Aggravations. Cold air, winter, eating potatoes, soups and on alternate days.
ARALIA RACEMOSA
“Menstruation, sudden suppression from cold. There is a feeble state of the nervous system, and much general debility. Chronic catarrh of the uterus, leucorrhoea foul smelling, with pressing down pains in the uterus.” (Minton).
ARSENICUM IODIDE
Pseudo-psoric, leucorrhoea bloody, yellow, with hard swelling of the labia, followed by induration in axillae and mammae, with retracted nipples; night sweats, tubercular cachexia and rapidly developing malignancies.
ARSENICUM ALBUM
Menses profuse in pale, anaemic, feeble individuals, who are low in vital energy. Flow is pale red, profuse or scanty, exhausting, producing great prostration; extremely restless with great thirst, worse in the afternoon or after midnight, all her symptoms are relieved by warmth. Flow often thin, pale, watery, acrid, excoriating the parts passed over; much fear, anxiety, restless and uneasiness with thirst for frequent sips of cold water.
Case 1. Mrs. B., 32 years old, thin, tall, with pale face; tubercular diathesis marked, vitality low, reaction poor, heart action weak, pulse small and weak; awakens much fatigued and unrefreshed; flow like thin, dirty water, scarcely any color in it.
Case 2. Mrs. L., age 21, fairly well nourished, but has no vitality, nor reserve strength; menses prostrate her so. Has no life left in her after flow; lips dry, thin, pale, desires to wet them often; cold water disagrees with her stomach, feels better when warm.
Case 3. Mrs. B., age 40, skin pale and white, dark hair and eyebrows, complexion sallow about and during menses; menses begin with an acrid leucorrhoea, corrodes the part with which it comes in contact, very weak and prostrated during flow; fear of dying and of being alone; easily fatigued, always chilly; warmth relieves her pains, suffers much with neuralgia of the head and face at each menstrual nisus. The least pain or suffering prostates her.
Case 4. Miss A., age 20, nausea and vomiting with cholera like symptoms during menses; thin, watery dysenteric stools, vomiting and purging with great thirst, a sip of water satisfies but it is soon vomited. Severe darting pains in uterus and ovaries; desire for sour things and pieces of ice and ice water; does not care for water unless it is very cold; is very anxious and restless, worse at 1 P.M. or from 1 to 3 P.M. Arsenicum is adapted to poorly nourished, weak, cachectic individuals who have no reserve force; the least exertion or mental worry prostates them. They represent pseudo-psora, when it has produced anaemia, the red blood cells being deficient in number.
ACETIC ACID
This is a pseudo-psoric remedy, adapted to people who are suffering with diseases in advanced stages, as chest diseases, bowel troubles, prolonged fevers, and after severe injuries. It follows well after Cinchona in hemorrhages, in night sweats, in exhausting discharges, dropsies, extensive ulcerations, etc. Menses profuse, passive; hemorrhages from the uterus, or from the nose, lungs, and bowels in chlorotic or anaemic women. Hemorrhages with rapid emaciation in exhausting diseases. Most of its troubles are accompanied with profuse night sweats, drenching night sweats. Hectic fevers with night sweats; menses do not appear on account of lung troubles; swelling of the feet with night sweats, hectic fevers with rapid breaking down of the lungs.
Case. Mrs. L., age 32, tall, thin, active brunette; came to me in the April of 1896 suffering with lung trouble; right lung badly infiltrated and the tubercular state well advanced. She had painless, prolonged and copious menses; flow alarmingly profuse and bright red, like arterial blood; cough loose, rattling, much phlegm in bronchia, temperature 101; night sweats worse in the upper part of the body. For this I gave Acetic acid after Trillium had given great relief, but no longer helped the case. She is still living yet not cured, but Acetic acid has done wonders for her.
ARNICA MONTANA
Premature, profuse menses, after falls, injuries, concussions, railway or carriage accidents. Flow bright red, mixed with coagula. Menses very difficult and painful. After a fall there is nausea, vomiting, and fever at beginning of flow or after injuries. Sore, bruised feeling all over body after injuries, face hot, extremities cold, blood passes hot from vagina. (Bell).
Case 1. Sore and general bruised feeling in the region of the uterus, blood bright red with clots.
Case 2. General bruised sore feeling all over body, cannot bear to move in bed or to have the clothing touch the body. Head is hot, hands and feet are cold. A sanguine plethoric woman who was suffering from a fall.
