Skin.- In affections of the skin, itching is the indicating symptom when the eruption is dry, or when there is not eruption, but simply pruritus. Prurigo occurs principally over parts where fat is deficient itching is worse in the evening and in bed from warmth and is associated with general coldness and sometimes twitching of subcutaneous muscles. Prurigo senilis often requires mezereum; there are terrible itching and formication of the parts where the skin is most shrivelled, worse at night, from heat and from heat and from scratching. It relieves the itching and cures the eruption of pityriasis versicolor. In the skin affections where there is most eruption mezereum is indicated when there are thick, adherent scabs, under which yellow pus collects; ulceration, if present, is surrounded by an areola which is very sensitive to touch. Porrigo capitis, impetigo, mercurial and mercurio-syphilitic ulcers are skin diseases in which mezereum is useful. It has cured deafness resulting from suppression of impetigo of the scalp. It is one of the chief remedies for shingles, both for the eruption and the subsequent neuralgia when mezereum characteristics are present.
Sexual.-It has been used also for leucorrhoea like white of egg, and accompanied with pruritus vulvae, also for blenorrhoea from the urethra or vulva when accompanied with much itching.
Digestion.-Mezereum has not been used much in gastro- intestinal affections, but has been found serviceable in some cases of constipation, when it has been indicated by the symptom “stools feel as if they would split the anus.” It would be indicated in chronic diarrhoea when associated with or following the characteristic skin symptoms.
Mind.-It should be thought of in melancholia, especially if associated with syphilis.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
(1) Bone and periosteal pains, worse at night, and from heat.
(2) Itching of skin, with or without eruption, changing place, worse from warmth and scratching, and at night.
(3) Neuralgias: post-herpetic, supra-orbital, facial, intercostal.
(4) General chilliness; sensations of cold air; in eyes, in ears, blowing on the head.
(5) Dirty, unhealthy skin, shrivelled; “live spots”; brown scabs.
(6) Prosopalgia, worse at night, from biting, and better from drawing air into the mouth.
(7) Syphilis and mercurio-syphilis.
(8) Phlegmatic temperament; indolent, light-haired persons; old people with prurigo.
AGGRAVATION:
From cold, damp, cold winds, sudden changes in weather, heat (skin, rheumatic symptoms), touch, pressure, evening, night, fats, wine.
AMELIORATION:
From heat (head pains), heat of stove (prosopalgia), drawing in air (toothache).
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,