CAUSTICUM
The menstrual flow is bright red, hot, delayed, flows feebly and in the daytime only. Flow ceases when lying down. Before the menses there is great weakness; cramp-like pains in the sides and back; great melancholy and sadness during the menses (Nat. mur.). Complexion very sallow. She has a sensation as if the scalp were too tight; eyes feel weak, can scarcely hold the lids open; great aversion to sweet things and to fresh and smoked meats. Urine passes involuntarily when coughing and laughing. There is often aphonia during the menses. She is extremely sensitive to noise and touch and is easily startled. Generally she is ameliorated by heat and aggravated by dry weather. Great mental and physical fatigue; must lie down during menses; severe cramp like pains in the back just before the flow begins.
CALCAREA PHOSPHORICA
Calcarea phosphorica is a true pseudo-psoric remedy, it has all the weakness of its sister Calcarea carb. and has added to it, the nervous and the hemorrhagic element of Phosphorus. It is especially indicated in youth, while Calcarea carb. is indicated at any period of life. The menses as you would expect, are too frequent in young girls, every two weeks; flow bright red; in adults the flow is apt to be dark and delayed in coming. Before menses the patient is often annoyed with rheumatic pains, or a stitching pain in the left side of the heart; drawing pains and a sore feeling in the pubic region.
Concomitants: Mental anxiety-always finding fault with others; desire to go from place to place; love-sick girls, or young women disappointed in love; headache of school girls, frontal or on the vertex, accompanied with rheumatic pains; uterine displacements with rheumatic pains, a feeling of great weakness in the sexual organs during menses; great weariness in all complaints, especially while walking or ascending stairs or a height, (Calcarea carb.)
During menses great sexual desire; parts feel full of blood; pulsation in all the parts, (nymphomania); all the parts erect with insatiable desire.
Case 1. Miss B, age 18, tall, slim, weak in body, no muscular strength, face pale but flushes easily, cheeks become hot and flushed at least excitement, palms of hands sweaty, menses every two weeks, which are copious and bright red. After Calcarea phos. cm. was given the menses became normal in two months and my patient has greatly improved in general health.
Case 2. Alice M, age 20, has been running down in health all winter; thinks her school work is too much for her. She suffers with rheumatic pains in her shoulders and arms, which are < during the menstrual period. Her muscles are soft, flabby, and have grown more so of late; feet damp, cold and clammy, easily affected by change of weather, < at the approach of a storm; tries very easily wishes to sit or lie down all the time; leucorrhoea after menses, albuminous; feeling of great weakness in sexual organs. 45m cured her.
Case 3. Age 16, dark hair and eyes, suffers with frequent menses, blood bright red, accompanied with drawing pains over the pubic region; during menses weary and tired all the time. 45 m cured her.
EUPIONUM
Menses too soon, copious, thin, and fluid. During menses great irritability and disinclination to talk (Nux. Chamomilla); full pressive feeling in the head; stitches in the chest; vertigo; things suddenly become blank before her. (China). Backache very severe, relieved by pressing hard against something hard, the pain extends from the back to pelvis, < stooping (Rhus.). Backache always < when leucorrhoea begins, which is acrid and exceedingly copious.
ERIGERON CANADENSES
Menses premature and profuse, accompanied with violent irritation of rectum and bladder; often diarrhoea and dysuria at the commencement of the flow; pains spasmodic, colicky; flow profuse, bright red, and < with every movement of the body. Post- partum hemorrhage or severe hemorrhages after abortion; constant, painless flow during pregnancy. Pallor and weakness when flow is severe, bleeding from nose, gums and mouth, bright red. Severe pain in lower dorsal region during menses; low spirited and very languid. She is aggravated by motion and rainy weather.
FERRUM METALLICUM
The menses in this remedy may be either scanty and late, or profuse and too early, but we usually look to Ferrum for a copious and prolonged, pale, watery fluid. Often it is intermittent, pale, and watery, or it may be suppressed or delayed. It may come on as a flood with colicky pains and with excited circulation, flushing of the face, alternating with pallor. The patient often has the appearance of plethora in the face, but it is a false plethora. Again the face looks flushed as if she had taken stimulants. Hemorrhage followed by prolonged oozing, palpitation of the heart, more or less shortness of breath, general debility and weakness. It is a typical tubercular or pseudo-psoric remedy; all its expressions are tubercular. Menses suppressed or delayed in young girls about seventeen or eighteen who have a tubercular taint. Hectic conditions and a rapid development of pulmonary tuberculosis. The flow is often long in establishing itself. Rush of blood to the head with congestive headaches during menses. Flow ceases then return; weariness with desire to sit or lie down. After hemorrhages, things grow dark or black before her on rising from a recumbent position; (China), vertigo on descending or on crossing a stream; hands, feet and face oedematous. She is < standing, (Sulphur); < in cold, wet weather; ((>)) from warmth, sitting or lying down, gentle motion, and is adapted to delicate chlorotic women where there is a tendency to anaemic conditions with frequent flushing of the face.