ANANTHERUM
Menstruation anticipating, copious, ovary painful, generally speaking the flow is light colored, bright red, but if menses are retarded the blood is dark and thick, stitches in uterus during menses; pressure in uterus during flow; tightening stitches in womb; prolapsus of uterus.
18
Case. Menses begin with bruised pains in thighs and region of kidneys; pressing pain in womb; much itching and burning in vulva; Vulva inflamed, red, excoriated menses followed by a thick yellowish-green leucorrhoea; mammae swollen, tender, sensitive during menses.
Aggravation: Morning, open air, cold, damp weather.
ARUNDO MAURITANICA (Reed)
This is another remedy that has too copious and long lasting menses; they are also back and clotted. They are accompanied with pain in the uterus and with the passage of gas from the uterine cavity; nymphomania often accompanies the monthly function, she is full of lascivious ideas; hysterical laughs easily; violent desire for sexual embrace.
AGNUS CASTUS
Menses are suppressed or retarded, with drawing pains in the abdomen; melancholy, sad, self-contempt, disgust with life generally, complete obliteration of sexual desire, or sexual desire greatly increased. Sterility, with suppressed menses and loss of sexual power; impotence complete; mind greatly depressed during menses. It is said that the Jewish women used this remedy to destroy sexual desire while attending their passover services. Sterility with suppressed menses; fears she will die, keeps repeating it; absent minded, cannot recollect anything, due often to sexual over-indulgence; sexual desire diminished or completely lost.
ASAFOETIDA
Menses premature, too short and too scanty, often ten days too soon. Labor like pains in the uterus, with much bearing down during menses; empty gone feeling in the epigastrium, with pricking flatulent colic, constantly belching large quantities of gas. Nervous flatulence, globus hystericus, gas chokes her, it comes so fast from stomach. Sense of constriction in throat, or sensation of ball in the throat; gas forms so fast that she cannot belch it fast enough; nervous flatulence, no disturbance of digestion; syphilitic or carcinomatous ulceration of the cervix with carrion-like odor from the discharges. Breasts become large with milk in them during menses.
Case 1. Nervous, hysterical plethoric woman, about forty years of age. Her husband said something to her that made her angry, which was soon followed by great nervousness and a spasm of the oesophagus; belched gas so fast that she lost her breath for a short time. There was much anxiety with great fear that she was going to die; constantly swallowing a ball in the throat (Ignatia, Lachesis); menses came on with pricking colic; Asafoetida 30 relieved all her symptoms in about an hour.
Case 2. Mrs. L., age 27, confined to her bed for three months with nervous prostration; suffers with globus. The least disturbance causes nervous belching such as a few minutes’ talk with a friend or the receiving of a letter; she has to be kept perfectly quiet, cannot even go to her meals, for the least exertion brings on this awful belching. There is much fear and trembling with twitching of the muscles; spasms of the throat and constant belching; no odor whatever, no disturbance of digestion; cured with a few prescriptions of this remedy. Compare Ignatia; Lachesis, Argentum nit. The menses are followed by a profuse greenish, thin, offensive leucorrhoea, causing swelling and inflammation of the parts.
ASARUM EUROPAEUM
Menses too early, too long lasting, accompanied with violent backache; pain in lumbar region some time before and during menses. The backache is worse than that of Pulsatilla, Kali carb, or Rhus tox. Accompanying the flow is great nervous sensibility; cannot endure the least noise, the whole body seems too light, as if she was hovering in the air; great nervous irritability and exaltation during menses.
Case. Mrs. B., an undersized, but stout, a woman of about 34 years, came to me for treatment for backache. Continuous backache, very severe during menstrual period; she was holding her back with both hands as I came into her home. She complained that the pain was awful and she could not endure it a moment longer. She was indeed in agony with it; could scarcely take a full breath. The flow was dark, clotted, with colicky pains; she was so nervous that the rattling of a paper or the least noise would set her wild. The backache grew better, she said, as the menses appeared. On examination of the uterus, it was found to be retroverted considerably. Asarum cured this case; the backache did not return at next menses. It is followed well by Bismuth.
J.H. Allen was a student of H.C. Allen. He was the president of the IHA in 1900. Dr. Allen taught at the Hering Medical College in Chicago. Dr. Allen died August 1, 1925
Books by John Henry Allen:
Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin 1902
The Chronic Miasms: Psora and Pseudo Psora 1908
The Chronic Miasms: Sycosis 1908