausea and vomiting are nondescript. In the early part of the proving there are diarrhoea and dysentery; with copious white gelatinous stool; stool consisting solely of pale tenacious mucus. And then comes paralytic constipation, and these prostrated, emaciated brain cases, such as described, will lie for days without stool, or any action of the bowels.

After a day or two they will not even respond to injections. Little, hard, dry stool. Again, when reaction comes, it very commonly comes with a diarrhea, or a sweat, or vomiting; perhaps with all three of these conditions.

The urine is retained or suppressed; sometimes it dribbles away passes unconsciously. Urine passed in a feeble stream; bloody urine.

The patient lies on the back, with his limbs drawn up; or slides down in bed. Great debility; great relaxation; the muscles refuse to act. Convulsions of sucklings. Epilepsy with consciousness. Traumatic tetanus. Constant somnambulism cannot be roused to full consciousness. Soporous sleep.

Editorial notes

• “partly open, arid” corrected to “partly open, and” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Hepar Sulphur
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 92 of 180
Source pages 1743–1769 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Coldness: The Hepar patient is chilly. He is sensitive to the cold and wants an unusual amount of clothing when in cold air. He wants the sleeping room very warm and can endure much heat in the room, many degrees warmer than a healthy person ordinarily desires, He has no endurance in the cold and all his complaints are made worse in the cold. If he becomes cold in sleep his complaints come on or if he is out in the cold, dry wind, complaints come on; inflammatory and rheumatic complaints appear.

The exposure of hand or foot at night in bed brings on symptoms. He wants the covers drawn close about the neck when in bed. This patient is also oversensitive to impressions, to surroundings and to pain. What with an ordinary person would only be an ache or disagreeable sensation becomes with Hepar an intense suffering.

Pains: But the pains of Hepar may be very severe, very sharp. Inflamed spots, eruptions, boils or suppurations are full of sharp pains. This is so intense that it is described at times, as a sticking and jagging like sharp sticks.

The pains in ulcers are often felt like sticks; intense and sharp as if sticks were jagging the ulcer. This sensation is often expressed by the patient suffering from sore throat. Lip feels as if he had swallowed a fish bone, or stick. This is in keeping with the general character, because it is present everywhere, in inflammations, ulcers, pustules, boils and eruptions; all seem to have sticks in them or some thing jagging.

Eruptions are sensitive, to touch. This accords with the oversensitiveness of the nerves found everywhere. The Hepar patient faints with pain, even from slight pain.

Mind: This remedy belongs to patients that are called delicate, that are oversensitive to impressions. The mind takes part in this oversensitiveness and manifests itself by a state of extreme irritability.

Every little thing that disturbs the patient makes him intensely angry, abusive and impulsive. The impulses will overwhelm him and make him wish to kill his best friend in an instant. Impulses also that are without cause sometimes crop out in Hepar.

A man may have a sudden impulse to stab his friend. A barber has an impulse to cut the throat of his patron while in the chair. Mothers may have an impulse to throw the child into the fire or an impulse to set herself on fire; an impulse to do violence and to destroy. These symptoms increase to insanity and then the impulses are often carried out. It becomes a mania to set fire to things.

The patient is quarrelsome, hard to get along with; nothing pleases; everybody disturbs oversensitiveness to persons, to people and to places.

He desires a constant change of persons and things and surroundings and each new surrounding or person or thing again displeases and makes him irritated. With this irritability of temper and physical irritability there is a tendency to suppuration in parts. Localized inflammations incline to suppurate, especially in glands and cellular tissue do we have suppuration and ulcers.

The glands of the neck, axilla and groin and the mammary glands swell, become hard and suppurate. First the hard swellings with the feeling as if they had sticks jagging in them, then it becomes highly inflamed and red over the part and ultimately it suppurates, discharges and heals slowly.

The bone even suppurates and takes on necrosis and caries. Felons around the root of the nail and ends of the fingers. The nail suppurates and loosens and comes off. Sensation of splinters under the nails, even when they do not suppurate.

