Silica


Dr. S.R. Phatak describes the clinically confirmed symptoms of the homeopathic remedy Silica in his Concise Materia Medica, published in 1977….


Generalities

      Triturations are prepared from pure flint. It produces defective NUTRITION esp. in children; due to imperfect assimilation. Affects the NERVES; increasing their susceptibility causing neurasthenic states and exaggerated reflexes. Diseases of bones and cartilages; caries and necrosis; softening, of bones. Exostosis. GLANDS are enlarged. Scrofulous rachitic children; with large head, open fontanelles; distended hot and hard abdomen, slow in walking, and wasted in body esp. legs. Children crawl nervously; or are dragged in on their mother’s arms; on running they become pale. Suppurative processes; stubborn; fistulous openings; abscesses. Slow incomplete inflammation, of glands, cellular tissue and skin; then induration. Keenly sensitive to noise, pain, to cold, hugs the fire, wants plenty of warm clothing; hates drafts. Cachetic and senile patients, persons of fair, clear complexion. Pains are violent and sticking, localized in ears, throat, ulcers etc. Tendency to easy exhaustion, and abnormal sweats. Want of vital warmth even when taking exercise. Spasms, epilepsy; feeling of coldness before the attack. Hysteria, paralysis and obstinate neuralgias caused by dissipation, hard work, with close confinement. Mal-nutrition. Arrested development. Emaciation. Want of grit; moral and physical. Proud flesh. Cicatrices; indurated, hard, nodular, shiny, glassy, tender, with shooting pain. Keloids. Dropsy in A.M. Cancer. Contracted sphincters. Ascending effects. Prostration of mind and body. Cerebral softening. Restless, fidgety, starts at least noise. Parts lain on go to sleep. Removes foreign bodies. Progressive locomotor ataxia. Sensation as if she were divided into halves and left side does not belong to her. Sensation of a hair on tongue; in trachea. Ill effects of vaccination; stone cutting; loss of vital fluids; injuries; sprains, splinters. Intolerance of alcoholic stimulants. Nervous affections after spinal injury, esp. when pressure on spine causes pain in remote parts. Convulsions; begins in the Solar plexus; after vaccination. Epilepsy; aura in the Solar plexus creeping into the chest and stomach. Skin is unhealthy; every injury festers. Discharges offensive, pus, sweat, stools etc.

Worse

      COLD; AIR; DRAUGHT; damp; uncovering, bathing. Checked sweat esp. of feet. Nervous excitement. Light. Noise. Jarring; of spine. Moon changes. Night. Mental exertion. Alcohol. Touch Pressure. Change of weather. Combing hair.

Better

      WARM-WRAPS; to head. Summer. Wet humid weather. Profuse urination. Magnetism and electricity.

Mind

      Yielding; faint hearted. Sensitive weeping mood. Obstinate stubborn, head-strong; children. Cries when kindly spoken to. Fixed ideas thinks only of pins, fears them, searches them and counts them. Mental acuteness, with physical weakness and torpidity. Sullen. Compunctions of conscience about trifles. Loss of self confidence; dreads failure, but unfounded. Starts from slight noise. Screaming violently, groaning; epilepsy. Indifference to religion. Hopeless. Sad. Disgust for life; wishes to drown herself. Brain fag. Cannot express himself correctly Fidgety. Complaints from anticipation.

Head

      Vertigo; ascends from dorsal region worse looking upwards, closing eyes, lying on left side. Ascending occipital pains better pressure. Periodical headaches. Headache, then blindness. Vertex throbs. Fontanelles open with distended abdomen. Lumps on scalp. Profuse sweat on head Swelling of glabella. Cephalhaematoma. Profuse urination better headache Right side as if paralysed worse coition. Headache worse by exertion, study noise, motion, jar, light, cold air, talking and straining at stools, and better by wrapping warmly, and pressure. Moist crusty eruptions on the scalp. Swelling filled with grumous fluid between scalp and bone. Headache while fasting or when not eating at proper time. Migraine. Chronic headaches since some severe disease. Falling of hair, premature, baldness.

