Category: Materia Medica

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The patient is absent minded; irritable; easily angered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flatulence, distending abdomen, ameliorated by eructations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antimonium Tartaricum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 19 of 180
Source pages 310–330 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Face: About the first thing we see in the study of an Antimonium tart. patient is expressed in the face.

The face is pale and sickly; the nose is drawn and shrunken; the eyes are sunken and there are dark rings around the eyes.

The lips are pale and shriveled. The nostrils are dilated and flapping, and there is a dark, sooty appearance inside of the nostrils.

The face is covered with a cold sweat and is cold and pale. The expression is that of suffering. The atmosphere of the room is pungent, more pungent than foetid or putrid, and makes you feel that death is in it.

The family is disturbed; they are going hither and thither, and the nurse is in an excited and busy state, and you enter upon this scene to make a homoeopathic prescription.

It is one of excitement and one that you cannot act rapidly in, but one in which you must make a very quick prescription.

These things will interfere somewhat with your thinking at the time that you must do the best thinking and the most rapid thinking.

Now, in what kind of cases do we find this state and appearance, where all the features and symptoms conform to the nature of the remedy?

Catarrhal patients: First, in catarrhal patients, in broken down constitutions, in feeble children, in old people.

Catarrhal conditions of the trachea and the bronchial tubes. Our ears being open we hear coarse rattling and bubblings in the chest.

If you have ever been in the room of the dying you have heard what is called the death rattle. It is coarse like that.

Now and then there is expectoration of a mouthful of light-colored, whitish mucus. The condition is one in which the chest is steadily filling up with mucus, and at first he may be able to throw it out; but finally he is suffocating from the filling up of mucus and the inability of the chest and lungs to throw it out.

Lungs: It is a paralytic condition of the lungs. It may occur in cases of grippe. At first it may be a case that comes on quite rapidly, running a rapid course.

It may be a case that produces early prostration, that is, in three or four days or a week. The first few days of the sickness will not point to Antimonium tart.

So long as the reaction is good and his strength holds up you will not see this Hippocratic countenance, sinking, and coldness and cold sweat.

You will not hear this rattling in the chest, because these symptoms are symptoms, that indicate a passive condition.

Antimonium tart. has weakness and lack of reaction. Hence we see that it is suitable in those cases that present this state, or in such patients as are so feeble, when they are taken down, that they at once enter upon a passive or relaxed state.

Bronchitis: In cases of bronchitis with pneumonia, inflammation of the trachea, inflammation of the air passages in general, the inflammation is likely to be attended with dryness or a scanty flow of mucus.

If this be violent in a few days it will reach a state of relaxation and weakness. But the first state does not indicate Antimonium tart.

Such medicines as Bryonia and Ipecac. come in for the first period, and your impression is, when administering those medicines, that they will be sufficient for the whole case, and they will be, except in those states wherein this weakness is present from the beginning, or where there is lack of ability to react sufficiently from your remedy to recover under it.

Then comes in a second remedy, and that is the time when this medicine begins its operation.

Ipecac. has some of this coarse rattling, but it is attended with great expulsive power of the lungs.

This medicine has the coarse rattling that comes after many days. Ipecac. has it the first days of the sickness. This remedy has the coughing and gagging and retching, but in the stage of great relaxation, prostration and coldness. It seems as if he will die.

When you hear him cough you are at once impressed with the idea that there must be some profound weakness in his lung power. We know that it is in the power of the lungs to produce an expulsive action with the deep inspirations.

They have no such power in Antimonium tart. The chest is full of mucous and it rattles; the cough is a rattling cough, but the mucus does not come up, or only a small quantity comes up, but it does not relieve him.

His chest is full of mucus, he is suffocating and he is really passing away, dying from carbonic acid poisoning due to a lack of expulsive power.

Pneumonia: In cases of pneumonia; when first coming down with a chill, it may be a very violent attack, such an attack as from its violence produced prostration early, that is, after three or four days.

It is not indicated in the beginning during the chill, and during the high grade of inflammation, but during the stage of exudation. But the violence of the attack leads him to a state of prostration, or he is already feeble as if he were old, and therefore he becomes easily relaxed and prostrated from the disease.

Altogether unlike Aconite, Bell., Ip.. and Bry., for they come down with violence – the very opposite is present in Antimonium tart.

Little fever, cold sweat, coldness, relaxation, Hippocratic aspect. So it is the remedy that closes out the scene with the severe cases of bronchitis, pneumonia; most of these cases die in an Antimonium tart. state.

This patient is an old gouty patient, debilitated from long illness, always shivering, pale, with enlarged joints. Every spell of wet weather brings on a catarrhal state of the chest, larynx and trachea which runs into a state of copious secretion of mucus.

He is in bed at once, prostrated, with coarse rattling.

Children: In children that have frequent attacks of bronchitis, from cold wet weather, from cold rainstorms in the autumn, in the spring and in cloudy weather.

No sooner do they get over one cold than another cold comes on. The acute stage is never violent with them, but they keep having these passive rattling colds. Recurrent rattling in the chest. Chilly, and pale.

Those florid children that do not look sick when they have a cold, are more or less vigorous, who have rattling in the chest, but do not come down with weakness and are not prostrated from it, but keep on rattling, they call for Kali sulph.

That is quite a distinguishing feature, the weakness at once speaks for this remedy.

Old people: In very old people this weakness occurs, old broken down people who have for years had catarrh of the chest.

Every sharp cold spell in the winter brings on catarrh of the chest, with thick white mucus, and attended with great dyspnoea, driving him to bed. He must sit up in bed and be fanned; cannot lie down because of the difficult breathing, and filling up of the chest.

Antimonium tart. will, ease him over a number of these attacks before he dies. When the mucus is yellow and purulent in one of these old people, Ammoniacum will tide him over a good many winters. We see a good many old people that suffer from catarrh of the chest during the winter; they have had it for years, and do not expect to be any better.

When the expectoration is yellow, Ammoniacum will pull them through and Antimonium tart, when it is white and attended with prostration, sweat, coldness, pallor and blueness of the face. These are the principal uses of this remedy in practice.

Modalities: it has many pains and aches. To a great extent Ant. tart. builds upon the Antimonium crudum basis. It forms its chest symptoms to a great extent upon that basis.

Many of the symptoms are like Antimonium crudum; many symptoms are worse when warmed up, and from too much clothing. You will see this patient sitting up in bed with no clothing around the shoulders or neck, and the night-gown wide open in order to breathe. Suffocates if the room is too warm. It gets that from the Antimonium crud. It is worse from bathing in cold water, like Antimonium crud. The mucous membranes are covered with thick white mucus, like Antimonium. crud. Also he does not want to be meddled with or bothered. Everything is a burden.

The child when sick doesn’t want to be touched or talked to or looked at. Wants to be let alone. The infant is always keeping up a pitiful whining and moaning. Many times the respiration is a moaning respiration. Rattling and moaning. Always in bad humor, that is, extremely irritable when disturbed.

Any disturbance seems to increase the breathing and is an annoyance and makes the patient irritable.

No wonder the patient is wonderfully anxious, because from his appearance we would say that he must have the feeling that he is dying. He looks as if he were sinking, and if he does not get relief soon he certainly will die, for there is a filling up of the chest that is suffocating him, and the feeling is that of suffocation, dyspnoea, which is steadily increasing.

The wings of the nose move as in Lycopodium. Lycopodium competes with it very closely and resembles it very much.

There are many headaches laid down under Antimonium tart., but Antimonium crud. is more likely to work out for Antimonium headaches, while this medicine is more likely to work out for Antimonium chest troubles.

Both of these remedies have very decided gastric symptoms. Constant nausea, vomiting and indigestion. Antimonium tart. with its difficult breathing is sick at the stomach. Loathes everything, loathes food; vomits even water.

He has also a docile state and if allowed to be quiet, in spite of all the sufferings, he will fall into a sleep, or go into a state of inability to feel. He will cough and sleep, and snore through the dyspnoea, so that it is in many ways like Antimonium crud., but Antimonium crud. has nothing like the copious flow of mucus from mucous membranes that are inflamed. It has nothing like the passive state of the whole economy, It is not so desperate in its provings, and not so dreadful to look upon.

Eyes: Clinically Ant. tart. has been confined in its use mostly to the mucous membranes of the chest, but it has the same passive conditions of all the mucous membranes of the body. Discharges of white mucous from the eyes.

“Eyes prominent, glaring. Dim, and swimming, Gonorrhoeal ophthalmia.”

But the rheumatic conditions furnish another form of this remedy, another phase of it like Antimonium crudum. The joints are affected, take on a passive, slow infiltration and become dropsical; dropsical swelling of all the joints. Gouty infiltration of the joints, and these are especially bad during the cold, wet weather. Eye symptoms of this gouty character.

Eyes infiltrated along with the joints, so there is a gouty state of the eyes. The gouty state affects the whole body. The mucous membrane is pale instead of being red and inflamed; it is pale and relaxed, and it appears to ooze; mucus forms upon it very readily.

This is the state that occurs in the chest. It is not that burning rawness found in Ars. and the more acute remedies, although there is a state of prostration and the anxiety and cold sweat which resembles Ars.

Teeth: Then this gouty state affects the teeth. His teeth are all rheumatic.

“Rheumatic pains in the teeth,” with rheumatic pains in the joints. Teeth are sensitive.

“Teeth covered with mucus.”

With all the complaints the stomach gives out, and there is nausea, inability to digest and loathing of food. Vomiting of everything taken, into the stomach; vomiting of even a spoonful of water. In most complaints this remedy is thirstless.

It is an exception that it has thirst. Generally in these attacks of dyspnoea the friends of the patient stand around with a very strong desire to do something, if it is only to hand a glass of water.

This patient is irritated by being offered a swallow of water. He is disturbed, and shows his annoyance.

The child will make an offended grunt when offered water. Thirstlessness with all these bronchial troubles, with copious discharge of mucus and great rattling in the chest.

Sometimes there is an irresistible desire for cold things in the stomach, but it is the exception.

“Desire for acids or acid fruits,” and they make him sick.

Troubles brought on in the stomach from vinegar, from sour things, from sour wine, from sour fruits, as in Ant. crud.

Aversion to milk and every other kind of nourishment, but milk especially makes the patient sick, causing nausea and vomiting.

Flatulence: The stomach and abdomen are greatly distended with flatulence. The abdomen is tympanitic. With the stomach symptoms and bowel symptoms there is this constant nausea, but it is more than a nausea, it is a deadly loathing of every kind of food or nourishment, a nausea with the feeling that if he took anything into the stomach he would die; not merely aversion to food, not merely a common nausea that precedes vomiting, but a deadly loathing of food.

The weakness takes on an increased anxiety, and he increasingly suffocates when he is offered food. Kind-hearted people very often want him to take something, for perhaps he has not taken any food all day, or all night; but the thought of food only increases the dyspnoea, increases his nausea, his loathing and his suffering.

Vomiting: Vomiting is not an easy matter in this remedy. The vomiting is more or less spasmodic.

“Violent retching. Gagging and retching and straining to vomit. Suffocation, gagging, through great torture.”

The stomach seems to take on a convulsive action, and it is with the greatest difficulty, after many of these great efforts, that a little comes up, and then a little more, and this is kept up.

“Vomiting of anything that has been put into the stomach, with quantities of mucus.”

Thick, white, ropy mucus, sometimes with blood.

“Vomits slime, with great exertion. Vomiting large quantities of mucus. Vomits tenacious mucus.”

“Vomiting of slime, with bile. A tough, watery mucus, then some food, then bile.”

But the principle thing vomited is the thick white, ropy mucus, flowing from the mucous membranes everywhere. Tough and stringy; can be drawn out in strings.

The patient is often choked while this thick, ropy, white mucus is expelled from the oesophagus and mouth. The mouth fills up with it. It is a tremendous effort, a spasmodic effort, for this patient to rid the stomach of its contents, which is mucus, or mucus and bile.

Early in the vomiting it is mucus, and after much straining there is a regurgitation of bile into the stomach, and the continuing of vomiting is from bile. The great straining also induces a flow of blood into the stomach, and the contents of the stomach will be streaked with blood.

Ulcerations: Ulceration of mucous membranes everywhere. It has ulcers in the nose and in the larynx, and ulcers that bleed. Bleeding ulcers in the stomach, and so there is vomiting of blood.

Like Antimonium crud., it has been useful in old drunkards.

Drunkards: Old drunkards sometimes take on a debilitated form and take frequent colds.

After getting over a big debauch, having been many days on one of their times, they become relaxed and cold, and take cold, and the chest fills up with mucus, and they are vomiting, suffocating and vomiting.

