Category: Materia Medica

Lac Vaccinum Defloratum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 107 of 180
Source pages 2097–2110 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

The untrained mind naturally rebels at the idea of giving skimmed milk to sick people as a remedy, but when potentized like any other substance it becomes one of the most useful remedies.

Every physician has seen a few cases in his practice; men, women and children who cannot drink milk. They say they are made sick by drinking or using milk, and that milk is poison to them.

It is the work of the true physician to study cases and ascertain in each case what symptoms are observed after taking milk. These symptoms constitute a proving of it and it is the best kind of a proving as it is produced upon sensitive persons.

The writer has made it his duty to study each and every one of these cases until the image of the sickness produced by, milk has dawned upon him both from the individual symptoms and from a collective view.

Much can be learned by meditating upon the milk constitution some may think there is a difference of importance between milk skimmed and new milk, but for all practical purposes the skimmed milk is sufficient and cures the oversensitiveness to milk, if used in a high potency. It is useless in low potency.

It is a useful remedy as it may demonstrate to the unbeliever the wonderful power of the high potency. It has aggravation during the whole twenty-four hours; some cases manifest symptoms only during, the daytime, and amelioration comes with the going down of the sun – but this is uncommon.

The chronic milk subject is very cold and bloodless and cannot get warm even in a warm room and by warm clothing; she is so chilly and so sensitive to cold that she feels the air blowing on her in the room, as if she were fanned, even where there is no possible draft and others feel the room to be very warm.

She is very sensitive to wet weather. She is subject to neuralgic and rheumatic pains all over the body but more especially in the head. The pain in the head is better from cold, applications, but the pains elsewhere are better from heat. The sufferings are all worse by motion and better by rest; pains are better by pressure.

The bones are sore to touch. Great lassitude and even weakness, can endure no exertion. There is marked restlessness and she is unable to hold up after loss of sleep; extreme weariness from a short walk.

She looks and acts as though she had been suffering long or as if she were going into a decline. The skin all over the body is violently sensitive to cold objects and touch of cold sponge. There is marked periodicity in the nature of the remedy, most noticed in the recurrent headaches. This remedy has had a reputation for curing diabetes and this is not to be wondered at when it is known to have cured the weakness, anaemia and copious, watery urine and great thirst; also copious, dense urine.

Many invalids cured by this remedy have appeared to the writer much like the typical diabetic patient; but it can cure only where the peculiar symptoms agree. It will not cure simply when the common symptoms are present.

Let all observers faithfully and minutely study all patients who have an aversion to milk; all who have diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, sick headaches, eructations, foul stomach after drinking milk and in time the general idea of the milk sickness will be known.

It is a most useful and frequently needed remedy for infants and children who cannot take milk, not always as their specific remedy, but as one of the remedies that will help many infants to grow up some grow morbidly fat and others become lean when fed on milk.

It has been useful in dropsy from weak heart; from liver complaints and from suppressed malaria. People who drink milk habitually become anemic and catarrhal; fatty degeneration of muscles, of heart and liver. Malassimilation, is the most marked feature of milk poison.

The pains become violent in many parts; in the spinal cord; in eyeballs; in supra-orbital nerves; in forehead and through the head; in the stomach; in lower part of the abdomen. Many people are made sick by milk who use cream with safety and delight.

Lac defloratum is often the remedy for such patients and after a careful examination, their symptoms appear like the proving of skimmed milk.

Mind: Loss of memory, listlessness and aversion to mental work; sadness, desires death and meditates upon the easiest method of self-destruction; sadness with weeping and palpitation; aversion to seeing and talking to people; weakness and vacillating mind. He is sure he is going to die. She imagines that all her friends will die and, that she must go to a convent; a horror when in a small closet lest the door will be closed and she will suffocate.

She becomes faint and dizzy when raising her hands high to thread her needle; vertigo on turning in bed; on moving the head from the pillow; on opening the eyes when lying; in the act of lying down. Faintness and nausea when stepping upon the floor in the morning. Vertigo when reaching up with the hands; tendency to fall to the right when standing or walking.

