Cold sweat occurs on the limbs, which between the toes is excoriating. The cervical glands are swollen and painful, especially those near the nape, and tearing and drawing pains are felt in the neck and down the back; in the hollow of the back they are very severe and cause the patient to be unable to sit. A sore pain is located beneath the coccyx.
Skin.-Besides the burning ulcers the principal skin lesions are a fine, moist rash, with burning at spots where there is no eruption, and purple, congested areas of the parts lain upon, in exhausting diseases.
A peculiarity about the fever is that the patient wants to drink cold water during the chill (compare ignatia), but when the hot stage comes on thirst ceases. Sometimes the chill is one- sided. There is easy sweating, especially about the head and face. Exhausting night and morning sweats are noticeable in hectic fever.
THERAPEUTICS.
Charcoal is used internally in bulk in the form of powder or lozenges, in doses of one or two drachms, to remove flatulence by its power of absorption of gases, and also in cases of poisoning by alkaloids or other vegetable poisons to delay their absorption into the blood. Externally it is employed as a deodorant in cases with foul-smelling secretions from ulcers, cancerous sores, &c., and for this purpose is added to poultices or used dry in bags of fine cloth or muslin.
CARBO VEGETABILIS is a remedy whose dynamic action covers the same ground as its chemical action but goes far beyond it.
Digestion.-Thus it is one of the principal remedies for flatulent dyspepsia, due to the fermentation on food that has stayed long in an atonic stomach, the eructations being foul and acid, the stomach painfully distended, with the frequent concomitance of a diarrhoea of foetid, slimy, dark yellow or brown stools. This form of dyspepsia is brought on by dissipation, or indulgence in rich foods, especially fatty foods and wine; milk always causes flatulence. This drug antidotes the effects of putrid meats or fish, rancid fat, salt or salt meats; it heals inflamed, bleeding gums from the abuse of mercury. It is useful in chronic ulceration of the stomach and as a palliative in malignant disease of that organ.
Fevers.-Carbo vegetabilis is one of the first medicines to be considered in cases of sepsis, in low forms of fever, such as typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, puerperal fever and gangrene. In these states it is indicated by putridity of the discharges, haemorrhages, sunken features, sallow complexion, and cold and blue surfaces- a condition of more or less collapse.
It is also indicated in diseases when there is a lack of reaction (opium), in low states of the vital powers where the venous systems is at the same time engorged; thus it is useful for children whose vitality is lowered after any exhausting disease, such as one of the exanthemata or cholera infantum, who are anaemic from the same cause; also for abscesses that have a slow reaction and offensive discharges, for ulcers with putrid, thin, blood-stained discharges, especially if they are implanted on varicose veins; for offensive otorrhoea left behind after measles or scarlet fever and for debility ensuing on nursing.
Carbo vegetabilis is indicated for haemorrhage of a passive character where dark-coloured blood oozes away continually, such haemorrhages as occur from uterine atony in connection with abortion, confinement, or menstruation; the blood in these cases may be putrid, coming in small clots and mixed with a considerable amount of fluid. Or there may be passive haemorrhage from ulcers or operation wounds, from the lungs in advanced cases of phthisis, from the gums in scurvy, and into the skin in purpura. In all these cases carbo vegetabilis is likely to be required. It is frequently called for in epistaxis, especially if recurrent, and in persons who have been overtaxed or have had a long debilitating disease, or are advanced in years.
Respiratory Diseases.-Carbo vegetabilis is useful in respiratory affections where there is a hacking cough which is dry, although rattling can be heard under the sternum. Perhaps after prolonged coughing a quantity of purulent, slimy, offensive sputum is raised. The cough distresses the patient exceedingly, it causes painful stitches through the head, the chest feels sore and weak. The drug is valuable in chronic laryngeal catarrh of old people, with rawness and soreness of the larynx and hoarseness worse in the evening and from using the voice, in chronic bronchitis of old people when there is burning in the chest, strangulation on coughing and when the cough is relieved by warmth-and in the last stage of pneumonia when there are marked dyspnoea, cold breath, great general coldness and a tendency to collapse. In all respiratory complaints requiring carbo vegetabilis the patient feels he cannot get enough air, he wants windows wide open and desires someone to fan him. It is recommended by Kent in the early stage of whooping-cough when no other remedy is plainly indicated and when there is vomiting and the cough causes a sore pain in the chest and pain in the “base of the brain.” The attacks of asthma, for which it is useful, wake the patient in the night, come on during every spell of warm, damp weather and are accompanied by occipital headache and the wish to be famed.
The carbo vegetabilis patient is the subject of chronic catarrhs which, if forcibly checked, cause congestions of other parts, ex. gr., if a chronic nasal discharge is checked by the patient getting chilled a violent headache is the result; it is most often occipital but may be of the whole head; it is worse from pressure, so that the patient cannot bear his hat on, yet at the same time the head is very sensitive to cold, and he wishes it to be warmly wrapped up (sil.).
Genito-urinary.-In women carbo vegetabilis is indicated in parturition when the patient comes to it weakened by severe illness or debilitated by loss of fluids. The pains cease or are weak. It is useful for lumps in the breast with indurated axillary glands (chronic mastitis) and in chronic of the bladder in cold people.
Circulation.-Carbo vegetabilis is a good remedy when the heart is failing from fatty degeneration, and where there is want of compensation, with dyspnoea, cold sweat and general coldness, a dusky, purplish countenance easily flushed by taking alcohol, and with a desire to be fanned. It is useful in functional disorders of the heart due to flatulence, and flatulence is a common accompaniment of asthma and cardiac affections for which carbo vegetabilis is suitable.
It has been recommended in the metastases of mumps. Carbo vegetabilis antidotes the pathogenetic effects of cinchona, lachesis and mercurius.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
1) Desire to be fanned rapidly (stomach and respiratory complaints).
2) Burning internally, cold externally; burning characterizes many of the carbo vegetabilis pains.
3) Surface cold; dusty, blue nails, dilated capillaries and veins, cold sweat. Numbness of parts lain on.
4) Haemorrhages, passive oozing of dark thin blood.
5) States of collapse, surgical shock.
6) Flatulent dyspepsia, flatulence (mostly in the stomach), worse on lying down.
7) Septic conditions, putrid discharges.
8) Conditions where there is lack of reaction.
9) Low states of vitality with venous engorgement.
10) Cases where disease seems to have taken hold of the system by reason of the depressing influence of some prior illness.
11) Old people.
12) Children, after exhausting diseases.
13) Ailments from abuse of quinine, especially from suppression of chill and fever.
14) Fever: tertian type, beginning 9 to 10 a.m. Thirst in cold stage, none in hot.
AGGRAVATION:
From eating cold air from a warm room (cough); from hot, damp air (hoarseness and asthma); evening, warmth (headache and stomach symptoms); brandy and wine, butter, pork, rich food, abuse of quinine and mercury; morning on waking (mental); pressure of hat (headache).
AMELIORATION:
From eructations, warm covering (headache), being fanned.
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,