Subjects specially susceptible to phosphorous are tall, slender and delicate looking young people who grow too fast, who are anaemic, with narrow chest and inclined to stoop. They are hypersensitive to light, noise, odours, music and touch. They feel the cold much, like to be magnetized, and to be rubbed, are clairvoyant and may go into a state of ecstasy (see Lachesis).
Nerves.- Provers tremble all over the body from slight causes and are quickly exhausted mentally and physically. The weakness may become paretic, with which there are jerking and twitching of the muscles, especially fibrillary twitchings. Affection of the sensory nervous system is shown by numbness, formication and pain. The pains of phosphorus are cramping tearing, shooting or stitching and burning. Burning sensations may be observed anywhere : in brain, stomach, chest, skin, &c; burning is felt between the scapulae and a hot wave seems to ascend the spine and travel up to the vertex. Co-ordination is often impaired. A complex of some of the above symptoms often results form over-work, exhaustion from haemorrhages, sexual excesses, prolonged suppuration or chronic diarrhoea, and phosphorus will then be a valuable remedy. It is sometimes indicated for severe nervous diseases, such as cerebral softening, whether primary or following apoplexy, for myelitis and for poliomyelitis. It is especially homoeopathic to pseudo- hypertrophic paralysis, an affection where, without discoverable organic spinal cord disease, there is loss of muscular power, associated with enlargement of the paralysed muscles, due to deposition of fat in them from fatty degeneration of the intermuscular connective tissue and probably of some of the striped muscular fibres also. Phosphorous has proved markedly successful in several cases of this disease.
Some of the mental symptoms suggest “anxiety neurosis” and maniacal attacks such as mania a potu. A kind of stupor from continued fear may develop.
Phosphorus is one of the most useful remedies for giddiness; it is worse in the morning, after meals, and on rising from bed or a seat, and is accompanied by faintness. The giddiness is usually an up-and -down movements, things seem to be moving up and down, or the patient seems to himself to be sinking through the floor; when seated the chair appears to rise.
The headaches for which phosphorous is indicated are congestive headaches. The head feels too full of blood, which seems to mount into it, and is often brought on by mental exertion or excitement, or by working under the heat of a gas jet or too bright a light. Sometimes the heat seems to enter the head from the spine. The pain is dull, pressive or throbbing, and usually is accompanied with a sensation of heat. It may be in the vertex or in the forehead, pressing down over the eyes and to the root of the nose, or a throbbing pain in the temples. The pain is violent and often attended with or preceded by hunger; it is sometimes accompanied by vomiting. It is worse in warm room, from noise, music, jars, masticating, light, warm food, and putting the hands into warm water, and is better from cold air, washing the face with cold water and sitting upright with cold applications pressed on the head. It is to be noted that though the symptoms of phosphorous are generally worse from cold and better from warmth, the reverse holds good for those of the head and stomach. The modality, that the headache is aggravated by putting the hands into hot water, and that it is made worse by physical exertion make it a remedy for “washerwoman’s headache.” The head feels weak, is easily tired, and excitement or grief will bring on a headache of the above description. Headaches such as this may occur in hydrocephalus or meningitis, in fevers and in nervous prostration, and phosphorus will be the suitable remedy. Sometimes prolonged study will bring on a violent headache, which comes as a sudden shock, as if an explosion had occurred in the head, or a splitting headache may be caused by a cough. Periodical headaches may occur every other day from mental exertion, accompanied by heat in the scalp and face, and tension in the face and forehead. A sensation of coldness and stiffness in the back of the head sometimes occurs. Scaly, bald spots appear on the scalp and have suggested the use of this drug for alopecia areata, for which it is a most effectual remedy.
