The kind of subject requiring antim. tart. is usually at one of the extremes of life, with feeble circulation and poor reaction, torpid and abnormally sensitive to damp. The temperature does not run high, even in febrile ailments. The patient is chilly, and his attack is likely to have been brought on by but slight exposure to cold or damp; if an adult he has probably always been very liable to “catch cold.’ Cold, wet weather and cold bathing aggravate or bring on relapses.
Digestive symptoms are not prominent, and may be overlooked, either because the patient is too young or too ill (and drowsy0 to draw attention to them. The mouth is sticky, the tongue pale and thickly coated white. The edges and papillae may be red; or red in streaks.
The patient is not usually thirsty, or if thirsty does not like to be bothered to drink. If he wishes for drinks it is for something acid or piquant to clean the mouth or “cut the phlegm.” Nausea and prostration may co-exist; the latter may depend upon the former or they may be independent features. In any case, prostration develops early. The patient is usually averse from milk, taking which adds to the nausea and may cause vomiting. This may be a temporary relief by bringing up thick stringy mucus, but it is difficult, associated with retching and straining; even water is vomited.
The nausea of antim. tart. (not specially in respiratory disorders) is a deep deadly loathing, and persists between the efforts of vomiting; it is something like that due to tabacum. Eructations like rotten eggs, flatulence and distension are present, the abdomen feels tight and “full of stones.” Antimonium tart. has been strongly recommended in choleraic diarrhoea, but other remedies are more likely. These complete the digestive symptoms.
Headache is a not uncommon concomitant. Besides general heaviness, worse in the morning, there is a constricted feeling- like a band tied round the bead. Or the pain may be unilateral- chiefly right-sided. The pains are worse on coughing.
The eyes and nose have few characteristic symptoms-they are mainly catarrhal-mucous discharges, dim vision and loss of taste and smell with coryza. This drug is useful for phlyctenular conjunctivitis and gonorrhoeal ophthalmia.
Urinary System.-As antim. tart. can cause acute nephritis so it may be a remedy for that condition, but it is not often called for. In addition to albumin and blood in the urine, bladder symptoms will be present if this drug is indicated-urging to urinate and burning during or after micturition. The urine is dark, scanty, reddish, and strongly smelling, reminding one of benzoic and nitric acid cases.
Back.-Associated with the kidney condition just mentioned or occurring independently of it there may be violent lumbo-sacral pain, worse from moving. Movement may cause retching and faintness.
Skin.-Severe backache and a pustular eruption are outstanding features of small-pox and of antim. tart. These two, backed up by other general symptoms common to drug and disease, have caused antim. tart. to be prescribed with advantage in variola and varicella. The benefit appears to accrue in the shape of moderated severity and lessened pitting. The remedy has been used prophylactically in epidemics, but it should not be relied on if vaccination is obtainable.
Papules and pustules on face and genitals-pustular acne, for example, may be indications for the drug; also ecthymatous spots and small chronic non-specific ulcers on the legs in debilitated subjects, or after severe illnesses in old people.
Extremities.-With small warrant from the pathogenesis, antim. tart. has been recommended in affections of the joints- gonorrhoeal rheumatism or gouty arthritis, with synovial effusions, or thickening of the ligamentous (fibrous) tissues of the joints. In gouty conditions, from habitual over-consumption of beer, with consequent catarrhal dyspepsia, antim. tart. may reasonably be expected to be of use. Arthritic conditions likely to require it, whatever their pathological cause, would be aggravated by cold, wet weather, by changes of weather, and by movement. The other symptoms of the limbs indicating the remedy are either nervous-“pins and needles,” twitchings of muscles, &c.-or are part of a general condition of weakness-trembling of limbs (upper or lower), feet “going to sleep” on sitting down, fingers cold and “dead,” &c.
The drowsiness of patients needing tartar emetic may be sign of combined exhaustion and asphyxia. In this case it will often be present in pulmonary disorders with deficient aeration of the blood and is common to most cases of the kind.
Drowsiness as an indication for antim. tart. need not have such causation. It is a feature running through the pathogenesis, of value in confirming the selection of the drug. Excessive sleepiness in all diseases; falling asleep in the day; eyes too heavy to keep open-thus the symptom is graphically described. it has led to the use of antimony in sleeping sickness (with a measure of benefit), quite apart from its use intravenously as a parasiticide. There are only a few other drugs having the symptoms so markedly-the most notable is opium. That drug causes heavy sleep with a red face, except in bad cases near the end, whereas the face is pale in tartar emetic cases. Nux moschata and apis also have great drowsiness in their pathogenesy.
Mental Symptoms.-A superficial consideration of the mental condition of antim. tart. patients would suggest a contradiction therein. The real state is one of irritability and restlessness. The patient, child or adult, resents interference or disturbance of any kind-wants to be let alone, is angry or moans on examination or when fed or given medicine. Passivity and indifference are foreign to him, and if present are but evidence of great prostration or drowsy hebetude from asphyxia, advancing to coma.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
Of named diseases, whooping cough, bronchitis and broncho- pneumonia in old and young, gastric catarrh (of alcoholic) and gastro-enteritis and gonorrhoeal rheumatism and variola and varicella are the most common.
In other conditions the following features (few or many of them) should be present to warrant the use of antim. tart.
(1) Prostration whether due to nausea or not.
(2) All-pervading nausea, with the characters described.
(3) Rattling breathing, with deficient expectoration and cough.
(4) Distressed (Hippocratic) anxious countenance, clammy sweat and pallor or blueness, in acute cases.
(5) Alae nasi dilated rather than flapping.
(6) Dislike of warm rooms in dyspnoea.
(7) Thirstlessness is a notable feature, even in febrile cases, but see No.8.
(8) Craving for acid drinks or fruits.
(9) Drowsiness worse in the mornings.
(10) Irritability if disturbed.
(11) Thick white coating of the tongue, with red edges and papillae.
(12) Loathing of food, even the thought of it increases the nausea and dyspnoea.
(13) Tendency to dropsical swelling of legs (and even of abdomen) after acute maladies.
AGGRAVATION :
General (a) in cold damp weather; (b) when lying down; (c) from movement; (d) from being carried or looked at (children).
AMELIORATION :
(a) From cool air (breathing); (b) from sitting up; (c) from lying on the right side (vomiting).
Edwin Awdas Neatby founded the Missionary School of Homeopathy and the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1903, and run by the British Homeopathic Association. He died in East Grinstead, Sussex, on the 1st December 1933. Edwin Awdas Neatby wrote The place of operation in the treatment of uterine fibroids, Modern developments in medicine, Pleural effusions in children, Manual of Homoeo Therapeutics,