The mental condition of iodine patients is characterized by anxiety combined with restlessness. The anxiety is of impending evil or of threatening insanity, and the effort to control such feelings increases them-this is important. Some physical outlet of activity must be found as a safety-valve for the mental tension or “anxiety.” Failing such outlet, sudden irresistible impulses to violence of one kind or another may supervene- impulses to destructiveness, to murder or suicide.
The simplest and readiest outlet for energy is walking-such patients “cannot keep still,” so they “walk night and day” (Kent, op. cit.). While the patient requiring pure iodine soon tires and sweats easily, one requiring an iodide walks long distances without fatigue, reminding one of the irrepressible energy of some general paralysis cases, but not arising from grandiose ideas. Short of this state, verging on insanity, the iodine patient may be excited, always in a hurry (arg. nit. and lilium), impulsive, with a tendency to injure people without any cause. Arsenicum and hepar sulph. patients have similar traits and impulses.
If the patient is wasting and has a shrivelled, sallow appearance, iodine would be additionally indicated, and in this connection one of the iodum modalities comes out-aggravation from warm rooms and heat generally; the patient longs for cold bathing and is comforted by movement.
The headaches of iodine have been described in the pathogenetic section. The throbbings are not confined to the head, but occur in various localities or all over, even to the finger-tips.
Though the patient’s nervous state is soothed by movement the headache is made worse.
Eyes and Face.-In addition to the protrusion of the eyeballs, which should bring to mind iodine as a possible remedy for the case, conjunctivitis, simple and phlyctenular, may require that drug in persons who are suffering from marasmus and are of a strumous or tuberculous “constitution.” Enlarged cervical glands would form an added indication. OEdema of the lower eyelids and of the face immediately below, with dilated facial capillaries, are found in heart cases requiring iodine; bluish lips may also be indicative.
Nose and Throat.-Nasal catarrhs having the peculiarity of being fluent in the open air and dry indoors are curable by iodine; also ulceration of the mucous membrane, with sanious mucous discharge and ozaena. Liability to constant colds in the head without the slightest apparent cause is a feature in iodine candidates. It has been used with success in diphtheria, in follicular tonsillitis (especially as the biniodide of mercury). An aphthous condition of the mouth and throat in debilitated patients suggests iodine as one of the likely remedies. Although swallowing is painful the patient craves food and drink, and is always worse from fasting. A swollen or oedematous uvula may require the administration of this remedy.
Digestive System.-The indigestion benefited by iodine is first, catarrh of the stomach, duodenum and common bile-duct with slight jaundice; it goes on to atrophy of the mucosa, from which little food is assimilated. In spite of occasional vomiting and chronic morning diarrhoea (with pale, offensive stools free from bile) the abnormally large appetite keeps up, but the inevitable loss of flesh persists until it amounts to definite emaciation The abdomen sinks in and enlarged mesenteric glands are revealed. At any early stage empty eructations are annoying, especially night and morning. Another form of stool is watery and frothy, with fatty globules or particles floating in it, suggesting involvement of the pancreas. The underlying cause may be tuberculous. Or a condition resembling hypertrophic cirrhosis of liver develops, with flatulent distension and jaundice, ultimately ending in atrophic cirrhosis and ascites. Exceptionally the bowels may be constipated with ineffectual urging and much flatus.
Respiratory System.-The named diseases in which iodum has proved strikingly useful are: (a) Laryngeal conditions, with “croupy” breathing and “croupy” cough, including simple laryngitis and membranous or diphtherial states, with hot, dry skin; (b) whooping cough; (c) bronchitis; (d) pneumonia, especially of the upper lobe of the right lung when the characteristic sharp pains and other bryonia modalities are absent; (e) phthisis pulmonalis.
