Skin.-kreosotum causes all over the body an eruption of large pustules like small-pox, or wheals like nettle-rash or bug bites, or a vesicular eruption that itches violently, worse at 5 or 7 p.m. and at night. The itching induces scratching, which is followed by burning on the legs and arms, but not on the rest of the body.
Fever, &c.-Chilliness predominates, the patient is always chilly, especially in the back, and is more so during the menses. After a rigor comes thirst and then a dry fever heat without thirst, with cheeks brilliantly red, as if painted, and cold feet, to be followed by a warm sweat and this in turn by pain in the sacrum. There may be alternate chill and heat with much thirst.
THERAPEUTICS.
In considering whether a case is suitable for treatment with kreosotum, one must bear in mind the characteristics of the drug, viz., tendency to haemorrhages and destruction of tissue, foul, acrid discharges, vomiting, itching burning pains, and great general weakness.
Digestive Tract.- Kreosote has been found very useful for sympathetic vomiting, such as that occurring in phthisis, in hepatic and uterine cancer, in chronic kidney disease and in the vomiting of pregnancy. It is also palliative to the pain and vomiting of cancer of the stomach. The vomited matters are sour, acrid and of undigested food or of sweetish water; the acridity is such that it sets the teeth on edge, and excoriates the buccal mucous membrane and lips; vomiting is worse from cold food and better from warm. Kreosotum is a valuable remedy in cholera infantum; in these cases the vomiting is incessant and the stools are cadaverous smelling. It is useful also in disorders of the stomach and bowels caused by eating smoked meats and fish, and in sea-sickness. In summer diarrhoea and the diarrhoea of dentition, kreosotum is of great service, also for foetid, bloody stools, sometimes clotted, which may come on with great perspiration during typhoid fever. It is a prime remedy for dentition troubles, and meets not only the pain but also the cachexia and the state of general irritation, and the constipation frequently present in children who are cutting their teeth with difficulty, and in whom the teeth with difficulty, and in whom the teeth decay almost as soon as they are erupted. For toothache caused by carious teeth there is no medicine so valuable; it is common practice to plug a carious tooth with cotton wool soaked in kreosote to allay the pain, but the administration of kreosotum in dilutions of 12, 30 or 200, internally, is much more efficacious. Scurvy, with spongy and bleeding gums and rapid decay of the teeth, yields to this remedy.
Urinary.- The heavy drowsiness and copious secretion of urine caused by kreosotum have led to its successful use n nocturnal enuresis in children whose sleep it too profound, so that they can only with difficulty be waked when taken up. The enuresis is usually during the first sleep. Kreosotum has caused sugar in the urine and has been used in diabetes.
Head.- It is a useful remedy for chronic headache, associated with great drowsiness and pressing-out pain, mainly in the forehead, as well as for falling off of the hair and of masses of indurated scales from the scalp.
Sexual.-Kreosotum has an important place in the treatment of diseases of the female generative organs : it is a remedy for ulcerations and erosions of the uterine cervix and vagina when characterized by offensive, excoriating discharge, and also for acrid, offensive leucorrhoea causing much itching and smarting of the external genitals. Offensive, putrid lochia call for it. It is a useful palliative in cancer of the uterus when the pain is burning and the discharge offensive and excoriating, causing great burning and itching between the pudenda and in the crural- labial folds, is usually yellow and stains the linen yellow; its odour has been compared to that of fresh Indian corn. It is accompanied by great weakness in the legs, and often follows menses that are too early, too copious, and that last too long, with frequently a day or two of intermittence in the flow.
Respiratory.- Kreosotum has been used by both schools of medicine chronic bronchitis, bronchiectasis, chronic pneumonia, phthisis, and the chronic winter cough of old people. The cough is paroxysmal, moist, is caused by crawling or tickling behind the sternum and there is burning in the chest.
Eyes.- It is indicated in chronic inflammation and swelling of the margins of the eyelids, which become agglutinated, and for moist eruptions about the ears with swelling of the cervical glands.
Epitheliomata occurring in the face, nose and lips, cancers of the stomach and uterus and gangrenous ulcerations, if accompanied by burning pains and very excoriating discharge, may all require kreosotum.
Skin.- it is indicated in urticaria when the itching is very violent towards evening, or when it occurs after menstruation.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
(1) vomiting; sympathetic; from malignant disease of the stomach.
(2) Four, excoriating discharges and secretions.
(3) Small wounds inclined to bleed easily; scurvy.
(4) Pulsation all over the body, easily excited by emotion.
(5) Menses flow only when lying (lil. tig., only when moving).
(6) Extremely irritating and excoriating leucorrhoea.
(7) Difficult dentition, cachexia, caries of teeth, odontalgia.
(8) Leuocophlegmatic temperament; blondes; old looking children, old women.
AGGRAVATION :
From cold weather, cold water and bathing, becoming cold, after menstruation, from leucorrhoea, during coitus and afterwards, standing and waking (leucorrhoea), at rest, touch, fasting, the lying down position (incontinence and uterine haemorrhage).
AMELIORATION :
From open air, pressure, warmth, moving about, sitting (leucorrhoea), sneezing (hoarseness).
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,