Head: In sickly, pale, careworn women, when the headache is over the eyes and through the frontal region and the pain is violent; is better from, pressure and tight binding up, is better lying down in a dark room; is better from cold applications; is better from perfect rest; is worse from least motion, worse from light, noise, and conversation; when the headache comes on from drinking milk and is attended with copious, pale urine; with nausea and vomiting of food, mucus and bile.

Violent pain in occiput, vertex and sides of the head; marked pulsation in the head with all headaches; during the headaches the face is pale and cold. There is also marked congestion with heat of the head and flushed face; the headache often comes with marked periodicity though sometimes not with regularity. Weekly headaches are the most common.

Great soreness all over the head on jarring or coughing; sensation as if top of head was lifted off; pain first in the forehead extending to occiput, making her nearly frantic. Intense headache in forehead and through head, worse in vertex, afterwards head felt bruised.

With all the frontal headaches there is strong pulsation in temples. It has cured many violent, periodical, sick-headaches, that have been present since childhood and said to be inherited. During these violent headaches there is sometimes a sensation as though the head were expanding; it has cured headaches that come before and after menses. Morning sickness during pregnancy.

Eyes: Dim vision before the headaches; can only see light, not objects sensation as if eyes were full of stones; extreme photophobia; dull pain in eyes, worse in left, even while lids are closed; better by cold applications, better by closing eyes, in a dark room; drawing pain in eyes when reading, could only read a few minutes at a time; great pain in eyes on first going into the light; pain in and above eyes, worse by heat and motion. Lids feel heavy, sleepy and dry. Pain most marked over left eye with lachrymation.

Painful pressure or tightness at the root of the nose.

Face: Deathly paleness of the face; wasted, thin and excessively sallow, with dark stains beneath the eyes. Sallow complexion with eczema. Flushes of heat in left side of face; sensation as if flesh was off the bones of the face, and edges were separated and sticking out.

Grinding teeth during sleep, with pain in stomach and head, with vomiting.

Taste insipid, sour; month dry; breath offensive; mouth clammy and frothy, especially during conversation.

Globus hystericus; sore throat, worse when swallowing. The mucous membrane of the throat is very pale.

Stomach: Entire loss of appetite; great thirst for large quantities of water eructations empty or sour; distension from gas; nausea after drinking cold water in the evening, worse after lying down; nausea from a recumbent position or from motion or on rising in the morning; deathly nausea, but cannot vomit, with groans and cries of great distress; great restlessness and sensation of coldness although the skin was hot and pulse normal.

Vomiting, first of undigested food intensely acid, then of bitter water and, lastly, of a brownish clot which in water separated and looked like coffee grounds. Incessant vomiting which has no relation to her meals; vomiting of bile, with headaches; violent pain in stomach. It is a very useful remedy for vomiting in pregnancy in women who loath milk. Cramping in the stomach.

Chronic gastro-enteritis with chronic diarrhoea and vomiting; tenderness of abdomen; flatulence and distension. Heaviness and feeling of stone in abdomen. Severe pain across the umbilicus, with headache.

Chronic constipation where rectum seems paralyzed and injections and cathartics have failed; the stool is large, hard and difficult; after prolonged straining the stool recedes. It has cured after Silica failed. Constipation in very chilly patients; constipation with periodical headaches and vomiting, frequent but ineffectual urging to stool; diarrhoea from drinking milk.

Urines: Frequent scanty urination; profuse, pale, watery urine with headache; urine very dark, and thick; albuminous urine. It cured involuntary urinations when walking in cold air, or when riding on horseback. It cured a lack of sensation when the bladder was full.

Genitals: It cured a yellow-brown leucorrhoea, worse before and after menses it cured a profuse yellow leucorrhoea. Bearing down in ovarian region menses too. late and scanty; menses too late, pale and watery. Pain in back and ovarian region during menses; sudden suppression of menses after putting hands in cold water; pains all over, especially in head; when the milk is diminished or fails it is of great service. The breasts are dwindling.