“Rattling of mucus in the chest of old drunkards.” Ant. tart. is sometimes required. Ant. crud. when the trouble is confined mostly to the stomach. Ant. tart. when the chest symptoms are present with growing anxiety and the coldness and the prostration; prostration from long drinking.

Old gouty patients, old drunkards; old broken down constitutions. In children also that have broken down constitutions, as if they had grown old. These take cold in the chest, with great rattling of mucus and require this remedy.

Very commonly there is anxiety in the stomach, it is not always described as a pain, but an anxious feeling, a deathly sinking, an indescribable sinking in the stomach as if she was going to die.

“Anxiety in the stomach, with nausea.”

A passive congestion of the liver, with vomiting and bile.

Pains: The remedy is also full of cutting pains, cutting like a knife. Pinching in the intestines. Colicky pains. Distension of the abdomen.

The abdomen may be distended with serum, or it may be distended with flatus.

“Sharp, cutting pains, as with knives. Most violent pains in the abdomen.”

Dropsy is one of the natural conditions of all forms of Antimonium. I remember an energetic horse doctor feeding all the horses Black antimony when the epizootic was upon the land, going through all the stables.

I learned, that he was giving Black antimony to all horses and I left instructions that mine should not have any medicine except what I gave. Nearly all the horses that he treated ended in dropsy, and were laid up for days and weeks with the legs wrapped up.

It was a proving of Antimonium. Ant. tart. is full of it. It was a common thing, formerly, for old broken down constitutions to be put on Ant. Tart. at the end of pneumonia and fevers, but they almost always had bloating of the feet for three or four months after getting up.

If they did not have that, they had “fever sores.”

Antimonium is a common cause of the “fever sore,” the lingering indolent ulcer that forms upon the legs following old fevers in broken down constitutions.

Sometimes they never get rid, of them. They certainly never get rid of them unless they fall into the hands of a prescriber of our school.

Editorial notes

• “great exent” corrected to “great extent” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Benzoïcum Acidum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 35 of 180
Source pages 755–772 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

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Whenever we see in the nature of a remedy a well-defined state and condition of the human system pointed out by certain distinctive groups of symptoms we may know that there is such a diseased state in the human family.

They have not the power to create by themselves any diseased state except there is first such a state in the economy of the human race to be aroused.

They simply call up in a single individual something that the individual has, and that something belongs to the human race, and so whenever we see a diseased state in the remedy we know that it exists in correspondence to something in the human race.

Things are so adjusted that everything is for use. There may be conditions in the human race that we, as yet, know no remedy for.

We see certain groups of peculiar symptoms frequently repeat themselves and we know they are representatives of a state of the economy, but up to this day we may not have seen in the Materia

Medica their counterpart.

In medicines we have the exact counterpart the diseases of the human race.

Gouty constitution: Now this remedy has a state and condition that is sometimes called the gouty constitution, the uraemic or the lithaemic constitution, and, these cases are very difficult to manage, as the state is so persistent. It is one of the manifestations of Psora.

Urines: These patients suffer more or less from irregularity in the action of the kidneys; sometimes the urine is scanty and then they suffer from bodily complaints; again the urine is copious and then they are relieved of their complaints.

They are subject to rheumatic attacks and pains in the joints, showing the gouty constitution, and then they have relief when the urine is copious and heavily laden with deposits; but on comes an attack when they have more or less urine, but it is light in specific gravity, and then they are full of pains; in that way they fluctuate.

Now, the young prescriber will sometimes see the patient when he is passing large quantities of uric acid forming the red pepper deposits and he thinks he must stop that; his idea is to check that one particular thing.

But the patient is a great deal better off while he has it. To cheek it is like suppressing a skin eruption, or restraining any other manifestation of disease.

It will be noticed, as one of the foremost things in this remedy’s manifestations, that it has strong smelling urine; the urine is pungent, and it sometimes becomes so strong that it smells like, Hippuricum acid, and so it is said urine smells strong like that of a horse.

The odor in this remedy approximates that of Hippuricum acid.

Complaints: The complaints then, of Benzoïc acid are such as are changeable, and we know why they are changeable; when the urine is copious and plenty of uric acid is being passed, and the urine is full of deposits, then the patient is at his best; when the urine is scanty or of light specific gravity he suffers from backache and pains in the joints, he suffers from atmospheric changes, is sensitive to cold drafts and to the air; but let the urine start up again, which it does in a sort of alternating way, light urine alternating with heavy urine, and the patient is comfortable again.

Then, there are complaints in which the urine smells strong and pungent; this often occurs in children. It is astonishing that these little ones manifest the uric acid diathesis in early life.

Children: Mothers often describe it as intensely urinous. It smells like intensified urine; it is not the smell, so much, of decomposed urine nor of foetid urine, but urine intensified.

It has cured many times wetting the bed involuntary urination in sleep, when the bed that has been wetted several times becomes uncleanable.

You can smell it almost as quick as you go into the room; the children all, smell like urine, strong urine; the house smells like urine. If two or three of these little fellows wet the bed at night, the urine is so strong it tells the story at once.

This medicine needs reproving; details have not been brought ou yet in nature is known. We have a good many medicines having this nature, but this is perhaps as intense as any.

This remedy does not. of course, fit all these patients, because it does not fit their special symptoms; but it has the nature or general state which, of course, precedes everything, and when it relates to all the particulars as well it does make wonderful changes.

Mind: There are a few mental symptoms.

“Inclined to dwell on unpleasant things; if he saw anyone deformed, it made him shudder.”

Alternation of profound sleep with prolonged periods of wakefulness. In the period of wakefulness, he dwells, during the night, upon all the unpleasant subjects that he can think of.

This state alternates with nights of stupid sleep for weeks, and this fluctuates, in accordance with the fluctuation of the state of urine.

“Sadness.”

“Anxiety while sweating.”

“Child cross.”

Head: There are many headaches; they are uraemic in character and come in many regions with many details.

“Fearful pain in occiput or cerebellum.”

“Rheumatic pains in head.”

That is well described, because these headaches of uraemic character take on a similarity to rheumatic pains.

“Pain and heat in region of organs of reverence and firmness.”

“Tearing pain in vertex.”

The headaches are very numerous; the remedy is full of dull, aching occipital headaches, coming on in the night from change of weather.

Pains located in the base of the brain after pains have existed for some time in the joints, and they are passing but little urine.

Every time he takes a little cold the urine becomes scanty and he is full of dull aches and pains in the head and especially in the occiput.

Smell: Perversion of smell.

“Sense of smell diminished.”

“Pain in nasal bones.”

Tongue: Another form of transformation scene takes place in this remedy, when all the gouty symptoms of the body cease and inflammation of the tongue comes on.

The pains in the joints cease suddenly from taking cold, from stormy weather and on comes a sudden swelling of the tongue.

Mercury also has this state.

“Extensive ulcerations of tongue, with deeply chapped or fungoid surfaces.”

Then, again peculiar kinds of sore throat take place from this same cause.

Sudden stoppage or slacking up of the quantity of urine; it becomes scanty, high colored, and pungent, smelling like that of a horse (Nitric acid) along with acute inflammation and swelling of the tonsils and throat inflammation of the tonsils with scanty, strong, pungent urine smelling like that of a horse.

Metastasis: Another feature that seems almost like metastasis.

Take an individual who is going around with more or less rheumatic aches in the joints; he takes cold and all this ceases, but the next day he comes down with inflammation of the tongue or sore throat, or inflammation of the stomach; so that he vomits every thing he eats.

The gout goes to different parts and in this instance it goes to the stomach; and then Benzoic acid, Antimonium, crud. or Sanguinaria is likely to be useful.

When it goes to the throat or is followed by swelling of the tongue Mercury and Benzoic acid should be thought of.

Whenever this gouty condition goes to the stomach, of course it must conform to those symptoms that are in the nature of this remedy.

In this remedy we have:

“loathing, sickness at Stomach,”

“nausea with gagging,”

“vomiting of a salty substance; bitter,”

When we think of Benzoic acid for the stomach symptoms, it is important that we have in mind its whole nature, how it brings about its complaints and what characterizes a Benzoic acid patient.

We would not be able to distinguish from the stomach symptoms alone we must carry with them the character of the remedy.

Stools: It has much disturbance of the liver, and many liver symptoms. As to the bowels, the stool, the rectum, anus and urinary organs, it is very rich in symptoms.

Its striking ones I will call your attention to, but remember its migrating, metastatic nature, its complaints going from one part to another, which will accompany these symptoms.

“Stools, copious, watery.”

This is true in summer diarrhoea that has come on suddenly, “excessively offensive,”

The white stool, like soap-suds, is so strong a symptom that the remedy does not fail to cure even when the gouty constitution is not present.

“Excessively offensive, scenting the whole house.”

“Putrid, bloody.”

“Watery, light-colored, very offensive stools (in children).”

So we get the idea that the stools are white and that the first passages are like soap-suds, but later the soap appearance subsides and leaves a white stool.

It is well, often, when a stool is passed that is of a light liquid, to bear in mind a few remedies that produce this state and ascertain whether it is like soapsuds or filled with bubbles of air.

“Diarrhea of children.”

The urinous odor of the body, and especially that peculiarly pungent, intense smell of the urine.

“Slightly elevated, wart-like, round surfaces around anus.”

The urinary symptoms are too numerous to read.

“Foetid urine.”‘

“Urine of a very repulsive odor.”

“Effervescing with hydrochloric acids.”

The odor is sometimes like hartshorn; it is pungent; these are only efforts to describe the strong smell.

“Urine dark brown.”

It is true that normal urine after standing a while will get a foetid odor, but in this remedy, that just passed is properly described as being intensely urinous.

“Urine contains mucus and pus.”

“Morbid condition of urine renders urine acid.”

it says in the text “Hippuricum acid,” but this is a rare condition.

“Brown urine smells sour.”

“Too frequent desire to evacuate bladder.”

“Nephritic colic.”

“Urine dark, urinous odor highly intensified.”

Gouty troubles of the liver; rheumatism; nephritic colic; it has cured such states after gonorrhoea, but it is not much of a gonorrhoeal remedy.

When the rheumatic states and these symptoms are present there are more or less pains in the kidney.

” Sore pain in the back; burning in the kidney.”

“Prolapsus uteri with foetid urine.”

“Retention of urine in infants.”

“Asthma with inflammatory rheumatic complaints.”

“Cough followed by expectoration of green mucus.”

Heart: The organ that is most commonly affected in these rheumatic complaints is the heart. No organ is so likely to be affected when rheumatism leaves the outermost parts as the heart.

Pains in the heart. So in this diathesis, with the strong smelling urine and the gout, we may expect affections of the heart.

“Pains change place incessantly.”

“Palpitation of the heart.”

The rheumatism, of course, is affecting the heart.

“Awakens after midnight with violent pulsations of the heart.”

Think a moment and you will see in what kind of a case you will need Benzoic acid.

The constitution of the remedy comes to mind at once with the heart symptoms, the dyspnea, pain in the heart with rheumatic symptoms;

“cannot go to sleep.”

Think of the alternation of sleeplessness with sleep; think of the strong urine, of the fluctuating complaints, of the erratic constitution.

“Palpitation worse at night.”

“Rheumatic pains in extremities relieving heart.”

There we get relief; complaints going back to the extremities with relief to the heart. The heart will relieve when the urine becomes copious or when the rheumatism goes back to the extremities, into the fingers and knees, especially the knees in Benzoic acid.

Rheumatism alternating between the extremities and heart. This medicine has cured affections of the heart when the rheumatism has a long time ago disappeared from the extremities and has ever since been affecting the heart; after Benzoic acid has been administered a very good sign of its action is that the extremities become painful and the urine becomes copious; free urine and solids increased; the urine becomes heavy, whereas it was light.

“Hard, frequent pulse.”

Extremities: The extremities are full of rheumatic affections.

“Lassitude in lower limbs.”

“Swelling of knee.”

All gouty affections belong to this remedy.

“Gouty concretions.”

“Nodes on joints.”

Benzoic acid is often an excellent palliating remedy in old gouty constitutions; they want to be relieved of the pains in their fingers and in the nodes and joints. The fingers crack and are clumsy and painful.

But often the pain has been relieved and gone to other parts. This is one among the remedies that will drive the complaints away from the internal organs and generally increase the pain in the extremities, which they will scold about.

“Trembling with palpitation of heart.”

“Extreme weakness; sweat and comatose condition.”

Note that comatose condition with sweat; the Benzoic acid patient sweats without relief.

Copious, exhaustive sweat and profound sleep, but there is no relief.

“Awaken with difficulty of breathing.”

Pulsation all over.

“All sorts of catarrhal states; gouty diathesis, gout with arthritic nodosites, syphilitic rheumatism, etc.”

