Circulation.-The pulse is small, contracted and slow, or hard, full and quick; it is often irregular. There is precordial anxiety with heat, and epigastric pulsation is noticeable.
Sleep is restless, disturbed by dreams, and night sweats are profuse.
THERAPEUTICS.
CUPRUM has its chief value in the treatment of convulsions and spasmodic conditions in general.
Digestive Tract.-This feature applies to gastric and intestinal affections as well as to nervous and respiratory. Thus, to indicate cuprum, vomiting and diarrhoea must be spasmodic and painful. The colic is relieved somewhat by bending double, yet the abdomen is tender and painful; it is apt to come on in sudden paroxysms, which are often recurrent and periodic, it is associated with headache and an inclination to vomit bilious fluid, but retching is more prominent than actual vomiting, and is of a violent, painful character. In both vomiting and diarrhoea the violence and spasmodic character of the symptoms are marked.
Cuprum is one of the three remedies recommended by Hahnemann for the treatment of Asiatic cholera, the other two being camphor and veratrum. Cuprum is indicated for the cases of a convulsive character, camphor when there is extreme coldness and more or less dryness, and veratrum when copious sweat, vomiting and purging are the main features. All three types tend to collapse and death. Cold, clammy sweats are present with cuprum and veratrum, camphor is distinguished by great coldness and blueness of the surface, which i usually dry, and the patient, through cold, wants to throw off the bed clothes; vomiting and diarrhoea are slight or absent with camphor. Cuprum is not only a valuable remedy in the convulsive form of cholera, but is a good prophylactic against that disease. It was recommended as such by Hahnemann, and its power in this respect has been confirmed. It is the remedy for choleraic diarrhoea, whether in children or adults, when associated with cramps in the calves and spasms in the hands and feet, also in the carpo-pedal spasms which occur in children reflexly from any cause, such as indigestion, teething,&c. When the nervous irritation in these cases is more severe and convulsions occur, cuprum is again indicated.
Nervous Diseases.-Cuprum is a good remedy in chorea when the movements are violent, are accompanied with spasmodic vomiting, and when it has been brought on by a fright. It is one of the chief remedies for epilepsy when the convulsions are violent; the fits begin with contractions and jerkings of the fingers and toes and extend thence over the body, the patient falls with a shriek, and passes urine and faeces during the attack, or the attack commences with a violent contraction in the lower part of the chest. The fits are followed by extreme prostration, and the patient is restless between them.
The respiratory affections for which cuprum in indicated are all of a spasmodic character, thus it is useful in prolonged laryngismus; in whooping-cough when the cough is very violent, and at the end of it the patient becomes stiff and motionless or goes into convulsions. The convulsion may be forestalled or arrested by drinking cold water. In nervous asthma cuprum will do much to relieve the paroxysms. In cases of severe cramping pain in the chest and in angina pectoris this remedy is useful.
Sexual.-It will relieve violent dysmenorrhoea when there are spasms commencing in the toes and fingers and spreading over the body, or when there are delirium, cramps, distortion of the face from spasms of the facial muscles and even general convulsions. Similarly it has been employed with benefit for clonic spasms during pregnancy and in puerperal convulsions that commence in the fingers and toes; the patient becomes insensible to light, and labour-pains cease. It is a good remedy for after-pains in women who have borne many children.
For cramps in the calves, soles of feet, toes and fingers, coming on in bed at night in men who are prematurely old and for similar cramps in younger men with constitutions broken down by vice or drink and which come on during the act of coition, cuprum is the remedy.
Urine.-It has been found beneficial for uraemic convulsions and cramps occurring in granular degeneration of the kidneys; also for suppression of urine and for enuresis.
Cuprum compares with zincum as a remedy for the results of suppressed eruptions and discharges or of the non-appearance of the same, when convulsive phenomena ensue or when there is metastasis to the brain with consequent cerebral symptoms. Such effects occur in measles and scarlet fever when there is sudden retrocession of the rash; cuprum will restore the eruption and relieve the nervous symptoms.
It has been used in meningitis and cerebro-spinal meningitis, convulsive symptoms again being the indication.
It should be thought of in the effects of fright, in premature exhaustion of strength in illness, in anaemia, and in spasms and paralyses occurring in hysterical subjects.
Skin.-Cuprum has been given with some success in the squamous forms of skin disease, especially in psoriasis. In the orthodox school cuprum has been used internally only as an emetic; it acts promptly. Externally, copper sulphate is used as an astringent injection in gonorrhoea, and as a lotion to ulcers and wounds in a 1 percent solution. The solid crystals are sometimes used to touch exuberant granulations. Small quantities of copper sulphate have been used to destroy the algae in reservoirs, which give the water an unpleasant odour and taste.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
(1) Cramps and convulsions. Clonic spasms beginning in fingers and toes.
(2) Diarrhoea, with colic, cramps and painful retching and vomiting.
(3) Cholera; cramps, painful vomiting and diarrhoea, coldness and cold sweat.
(4) Convulsions begin in the hands and feet.
(5) Nervous symptoms from non-appearing or retrocedent eruptions and discharges.
(6) Convulsive cough: relieved by drinking cold water, whooping cough.
(7) Attacks are intermittent, tend to recur and to be periodic.
(8) Great weakness and prostration during and following illnesses.
(9) Symptoms suddenly change in character, metastases.
(10) Effects of fright: chorea : epilepsy : asthma.
(11) Hysterical subjects.
(12) People who are fair-haired and have the carbo- nitrogenous constitution.
AGGRAVATION:
From touch, pressure, before menses, vomiting, evening and night, cold air and wind.
AMELIORATION;
From cold drinks (colic, whooping-cough, vomiting, hiccough), being mesmerized, perspiration.
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,