Chest: Asthma with bloating of stomach; cardiac dyspnoea.

Short, dry cough; worse in a cold room or in cold air.

Soreness of chest with oppression; rheumatic pains in chest in cold, damp weather; tubercular deposits in apices of both lungs.

Pressure in the region of the heart with dyspnoea and a feeling that he must die; cutting as with a knife apex of the heart. Pulsation of the heart and flashes of heat in the left side of face and neck; palpitation from least exertion or excitement.

Heat up and down the back and across from shoulder to shoulder; extreme sensitiveness of back to cold sponge. Herpes on side and neck; itching and burning after scratching; hard pressive pain at fourth cervical vertebra; chills creeping along back between scapulae; intense burning pain in small of back and sacrum; constant pain in small of back.

Ends of fingers icy cold – rest of hand warm; numbness and loss of sensation over outer and anterior surface of thighs; pain pressing down sciatic nerve and heel; morning on rising, with nausea and faintness; weakness and aching in the swollen ankles. Skin thickened on edges of foot; feet cold as ice. Aching pains in wrists and ankles cold hands and feet during headache.

Great restlessness; extreme and protracted suffering from loss of sleep at night; sleepy all day; extreme insomnia.

Fever at 9 A.M., until morning; wakes in profuse sweat, which stains linen yellow. Hectic fever. Sensation as if sheets were damp.

The skin is so very sensitive to the touch of a cold hand or sponge that the prover could bathe only in very warm water. The skin is cold and pale and veins look blue and very prominent. Herpetic eruptions; itching of the skin; burning, after scratching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vertigo in the open air; he must lie down.

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

Stupefying pains in the head, with pulsation.

Stitching pains in the head.

Periodical paroxysms of aching pain under the frontal bone.

Sensation as if brain fell forward on stooping.

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

Dim vision. Veil before the eyes. Objects larger.

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

Formication of the face. Lockjaw.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burning in chest on inspiration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Burning in the urethra after urinating.”

“Itching redness and discharge of pus.”

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

It has another symptom that was verified by Lippe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Emaciation of suffering parts.”

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

“The diseased limb withers.”

Drosera Rotundifolia
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 79 of 180
Source pages 1539–1546 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

Generalities: The use of this medicine has been mostly limited to whooping cough, but it has a more extensive use.

When we examine its spasmodic nature, its exhaustion, its cramps, which extend through a large number of complaints, we must realize that it is a more extensive remedy. Epileptiform spasms, prolonged sleeplessness, copious sweat on waking from sleep, restlessness and anxiety. imagines that he is constantly persecuted. Flashes of heat, dread of the night. Many complaints come on in the night. Anxiety, sleeplessness, and fear of ghosts. Spasmodic cough. Fear of being alone and suspicious of his most intimate friends.

Confusion of mind and much dizziness. Lancinating pains in various parts of the body, especially in the head, and must support the head with the hands.

Must support the chest when coughing. Must press upon the abdomen. Pressive, congestive headaches. Corrosive itching in various parts of the body with measles -like eruptions. The eyeballs become prominent and congested from coughing during measles and in convulsions. Stitching pain in the eyes. Noises in the ears, roaring, bumming and drumming. Earache in children. Stitching in the ears. Bleeding from various orifices, especially from the nose, throat, larynx, and chest when coughing, in connection with the spasmodic coughs.

Face: Ordinarily the face is pale and sunken with beat of the face and he has cold extremities, except when coughing, at which time the face becomes red, congested, and purple like Bell. and Cupr. Stitching pains will be found in many complaints.

Putrid taste in the mouth is a common symptom when it is found in phtisical conditions of the lungs, larynx, and also in whooping cough. Bloody saliva and hemorrhage from the mouth. Difficulty in swallowing solid foods.