These patients are getting low down in the scale of life, the tissues become feeble. Ulcers form upon the skin and mucous membranes.

Apis Mellifica
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 20 of 180
Source pages 331–358 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Skin: This remedy has so many symptoms on the surface of the body we will study the outer aspect first. All over the body is found a thick rash, sometimes of a rose color.

It is rough and can be felt as a rough rash under the fingers. The patient at this time is greatly distressed by heat and the skin is sensitive to touch with the rash or without it. Nodular swellings here and there come and go.

Then comes an erysipelatous inflammatory condition, in patches, here and there, about the head, with great tumefaction about the face, eyes and eye-lids.

Erysipelas may occur anywhere, but it more commonly belongs to the face and runs to a high degree of inflammatory action, with stinging, burning and oedema. In the extremities we have a marked dropsy, swelling with pitting upon pressure.

A general anasarca may appear. The face is greatly swollen at times, the eyelids look like water bags, the uvula hangs down like a water bag, the abdominal walls are of great thickness and pit upon pressure, and the mucous membranes in any part look as if they would discharge water if they were punctured.

Puffing or oedema, with pitting upon pressure, is a general condition that may be present in any inflammatory state, There is a general amelioration from cold and aggravation from heat. The skin symptoms and the patient are aggravated from heat.

This prevails also in the mental state, in inflammatory conditions; in cardiac conditions, in dropsy, in sore throat, etc. Sometimes this aggravation amounts to aggravation from warm drinks, warm room, warm clothing, warmth of the fire, etc.,; if it is heat the patient is greatly disturbed.

Brain: In brain troubles, if you put an Apis patient with congestion of the brain into a warm bath he will go into convulsions, and consequently warm bathing is not always “good for fits.”

It is taught in old school text-books so much that the old women and nurses know that a hot bath is good for fits, and before you get there just as like as not you will have a dead baby.

This congestion of the brain, with little twitchings and threatening convulsions, makes them put the baby in a hot bath, and it is in an awful state when you get there. If the baby needs Opium or Apis in congestion of the brain the fits become worse by bathing in hot water.

If the nurse has been doing that kind of business you have learned the remedy as soon as you enter the house, for she will say the child has been worse ever since the warm bath, has become pale as a ghost and she was afraid he was going to die.

There you have convulsions worse from heat, pointing especially to Opium and Apis. That is the way with Apis all through. It is not laid down in the books that Apis is worse in the throat symptoms from warm drinks and wants altogether cold things, and will not take warm things which aggravate, but one of our graduates wrote me that by making use simply of the generals, as he had been instructed, Apis conforming to all the rest of the case, he made a beautiful cure of a case of diphtheria which had the relief from cold, which shows how generals are continued into particulars and how they can be made use of.

The generals continue to build and enlarge our Materia Medica. Upon the outer surface then we see that Apis is full of dropsy, red rash, eruptions, urticaria, erysipelas, which inflammations extend to the mucous membranes.

The outer part of man is his skin and mucous membrane. When we are dealing with man from centre to circumference, we think of the innermost as the brain and heart and internal organs that are vital, while their coatings and coverings are external.

Apis affects the things that are external; it affects the envelopes, the coverings. You notice how frequently it affects the skin and the tissues near the skin, and it also affects the envelopes or coverings of organs; for example, the pericardium. It establishes serous inflammations with effusion. Apis produces an inflammation of the membranes of the brain. In the serous sac which encloses the heart, pericardium, and also in the peritoneum it produces the same kind of inflammation.

Thus we see that the coverings are especially affected by Apis, viz., the skin and mucous membranes and the coverings of organs; and with these we get dropsy, catarrh and erysipelas.

In all of these inflammatory conditions there is stinging and burning; burning like coals of fire at times, and stinging as if needles or small splinters were sticking in.

Mind: The mental symptoms of Apis are very striking, and the most striking thing throughout the mental state is the aggravation from heat and from a warm room,

The symptoms themselves are great sadness, constant tearfulness without any cause, weeping night and day; cannot sleep from tantalizing thoughts and worrying about everything.

Depression of spirits with constant weeping. Sadness and melancholy; extreme irritability; borrowing trouble about everything. Foolishly suspicious and jealous. Absolutely joyless. Absolutely indifferent to everything that would make her happy or joyful.

No ability to apply things that would make her happy to herself, they must mean someone else. Foolish, silly, childish behavior in a woman in confinement, in a woman in advanced years; talking foolish twaddle, such as a child would talk, on serious, occasions.

Another aspect of the mental state is the delirium, which comes on in serious forms of brain affections in children. The child gradually goes into a state of unconsciousness.

Lies in a stupor, one side of the body twitching the other side motion less, rolling head from side to side; head drawn -back rigidly; pupils contracted or dilated, eyes very red, face flushed, a stupid state or state of semi-consciousness. Child lying with the eyes partly, closed, as if benumbed.

It is suitable in congestion of the brain, meningitis or cerebro-spinal meningitis with opisthotonos when all the symptoms are aggravated from heat.

Child: The child puts on a more dreadful state if the room becomes overheated; become extremely death-like or pale if the room becomes overheated.

If the child is able to do so it kicks the covers off. If it is in a position where it can look into a large open grate it will be much aggravated. I have seen Apis children who had to be removed from near an open fire.

They will cry, to get away from the heat that comes upon them from the register or open fire. The heat increases every symptom, and sometimes causes them to break out in a cold sweat all over the body, which does not ameliorate their fever nor the burning heat.

Very often the head is rolling and tossing, the teeth gnashing, and the eyes flashing with threatening convulsions, the child carrying the hand to the head at times, a state of semi-consciousness, and the child screams out with that peculiar scream which is known to mean congestion of the brain – cri encéphalique – the brain cry.

The shriek is a very strong Apis feature. The child cries out with this shriek in sleep when going into brain troubles. It says in the text:

“Sopor interrupted by piercing shrieks.”

We must be able to see in the general beginning of provings the disease which they resemble, for we do not always see the remedy in the advanced state.

We see the diseases in a state of progress, and must be able to see it in its beginning. As was the disease in the beginning so was the remedy in the beginning. Things that have similar beginnings may have similar endings.

Apis also has muttering, delirium and loquacity. All kinds of screaming and shrieking, shrill and otherwise, violent and less violent. Premonition of death, dread of death, fear of apoplexy.

“Very busy, restless, changing kind of work, with awkwardness.”

Awkwardness is especially found under the fingers, toes and limbs in Apis. The whole nervous system shows a disturbance in co-ordination. This disturbance in co-ordination runs through the remedy, awkwardness, staggering with the eyes shut.

Dizziness when the eyes are shut.

“Ailments from fright, rage, vexation, jealousy or hearing bad news.”

“After severe mental shock paralyzed on the whole right side.”

Violence and rapidity: The complaints of Apis are attended with violence and rapidity. They come on with great rapidity, rush on with violence, until unconsciousness is reached. It has been my fortune to see many violent cases of poisoning from the sting of the honey-bee.

When the over sensitive patient is poisoned by the sting he is dreadfully sick. The majority of people in the course of their life have been stung by the honey-bee and a mere little swelling occurs in the region of the sting, a swelling as big as a robin’s egg or 4 hen’s egg at most, without constitutional states; that is, when the individual is not sensitive to Apis.

He may have been stung in half a dozen places, and each one gives him a little lump.

But you meet one who is sensitive to the sting of the honey-bee, and if he gets one little sting on any place in his body, he comes down with nausea and anxiety that makes him feel that he is dying, and in about ten minutes he is covered with urticaria from head to foot; he stings and burns and wants to be bathed in cold water; he fears that he will die if something is not done to mitigate his suffering, rolls and tosses as if he would tear himself to pieces.

I have seen all these symptoms come on after Apis. The antidote for that is Carbolic acid. I have seen Carbolic acid administered in that state, and the patient described the sensation of the Carbolic acid going down his throat as a cooling comfort.

He says:

“Why, doctor, I can feel that dose go to the ends of my fingers.”

When you administer an antidote under such circumstances listen to what your patient says. When you get the true natural antidote, and, at times, when you get the true curative medicine in a case, no matter how high the potency is, the patient will say:

“I feel that to the roots of my hair and to the ends of my toes.”

Such is the feeling it gives when the true antidotal medicine goes to the innermost portions of his economy, and that is the way we want to get our medicines always, to be guided by the symptoms of our patient that they will tell us what medicine to administer, and when the medicine is administered its highest reaction is of that sort.

Eyes: If we are well acquainted with the symptoms of Apis we can many times get along without having a specialist to treat the eyes. They make more people blind with their lotions, caustic solutions, etc., than they benefit.

The old-fashioned way was to cauterize with copper and silver nitrate solution, and the modern things are not much better. At the present day, the homoeopathic physician who is not capable of taking eye symptoms as well as lung symptoms and symptoms of any part of the body is not competent to practice medicine.

Eye cases can be prescribed for by the physician. In Homoeopathy there is no such thing as treating the eye and other organs of the body, but the patient with all his organs, not the patient with one or two organs.

Apis is a great remedy for the eyes. It has deep-seated inflammatory complaints of the eyes as a result of disease. Inflammations that are erysipelatous in character, that leave thickening of the mucous membrane and lids, and white spots over the eye; opacities.

Inflammation with opacities very extensive or in patches. Enlarged blood vessels.

Face: When the inflammatory condition is active it is attended with oedema of the lids, both upper and lower, and the whole face is sometimes in a state of oedema, such as you would expect to see after a bee sting.

The swelling of the mucous membranes of the lids is so enormous that they roll out, looking like pieces of raw beef. The fluid will run out over the cheeks in great abundance. Burning and stinging like fire, better from washing, from cold applications, worse from heat.

Chronic eye troubles that are worse from looking into an open fire, worse from radiated heat; wants something cold applied. Chronic granular lids. The results of chronic inflammation are numerous and extensive. Worse from looking at white things, worse from looking at the snow.

Pain in the eyeballs, pain deep in the eyeballs, stitches, burning, stinging and shooting. Chemosis. Apis is often suitable for old scrofulous affections of the eyes. Vascular. affections, the veins are enlarged.

“Iritis.”

“Congestion to the eyes, blood-vessels injected;” whole conjunctiva inflamed.

Photophobia. Rheumatic ophthalmia, that is, a high grade of inflammation of the eyes in rheumatic subjects. Catarrhal inflammation of the eyes; scrofulous inflammation of the eyes. Hot tears gush out of the eyes; burning in the eyes.

Erysipelas of the eyes and sides of the face, extending from the right to the left. This direction is an Apis feature in many other respects.

Erysipelas commences on the right side of the face, extends over the nose to the left side.

Inflammation commences in the right side of the abdominal viscera and extends over to the left. In inflammation of the ovary the right is preferred to the left. The right side of the uterus is preferred. Pains in the whole right side of the pelvis extending over towards the left. Burning stinging here and there extending from right to left.

Inflammation of the middle ear in connection with or after scarlet fever.

Throat: Now we come to the throat troubles of Apis. We have much throat trouble.

Apis cures diphtheria, especially when there is a high grade of inflammation and the membrane is scanty or comes slowly or insidiously, and it is somewhat of a surprise the gradual progress it makes; the parts are oedematous and the soft palate is puffed like a water-bag, and the uvula hangs down with a semi-transparent appearance like a bag of water.

All around the throat and mouth there is an oedematous condition looking as if it would flow water if pricked. Burning, stinging pains in the throat ameliorated by cold and aggravated by heat. Aversion to all warm substances and drinks.

The tongue swells until it fills the mouth, worse on the right half of the tongue, or involving the right side first. Raw beef appearance, denuded appearance of the tongue and buccal cavity and throat.

Various kinds of swelling in the throat; benign swellings, with burning, stinging and redness. Ulcers in the throat that come as a result of this inflammation. Apis is suitable in the severest forms of sore throat accompanying scarlet fever.

Scarlet fever: It cures scarlet fever when the symptoms agree, and it is not an uncommon thing for Apis to be suited to scarlet fever, though the rash is sometimes rough.

The scarlet fever rash is not always smooth and shiny. When the rash does not come out at all the face is very pallid, with a high grade of inflammation of the throat; the scarlet fever is in the family, and the skin is red without any rash; in those cases that are worse from heat, want the covers off, and are sensitive to the heat of the room.

The patient desires a low temperature in the room, is worse from heat, wants cool things, worse from radiated heat especially, or hot air that comes from a register or fire.

He suffocates when a little warm air is radiating over the body. He is disturbed from heat even in the chill of an intermittent fever; if in a warm room when having a chill, he suffocates. So it is with the scarlet fever, with the sore throat, and in diphtheria; from the least whiff of radiated heat he suffocates.