The nails become hard and brittle. Warts crack open and bleed, sting and burn and suppurate. Hepar is especially useful in felons in such a constitution as described, but sometimes you will have nothing more than the fact that the patient is a scrawny, chilly patient, who is always taking cold and subject to felons. I have often had to give Hepar on no better information and have known it to stop the tendency to felons. It also competes with Silica.

The patient is often scrawny, and has a tendency to enlargement of glands. The lymphatic glands are generally hard and enlarged, They are chronically enlarged without suppuration, and at any cold that comes on some particular gland may suppurate.

The catarrhal state: is general.

There is no mucous membrane exempt, but especially do we have catarrh of the nose, ears, throat, larynx and chest. The Hepar patient is subject to coryza. In some instances the colds settle in the nose and then there will be much discharge, with sneezing every, time he goes into a cold wind.

The cold winds bring on sneezing and running from the nose, first of a watery character and finally ending in a thick, yellow, offensive discharge.

Discharges: These offensive discharges smell like decomposed cheese, and this characteristic runs through the remedy.

The discharges from all parts of the body smell like old cheese. The discharges from ulcers are offensive, and have a decomposed, cheesy smell. It has discharges running through it also that smell sour, and this is also a general because it modifies all things that can be sour.

The babies are always sour in spite of much washing. Or it may be noticed by the members of the family that one of the family always smells sour, has a sour perspiration. The discharges from ulcers are sour, and also discharges from, mucous membranes. The discharge from the nose becomes copious, and causes ulceration in patches.

Throat and cough: The throat has a catarrhal condition; the whole pharynx is in a catarrhal state with copious discharge. Throat extremely sensitive to touch; pain as if full of splinters; pain on swallowing. The larynx also is painful on talking; painful as a bolus of food goes down behind the larynx, and painful to touch with the hand.

There is a loss of voice, and a dry, hoarse bark in adults, especially in the mornings and evenings. Every time he goes out in the dry, cold wind, he becomes hoarse, loses the voice and coughs. It is a dry, hoarse, barking cough. Inspiring cold air will increase the cough and putting the hand out of bed will increase the pain in the larynx or cough.

Putting the hand or foot out of bed brings a general aggravation of all the complaints of Hepar. Putting the hand out of bed accidentally when sleeping will bring on cough, and cause sneezing. The larynx has its catarrhal state, and in oversensitive children this catarrhal state becomes a croup.

Sensitive children that are exposed during the day in a cold, dry wind, or cold air, come down next morning with a violent attack of croup. The Hepar croup is worse in the morning and in the evening; evening until midnight. Sometimes cases that at first call for Aconite run into Hepar.

The Acon. croup comes on with great violence, worse in the evening before midnight. The child wakes up from its first sleep with a hoarse, barking croup. A dose of Aconit may prove entirely sufficient; or it may be only a palliative.

The child goes to sleep and along towards morning, or at least sometime after midnight, there is another attack, which shows that Acon. was not sufficient. Such a case will be controlled by Hepar.

When the croup comes on after midnight and the child wakes up frightened, suffocating, rouses up in bed with a dry, hoarse and ringing cough, which rings like a dry whoop, then Spongia will nearly always be the remedy, and again if Spongia palliates it and it is not sufficiently deep and there is a morning aggravation which shows that the trouble is returning Hepar follows. Acon., Hepar and Spongia are closely related to each other and they are truly great croup remedies.

Dry, paroxysmal cough from evening until midnight and sometimes lasting all night, with choking, gagging and crouping; some loose coughing in the daytime; rawness and scraping the larynx; worse in cold air or uncovering hand or foot in bed.

The catarrhal state is sometimes lower down in the trachea, and the trachea becomes extremely sore from much coughing. The patient has been coughing days and weeks and has the morning and evening aggravations; a rattling, barking cough with great soreness of the chest in an oversensitive and chilly patient.

The cough is attended with choking and gagging, even to vomiting; it is worse in the cold air, and from putting the band out of bed. He coughs and sweats. There is much sweating the whole night, without relief. Sweating all night without relief belongs to a great many complaints of Hepar. He sweats easily, so that with the cough and on the slightest exertion he is fairly drenched with perspiration.