Constriction of the throat and of the larynx and constriction of the oesophagus preventing swallowing. Cramping constriction runs all through the remedy. Cramping of the hands upon undertaking to hold on to something. When grasping the broom handle.

In the throat there is burning and scraping. Stitching pains in the throat. The throat is dark red or purple. I believe that Drosera has a clinical symptom of great value. Scraping hi the larynx and cough after eating. In its proving it has cough after drinking. It has especially cough after eating and drinking cold things. This cough comes from tickling in the larynx and constrictions in the larynx. Nausea and vomiting. Vomiting of blood and bile in the morning and vomiting of mucus, and food when coughing. Coughing until he retches and vomits.

Constricting pains in the pit of the stomach. Constricting pains in the sides of the abdomen. Colic after sour food. Perhaps the most troublesome irritation found in this remedy is in the larynx, where there will be found clutching, cramping, constricting, and burning.

Larynx: Hoarseness and continued irritation causing coughing and continued irritation and scraping of the larynx. Accumulation of mucus in the larynx, dryness in the larynx, spasms of the epiglottis. Violent spasmodic cough from tickling in the larynx.

Violent tickling in the larynx brings on cough, rousing him from sleep, coming on every few hours with increasing intensity making the remedy resemble whooping cough, in which it has been very useful. Sensation in the larynx like a feather. Spasms of the larynx. Spasms of the extremities when coughing. The cough is brought on from tickling, from accumulation of mucus in the larynx. These conditions are found in phthisis of the larynx, in whooping cough, in laryngitis, and in catarrh of the larynx.

Spasmodic difficulties of the chest and larynx cause difficult breathing and suffocation. Sensation as of something in the chest preventing breathing when talking or coughing. Difficult breathing and cough coming after midnight.

Difficult breathing especially on waking. Not able to utter a sound. Difficult breathing and suffocating sensation. The face becomes purple from spasms in the larynx. Compression of the chest. These attacks of suffocation come on with the cough or come upon lying down.

Asthmatic breathing from talking and constriction in the larynx. Deep sounding, hoarse cough, rough scraping cough, loud whooping cough, spasmodic whooping cough. Violent constriction of the chest and muscles of the throat and larynx with whooping cough. Whooping cough coming in paroxysms of two or three hours, but violently worse after lying down at night and toward 3 o’clock in the morning. Most tormenting tickling in the larynx urging to cough.

Paroxysmal dry cough from tickling in the larynx. Spasmodic cough, sympathetic cough from spinal irritation. Violent spasmodic cough in young girls going into consumption. Cough with expectoration of bright red or black clotted blood. Bloody expectoration.

Cough: These spasmodic coughs come often during measles or after an attack of measles. An irritation in the larynx remains. It is one of the most frequently indicated remedies for measles. Like Carbo veg.

Severe attacks of stitching in the chest when sneezing or coughing. He must press on the chest with the hand for relief. Makes an effort to hold chest with the hand when coughing, the cough is so violent. Compression of the chest, burning sensation in the chest, stitching pains in the chest. It is a very useful remedy in chronic bronchitis with spasmodic cough. It is a great palliative for the spasmodic cough that occurs in consumption and all along the course of tuberculosis of the lungs. In these chest complaints, pains between the shoulders, pains in the back as if bruised from coughing.

Coldness in the bands and feet and blueness of the extremities. Cramps in the extremities with the cough. The cough becomes so violent that the patient goes into convulsions. Along with these spasmodic coughs especially in phtisical conditions there are febrile attacks. Chill and chilliness and one-sided chill. Chill and fever with whooping cough. Chill and fever with inflammation of the larynx. The heat as well as the cough is worse after midnight. Cold sweat on the forehead and on the extremities.

Sweat over the whole body following the fever. Copious sweat all over the whole body with the cough. The cough ends in great exhaustion. Whooping cough with fever.