GLONOINUM
Instead of the menses, great congestion of blood to the head with throbbing and surging sensations. Tearing pains in the head; surging of blood to the heart; great disturbance of circulation during the menses; fullness in the head; sensation as if too large; face red, dark; pulse full, quick; arteries raised like cords, with throbbing in arteries; vomiting with cold extremities; face and head hot, flushed, often purple; < from heat, and after taking stimulants; ((>)) from cold applications, quiet, pressure. Adapted to florid, plethoric, sanguine, nervous temperaments, about the period of the menopause, and to disturbances and congestions of the brain with the above symptoms.
GOSSYPIUM HERBACEUM
Menses delayed, scanty, watery, accompanied with stinging pains in the ovaries and drawing pains in the uterus. Flow only lasts a day, and is watery, pale, scanty; there is soreness in vulva and thighs when the flow is thin and watery. Pains jump from place to place; (Calcarea phos.), great uneasiness, with much sighing during the menses, sometimes nausea and vomiting. It is a remedy to be thought of in the early morning sickness of pregnancy.
GRAPHITES
Pseudo-psoric, very decidedly in all its actions. It has like all pseudo-psorics, a great tendency to hemorrhages; often vicarious and apt to be venous. Menses delayed, retarded, scanty, thick, black and occasionally watery. Menstruation suppressed, with flow of blood from the anus. Great weariness and lassitude with heaviness of the limbs during the menses; violent colicky pains in the epigastrium, as if torn to pieces; heaviness and weight in the anus. Itching blotches here and there on various parts of the body; soreness of the parts between the thighs, with blotches and pimples. Nails grow thick and crooked; fingers cracked and fissured, bleeding or oozing a thick, honey-like, sticky serum. Skins of hands very hard, thick, dry, rough and fissured. Vicarious hemorrhages from the nose or spitting of blood in place of menses, or bleeding piles, very copious at times; sometimes there is a burning sensation on the vertex or on soles of the feet during menses (Sulphur); stools large, hard, knotty and covered with a white slimy mucus (Alumina). Mentally, the graphites patient is sad, despondent; thinks of death or that something dreadful is going to happen. (Actea). Anxious about her spiritual welfare. Skin cracks behind ears, lips, corners of mouth, nose, fingers, toes, etc. Taste salty, sour or bitter. All her symptoms are aggravated during menstruation or from cold, except the skin symptoms. Adapted to tubercular women when there is a tendency to obesity, skin eruptions and venous stagnation.
GELSEMIUM
Anti-sycotic. This remedy is the Aconite of the prairie country; we seldom find aconite indicated in fevers in and about Chicago. Rhus tox, Ferrum phos., or Gel., and Belladonna are more often indicated in febrile conditions. Almost all its diseases have a sycotic taint and a febrile state. Menses are often greatly delayed or suppressed in this remedy. Menses with convulsions or suppressed with great aching all over the body; pain at the base of the brain; fever; muscular prostration and a general muscular soreness, aching and lameness. Menses with congestion to the head; face red; fever high; pulses soft, slow, with sharp labor- like pains in uterine region. Menses suppressed from embarrassment, shock, fear, sudden surprises; great anticipation or excessive joy brings on menses too soon. Menses comes on too soon in LaGrippe. Menses with fever, diarrhoea, red face, painful aching of the whole body; with great heaviness of the limbs, delirium; with a drowsy and sleepy condition of the senses (Belladonna, Opium). She is often very irritable. Menses accompanied with a wild crazy feeling in the head alternating with uterine pains; pain lingers at the back of the head or spreads over it; relieved by passing large quantities of urine (Ignatia). Pain in uterus as if squeezed by the hand; complete relaxation of the whole muscular system, with trembling of the body. Adapted to nervous, rheumatic, excitable women, often indicated in people who have a tubercular taint blended with the sycotic element, whether the Sycosis be transmitted or acquired.
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