(i) Fluids easily transude form the blood-vessels, the skin becomes oedematous, and serous and synovial cavities dropsical.
(j) Most arsenic complaints are worse from midnight till 2 or 3 a.m. and to a less extent from noon till 2 p.m. Bearing these general characteristics in mind we may now proceed to consider the affections for which arsenic is remedial.
(1) Mental Conditions.- The provings and poisonings of arsenic suggest its usefulness: in melancholia, especially “agitated melancholia”; in restlessness of early dementia praecox; in anxiety neurosis; for delusions, e.g., of wickedness or of “being a lost soul,” of approaching calamity. Impulsive attempts at suicide at suicide may occur in arsenic cases. Korsakow’s disease (if not arsenical) may require it. Besides the great restlessness already noticed there is a state of anxiety, fear and despair, the sufferer thinks his illness terminate fatally and that it is of no use for anyone to try to do anything for him; he has despairing ideas and distressing thoughts. “Anxiety like one who has committed murder.” As a consequence he may commit suicide. He is afraid to be alone, especially in the dark, wants someone to be with him as he thinks he will die. He has spells of sudden fear at night that he is going to suffocate and jumps out of bed in alarm. A peculiarity of the arsenic patient is that he is very sensitive, all sensations affect him too much. He is very fastidious, ex. gr., every picture on the wall must be hung perfectly straight, no disorder or confusion can be tolerated.
(2) The headaches of the arsenic patient are of two kinds: (a) the congestive, in which the head feels bursting and throbs, is worse from light, noise and motion, any yet is attend with great restlessness; it is relieved by lying in a dark room with the head raised on two pillows. There is often vomiting with these headaches (sick headache), or retching, more than actual vomiting. Contrary to the usual modality of arsenic these congestive headaches are relieved by cold applications and cold air; the patient will fell cold himself and want to be wrapped up, but likes his head to be uncovered and cold air to blow upon it. (b) The neuralgic, which is often frontal or supra-orbital, and like the other pains of arsenic is better from warmth and worse from cold.
The scalp is so sore that he cannot bear it to be brushed or the hair to be combed.
(3) The eye complaints for which this drug is suitable are conjunctivitis with swollen lids, blood-stained acrid discharge, which excoriates the lids and reddens the canthi; there are granulations and burning pain and ulcers of the cornea with the same kind of thin, excoriating discharge.
(4) Arsenic affects profoundly the whole alimentary canal. The lips are dry and cracked and the patient often licks them. The tongue is red with indented edges, or in severe diseases like typhoid is dry and brown or black. Putrid ulceration and gangrene of the mouth (noma) call for the drug.
The thirst of arsenic is one of its peculiarities. In acute cases it is either for a little, just enough to moisten the mouth, and very frequent, or it is insatiable for large quantities, but the stomach is so irritable that it can retain only a sip at a time. In chronic cases there may be absence to thirst.
Inflammation of the throat and tonsils with burning is aggravated by cold and relieved by warm drinks. With these modalities it is indicated in diphtheria when the exudation presents a shrivelled appearance and covers the palate and fauces. The stomach irritation is serve, the pains are burning and aggravated by the least food or drink, especially if cold. External heat and warm drinks soothe. There is vomiting of watery fluid, bile or blood, with pain and much retching. The stomach is extremely sensitive to touch. In cases of gastritis or gastric ulceration with these symptoms, and in the chronic gastritis of drunkards, arsenic is a most valuable medicine (kali bich, especially for gastritis of beer drinkers).
The abdominal pains are intense and burning, and though the abdomen is so sensitive that the patient cannot bear examination, yet he is so restless that he is perpetually turning himself about. Hot applications relieve the abdominal pains.