Hypericum
From Lectures on Homœopathic Materia Medica by James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D. – Lecture 95 of 180
Source pages 1808–1823 of the Nalanda Digital Library edition (public domain)

One who makes a study of the proving of Hypericum will be reminded of a class of injuries involving sentient nerves and it is not surprising that this remedy has come into use for the results of such injuries.

Injuries: The surgery of Homeopathy largely involves the use of Arnica, Rhus tox., Ledum, Staphysagria, Calcarea and Hypericum. These remedies are used in a routine way when a physician runs into semi-surgical conditions, or the results of injuries.

For the bruised, “black-and-blue,” sore appearance and sensation Arnica comes into use it corresponds especially to the acute stage until the soreness and bruised condition have disappeared from the parts injured or from the whole body; but for the strains of muscles and tendons Arnica proves insufficient and a thorough study of Rhus will show that that remedy is suitable for the resultant weakness of tendons and muscles, and the bruised, rheumatic feelings that come on in every storm and often wear off on continued motion.

For the final weakness that persists even after Rhus we have Calcarea carb. In these three remedies we have a series, but to distinguish these from Hypericum is the important thing. Hypericum is only a minor remedy for bruised and strained tendons and muscles; it goes into a different class of complaints.

Hypericum and Ledum run close together, and they have to be compared. Ledum, as much of the sore bruised feeling of Arnica and will often take its place; but Hypericum and Ledum come together for consideration when an injury to a nerve has taken on inflammatory action. Instead of the muscles and bones and blood vessels, as in Arnica, Rhus and Calcarea, the nerves are the sphere for these two remedies.

Nerves injuries: When the finger ends or toes have beer, bruised or lacerated, or a nail has been torn off, or when a nerve has become pinched between a hammer and the bone in a blow, and that nerve becomes inflamed and the pain can be traced up along the nerve, and it is gradually extending toward the body from the injured part with stitching, darting pains, coming and going, or shooting up from the region of the injury toward the body, a dangerous condition is coming on.

In this condition Hypericum is above all the remedies to be thought of and hardly any other medicine is likely to come in. It hardly need be said that lock-jaw is threatening.

Sometimes a vicious dog will take bold of an individual through the thumb, or through the hand or the. wrist and run one of his great teeth through the radial nerve or some of its branches in the hand, causing a lacerated wound. You may not find in the earlier stages the symptoms of Hypericum, but they will develop gradually and you will have them to treat. Do not cut the off, but cure it. We cure all these injuries with medicines-punctured, incised, contused and lacerated wounds, painful wounds.

A wound will sometimes yawn, swell up, no tendency to heal, look dry and shiny on its edges, red; inflamed; burning, stinging, tearing pains; no healing process. That wound needs Hypericum. It prevents tetanus. Every practitioner knows that lock-jaw way develop after an injury to sentient nerves. The old school doctor is frightened by these shooting pains up the arms after an injury. A shoemaker may stick his awl into the end of his thumb or a carpenter may stick his finger with a brass tack and he does not think much of it, but the next night shooting pains extend up the arm with much violence.

The allopathic physician looks upon that as a series matter, for he sees lockjaw or tetanus ahead. When these pains come on Hypericum will stop them, and from this stage to advanced states of tetanus with opisthotonos and lock-jaw Hypericum is the remedy. It is full of just such symptoms as are found in tetanus and such symptoms as lead to tetanus and it is full of all the manifestations of an ascending neuritis.

Again, you may have an old scar, and it comes in contact with a hard body and is injured, bruised, torn internal) smashed, and stinging, tearing pains come in that cicatrix, and it burns and stings, and there is no relief, and the pain runs toward the body along the course of nerves. A painful cicatrix with pain shooting up toward the centre of the body following up the nerves.

Hypericum is the medicine for that.

Now there are other remedies – all know about Arnica, but be sure you keep it in its place. The first stage of the injury, where much bruising has been done, and there are none of these pains that I have described, for the first hours for bruised conditions and concussions and shocks Arnica is routine, because it produces states upon the human body like it had been bruised. But you will find Arnica only fits into that one place.