He wants the doors and windows open, wants something cold. Sometimes the scarlet fever patient will go into convulsions because the rash fails to come out.

Apis is sometimes a suit able remedy and must be compared with Cuprum, Zincum and Bryonia. A warm bath will intensify the convulsion.

“Sensation of constriction and erosion in the throat in the morning.”

Throat sore and swollen; stinging pains.

“Could not shallow solid food.”

With these complaints there is often shivering, shuddering, little chills intermingled with the febrile state. Many times you will think to comfort him by covering him up with a warm blanket, but it will make him worse, he will throw it off.

A child will kick off the covert an adult who is shivering while covered up will kick off the covers. These strange and peculiar things are guiding features, things that cannot be accounted for.

Stomach and abdomen: In Apis there is vomiting, nausea, retching and vomiting, with great anxiety. Vomiting of bile and everything eaten. Vomiting of bitter and sour fluids

Apis causes soreness and tightness throughout the abdomen and hypochondria. Sensation of tightness runs through many of the complaints of Apis. The abdomen is distended with gas.

Meteoritic condition, great tension and fullness, hard and drum-like. In all inflammatory complaints, in peritonitis, inflammation of the liver, inflammation of the pelvis, there is great tension, tightness; but this tightness is not always general, sometimes it is local; sometimes it is with little congestion, but tightness prevails throughout the abdomen, and this tightness makes it impossible for the patient to cough for fear something will burst.

The cough makes him feel as if something would be torn. Cannot strain at stool. This is common in the abdominal and pelvic complaints of women. The woman will say she cannot strain at stool, because of the feeling that if she strains something will break loose.

The same state exists in the chest It seems that on coughing something will tear loose, as if the fibres are in a state of tension or stretching.

Hypersensitive state of the liver; inflammation of the liver and spleen. Pain under the short ribs, worse on the left side.

“Pains from below the ribs spreading upward. Obliged to bend forward from a painful contracted feeling in the hypochondria.”

All the complaints are likely to make the patient bend forward and flex the limbs, because the state of tension is painful.

Sensitiveness of the stomach to touch. Over the whole abdomen she is so sore that touch is extremely painful; in all the inflammatory complaints of women the abdomen is very sore and painful. Soreness, distension and stinging burning pains through the abdomen. Burning beat in the stomach.

In the external abdomen there is an oedematous state. Dropsy, sometimes alone, sometimes with anasarca. Limbs swollen to the full extent, pitting upon pressure, the feet and limbs swollen, with burning, stinging and numbness in the limbs.

Feeling as if the intestines were bruised. Watery diarrhea is common in Apis; yellow stools, green stools, olive green stools, watery stools, etc.

Every day six to eight diarrheic stools, which smell like carrion. It is especially useful in a peculiar kind of stool occurring in children and infants, and intermingling of blood, mucus and food, giving the stool an appearance like tomato sauce.

The anus protrudes with stool and seems to re open, an open anus like Phosph, and Puls. Chronic diarrhea dysentery, haemorrhage from the bowels.

In its constipation it is related more commonly to head troubles. He goes many days without a stool. The bowels seem to be perfectly paralyzed, with congestion of the brain and acute hydrocephalus.

Urines: The urinary troubles are numerous in Apis.

The urine is scanty, coming only in drops. Much straining before the urine will start, and then only a few drops; dribbling a little hot urine, burning urine, bloody urine. As soon as a few drops collect in the bladder the urging comes, constant, ineffectual urging.

Later the urine is almost suppressed. Infants go a long time without passing urine screeching and carrying the hand to the head, crying out in sleep, kicking off the covers. Very often a dose of Apis will be found useful.

It is often called for in scarlet fever when the urine is loaded with albumen. Urinary troubles, with swelling of the genitals, and the swelling is oedematous

Scanty urine in little boys, with the foreskin enormously distended, or in hydrocele. Every time the call to urinate comes he will shriek, because he remembers the pain he had the last time. Inflammatory complaints of the kidneys and ureters, bladder and urethra.

The whole urinary tract is irritated, very much like Cantharis, and these two medicines antidote each other. If you are called to a child that has been drugged with crude Apis you can generally antidote it with Cantharis. If you go to a woman who has taken Cantharis for vicious purposes, you can very often overcome it with Apis. The violent frenzy that has been brought on by Cantharis will be overcome by Apis.

The smarting, burning and stinging along the urinary tract will be found under Apis.

“Flow of urine, unconscious.”

Stitching pain in the urethra with enuresis. Morbid irritability of the urinary organs.

“Strangury. Agony in voiding urine. Retention of urine in nursing infants.”

It is queer how the old women knew, long before Apis was proved, that when the little new-born baby did not pass its water they could find a cure by going out to the bee-hive and catching a few bees, over which they poured hot water, and of which they gave the baby a teaspoonful.

Some domestic things like that have been known among families and among nurses, and it is consistent because it is just like what we give Apis for.

“Urine scanty and foetid, containing albumen and blood corpuscles.”

Especially in acute albuminuria. The acute inflammatory affection of the kidney with albuminuria, such as occurs in scarlet fever or diphtheria, or after these, such as occurs as a sequel of acute disease.

Inflammation of the kidney closes up the case and kills off a good many in allopathic hands, never in homoeopathic hands. It is closely related to the genital organs of both male and female. Swelling and oedematous state of the genitals. Apis is a great friend of the woman. It cures all of her inflammatory complaints it seems, when the symptoms agree.

That is to say, it produces inflammation of the uterus and ovaries and dreadful sufferings in the external and internal parts, and we have only to discover when the symptoms agree to cure most of these inflammatory troubles.

It even stops abortion. It will stop abortion after some miserable scoundrel has attempted to get rid of the offspring, and she has taken drugs and brought on pains, pains strong enough to expel the contents of the uterus, especially in the first, second and third months.

A little haemorrhage has come on, a mere threatening, the membranes are not yet ruptured, but they soon will be, and she has stinging, burning pains, and lies uncovered and suffers from the heat, probably from the overdose of Ergot.

Apis will overcome this greatly to her regret. This kind of villainy prevails. But women have accidents and weakness. whereby, in spite of the fact that they desire to hold their offspring, they are threatened with abortion, and Apis is a great friend to the prospective mother.

Burning and stinging pains in the ovaries, especially the right; when greatly enlarged and even cystic, Apis has proved a curative remedy, has often cured tumors, and has caused cystic formations to stop growing or to disappear.

The right ovarian region is very sensitive. Pain in the uterus and ovaries before and during menstruation. Stinging, rending, tearing pains cutting like knives, worse from heat.

It is a very easily got symptom, because in most painful symptoms heat or the hot water bag are tried with the natural hope of relief, but with this remedy it aggravates. She throws it aside, for the pain is worse from heat.

“Ovaries enlarged”, etc Dropsy of right ovary. Ovarian tumor.

Berberis
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 36 of 180
Source pages 773–790 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Generalities: When we have finished the study of Berberis we will see that it is not a very extensive remedy, but it is a very important one.

Like Benzoic acid, it fits into the gouty and rheumatic sphere. It corresponds to such gouty conditions as do not determine to their proper places.

A low state of the economy is present; anaemic condition; feeble constitution; pallid and sickly, old and worn out; prematurely old and wrinkled men and women.

They are too feeble to determine the gouty deposits to the finger joints, where they naturally belong, and the trouble is yet, as it were, wandering around through the economy.

Wandering pains in the nerves, and nerve sheaths. The wandering, stitching, tearing, twinging pains that run through Berberis are found in old gouty constitutions, and that is where we get the greatest benefit from Berberis.

Pains and urines: Its proving would lead us to see it is similar to the wandering, twinging and tearing pains of old gouty constitutions, in persons who are pallid, and sickly, and chilly, where the deposits have not been so marked in the joints; but where the twinging in the fingers and in the toes are just such as are found – where the deposits do exist.

Of course in all of the gouty states we must look to the liver and kidneys for pains and various distresses; they are centers of observation, because these organs are more or less disturbed. And very often cardiac troubles go along with them.

The kidneys, liver, and heart are more or less disturbed in their functions and we see that Berberis takes hold of these organs. We have the uraemic state, and the state of disorder that ends in these conditions. We will have twinging pains along with kidney disturbances.

Irregularities of the urine. Copious discharges, alternating with scanty discharges. Light urine, and heavy urine, excessive deposits of uric acid and urates.

It is changeable, like Benzoic acid. These two remedies run very much together, yet their symptoms are wholly unlike. We find among these sensations that stitching pains are found in almost every region of the body, and they are all the time changing.

Wandering and stitching pains; little twinges. As you sit by his side and talk to a gouty patient-

“Ow,” he will say. What does he mean by it?

He has had one of those twitching pains. The next thing he knows it is in his knee; then it is in his toes; then it is in his head, all over him.

Finally the gouty deposits become prominent in the fingers, and after the gout has determined itself, then we have sore fingers; but these corresponds more particularly to Ledum, Sulphur, Aesculus and Lycopodium, where the disease has become marked and has located in the joints.

In Berberis these twinging, tearing, stitching, burning pains are everywhere, they never re in one place, but are always moving, and they are not often affected by motion.

Whether he moves, or keeps still, they keep coming. In a few instances we have pains aggravated by motion, but a very few in proportion to the many pains in Berberis.

He moves many times, because he cannot keep still. He moves, because he suffers. There are also many pressing pains. But the burning, stinging, tearing, stitching, wandering pains are the feature, the grand feature of Berberis.

If you single them out in places, in a given joint, from that one joint they will radiate in every direction. If it is the knee joint, they will go up; and down, and every way; if it is the finger joint, they will run in every direction.

If it is the kidney, they will go down the ureters; if it is the liver, they will go down into the abdomen in every direction.

“Radiating from a particular point,” is a distinguishing feature, and it puts Berberis almost alone for radiating pains. This is such a strong feature that Berberis, has cured renal colic in many instances because of its well known ability to shoot out in every direction.

It cures gall-stone colic when these little twinges go in every direction from that locality. We see these twinging, shooting pains in gouty constitutions are associated with urinary troubles, and with liver troubles, and we begin to lay a foundation for the study of Berberis.

The joints sometimes swell.

“Enlargement of the joints.”

But the swelling is not so common as the pains without swelling. Soreness, lameness in the joints, with these radiating pains. There will be burning, stitching, tearing, and the pains will radiate and appear in one part of the body then in another.

“A pain in the heel as if it were ulcerating,” and then the pain shoots off in every direction. Numbness. Lameness.

As to the heart, the pulse becomes slow. Very often it is slowed down astonishingly.

Mind: The mental symptoms are very defective, that is, we do not know the mental symptoms. There are a few. We know this, that the mind is weak, that he is unable to sustain a mental effort, and that he is forgetful.

“Defective recollection and weak memory. Terrifying apparitions in twilight.”

It is not a strange thing for a child in the dark to imagine all sorts of things, because they have heard graveyard stories from old people; but with this remedy between the daylight and darkness he sees ghosts, imaginary forms – coming round him. It has melancholy, apathy, prostration of mind.

Head: Some dizziness. The headaches are of the game character as the general pains in uraemic subjects, where there is plenty of sand in the urine, red pepper deposit.

The head comes in for its share of these wander ing, pains. Stitching, tearing, twinging in the scalp; in the skull; in the eyes, ears, back of the head. Burning pains.

“A feeling in the head, as if it was becoming large,” is a peculiar symptom; a puffy sensation.

Always putting the hand to the head; it feels as if he had on a skull-cap. It fits down over the brow, and it is not an uncommon thing with such patients to put the hand to the head to take off the cap.

“Feels as, if he had a cap on the head,” when there is none there.

This symptom is not always described like a cap on the head. It is convertible into numbness of the scalp; many patients describe a sensation of numbness in the scalp, as if they had on a cap.

Some times patients will deny that it is a sensation of numbness, and say it is just a cap. At one time I fully believed the “cap” belonged to two sensations. If it was painful I placed it under “pressure.” If it was not painful it was supposed to belong to “numbness;” but I have now made a new rubric, “the sensation of skull-cap,” which I now think is entirely distinctive, from numbness; but they both have to be compared.

Eyes: Then the eyes take on that same gouty condition, with stitching, tearing pains, twinging pains, shooting pains. Shooting off in various directions.

There is one grand feature about Berberis, that it has no particular direction; it has all directions. Most remedies have pains taking a direction from one part to the other, pains going from the eye to the temple, etc., but in Berberis it cannot be said the pains go to any place in particular.

They are wandering pains and they radiate. Pains in the ears of the same character. In every part of the body we have these twinging, tearing, burning, shooting pains coming and going, causing the patient to scowl and make a sharp noise.