Ears: It has catarrhal affections of the ear.

A sudden inflammation comes on in the middle ear, an abscess forms, the drum of the car ruptures and there is a bloody discharge and sticking, tearing pains in the inflamed ear. There is first a sensation of stopping up of the ear, then, bursting and pressure in the ear, and then perforation of the drum.

There is also an inflammatory condition causing a discharge that is foetid, or a bloody yellow, purulent discharge, thick, with cheesy particles and smelling like old cheese.

Eyes: Hepar sometimes is bad on the oculist.

When it is indicated, it cures eyes very quickly, so that the oculist does not have a very long case and it does away with the necessity for washes in the hands of the specialist. From the eyes we have the same offensive thick, purulent discharge. Inflammation of the eyes attended with, little ulcers.

Ulcers of the cornea, granulations, bloody, offensive discharge from the eyes. The eyes look red, the lids are inflamed, the edges are turned out and the margin of the lids become ulcerated. In all sorts of so called scrofulous affections, the eye conditions may be covered by Hepar when the constitutional state is present.

The constitutional state of the patient is the only guide to the remedy. Many times the eye symptoms are nondescript. You have only an inflamed eye with catarrhal discharge, and for this you could give a large number of the anti-psorics; but when you go into the state of the patient and find these general symptoms, then this remedy will cure.

The general symptoms will guide to the remedy that will cure the eyes. You will see that the specialist for the eyes is often limited unless he knows how to secure all the symptoms of the patient and selects the remedy upon the totality of the symptoms.

Bladder: There are other catarrhal, conditions. Catarrh of the bladder, with purulent discharges in the urine and copious muco-purulent deposits. Ulcers of the bladder. The walls of the bladder become hardened, so that it has almost no power to expel its contents, and the urine passes in a slow stream or in drops, or in the male the stream falls down perpendicularly. No ability to expel the urine with force. It is a paresis. There is burning in the bladder and frequent, almost constant, urging to urinate. It has also a catarrhal state of the urethra that resembles gonorrhoea, and it has been a very useful remedy in chilly patients with gleety discharge of long standing. Thick discharge of a white, cheesy character. Ulcers and little inflammatory spots along the urethra.

There is a sticking sensation here and there along the urethra and when passing urine a sensation of a splinter in the urethra. Copious leucorrhoea with the same offensive, cheesy smell.

Leucorrhea: The leucorrhea is so copious that she is compelled to wear a napkin, and the napkins, I have been told by women who have been cured by Hepar, are so offensive that they must be taken away and washed at once because the odor permeates the rooms.

This horribly offensive odor that is so permeating is often cured by Kali phos. It has really one of the most penetrating of odors, so much so that when a woman suffers from this leucorrhoea the odor can be detected when she enters the room.

A very important sphere for Hepar is after mercurialisation. Many old people are walking the street at the present day who have been the victims of Calomel, who have been salivated, who have taken blue pill for recurrent bilious spells, to “tap the liver,” until finally they get into a state of chilliness felt, as it were, in the bone.

They sweat much about the head, they ache in the bones, and every change of weather to cold, and every cold, damp spell affects them. They, are like barometers. Hepar is the remedy for that state.

They go into diseases of the bone easily and are always shivering. While they have periods of aggravation from warmth, as a general rule they are chilly subjects, and feel the cold easily. In the more acute affections of Mercury there is an aggravation from the warmth of the bed, but the old subjects who have been years ago poisoned with it get almost bloodless, and they become chilly; they cannot get- clothing enough ib keep them warm.

They become withered and shriveled, and have rheumatic affections about the joints. Then it is that the symptoms of Hepar agree and it becomes a valuable antidote to that state of mercurialisation.