Arnica should never be used for wounds the way the lay people use it, because if it is used in full strength it may bring on erysipelas.

Again, for bruised of bone, cartilages, tendons, insertion of tendons, bruises about cartilages and about joints, Ruta is better than any other remedy; and if we study the proving of Ruta we will not be surprised, because it produces symptoms like those found in such conditions.

Lingering, sore, bruised places on bones, in joints and upon cartilages. But Ledum comes in very often as a preventive Medicine. It is a preventive medicine when an accident happen to the ends of the fingers, if a patient steps on a nail or tack or sticks a splinter under a finger-nail or into the foot. If a horse pick up a nail, pull it out and give him a dose of Ledum; there will never be trouble, he will, not have lock-jaw.

These punctured wounds, rat bites, cat bites, etc-, are all made safe by Ledum; i.e., Ledum prevents the shooting pains that naturally come and the nerves will never be involved. We will have no trouble if we can give it at once. Again, if the pain is a dull aching in the part that was injured, in the wound Ledum is still the remedy; if it shoots from the wound up the nerve of the arm it is more like Hypericum.

A sensitive nervous women steps on a tack during the day, and she feels all the day where the tack went in, lies down in bed and it aches so violently she cannot keep it still. Ledum will prevent any further trouble, but if that goes on until the morning the pains will be shooting up the leg, calling for Hypericum.

I mentioned the use of Ledum when a horse picks up a nail. Now, if a nail goes through the thin part of the hoof and strikes the coffin bone that horse is almost sure to die with tetanus; the veterinarians know nothing for it; though they poultice it and put on liniments, etc., that horse will die with tetanus; but if a dose of Ledum is given before the tetanus comes on it will save the animal from tetanus; after the jerking comes on it will save the animal from tetanus; after the jerking comes on Ledum will not do, but Hypericum must be given.

Hypericum belongs to lacerated wounds and when there is laceration of parts that are full of small nerves, sentient nerves, give it at once. Do not waste time with Arnica because there is soreness, for the soreness is of much less importance than the danger from nerves in lacerated wounds. In punctured wounds give Ledum at once. Whatever sequences come on, of course, have to be met in accordance with the, state and symptoms of the case.

Spine injuries: Injuries of the spine give us another class of troubles requiring Hypericum.

I remember a case such as has been met with quite often and such as we read of and hear about, one, however, that was not saved. A sudden lurch of the car caused a man who was standing on the rear end of the car to be hurled back on his coccyx. He did not think much of it, went home, bad pains in the head and various pass of the body.

Several physicians were called; nobody could find out what was the matter with him, and at the end of ten days he died. They turned him over and found that his coccyx was black and an abscess was threatening in the muscular region. If it had been known Hypericum would have saved his life.

Many times I have seen Hypericum cure similar conditions. Injuries of the coccyx are among the most serious and troublesome injuries that the physician comes in contact with; injuries just like that, falling back and striking a stone, or something that bruises the coccyx.

Very little is found immediately in the coccyx; close examination reveals nothing more than soreness upon pressure, but many times we do have the description of pains shooting up the spine and down the extremities, shooting pains over the body and often convulsive movements.

When such symptoms are present any physician ought to be wise enough to find out an injury, but even very astute physicians are blinded over injuries of the coccyx. Many a woman sustains an injury of the coccyx during labor, and however, slight, soreness remains for years afterwards, and she is always in trouble, always hysterical and nervous, from this injury of the coccyx.

Such injuries, if taken early, can be cured by Hypericum. It is in the remedy. Slight inflammation or irritation of the lower part of the cord; it feels lacerated, and sore, and aches and never passes over until the results of the injury right in the spot have been removed. These injuries have been cured in after years by Carbo animalis, Silica and Thuja and other remedies as indicated.