The patient has a sickly look; face pale, earthy complexion, with sunken cheeks and hollow, blue-encircled eyes.

That is a description of a sick face. Berberis has been very useful in phtisical conditions; and in the pains, and twinging, and sufferings in persons who have been operated on for fistula in ano.

When the fistula has been closed, these pains will come if it is a Berberis case. The kidney manifestations will come on, or the liver manifestations, or the enfeebled heart, or these wandering pains.

At one time feverish, full of pains, with violent thirst; alternating with the very opposite state.

Prostration land – aversion to water. Want of appetite at one time; canine hunger at another.

The stomach is disordered, digestion is glow and feeble, and we have manifestations usually known to patients as “bilious.”

Liver: Eructations that are bitter and of bile. The liver is full of suffering.

In the liver we have these pains, and added to them sudden stabbing like a knife puncturing the liver. Shooting, tearing, burning, stitching, twinging pains, wandering from one place to another.

“Gall-stone colic.”

These pains with jaundice. The liver seems to slow down in its actions, and the patients becomes, jaundiced.

The stool becomes white, bileless.

“Sharp, pinching pains in the liver, which come suddenly and with great severity. Violent stabbing pain in the region of the liver, taking his breath away. Had to bend double.”

These pains last a moment and pass away. In gall- stone colic pains are spasmodic, increase in intensity and diminish, but do. not let up entirely.

Berberis when it is indicated will let the little gall-stone loose, and it will pass through, and the patient will take a long breath and wish he had sent for the doctor sooner. Any thing that is spasmodic can be relieved instantly.

Anus and Stools: Pains through the abdomen. Copious, thick, mushy stools, and these are yellow, like yellow corn meal mush.

“Diarrhoea; mush-like yellowish discharges.”

“Clay-colored.”

From what we have seen it is not surprising that it is clay-colored, that it is bileless, that it is white.

The action on the liver does that. When you have these symptoms associated, with radiating pains, and with wandering pains in broken down constitutions, persons who are suffering from cold, who are pallid and sickly, you have a Berberis case.

Then the patient becomes constipated, but the stool is white, or very light colored.

“Burning, stinging pain before, during, and after stool.”

“Enlargement of the prostate gland, which causes a constant pressure in the perineum. Pressure as if there were a lump, or as if something was pressing down.”

“Tearing extending around the anus. Herpes around anus. Fistula in ano.”

Now the surgeons nearly all advocate that if there is a fistulous opening around the anus it must be operated upon. Homoeopathy cures such cases. I have, not operated on one for twenty years. The remedy that is indicated for the patient will cure the patient, and the fistula.

Above all things they should not be operated on. To close up that fistulous opening, and thus neglect the patient, is a very dangerous thing to do. Knowing all that I know, if such a trouble should come upon me and I could not find the remedy to cure it I would bear with it patiently, knowing I was keeping a much less grievance.

Nor I could I advise my patient to have, a thing done that I would not have done upon myself. It is a dangerous thing to operate upon a fistula in ano.

It is a very serious matter. If it is closed up, and that patient is leaning towards phthisis, he will develop phthisis; if he has a tendency towards Bright’s disease, that will hasten it; if he threatens to break down in any direction; his weakest parts will be affected and he will break down.

Occasionally time enough elapses so that the physician who is ignorant does not see the relation between the two. But now that you have heard it, you can never forget it.

Kidneys: And then the kidneys and the urinary organs come in for their troubles. There is such a soreness in the lumbar region, in the region of the kidneys, that he can bear no pressure.

He cannot step down from a carriage to the pavement without letting himself down very carefully. A jar is a great shock to him, and sometimes the soreness is so great that he almost faints.

Soreness in the back; in the muscles of the back, and in the region of the kidneys; and this associated with all sorts of disturbances in the urine, with excessive deposits.

The kidneys radiate in every direction. Pains run up into the kidney, and they become worn out if he does not get relief, he will have some serious disease. Hence we have these symptoms.

“Burning and soreness in the region of the kidneys. Burning stitches, single or several in succession, in regions of loins and kidneys. Much pain, soreness and tenderness in back, in the region of the kidneys. Sensitiveness in the region of the kidneys so great that any jarring motion, riding in a wagon, jumping from it, was intolerable. After kidney complaints, a foul, bitter taste, rush of blood to the throat. Great urging, with pain in the neck of the bladder, with burning, scanty urine. Violent, cutting, tensive pain, deeply seated in left side of bladder, at last becoming a sticking, obliquely in female urethra, as if in its orifice, lasting a ‘few minutes.”

Now we see how these symptoms manifest themselves. Sore, inflamed, sensitive kidney, one or both.

And then, the formation of little calculi in the pelvis of the kidney – little stones like pinheads; and every now and then one of them takes a start down the ureter to the bladder, and, oh, how he suffers.

Then it is that the pains in the kidneys radiate in every direction. Pains run up into the kidneys and down into the bladder.

In the male they appear as if, they ran down the spermatic cord into the testes, and he is a great sufferer. You will, be astonished to know how quickly Berberis will relieve this particular kind of renal colic. Burning pain in the bladder; burning pain in the kidney.

“Urine dark, turbid with copious sediment. Urine very slow to flow. Constant urging.”

The bladder becomes very irritable. Catarrhal conditions of the bladder. Smarting, burning, stitch ing pains. Many troubles, pains and aches in the spermatic cord and testes in gouty constitutions. Burning pains along these regions.

Berberis especially fits a woman who is tired, with a gouty constitution; though not old in years she is physically tired, so that all of her domestic affairs fret and tire her.

Coition becomes painful, and she has an aversion to it. The orgasm is delayed, or is entirely absent, and she is prostrated by it.

In all the affairs of her innermost life she is a drudge.

Full of twinging pains in all of her nerves.

“Burning in the female urethra. Burning pain in the vagina”.

A lack of sensation normal to these parts in the woman.

Apocynum cannabinum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 21 of 180
Source pages 359–379 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

This remedy comes in as a good one to contrast with Apis. You will find it analogous in its symptoms and much like the complaints cured by Apis.

You will be astonished in going over the dropsical condition, the rheumatic condition, the tumefaction of the cellular tissues, the dropsy of the sacs, the scanty urine resulting in dropsy; the inflammatory swellings with oedema, at the great resemblances; and if you were to start in with two cases and work them out from their particulars, and if one feature were left out, the aggravation and the amelioration, the cold and the heat, in many cases you would not be able to distinguish between Apis and Apocynum, so near alike are their swellings, their bleedings, their distensions, and their disturbances.

Both are remedies for dropsy; routinists will try first Apis, and then they try Apocynum, and then they will try something else that is good for dropsy.

But all the way through this medicine is aggravated from cold, the patient himself is aggravated from cold. His complaints are worse from cold applications. In his distended, dropsical state, he is chilly, sensitive to air. He is sensitive to cold drinks.

He has a pain in the stomach, and even vomits, from cold drinks. Pain in the abdomen from cold drinks. Uneasiness here and there in the body when cold things are in the stomach; you see at once how different that is from Apis.

Anyone who follows symptom hunting and does not distinguish between circumstances that relate to the patient and modalities that relate to symptoms cannot appreciate these two grand distinctions, where the one patient is aggravated from heat and the other one ameliorated by heat, in all complaints.

The excretions are all diminished. The urine is scanty. The skin is dry. No matter what his complaints are, he cannot sweat. He feels if he could only perspire he would get well. There is no out throw of water. He drinks plentifully, and it goes in-to the cellular tissues to distend them, and he becomes dropsical.

He has a water constitution, one that takes in water and lets out none. He passes little water, and he perspires scantily or none at all; his skin is dry, sometimes hot, yet he is chilly.

The skin feels husky and rough, but he is chilly. Apis suffers dreadfully from dry skin, from scanty urine; yet Apis is aggravated everywhere from heat and ameliorated from cold. That is the grand distinguishing feature in the dropsies and rheumatisms and many internal complaints.

“Dropsy of serous membranes.”

Dropsy of the brain, pericardium, pleura, peritoneum; all of these are distended with serum. And there is great suffering, great uneasiness.

The inflammatory rheumatism is again like Apis, in that it takes on dropsy with it. Inflammation of the joints, of the ankles, joints, of the toes, of the fingers, inflammation of the joints all over the body.

The swelling about the joint pits upon pressure like Apis. But with the scanty urine, want of sweat, with the febrile condition, he is all the time chilly, and wants the parts well wrapped where Apis wants them uncovered. One might say,

“Why, that is only one symptom.”

All who do not perceive the difference between symptoms predicated of the patient and symptoms predicated of the parts will see that as only one symptom with the rest of them. When he takes up a case and works it out in the Repertory he will use it as one symptom. Yet that feature will sometimes rule out all the rest, because it is predicated of the patient and not predicated alone of his parts.

We have many remedies where the patient himself is ameliorated from heat. He wants to be in the heat, he wants to be warm, and yet he wants cold applied to the part. But that which is the general is the ruling feature, and if we do not know and distinguish the things that are general from the things that are particular, we get our Materia Medica mixed up. We must distinguish the things that belong to the patient himself from the things that belong to his parts.

“Dropsy, with great thirst.”

Dropsy: This is a great medicine for the low forms of disease, such as typhoid and scarlet fever, and is useful after lingering sicknesses. Patients become greatly prostrated, very chilly, very anaemic, have great thirst, the urine becomes scanty, the skin becomes dry.

It is a bad convalescence; he has not recovered. Dropsy sets in; dropsy after scarlet fever, dropsy after typhoid fever. A low form of disease, like typhoid fever, has kept him in bed for four or five weeks, and he is emaciated and prostrated, and now he does not gain flesh, he has no appetite, but he drinks copiously; he seems to want nothing but water.

His skin commences to distended, fills up, and becomes dropsical. That is like Apis, and Apis would be indicated provided he was always hot, and wanted to be uncovered, and wanted cold things.

Mind: The mental symptoms of this remedy have not been brought out.

We only know a few clinical symptoms, and they are of little importance. It has cured that peculiar kind of stupor belonging to hydrocephalus, but we do not know what kind of a primary case of brain disease this remedy would fit, because of lack of provings.

We only know the condition after it has existed for a long time, that is, for weeks; rolling the head and tossing about, and he is greatly emaciated. The little one has chills and fever along with it, and his skull is beginning to distend, the fontanelles are growing wider; then we begin to think of some of those remedies capable of curing dropsy in the shut sacs, and this is one of them. But we do not know the beginning. We do know the beginning of Apis, but not of this remedy.

Hahnemann’s provings are full of particulars.

He cross-examined his provers as to their modalities, the time their symptoms began, and where they ended.

Many of the symptoms he felt upon himself, because he proved many remedies. Hahnemann had a sensitive constitution and deep perception, and his provings gave him an insight into medicines that he could not have obtained in any other way.

Those who prove medicines properly, conscientiously, prudently, learn more about materia Medica than anyone else.

They become inured to hardship and live longer therefrom. They are hardened to their environments, to their atmosphere, to their associates and their surroundings.

They are made better and they may be able to perceive something of what Hahnemann perceived.

But now-a-days provings are made and nothing recorded but common symptoms, that in stomachache, nausea, headache, pain in the back, cold feet. Many of our remedies are not proved much further than that.

What, when and how much, are left out. The modalities are left out, The finer sensations are not described because they are considered emotional.

“Low-spirited and bewildered. Feels as if she could do nothing but cry.”

We do not know the affections of either the male or the female. We do not know the desires or aversions, mental or physical; and hence it may that this is only, a partial proving and suitable only for those complaints that show themselves upon the surface.

“Hydrocephalus, with great stupor.”

That is the last stage of it where there is great prostration, loss of flesh, stiffness of all the limbs, with dropsical swellings. Many times in hydrocephalus pains shoot along the nevers and attack the joints.

Then it is that such remedies as Apis and Calc. carb. and this one take hold with wonderful depth. The first permanent and substantial indication – that the remedy is working in a hydrocephaloid case is that it increases the flow of urine, which has been scanty all the time.

For hydrocephalus study Tuberculinum.

Face: The expression of the face is that of anguish.

“Face bloated, puffed, swollen. Bloating under the eyes. Pitting upon pressure. Tongue dry; great thirst.”

There is another remedy that comes into this sphere that will be very often misunderstood, too, and will be likely in most instances to be given before this remedy. It is Ars.

It has all the dropsical. conditions of Apis and Apocynum. It has all the coldness and distension of the abdomen and of the shut sacs. It, too, is ameliorated in all of its symptoms, and the patient himself is ameliorated, from heat, and intense heat is required for that purpose.

