Late Pneumonia



As far as the complaint of these patients is concerned, their main one is a feeling of intense weariness. They feel deadly ill, they are very low spirited, and they are definitely complaining. They always suffer from a feeling of intense oppression of the chest, which they say feels as if it had a ton weight sitting on it.

Then in these Sulphur cases there is a strange mixture in their temperature sensations. You tend to look on your Sulphur patients as burning hot, with burning hot feet which they want to stick out of bed. Well, you do at times find that state in your Sulphur pneumonia patients, but much more commonly you find they have alternating waves of heat and cold. You will very often find they have hot patches and cold patches, for instance, a hot head, or hot hands and feet, associated with chilliness in the back. It is that irregular distribution of heat and cold which is typical of the Sulphur pneumonic patient.

Another thing that strikes you about the Sulphur pneumonias is that they are definitely going to the bad. They are very ill, and they are not reacting properly to their disease.

In their pneumonias the Sulphur patients develop a very worrying cough. It never seems to leave them at peace at all, and it simply wears them out; they get frightfully tired of it and they are apt to get irritable with it. The sputum is very scanty, and the cough is always associated with pretty acute pains in the chest, which usually stick through to the back. I think as a rule in these Sulphur cases you are liable to have a more extensive involvement of the left side of the chest, rather than the right. You will very often see a case in which there are the typical pains one associates with Chelidonium-pains in the front of the chest going right through to the scapula. But a differentiating point is that you are more likely to get them on the right of the chest in Chelidonium, whereas in Sulphur they are more frequently on the left side. Occasionally, however, you do come across a Sulphur case with the typical Chelidonium pain on the right side of the chest.

These Sulphur patients always complain of a horribly dry mouth, which is very often offensive. The tongue is usually thickly coated, rather dirty, and there is always intense thirst. Then there are one or two typical Sulphur symptoms. One is that these patients are very liable to have their worst paroxysms of coughing after they have been asleep. Another is that very often after being asleep they wake with a horrible feeling of pulsation in the chest, accompanied by pretty acute anxiety and a feeling that they are going to die. There is one odd thing in these Sulphur pneumonias, and that is that in spite of the fact that they often wake up in this acute distress they quite frequently tell you that while they are asleep they have singularly pleasant, peaceful dreams. It is about the only drug in the Materia Medica that I know which has that peaceful dream in a distressful condition like a pneumonia.

Another point about these patients is that, as they are very tired and very exhausted, they tend to slip down in the bed, and if they do get low it very much increases their respiratory distress. You will find that these Sulphur pneumonia patients all have a pretty acute air hunger; they want as much air about them as they can get, and they are very embarrassed if the room becomes at all close.

There are two periods in which you are liable to get trouble. The first is about 5 o’clock in the morning. At this time the patients are apt to wake up with the horrible feeling in their chests, and extreme exhaustion. They feel there is something deadly wrong and are sure that they are going to die. And quite frequently about that time in the morning they have an attack of diarrhoea. The other period in which your Sulphur pneumonia feels very bad is about II o’clock in the morning, between II and 12. At that time they get into the horrible Sulphur sinking, depressed, low, miserable state.

These Sulphur patients are always sweaty, and it is usually a hot, heavy-smelling sweat. And speaking of this, when you are nursing a Sulphur pneumonia do be careful not to allow the nurse to give the patient a blanket bath, because although he has that horrid, offensive sweat you will find if you do allow him to have a blanket bath he will get a rise of temperature the same evening for a certainty. Another thing worth remembering from the practical point of view is that Sulphur patients do not stand talking well. This is not quite so marked as it is in Bryonia (incidentally quite a number of your Bryonia cases will run on to Sulphur), but the Sulphur patient is very definitely aggravated by having to talk. He feels completely exhausted and tired out by it, and it does him definite harm. So do not allow your Sulphur patients to have visitors.

In the acute stage Sulphur patients respond remarkably well to the very highest potencies, cm’s repeated 2 hourly, but in the stage of exhaustion it is wiser to administer IM’s instead at the same intervals.

Douglas Borland
Douglas Borland M.D. was a leading British homeopath in the early 1900s. In 1908, he studied with Kent in Chicago, and was known to be one of those from England who brought Kentian homeopathy back to his motherland.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.