Eyes.-Phosphorus causes numerous eye symptoms and affects all parts of the eye; it induces subacute conjunctivitis with lachrymation, swelling of the lids, suppuration of the meibomian glands, twitching of the eyelids and various disorders of vision. When reading the letters look red, after reading the eyes are painful; black spots or colours pass before them, especially when looking at bright objects. Momentary blindness is experienced, or paroxysms in which everything seems covered with a grey veil; a green halo is seen round the candle. The eyelids tremble and quiver. Phosphorus is therefore indicated in amblyopia and weakness of sight caused by loss of fluids or that come on in states of exhaustion from any cause, such as excess of venery, and in or after typhoid fever. It is useful in glaucoma and for haemorrhages into the retina or vitreous, and for albuminuric retinitis accompanying suppressed menses or Bright’s disease. It is the remedy for blindness caused by electric shock and lightning. It is useful for paralytic weakness of the muscles of the eye. It has been found serviceable in some cases of cataract, and arcus senilis has disappeared when phosphorus has been given for condition of general health indicating it. Meibomian cysts and episcleritis have been cured by it.
Ears.-Phosphorus causes at first hypersensitiveness of hearing and sounds reverberate through the ears, especially music; later, tinnitus and deafness supervene, the deafness being greater for the human voice than for other sounds. It is for this form of deafness that phosphorus is indicated, and such a deafness may occur after exhausting diseases, such as typhoid fever, or in brain diseases like cerebro-spinal meningitis.
Face.-The countenance of the phosphorus patient is sickly looking, earthy or pale, with blue rings round the eyes; or it may present a smooth, waxy appearance like “polished ivory.” With hectic fever circumscribed red spots are seen on the cheeks. The lips are dry, cracked at the corners and a fissure indents the middle of the lower lip. The skin of the face feels tense. Tearing pains and twitchings occur in the cheeks and lower jaw, and there is toothache, with receding gums which easily bleed. Phosphorous is useful for neuralgia of the jaws, threatened or commencing caries of the lower jaw and for toothache, when the gums bleed and the pain is worse from talking and eating and having the hands in hot or cold water. It is a good remedy, to arrest profuse haemorrhage after extraction of teeth. In neuralgia of the face the pain is better from having the head and face wrapped up and sheltered from exposure to wind. It is a useful remedy in inflammation of the parotid gland, especially when there are suppuration and fistulous openings.
Digestion.-With phosphorus the tongue is dry, coated white and swollen, so that it is moved with difficulty and speech is thereby impeded. In typhoid conditions it is yellow, brown or black. Sordes form on the teeth, and aphthous patches, which bleed easily, form on the roof of the mouth and tongue. Saliva is increased and tastes salt or sweet. The throat feels dry and glistens, the tonsils and uvula are swollen and there is a sensation as of cotton or velvet in the throat, with difficult hawking of lumps of white mucus, nearly transparent and feeling cold in the mouth. Pain and burning in the throat extend down the oesophagus, in which there may be spasmodic stricture. There is a bitter or sour taste in the mouth after a meal, especially after taking milk. Thirst is intense in both acute and chronic states and is for cold, juicy and refreshing drinks, for wine and sour things. Food when taken often comes up immediately, as if it had never been swallowed, it seems to get to the lower end of the oesophagus and then to be returned by a reversed peristalsis, coming up unchanged into the mouth as in rumination. The phosphorus patient is a hungry patient, cannot go long without food, if he does he feels utterly faint and exhausted and must have food to relieve this state, he does not want much at a time but must have it often. Hunger returns soon after a meal and he becomes very hungry at night and cannot rest until he has roused up and eaten something.
Risings are frequent and generally empty, or are sour and taste of food. There may be nausea coincident with hunger, which disappears after eating or drinking cold water, but as soon as the water or food becomes warm in the stomach it is thrown up. This is very characteristic of phosphorus vomiting; the desires are all for cold things-for cold food, for ice-cream or ice- water-which relieve temporarily, but as soon as they become warm are violently rejected. There is craving for salt (nat. mur.), and phosphorus relieves illness due to excessive indulgence in salt. The vomited matters are of food, of sour fluids, bile and mucus, or of blood, with black “coffee grounds” substances. There are distension and pain in the pit of the stomach, burning in the same locality, or pressure as of a hard substance there. There is sometimes a severe sinking or “gone” feeling in the stomach, and this may be worse at 11 a.m. (sulph.).
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,