Hepar is also a complement and antidote to potentized Mercury. When Merc. has been administered and has done all it can do as a curative remedy, or when it has acted improperly and has some, what mixed up the case and it is necessary to follow it with the natural complement or antidote and prepare for another series, Hepar is to be thought of as one of the natural followers of Merc. it is well known that Merc. is not followed well by Silica. Sil. does not do useful work when Merc. is still acting or has been acting.

This is the time that Hepar becomes an intercurrent remedy. Sil. follows well after Hepar, and Hepar follows well after Merc., and thus becomes an intercurrent in that series.

In old syphilitic cases when the symptoms agree Hepar is a very full and complete remedy. It corresponds to the majority of symptoms of syphilis, and it only needs to correspond to the symptoms of the individual patient when he is syphilitic to be indicated. Thus in old cases who have been mercurialized, who have had the symptoms suppressed so that the disease is latent and ready to crop out at any time, Hepar will come in and have a decided effect upon the syphilis and upon the mercury.

It will straighten matters out and cause a development that will lead to clear prescribing. In this relationship to syphilis and mercury Hepar is closely allied to Staph., Asa f., Nit. acid, Sil., etc.

Especially Hepar the remedy in those cases of syphilis where great quantities of mercury have been taken, until it is no longer able to suppress the symptoms of the disease; in old cases when the syphilitic miasm attacks the bones of the nose and they sink in, or a great ulceration takes place; those cases you sometimes see walking around the street, with a big patch over the nose or over the opening that leads down into the nasal cavity.

Nose: When there is severe pain in the region of the nasal bones, the bridge of the nose is so sensitive that it cannot be touched and in the root of the nose there is a sensation as if a splinter were sticking in. For offensive discharge from the nose, foetid oezena in an old case, which has been mercurialized, who is chilly in his very bones, think of Hepar. It has cured many such cases; it has healed up the ulcers; it has cured the catarrhal state, and it has hastened the healing up of the portions of diseased bone, by hastening the suppuration and has returned the patient to an orderly state.

Throat: As we go into the syphilitic affections that lead into the throat, we find ulcers of the soft palate which eat away the uvula, small ulcers which finally unite and destroy the soft palate and then commence to work upon the osseous portion of the roof of the mouth.

The odor that comes from that mouth when it is opened to show the throat is extremely offensive; very often like spoiled cheese. The medicines that are especially related, or especially useful in this form of ulceration in old syphilitics, will be Kali bi., Lach., Merc. cor., Merc. and Hepar, but in those syphilitic cases that have been mercurialized Hepar and Nitric acid should be thought of.

Nitric acid is very closely related to Hepar; it is just as chilly; it has the sensation of sticks in the throat and in inflamed parts. It has fine ulcers in the throat, upon the tonsils and in the larynx. Nitric acid competes with Hepar.

You think of the two together. Both have sensation of a fish bone or stick in the throat.

The cartilages of the larynx become attacked in syphilitic affections and old mercurial affections. When the case is not of syphilitic origin but is of sycotic origin, small or large white gelatinous polypi form in the larynx and they are sore, causing loss of voice, or cracked voice; when they cause choking or uneasiness, Hepar is one of the remedies. Hepar, Calc., Arg. nit and Nit. ac. and sometimes Thuja are the remedies related to such conditions.

Genitals: Again, in the earlier syphilitic manifestations, the chancre has the feeling of a stick in it; then comes the formation of a bubo that may be either non-suppurative or a suppurating gland, associated with a chancre or a harmless ulcer upon the penis. These conditions are often indications for Hepar, when the constitutional state is present.

Hepar has also sycotic warts. It is useful in old cases of gleet; also when there is a sensation of a splinter in the urethra. In strictures and constrictions of inflammatory character during the inflammation there is a tendency to ulcerate, and with this the sensation of a stick is felt.

Arg. nit., Nit. ac. and Hepar run close together for this kind of inflammation, and will cure the inflammatory stricture before it becomes a complete and permanent fibrinous stricture.

It is only very rarely that you will be able with your medicines to cure a stricture after it has taken on permanency, after it is many years old, but as long as the inflammation keeps up there is hope.