He wants to be in a very hot room, but it has something else. It has a deathly prostration, a deathly anxiety and terrible restlessness, not found in either of these remedies. It has also such a cadaveric odor, discovered on entering the room, which is not common to either of these remedies.

In this way we have to take up our medicines and study them only one at a time, but we have also to study them by comparison.

The medicines that are similar in generals have to be compared as to heat and cold.

In that way we get a list of those that are ameliorated by cold and list of those that are ameliorated by heat and another nondescript list not ameliorated by either. That is the starting point, and we have to divide and sub-divide these, and so on.

“Thick, yellow mucus in the throat. Great thirst. Stiffness in the thoracis region. Fullness. A sense of distension.”

You will think a moment and see that filling up the pleural cavity does not cause very much outward distension, because the ribs prevent it. They form a wall, and hence the growth or distension is towards the lungs, and downward towards the diaphragm. By this means we get increasing dyspnoea, with cough. This medicine, like Apis, must sit up; cannot lie down.

You will find it is a common-feature in hydrothorax for the patient to be compelled to sit up. because lying down increases the pressure upon the lungs and narrows the breathing space; and hence, he must sit up in order to let this heavy water-bag, the pleural sac, hang down, against the diaphragm, and that produces pressure in the abdomen and distension of the bowels.

“Thirst on waking. Thirsty all day. Great thirst but water disagrees.”

He likes cold water, but it so disagrees with his stomach, causing pain in the stomach, or causing him to vomit before it even gets warm, or causing distension, or causing uneasiness, so that he dreads to take cold drinks. He is more comforted by hot drinks. Warm drinks warm him up, make him more comfortable, cold drinks aggravate. Yet his thirst is for cold.

Then come distension and vomiting. You will find patients so distended in all their cellular tissues with a general anasarca that it seems that no more water can be taken from the stomach into the blood. He is full.

The blood vessels are distended, his stomach is distended and he must vomit; and with this distension of his whole body he drinks and vomits. It is with difficulty he can eat; cannot keep it down; it will not digest. From this comes a part of these symptoms.

“Sense of pressure in the epigastrium, in the chest,” so that it is almost impossible for him to get breath enough to move.

Very little food makes him feel distended. He wakes up and wants something in his stomach. There is a gnawing hunger, but every little thing, even a mouthful, makes him feel distended. His stomach is already full of water and he vomits up great quantities of water, of bile, and of undigested substances that he has swallowed.

The stomach finally, in dropsical conditions, becomes very irritable. It seems as if nothing passes through him, He finally becomes paralyzed in the bowels. The kidneys are not acting, and scarcely any urine passes. The tongue becomes inflamed. The mucous membranes are all inflamed, and probably the stomach is. Abdomen very much distended; dropsy of the abdomen.

The another phase comes on. It seems that one by one each organ ceases to perform its functions.

The ovaries and uterus fail to perform their functions, and amenorrhoea comes on with dropsical conditions. Many times this seems to be the beginning of such troubles; a failure of these organs to perform their functions, and then dropsy sets in.

A woman passes along to a low state of weakness and nervous excitement, no menstrual flow, tenderness of the abdomen, distension of the abdomen, and then distension of the limbs.

Apocynum has been a curative remedy in diarrheic conditions alternating with dropsy. Sometimes a diarrhea will set in and all the other troubles go away. The diarrhea is copious, yellow, watery and involuntary. 1 once knew large doses to be given in a case of dropsy, and it established its own peculiar diarrhea and while that diarrhea lasted the enlarged spleen and the dropsical condition of the body all went away apparently, to the doctor, in a natural manner.

It was brought to my observation, and I said, “Wait.” Finally he was brought to stop, the poisoning by Apocynum, and heart failure followed at once. A similar effect is to be seen from the allopathic use of Digitalis.

The time comes when the doctor will be compelled to stop Digitalis, and the patient dies of heart failure; Digitalis is never charged with the death, and the doctor never seems to learn that Digitalis will kill.

Everywhere the functions are impaired, in the skin, the kidneys, bowels, uterus, and all tends toward the formation of dropsy.

Urinary troubles are exceedingly troublesome. Scanty urine accompanies many complaints among the early symptoms. Retention of urine; painful micturition; urging to pass urine constantly.

The bladder is sometimes only partially full, but he cannot pass urine.

“Retention with great urging.”

“Paralysis of the extremities. Urging to urinate.”

Numbness, tingling in the extremities, and finally entire loss of power. Some patients re this way for a while, and finally dropsy will set in. It has alternating conditions, as I have mentioned; dropsies, alternating with copious discharges.

The dropsy may be relieved with copious watery discharges from the bowels or by copious spasmodic action of the kidneys, the urine being so profuse that he can hardly realize where so much water comes from. All at once it ceases.

The urine becomes scanty, and then the tissues fill with serum, and the dropsical condition progresses. These conditions cease after a while, and the heart fails.

“Urine diminishes to one-third its usual amount, without pain or uneasiness about the kidneys or bladder. Urine suppressed. No urine at all in brain affections.”

It was a routine medicine once, given to all children for wetting the bed, and as it cured many it must have that symptom, but that is a clinical symptom. It is not surprising, seeing its action is so marked upon the bladder, that it has cured involuntary passage of urine.

“Dropsy of the genital organs.”

I have mentioned the suppression of the menstrual flow, the amenorrhoea, but it has also a marked hemorrhagic tendency. It will establish haemorrhage anywhere, but especially from the uterus. Copious haemorrhage. The menstrual flow may become copious, too frequent, last too long; but it will also establish a uterine haemorrhage at another time. It will cause the patient to bleed so copiously that she becomes anaemic from uterine haemorrhage; and then will follow dropsy.

The old practitioners were in the habit of giving China in most instances where dropsy followed a haemorrhage. It was so generally useful, and so commonly relieved, that they seldom used any other remedy.

But Apocynum is also a remedy for dropsy following haemorrhage. Many times it will fit the symptoms clearly in dropsy following haemorrhage.

“Prolonged menorrhagia, or haemorrhage from the uterus for six weeks. Blood expelled in large clots, sometimes in a fluid state.”

Moderate flow for a day or two; suddenly sets in with such violence that she cannot be out of bed. Compels her to lie quietly.

“Shreds, or pieces of membrane with the fluid blood. Menorrhagia continuing, or paroxysmal,” that is, a continuous flow until the patient is exhausted.

That is like Phos. and Ipecac. and Secale. In most instances, a uterine haemorrhage will cease after about so much blood has been lost. In medicines where the flow is so liquid as it is in this medicine that tendency to cease does not come until a state of profound exhaustion has come on.

Then the dyspnoea, as has been described, will not permit the patient to lie down. This is commonly from hydrothorax. It has also a hypostatic congestion of the lungs in patients that have been sitting up a long time, so that it fills up from below, gradually creeping up so that a large portion of the breathing space is destroyed.

“Great oppression about the epigastrium. Difficult breathing. Gasping for breath. Wheezing and coughing.”

It has all the rattling that is found in Tartar emetic and Tartar emetic has a similar filling up of the chest, cannot lie down.

Pulse small and irregular; almost pulseless. Disposed to faint whenever she attempts to raise her head from the pillow. Small weak pulse. Dropsy of the pericardium. Palpitation very troublesome.

Editorial notes

• “thereform.” corrected to “therefrom.” (transcription error in the digital source text).
• “environnements” corrected to “environments” (transcription error in the digital source text).

Borax
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 37 of 180
Source pages 791–809 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Borax is one of those domestic remedies that has been long used for local conditions as a soothing substance and for a healing purpose.

In “nursing sore mouth” of mother or child Borax has been used in the families of old, in the form of Borax and honey, as a wash.

The extensive use that has been made of it would make the homoeopath wonder if the people had not hit upon something, and it is a fact that Borax will rapidly heal up a sore mouth.

It is not strange that it does so, for Borax, in its proving, produces aphthous conditions of the mouth, which extend to the throat and even into the stomach. It cures where the genitalia and anus are covered with these aphthous appearances.

Mind: Anxiety, fidgetiness, and sensitiveness are prominent in Borax. He is anxious about trifles. He starts at every noise, on hearing unexpected news, from music, from excitement.

This anxiety or nervousness, this indescribable feeling that is within him, is aggravated from upward or downward motion.

Such a motion as going up in one-of our elevators nearly drives him to distraction, but he is made worse going down. All complaints are aggravated from downward motion.

It has been said in routine practice, that in all cases of sore mouth in children, when the child is worse from downward motion, Borax is the remedy.

When the mother is in the act of laying the child down on the bed it often rouses up in its sleep and cries out in fright. The anxiety may be better appreciated if you will go to the top of one of these high buildings and go down in the elevator.

It is natural for every one to feel, with the rapid motion, an anxious feeling in the Stomach, a sensation of falling; that is natural to the healthy man, but if you exaggerate that intensely you have the Borax condition in which the slightest downward motion, of even riding down hill or walking down stairs, or, in the child, when being carried down stairs in the mother’s arms, produces a violent aggravation. All the nerves are in a fret.

We notice that Borax has an intensified activity throughout the body; all of his senses are made more acute.

His hearing is intensified, he is oversensitive to his surroundings, over-anxious. He has an excitable spirit throughout. Riding down hill produces vertigo.

On nervous excitement, fear and apprehension. This is a strong feature of Borax. It has many such symptoms, but the nervous elements, partake of this type.

As we go through the remedy many other things will be called out; but this may be said to be the principal feature of the mental state, and it is to a great extent the key to Borax cases.

“Anxious feeling during downward motion or rocking.”

The diarrhoea will be cured when that state is present. Aphthae will be cured when that state is present. The rheumatism, menstrual troubles and numerous other complaints will disappear upon the administration of Borax, when this key is present.

It has hysterical manifestations.

“Changes from one work to another.”

It has a restless, nervous, anxious, excitable state that runs through his body. The child screeches and screams when it is dandled and tossed up and down.

The motion of the brain, the upward and downward motion, as in swinging, rocking, etc., makes the patient lose himself, he hardly knows where he is; confusion and vertigo come over him. If one rocks the child, it has an anxious expression of face.

“Very anxious on riding rapidly down hill.”

“Anxiety increased until 11 P.M.”

That I have noticed in Borax as a peculiar time of aggravation of the anxiety. I have noticed it in women who had periods of insanity, whose nervous trouble and mental state would keep up until 11 P.M. You will notice sometimes in insane people that it seems as if they were possessed of the devil; and at once a lucid interval will come and they will talk just as if nothing had happened.

So it is in Borax that a great change may occur at 11 P.M.; this state of anxiety and nervous excitement may stop at that hour.

“Fretful, ill-humored, indolent” state increased until there is a stool and relieved by stool.

“He starts on hearing an anxious cry;” on hearing an unexpected noise, on bearing something drop from a chair to the floor, or if a door opens unexpectedly.

This is all in keeping with the nature of Borax. If you compare Borax with other Natrums you will find an astonishing likeness in the nervous excitability; Natrum carb. and Natrum mur.

Aggravation from noise, oversensitiveness to noise and overexcitement of the nerves run through all the Sodium family. They are wonderfully intense people.

“While engaged in thinking at his work, strong nausea.”

Borax has many times cured this kind of trouble. I have seen it come up in this way; from any sort of meditation he becomes nauseated and excitable and must leave his work and rest a little while, and then he goes at it again until be becomes sick at the stomach and so must rest again.

With the aggravation from mental exertion, from noise, from excitement, from downward motion, we get the mental aspect of Borax.

A further examination of the sensorium shows:

“Vertigo and fullness in head on descending a mountain or stairs.”

This is a form of the same anxious feeling. This remedy has a good deal of vertigo, sometimes constant vertigo, which is made so intense on downward motion that be must sit still, and do nothing.

It has many congestive headaches, pressive headaches and much beat in the head.

Eyes: There are many eye symptoms.

“Granular lids.”

“Lashes turn inward towards eye and inflame it. Entropion.”

Granulation and thickening of the mucous membrane of the lid; contractions and scars and drawing inward.

“Lower lids entirely inverted.”

“Difficult opening of lids”

Nose: Like all the salts of Sodium the nose suffers from chronic inflammation of the mucous membrane, a catarrhal state, with copious discharge, and crusts in the nose; stoppage of the nose. The whole Natrum family has these dry crusts in the nose, and copious discharges from the nose.

Natrum mur. predominantly produces white discharge, and so does Borax; Natr. sulph. produces yellow discharge, and so does Borax; Natr. sulph. produces yellow discharge from the nose, even yellowish-green.

Borax is laid down as producing greenish discharge; its characteristic discharge, which is a general of the remedy, is a white discharge.

Face: The face of the infant is pale, and clay-colored.

“Children have small vesicles around the mouth, and on the forehead.”