It is related also to injuries of the spine higher up. It is not an uncommon thing for a man. while going down stairs, to fall backward, his feet to slip from under him and he strikes his back upon one of the steps and undergoes a sharp injury.

Some will at once give Rhus tox; I have known others to give Arnica. Hypericum is to be given at once to prevent the kind of inflammation that may come from such an injury. Then there will be other tendencies, such as drawings and rheumatic symptoms, that will come on, calling for Rhus and finally Calcarea.

Old weakness of the back, with painfulness on rising from a seat, are often cured by Rhus, followed by Calcarea, but Hypericum must first of all take care of the condition of the fibres of the cord and meninges. Meningeal troubles are common from injuries of that class, with drawing of the muscles of the back, a feeling of contraction or tightening. Stitching, shooting pains in the back in various directions; they shoot down the limbs. Injuries of the back are not so likely to end in tetanus as the injuries of the sensory nerves; but they are sometimes even more troublesome because they linger so long.

Persons who have been injured in the spine or about the coccyx linger along for years with symptoms that would lead to many remedies. We find in the provings such symptoms as occur after these injuries, and, of course, this remedy will cure anything that its proving justifies. Its action is upon the nerve sheaths and meninges, with stitching, tearing, rending pains along the nerves, wherever there are injuries.

Now, there is another remedy that we want to know. If you have a clear-cut or incised wound made with a sharp instrument, or if you have made such an opening with your knife while practicing surgery, if you have opened the abdominal cavity and the walls of the abdomen take on an unhealthy look, and there are stinging, burning pains, Staphysagria is the remedy that will make granulation come immediately.

Sphincters: Staphysagria is also a wonderfully useful remedy where the sphincter stretchers have been.

Staphysagria is the natural antidote to stretching. When the urethra of a woman has been stretched for stone in the bladder, Staphysagria is useful. I remember a case of stretching of the urethra; after the operation the patient was in great distress, screaming and crying, bathed in a cold, sweat. head hot and body in cold sweat.

Staphysagria was given to him and in a few minutes she went to sleep. She had been six hours in that suffering without any relief whatever. Where coldness, congestion of the head, and rending, tearing pains occur from stretching sphincters, or from tearing parts, for the purpose of operation, death is likely to occur, and Staphysagria is closely related to that tearing, lacerating and stretching of fibres which causes such suffering.

After a surgical operation, where there has been much cutting, a great state of prostration, coldness, oozing of blood, almost cold breath, of course the Materia Medica man, if there is one around, will say,

“Why give him Carbo veg., of course.”

Yes, you will, but it will not help him. It may disappoint you. But if you are a surgeon, know your surgical therapeutics better than a Materia Medica man, you will say,

“No, Strontium carb. is what I want.”

It relieves that congestion all over the body; he gets warm and has a comfortable night. Strontium carb. is the Carbo veg. of the surgeon.

Lastly, we sometimes have to antidote chloroform, and because there are pains and aches you will get no action from these medicines; you can antidote your chloroform almost instantly by a dose of Phosphorus, because it is the natural antidote of chloroform. Phosphorus will stop the vomiting, Phosphorus has vomiting like that of chloroform. Phosphorus likes cold things, cold water in the stomach, and vomits as soon as water has become warm in the stomach. So does chloroform. Why should they not antidote each other?

Editorial notes

• “paultice it” corrected to “poultice it” (transcription error in the digital source text).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I must sleep with my mouth open.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ear: The Dulcamara child is very susceptible to earache.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its “cold” sores are very troublesome.

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

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

“Catarrhal ailments in cold, damp weather.”

“Mammae engorged, hard, sore and painful.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warts on hands, fingers and face.

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

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

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

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

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

Hypertrophy: runs through the remedy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An impulse to do it comes into my mind.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You must stop working, you must rest.”

“Why,” he will say,

“If I do I would die or go mad.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“strange and peculiar” features.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such conditions of course bring on a tendency to gout.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some remedies have both the latter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colds: Then there are the “colds.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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