Genito-urinary Tracts.-The urinary tract is, perhaps, least affected of any by iodine. Frequent micturition, with large quantities of urine of yellowish-green colour is found in some iodine cases; the polyuria and emaciation have led to its use in diabetes. Incontinence of urine in old people with prostatic hypertrophy may be benefited by the remedy. It has been used in chronic inflammation, induration and hypertrophy of the genital glands in both sexes, but it is not clear for what particular pathological conditions it is most useful. The use of iodine and iodide of potassium for syphilitic gummata has, by some, been claimed as homoeopathic, but the dose if used on pathological grounds requires to be substantial if not massive. It is certainly not a homoeopathic “specific” for tertiary syphilis, and if homoeopathic at all it will only be so in those patients who manifest what has been called the “iodine constitutional state,” which will be summarized later on.
In men, especially old men, it may be indicated where there is present weakness or impotence combined with a state of sexual erethism, whether the testes are atrophied or “hypertrophied.”
In women the drug has been more used homoeopathically than in men. Acridity of secretions is an iodine characteristic, and it is strongly manifested in catarrh of the female genital canal. The leucorrhoea which it causes is extremely excoriating, causing redness and soreness of the muco-cutaneous junction and adjacent skin areas. This discharge itself is thick and slimy and blood- stained, and it is worse near the menstrual periods. The drug has been recommended in cancer of the cervix, but the present writer does not personally know of results to support that recommendation. It may be relied on where the above indications are present in cases of cervical erosions and hypertrophy from uterine subinvolution of the traumatism of repeated child-births. If a small atrophic condition of the breasts is part of a constitutional state (marasmus) indicating iodine then their size or activity may be restored by its exhibition as part of the rehabilitating effect of the drug. If the patient has passed the menopause only an adipose deposit corresponding to improved general nutrition can be expected.
Menorrhagia has been successfully treated by iodum, and one indication in this sphere is recurrent or excessive flow after an action of the bowels.
Fever.-Of febrile complaints those in which iodine is most frequently useful are subacute or chronic malarial cases, influenza induced by damp or chills, respiratory cases as narrated and gouty attacks. Profuse night sweats in debilitated subjects may occur in any of these cases.
Circulatory System.-The heart and vascular symptoms point more to reflected influences and to cardiac myopathy than to valvular lesions. They are violent palpitation and throbbings felt all over the body, precordial pain, oppression, anxiety and restlessness. The heart feels as if grasped as in a vice; the pulse is small, rapid and irregular. The pain, constriction and pulse suggest the usefulness of iodine in some cases of angina.
Extremities.-Pains, twitchings and trembling are at times present as a part of a general depressed condition. Gout in elderly people, with large and tender joints of feet, with acrid foot sweat and oedema, have been benefited by iodine, but only when the iodine leading indications are present.
Skin.-Ulcers with spongy edges, and ichorous or bloody and acrid discharges, also pustular eruptions, due to Staphylococcus aureus or at some stages of small-pox, may require iodine.
General Summary.-A diagnostic bird’s-eye view of iodine as a remedy may be conceived in some such a manner as follows: If a dark-haired, sallow or cachectic, emaciated patient walks into a doctor’s consulting room, obviously weak, short of breath, with an enlarged thyroid, hoarse cough and nasal catarrh, some of these features would be ignored as irrelevant in making a rapid provisional mental diagnosis of his disease-tubercle, cancer, malaria, &c. On the other hand, further detail, subjective and objective, would be required to complete the diagnosis. For the final diagnosis of the homoeopathic remedy, too, other features might be necessary but the picture presented by such a patient would at once suggest to the well-informed therapeutist iodine as one of the remedies to be considered. Enlarged glands in axillae, groins or abdomen in the emaciated patient would be confirmatory of the original suggestion. If such a patient had a ravenous appetite, a restless, hurried disposition, with loss of memory, and some of the mental symptoms narrated earlier, the selection of iodine as a remedy, curative or palliative, would be justified, irrespective of the disease category in which he (or she) were ultimately placed. Relief from eating (to duodenal or other digestive ailments and to some mental symptoms) and aggravation in damp, warm weather or warm rooms (chiefly in respiratory or febrile cases) would further indicate this drug. This temperature modality (aggravation from heat) is important, almost to the exclusion of drugs not having it, ex. gr., arsenicum.
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,