Distension and tympanites, diarrhoea and dysentery are likely to follow. The stools vary from being simply watery to black, bloody and horribly offensive. Arsenic is therefore a useful remedy in many forms of gastro-enteritis and dysentery when there is much prostration and restless and painful, unbearable urging and distress in the rectum and anus. It is also a remedy for Asiatic cholera when the first stage has passed and the patient is exhausted and almost comatose. In cholera infantum it is of great value. It is one of the remedies for enteric fever, acting, as it does, specifically on the mucous membrane of Peyer’s patches.
Haemorrhoids which look like black grapes and feel like coals of fire call for it.
(5) Arsenic inflames the kidneys and in acute cases causes suppression of urine, and in chronic cases albuminuria and haematuria with burning in the urethra during micturition (canth). It has been found very useful in the large white kidney and in post-scarlatinal nephritis. Dropsical conditions are an indication for it in kidney disease (apis).
(6) In the sexual organs arsenic causes oedema of the penis and scrotum in the male and of the labia in the female, and ulceration and gangrene of the genitals of both sexes. It is a remedy for syphilitic ulcerations. Of late years it has been used largely in material doses of various of its organic compounds, such as salvarsan, injected intravenously or into the muscles, for the cure of syphilis. They have the power of destroying the Spirochete pallida and thereby rid the patient of the disease.
The haemorrhagic influence of arsenic makes it very suitable in many cases of menorrhagia and metrorrhagia, and its power over malignant ulceration indicates it for cancer of the uterus with its burning pain and foetid discharges.
(7) In the respiratory sphere the patients take cold easily and are sensitive to cold air, the nose becomes swollen and pours forth a watery, excoriating discharge which scalds the alae nasi and upper lip (aurum, allium; bland in the case of euphrasia).
Frequent sneezing occurs and also pain in the bone at the root of the nose. The discharge may be suddenly checked causing a dryness and burning in the nose with frontal headache. In chronic catarrh the discharge is thin, often blood-stained, or where there is a tendency to ulceration it may be thick. The catarrhal state goes down into the larynx causing hoarseness and an irritable cough from a sensation as if excited by smoke or vapor of sulphur. It is worse after drinking (Phos) and after midnight, when it is suffocating and the patient must sit up in bed (acon., antim. tart., samb).
When the inflammation proceeds down the trachea and bronchi there occurs wheezing with frothy expectoration looking like beaten-up white of egg;oppression of breathing is increased and it becomes asthmatic in character; there is a feeling of constriction, and lying down is impossible. When very bad the face becomes cyanotic and covered with cold sweat and there is great mental anxiety. A more serious condition still is when the urge are reached and become gangrenous with green ichorous sputum or prune-juice-like fluid, and horribly offensive odour. With these conditions there is a sense of burning in the chest as if one fire. In asthma, acute and chronic bronchitis and pneumonia, when the characteristic general symptoms were present, arsenic has saved many lives. An indicating symptom in some chronic lung troubles is acute, sharp, fixed or darting pain in the apex and through the upper third of the right lung. It is useful for pleurisy with effusion.
(8) The heart symptoms indicating arsenic correspond to a state of great weakness, with palpitation from the least exertion, worse lying on the back; attacks of palpitation at night; pulse quick, weak and irregular. Severe paroxysms of palpitation or attacks of syncope may supervene during endocarditis. Agonizing precordial pain (angina pectoris) is frequent. The power of arsenicum over dropsies is largely due to its favourable action on the heart.
(9) In nervous diseases it is useful in paralysis, chorea, epilepsy and various neuralgias. The paralysis is usually bilateral and neuralgia is an invariable concomitant. The pain may coexist with loss of sensibility to every thing but cold, which aggravates it. The paralysis is most complete in the hands and feet. There is a feeling of great restlessness in the limbs. In simple uncomplicated cases of chorea it is one or the best remedies. It is suitable for all kinds of pure neuralgias when the pain is burning and accompanied by great restlessness and anxiety, especially in states of debility such as post influenzal and malarial neuralgias, tic douloureux, the neuralgias of old age and those occurring in debilitated and anaemic persons and after herpes zoster..
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,