Natr. mur. produces herpetic eruptions around the mouth in all of its febrile states, and when the patient takes cold. Borax is sometimes forgotten, and Natr. mur. is thought of because it is better known.

When the Natrum constitution is present, then it becomes a process of individualization to determine which one of the Natrums is indicated.

“Aphthae in mouth and on tongue.”

“Aphthae on tongue and inside of cheek.”

This alone is not an indication for Borax, although Borax is one among many medicines when the mouth is so sore that the child lets loose its hold of the nipple or bottle. Many prescribers give Borax on that indication alone; but the constitutional state ought to be hunted up, so that there may be constitutional foundation for the remedy.

Sulph. ac. is more frequently indicated.

“Red blisters on tongue.”

“Vomiting after drinking.”

This leads one to expect that this aphthous state has traveled down the oesophagus into the stomach. There are many stomach symptoms present that are likely to be the result of some such condition.

“Buccal mucous membrane highly reddened.”

The sore mouth, such as mothers have and such as infants have, can be cured with Borax.

“After every meal flatulent distension.”

“Constant vomiting.”

“Vomiting of sour slime.”

The Borax patient with stomach aphthae will gag and retch and cough, and that is what is called a “stomach cough.”

Mothers say,

“It is a stomach cough,” because the child gags and retches with it.

“Stomach cough with pain extending into region of spleen.”

Anus and stools: Little ones often get summer complaints when they need Borax. All around about the anus you will see the aphthous appearances. Great slimy stools are passed day and night; the child keeps up a pitiful crying; the mouth is aphthous, child is emaciating, and holds its head back.

“Stools; frequent, soft, light yellow, slimy.”

Quantities of fluid like boiled starch are emitted from the anus; Borax has that as well as Argentum nitricum.

There are also conditions of the rectum producing thickening of the mucous membrane, with stricture, growing, smaller and smaller until finally a long thin stool is passed, no larger than a pencil. This inflammatory stricture has been cured by Borax.

Urines: In this over-sensitive child when the catarrhal state is general the urine burns so when it passes that with the first urging (which causes the child to realize it must soon urinate) it screams out; screams with the desire to urinate.

That is what it means when it says

“Worse before urination.”

it is not that the state of the urinary organs is worse before urinating, but the child in realizing that it must urinate screeches and screams.

“Frequent urination preceded by cries.”

The urine burns and you may know that the child must soon urinate because it commences to cry.

“Orifice of urethra pains as if sore, after urinating.”

“Desire to urinate without being able to pass a drop.”

This remedy has cured gonorrhoea. Wherever there is mucous membrane you may expect to find the aphthous patches. There is another feature like Natr. mur. and Natr. Carb.; in both male and female it takes away sexual desire; it benumbs the patient, and hence the mind and sexual organs are in a state of indifference.

Females, mothers and children: Then we come to the most striking feature of Borax in regard to the female sexual organs; in the menstrual flow will be found membrane.

Borax cures the most violent forms of membranous dysmenorrhoea, when there are violent labor-like pains before and during the flow and it seems as if the uterus would expel itself from the vagina.

The flow starts slightly, but the same violent pains keep on, until the expulsion of the membrane. I have known Borax to cure when the membrane was a cast of the uterus. Such patients are easily startled from downward motion; let that be your guide to Borax in membranous dysmenorrhoea.

She dreads downward motion, and motions like swinging and rocking.

“During menses; throbbing in head and rushing in ears.”

“Pinching and griping in abdomen;”

that word does not describe it exactly, for it is like the pain in labor;

“pain extending from stomach.”

Pain like the stabbing of a knife in the groin, and that may occur either before or during menstruation.

“Tired; sweat after midnight.”

But, remember, with such things you must have the mental state, the nervous, ex citable state and then Borax will cure this dysmenorrhoea.

Another grand feature of Borax I read in the next sentence.

“Leucorrhoea like the white of eggs.”

It has albuminous leucorrhoea which feels like a hot fluid, and flows down the legs.

“White albuminous or starchy leucorrhoea.”

“Acrid leucorrhoea appearing for two weeks.”

“Leucorrhoea white as mucus, without any other ailment.”

Now from this acrid leucorrhoea, from the menstrual state, this false membrane forming and being thrown off, it is no wonder that women are sterile.

All these women are sterile, all who have such symptoms are sterile and Borax has cured sterility when this condition was the cause. You will find routinists prescribe Borax for all women who are sterile, regardless of the state. When a remedy is given for sterility, the state must be looked into which is peculiar to the remedy given such a state as that remedy can produce upon the healthy woman.

Another feature. Many times I have used Borax when the mother could not nurse the child; she talks about always having a little, thick milk.

“The milk is too thick and tastes badly.”

This condition of the milk prevents the mother from nursing her child. This is a constitutional state, and Borax, if given in the beginning of pregnancy, to a Borax patient will so change the milk as well as the rest of the constitution that the mother will be able to nurse the child.

I have a number of times, when a mother has brought forth several children that she was unable to nurse, given Borax and it has so affected the case that she could nurse the next child. This remedy also has loathing of the breast in infants, due to the fact that the milk tastes bad and not due to any defect on the part of the child.

You might think of prescribing for the infant, but if you examine into the case you will find that the child will not take the milk, because it is loathsome. The mother needs a dose of Borax, which will cure the child of its diarrhoea and loathing of milk.

“The infant becomes pale, nearly earth-colored.”

“The child throws up its hands when an attempt is made to put it down.”

If the mother was a Borax mother, the child very likely is a Borax child; it is not an uncommon thing for the mother and baby to need the same remedy; many times I have medicated the child through the mother’s milk if both needed the same remedy.

Another peculiar feature is that when the child is nursing, there is pain in the opposite breast. Borax is not necessarily limited to the state of confinement; there is a practical use for Borax among nervous women in all states of life.

Borax has cured pleurisy that very much resembled Bryonia, especially on the right side like Bryonia; stitching or darting pains from without inward as if through the upper right lung posteriorly

the stitching pains might make you think of Bryonia.

“Wilted, wrinkled skin.”

“Skin pale or livid.”

Emaciated; flabby child becomes emaciated. Children become marasmic along with the aphthous condition; they cannot digest. They vomit or have diarrhoea; aphthous condition that extends the whole length of the intestines; involving all mucous membranes. Oversensitive child, screams from downward motion. The aphthae involve a good many other symptoms; crying before urination, because the bladder is involved.

The aphthous condition and worse from downward motion; the oversensitiveness to noise, easily startled, anxious feeding, etc., are the most striking and characterizing features.

Argentum Metallicum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 22 of 180
Source pages 380–406 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Generalities: We will take up the study of Metallic silver.

No wonder that this remedy is a very deep acting remedy, for it has been used symbolically, and medically throughout all history.

It has been a valuable substance throughout all history. It is an anti psoric and from its symptoms. I believe it to be an anti-sycotic. It goes into the life. Especially affects the nerves, nerves sheaths. Has complaints along the nerves.

All cartilages in the body are affected by it. It produces a hypertrophy of cartilages, a thickening of the cartilaginous portions of joints, of the cartilage of the ears, and of the nose.

Produces cartilaginous growths and tumors; infiltrations. It affects the nerve substance, it is a deep organic remedy.

It is more than an ordinary remedy, for it affects all there is of man. In those nerve fibers especially that carry messages. It affects the brain in a very profound manner, bringing about changes and a gradual softening.

Mind: A strange feature about it in its general action upon man is that is singles out mostly the intellectual faculties.

It scarcely disturbs his affections; only makes slight and vague changes in his voluntary system.

But the memory, the intellectual part of man is disturbed increasingly to imbecility. In great sufferings and it is full of suffering – it affects his ability to reason.

In nearly all the headaches and pains in the back, and the rending, tearing pains that it produces over the body, it disturbs his memory and reasoning faculties.

Disturbs his ability to think. And it comes on in persons who are in the habit of laboring with the intellectual faculties.

Business men, students, readers, and thinkers. Reasoners come to a point when they can no longer reason and the slightest mental effort brings on vertigo.

He is fatigued. All symptoms are worse after sleep. Instead of being rested for the day, he wakes in the morning with mental fatigue and weakness, so that he can hardly move, and it is with great difficulty that he gets himself together for a mental or physical effort of another day.

Pains: If he undertakes to do any more mental work, he gets a headache. Headache mostly in the front of the head, but also in the occiput.

Another strange feature about it, it is full of rending, tearing pains along the nerves, predominantly of the lower extremities.

Tearing, as if the nerves would be torn in pieces (during rest).

Cold, damp weather, stormy weather will bring on rheumatism – not so much with swelling, although it has that, but pains apparently in the cartilages, and pains along the nerves.

And these pains are so severe that he cannot keep still. Hence, it has a rheumatic state, from cold, damp weather, from becoming chilled, in the joints and in the nerves, so that be walks and walks.

Many symptoms are better from especially walking. So tired and exhausted, but die pain is so severe that it drives him to walk. These pains are many times palliated by copious drafts of coffee, and this will suppress the sickness, and leave upon him all sorts of difficulties, under which he is threatening with break down, and in time be becomes almost useless.

“Mental weakness. Physical prostration.”

Rending, tearing pains, Affections of the joints, the cartilages of the joints. Tearing pains along the bones and he is really a wreck, an old broken down constitution when he is yet young.

“A man of forty is like one of eighty.”

All these pains are better from motion.

Again, it full of infiltrations. Inflamed cartilages infiltrate and form into hard knots. A superabundance of cartilaginous tissue, so that round about the joints the cartilages are thickened.

In the ear and nose the cartilage is thickened. The infiltration that belongs to epithelioma. It has been a wonderful palliative in scirrhus, and in epithelioma. It has cured epithelioma.

It is on record as curing pp epithelioma of the cervix uteri.

Ulceration everywhere; but ulcers that have their beginning in the cartilaginous tissue and. break out through the cellular tissue, and copiously discharge. The ulcers infiltrate at. their base, and become hard.

Another marked feature is that it affects both testes, but it has a predominant action in the right. The left ovary and the right testis.

Such things are singular, that in one sex it should produce symptoms in one side of the body, and in the other sex on the, opposite side.

It has cured. all sorts of tumors enlargement of the ovary, and infiltrations of the tissues. It is a chilly remedy. Wants to be kept warm and its pains are ameliorate by heat.

Its headaches are ameliorated by heat – are ameliorated by pressure, by bandaging. I have orated by heat. I have many times cured these symptoms in headaches when the patient had the head wrapped up.

Now, in this medicine we class the patient as one having a lack of vital heat. He wants to be warm. Likely to be lean, growing increasingly lean, increasingly nervous, increasingly sensitive.

Takes on all sorts of whims. Women needing Silver very often do such strange and unaccountable things in (compare Argentum nitricum) their nervous states that they bar out all sympathy of their friends, and are called hysterical.

Deep seated trouble of the nerves. Growing increasingly sensitive to surroundings.

Now, the mental state of Argentum met. is just such as is aroused by confusion, just such as is I aroused by the emotions, just such as the loss of balance from fear, from anger, from fright, from disturbance of the mind.

Because this patient is so sensitive to his surroundings and so disturbed by annoyance. With his pains he becomes delirious, and it is not that involuntary delirium that we see in low forms of fever, but he becomes wild and full of rage.

He takes on mental excitement, rage and a state in which he talks nonsense with great rapidity. Sometimes there is a stage of unusual excitement in his conversation all mixed up about the character of his thought.

All of the time looks as if he were intoxicated, and he flies from one subject to an other, and prattles. For a moment appearing to be very intense and very active in mind, and forgets all that he was talking about.

In society indisposition to talk.

Because he is incompetent. He is tired mentally and he forgets what he is talking about. Loses the thread of his discourse; and he dreads to talk because he gets complaints while talking. If compelled to answer, he becomes dizzy, and feels strange all over, and has nervous shakes or shocks.

And shocks go over him when tired like an electric shock. It comes suddenly, but the most favourable time for that to come is just when he wants to go to sleep. He thinks, now he is away from all the troubles of the day and can, rest, and the instant sleep comes over him he is roused from head to foot a shock, and another one, and another one, sometimes the whole night he jerks from head to foot.

His limbs jerks up, his lower limbs twitch and jerk, then he gets out of bed and walks – tries to walk it off. This comes out in the proving of Argentum nitricum, but it belongs as much to Argentum met., and Argentum met. has long cured it. In Hahnemann’s study of the remedy he lays down the importance of shock on going to sleep. Shocks in the limbs.