I remember one very old one that was cured by Sepia. I did not know at first of its presence, but prescribed Sepia on the symptoms of the case, and the patient came back with great suffering in the urethra, and then confessed to me that he had had gonorrhoea and had been troubled for years with a stricture. That inflammation was aroused anew and after it ran its course it really left the passage clear and there was never any more trouble with the stricture.

That was a very unusual result. I have many times prescribed for patients with the utmost endeavors to do the same thing, and have cured the patient in other respects, but the stricture would remain. Remember then that Hepar has fig warts, chronic sycotic discharges, or chronic gonorrhoea, offensive, cheesy discharges, the sensation of sticks in the urethra, inflammatory stricture, which will be associated with difficulty in passing urine, to the extent that there is a weakness of the bladder and the urine falls perpendicularly.

Suppuration: Hepar has served a valuable purpose in its ability to establish suppuration around foreign bodies. For instance, a foreign body is under the skin or is somewhere unknown. Perhaps it is the tip end of a projectile after the projectile itself has been taken away, or under the nail a splinter is forming a suppuration. It is so small that it is hardly observed and it is supposed often that the splinter has been entirely removed, but an inflammatory condition starts up.

Hepar if indicated by the general symptoms of the patient hastens the suppuration and heals up the finger, for it has all such things. Silica is another remedy capable of establishing inflammation and suppuration and removes little foreign bodies that cannot be located.

Of course it is understood that if the physician knows the location of a splinter, he will take such steps as are necessary to remove it, and not wait for the action of a remedy. But at times a needle point breaks off against the bone of the finger of a seamstress, or small portions of the needle may exist where they cannot be found without an immense amount of slashing which the patient refuses. Hepar or Silica will remove it. A little abscess will form and the little mite will be discharged.

Knowing that these two remedies have this tendency to establish a suppuration wherever there are foreign bodies, it is well to be reminded that if a bullet were encysted in the lungs it would be well, if the symptoms called for Hepar or Silica, to consider whether it might not be injurious to give a remedy that would establish a suppuration. It might be that the bullet is resting in a vital place, in a net-work of arteries, and it would be well not to establish suppuration in this vital region.

Deposits, of a tubercular character are often located in a place that they can easily be suppurated out, and the action of the remedy on them would be the same as a foreign body. Hence it is that Hepar, after its administration, will very often abolish a crop of boils all over the economy because in the skin there are small accumulations of sebaceous matter and these will be suppurated out.

Sulphur also does this, so that it may be well to be careful and not give Silica or Sulphur, or Hepar too often, or too high, in patients that have encysted tubercle in the lungs. Rokitansky in his numerous post-mortems found a large number of encysted caseous deposits in the lungs, in cases that had lived and outgrown these trouble; they had become encysted and therefore perfectly safe and the patient had died of something else.

It might be dangerous to administer these medicines that have a tendency to cause suppuration in such, and you should at least proceed cautiously in using them. After you have seen a great many cases you will find that you have killed some of them. If our medicines were not powerful enough to kill folks, they would not be powerful enough to cure sick folks. It is well for you to realize that you are dealing with razors when dealing with high potencies.

I would rather be in a room with a dozen negroes slashing with razors than in the hands of ail ignorant prescriber of high potencies. They are means of tremendous harm, as well as of tremendous good.

In contrast with Hepar (although Hepar is a form of Calcarea), Calc. carb. has no such tearing down nature in it. It does not establish inflammation around foreign bodies and tend to suppurate them but causes a fibrous deposit around bullets and other foreign, substances in the flesh. It causes tubercular deposits to harden and contract and become encysted.

Many excellent homoeopathic physicians have said to me,

“I do not agree with you as to the danger of Sulphur in phthisical cases. I have cured cases of phthisis with Sulphur.”

So have I many of them. But I did not refer to curable cases, but to those cases which are well developed and have gave symptoms. It is well to know all the elements in the case; then if you have administered a remedy and killed your patient, you know at least what you have done.

It is better to know what you have done if you have killed your patient, than to be ignorant of it and go on and kill some more in the same way.