But it is an electric shock that causes the whole body to jerk. Anxious about the health. Thinks he is certainly breaking down, for he is growing weaker. He cannot walk, though he is growing increasingly restless. He cannot exercise mentally or physically without distress. From meditation or as soon as he enters a warm room he becomes dizzy and that is an exception belonging to a few of the head troubles and the sensorium; he usually is sensitive to cold. In the house when the room is close he becomes dizzy.

It has been an astonishing feature in this remedy that precisely at the hour of no great many troubles come on, and the pains and Hess Chills. Pains in the ovary at noon. Dizziness with vertigo as if intoxicated.

The headaches are frontal and occipital. One-sided brain affection. One-sided headaches. Violent neuralgia in the head upon one side at a time, as if deep in the brain, as if involving one-half of the brain, Mostly the headaches have been on the right side-the one-sided headaches.

Those broken down patients that have become prostrated and over-wrought by exposure to the sun. Upon the scalp, the ears, here and there upon the body, itching places.

Itching and burning, like frost bite. It has an itching and burning like Agaricus, in the toes, in the ears, and he scratches the part, and scratching does not relieve it until the skin is off, until it oozes, but no relief from scratching.

Rawness in the ears, kept up by constantly boring and scratching in the ears. Scratching the skin off because of the tingling, itching and burning.

Eyes: Another strange feature is that about the eyes. Silver affects the lids more than the globe. It affects the sight, producing dimness of vision, and loss of vision; but it produces infiltration of the lids, thickening of the lids until they are almost as hard as cartilage.

The mucous membrane is infiltrated and hard, and the eyelids cannot be opened. They spasmodically close, they cannot be pulled apart except by violence. It is a blepharitis, with thickening and infiltration.

Copious discharge. Now, as we strike this as a catarrhal region, let me say that all through the remedy we will find passive catarrhal discharges. In some instances thick and yellow, but at the same time passive, a passive state of the mucous membrane. But the characteristic, the principal discharge of Argentum met. is gray, thick, tenacious mucus.

He expectorates from the lungs-and from the air passages, from the trachea and from the larynx, gray mucus. Gray mucus from the vagina, gray mucus from the urethra, gray mucus from the eyes. Only in a few instances does it have yellow discharges.

When ulceration takes place, as in the larynx and on the eyelids, we have from this ulceration thick, yellow discharges; but from the ulcerated mucous surfaces it will generally be found to be gray, except in the urethra.

It has cured old cases of chronic gonorrhoea. If we get the general character of the remedy we know what to expect when it goes to each region. If we do not know the general character of a remedy we do not know what to expect; and if we get into a region where we have the very opposite of it we know then that that is a particular, and does not conform to its generals.

But first of all we have to single out what is general, what may be expected, what belongs to the nature of the remedy, so that when we see its opposites we may recognize it and know it as an opposite, as a particular, and as an exception. Here is one of the characteristic features of Argentum itching.

“Scratching until bleeding in the ear”.

Now, this itching involves the whole outside ear and extends into the ear, so he scratches the ear until it is red, and swollen, and bleeds.

The cartilage of that ear is lumpy and nodular; is infiltrated. The cartilages of the nose are also infiltrated. Argentum met. cures many of these cases that are operated on when they have some portion of the inside of the nose removed by the surgeon, so that the patient can breathe better.

“Thickening of’ the bones in the nose, the thickening and building up of the mucous membrane and the cellular tissue in the nasal passages.”

Argentum met. is often indicated in such cases. This remedy has a very decided action. Infiltrations go on thickening and hardening, and then we have serum in joints. This is one of the most important remedies to know in the necrosis of cartilages every where in the body.

But with it must go such nervous and mental symptoms as the remedy has, such as I have described. The patient looks sickly, pale, careworn, tired. A broken down patient. An Argentum met. patient is a sickly one who should have had a homoeopathic doctor years ago, but one who can, be patched tip and benefited now if be has not gone too far.

“Painful tension and drawing in the throat. Throat feels raw and Painful sore during expiration. This is extended into the larynx. soreness from breathing. Rawness from coughing in the larynx. Great quantities of gray mucus expectorated easily. Tension in the fauces on the right side.”

Abdomen: Argentum met. has abdominal troubles. Bruised, sore feelings in the abdomen. If these progress from a catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membranes to a general congestion of all the tissues in the abdomen, diarrhea comes on, or constipation of the most inveterate character, tuberculosis of the mesenteric glands, emaciation, weakness, trembling.

Paralytic feelings here and there in the body. Painful soreness, in the whole abdomen in connection with the urinary troubles. It has a low form of tissue making, such as tuberculosis, cancerous affections, infiltrations, such as we have mentioned.

Dry stool, like sand. Undigested stool; very offensive. Catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membranes of the urinary passages, the whole urinary tract. It cures albuminuria; it cures diabetes, with sugar in the urine; and many of the broken-down conditions of the kidneys. Low, broken-down constitutions. Enormous quantities of whey-like urine. A copious flow of urine. Children lose the urine in sleep. Broken-down, nervous constitutions lose the urine in sleep.

Genitals: It has a very decided action upon the genitalia of both male and female. In the male it especially affects the testes and the mucous tract. It, infiltrates the testes, producing hardness. In the text it reads;

“crushed pain the right testicle.”

“Clothing increases pain on walking.”

Inflammation with infiltration. Chronic orchitis. It has cured a very suspicious testicle believed to he a cancerous affection, which began in the epididymis, following a gonorrhoea. Inflammation, great hardness, pain, swelling, burning and stinging.

Another symptom here is of great importance:

“Yellowish-greenish gonorrhea of an indolent character from the beginning, of eight months’ standing.”

That clinical symptom has been verified.

Now, it is a natural feature of gonorrhoea for the discharge to be yellow, or yellowish-green, and thick in the early stage, for it then to become lighter and lighter until it is whitish thick or thin, growing lighter in character until it becomes white and gleety. Argentum met. is the remedy when the discharge remains yellow.

The pain has all ceased, and generally when the pain ceases the discharge soon begins to be lighter, but in the Argentum met. cases pain ceases, it becomes a passive discharge, the urethra loses its sensitiveness to pain, and the mucous membrane loses its sensation to a great extent, but the thick greenish or yellowish discharge remains. Now, in these thick passive discharges that are long-standing, old cases, we are very much troubled to find remedies.

These old stubborn cases that still re yellow, and still re thick. They will not yield to ordinary remedies-they come under a peculiar class of remedies. Argentum met., Alumina, Alumen, Sulphur. Ones not usually thought of in the early period, but the general constitutional state of the patient forms the character of his symptoms.

In the female we have ovarian troubles, infiltration, hardness, cystic troubles, cystic ovaries, that are cured by this remedy; ovarian tumors; very large, hard indurated ovaries – especially the left. The right testicle, the left ovary. Pain in the left ovary and back. Prolapsus, with pain in left ovary. Pain in the small of the back while sitting. The cures have been predominantly of the left ovary, although, it cures complaints of both.

Another grand feature – found in-this remedy is weakness, relaxation of muscles through the whole body; trembling; and now, if that thought is applied – if that feature of the remedy is observed in the pelvic organs – it will be seen that those muscles that hold up the uterus, the broad ligament, etc., are in a state of relaxation, they allow the uterus to sag. In other words, we get prolapsus.

Prolapsus: You will be astonished to know that homoeopathic remedies are wonderful in their ability to create tonicity, and thereby restore the prolapsed uterus to its normal position, and to remove the dragging down feeling women generally describe, a sensation as if the inner parts were being forced out.

All of these are sensations that accompany a prolapsus. Argentum is one of the medicines. In fact, the whole pelvic system is engorged increased in weight; tissues infiltrated likely to be hardened. Cervix congested and indurated. Takes on ulceration.

Greatly enlarged, congested. It has been a palliative medicine in epithelioma of the cervix, with burning, stinging pains, copious, putrid, yellowish-green and bloody discharge. It has cured a tendency to menorrhagia, copious menstrual flow; the relaxation that must be present in hemorrhages will soon be overcome when the symptoms agree, when the general state is present. Ulcer of the uterus; discharge purulent, ichorous.

“Sometimes bloody water, with unbearable stench.”

It is a medicine increased in weight; tissues infiltrated likely to be hardened. Cervix

“Neck of the uterus very much swollen, presented a spongy mass, deeply corroded with ulcers in different directions.”

Where it was given in case of scirrhus of the uterus it says.

“In less than three days foul smell was lost entirely.”

When a remedy acts in that manner it actually stops the growth. In fact, a cancerous state that would go on to its termination in fourteen to sixteen months will go two or three years and the patient re comfortable.

The remedy that is indicated stops the ulceration, it checks the destruction, and keeps the patient comfortable and with her friends for years. In cancerous affections the state of life is very low. The state of order is generally beyond restoration.

Voice and larynx: Then we come to a state of the larynx. It is a wonderful laryngeal medicine. Loss of voice with inflammation, from overuse of the voice such as occurs in singers and talkers. One who is compelled to use the larynx much. It is then a paralytic weakness of the vocal cords. Running all through this remedy there is aggravation from any little prolonged exertion – a paralytic tendency wit aggravation from exertion.

So it is in the lungs – in every part of the body. And then comes the loss of voice. Now, apply all that we know of its ability to infiltrate.

We have tuberculosis of the larynx. Singers, public speakers, who are broken down, nervous, of poor digestion, bad inheritance, take on tuberculosis of the larynx, and the voice is lost. Ulceration follows. And this trouble finally goes into the lungs. They emaciate and get night sweats.

“Loss of voice.” Generally of a painful character. Again, colds settle in the larynx.

“Cannot speak a loud word; constant tickling in the larynx, provoking cough.”

Rawness and soreness in upper part of larynx. Laughing aggravates the coughing-laughing will cause tickling in the larynx, and he will scrape out quantities of gray mucus.

If the irritation is in the smaller air passages, in the lungs, laughter will set him to coughing, and he will scrape out gray mucus.

“Over the bifurcation of trachea, a raw spot; when using the voice, talking, laughing, or singing.”

In the middle of the chest a raw sensation.

“Roughness and hoarseness of the voice. Phthisis of the larynx;”

in those withered young people; a young man when he is not more than twenty five looks to be fifty. Many wrinkles as though he had had many cares.

Has a dry cough; gets up a little gray mucus. Yet he may be somewhat wiry, getting about fairly well. Has inherited phthisis. The cough is a deep cough, is aggravated from laughing, talking and in a warm room. Laughing causes cough and causes mucus in the larynx.

This remedy will turn aside this threatening phthisis, this dry teasing cough. A little dry, hacking cough especially comes under this remedy. In no instance are we likely to have those violent spasmodic shaking coughs, such as we find in Bry.

When coughing a sore feeling in the larynx.

“The cough is accompanied with an easy expectoration.”

He does not usually cough so much to get up the mucus as he does to relieve a little irritation; but when there is mucus it generally comes up easily. It is not so difficult to detach as we find in many remedies.

“Easily detached mucus in the larynx.”

He simply scrapes it out by an effort of the larynx. Cough and scraping of the larynx during the daytime and evening, worse in a warm room and better in the open air and from motion.

It has a sense of weakness of the chest. There are two remedies having this weakness of the chest and you cannot easily tell them apart.

Weak voice, weak chest; a feeling that it is so difficult to, breathe, and so difficult to talk, and so difficult to cough, because the muscles of the chest feel so weak.

These two medicines are Argentum met. and Stannum.

Great weakness of the muscles of the chest. The patient dwells upon it much, and it is a weakness far beyond what can be accounted for in tuberculosis, a sense of muscular weakness in the chest.

A paralytic weakness of the chest. Of course, this is wholly different from the Antimonium tart., which has a dreadful weakness of the chest, but in that remedy you will remember it is in the acute affections.

It is suitable in lingering complaints, sickness of long standing, so that “great weakness of the chest” means that which I have tried to describe and it is that witch patients will often fail in their efforts to describe.

“Doctor, I feel so weak in the chest.”

Now, this remedy is full of cardiac disturbances. Palpitation when lying on the back.

“A sense of trembling in the chest.”

A sense of quivering, fluttering, or trembling, as it will be described by the different patients, trembling in the chest.

That tremulous weakness of the whole body, bands and feet; palpitation with general trembling is strong in this remedy.

“Frequent palpitation. During pregnancy, palpitation. Palpitation at night. Palpitation associated with headaches.”

With general weakness. Gradually increasing weakness. From his general weakness the knees knock together when walking. Trembling in the knees with palpitation and general weakness. The limbs become stiff,

“Numbness in the limbs, as if asleep.”

Loss of power. Many of the complaints are increased during rest. Pain in the back and limbs while sitting, better while walking. All the nervous excitement that is possible in remedies comes up in this remedy.

Editorial notes

• “in the epididymus” corrected to “in the epididymis” (transcription error in the digital source text).