Eyes

      Affections of canthi; in the region of tear-ducts, swelling of lachrymal fistula; stricture of lachrymal duct. Spotted vision. Objects appear pale. Aversion to daylight; it dazzles. Keratitis; pustular; perforating. Inflammation of eyes. Hypopion. Opacities of the cornea; after small pox (use 30 for months). Cataract in office workers, after suppressed foot sweat. Styes; to prevent their recurrence. Encysted tumours of lids. Letters run together while reading.

Ears

      Roaring in ears. Hissing in. Perforated drum. Itching. Caries of mastoid process. Deafness, hears again with a loud report or on blowing the nose, and coughing; worse full moon. Foetid discharge. Sensitive to noise. Feeling of stoppage in the ear better when yawning or swallowing. Crusty formations in ears. Child bores into its ears when asleep.

Nose

      Frothy nasal discharge. Coryza, with epistaxis. Perforation of septum. Dry hard crusts; bleeding when loosened. Sneezing in morning. Itching of the tip. Bone sore. Nose; dry obstructed, with loss of smell. Epistaxis in infants. Cracks in nostrils. Obstinate colds; with ear affections. Nose cold.

Face

      Pale, cachetic; waxy. Enlarged parotids. Cracks; in lips; on skin of face. Eruptions on chin. Swelling of maxillary glands. Indurated fissures at the corners of lips. Cancer of lower lip.

Mouth

      on gums. Pyorrhoea. Water tastes badly; vomits after drinking. Teeth; break down, lose their enamel, become rough, carious. Tongue; brown. Teeth feel too large and too long for the mouth. One sided swelling of tongue.

Throat

      Bitter taste in. Tonsils swollen, suppurating. Food is ejected through nose, when swallowing. Pricking pain as of a pin in tonsil. Hawks foul lumps. Swallowing painful, difficult; hysterical.

Stomach

      Aversion to cooked or warm food and meat; to mother’s milk, vomits it. Likes ice cream, ice water, feels comfortable when it is in the stomach. Water tastes bad; vomits after drinking. Induration of pylorus. Water-brash with chilliness. Voracious appetite, but disappears on attempting to eat, or loathing of food. Sour eructations after eating. Sour vomiting. Gnawing, twisting pain in epigastrium worse by pressure. As if a cold stone were in stomach.

Abdomen

      Throbbing ulcerative pain in the region of liver; abscess of liver. Colic, cutting pain; with yellow hands and blue nails. Distended hard and hot, with thin legs esp. in children. Cutting, cramping pain in rectum extending to testes worse coition. Constipation worse before and during menses. Straining, with soft stools, with exhaustion. Moist anus, foul flatus. Stools; comes out with difficulty, when partly expelled, recedes again; retained for fear of pain. Cracks on abdominal wall. Fissures, fistula in ano, with chest symptoms. Painful spasms of sphincter. Intensely painful haemorrhoids protrude during stool. Foul diarrhoea. FRUITLESS urging to stool. Chronic diarrhoea. Stools offensive, painless, lienteric. Tapeworm. Diarrhoea after milk. Hernial tumour tender. Ascites; with great effusion; with frequent attacks of diarrhoea.

Urinary

      Profuse urination better headache. Frequent urination with tenesmus. Nocturnal enuresis; in children; from worms. Chronic urethritis; foul discharge from urethra, thick, curdy, purulent, bloody. Pus in urine. nightly incontinence after a blow upon the head. Renal and vesical calculi.

Male

      Foul gonorrhoeal urethral discharge. After coition sensation on right side of head as if paralysed. Itching moist spots on scrotum. Hydrocele. Nocturnal emissions. Sexual appetite increases or decreases. Prostatorrhoea worse straining at stools. Chronic urethritis with twisting pain. Elephantiasis of scrotum. Extreme exhaustion after coition; takes 8 to 10 days to come to normal condition. Painful eruptions on mons veneris.

Female

      Increased menses with paroxysms of icy coldness over whole body. Cutting upward in vagina worse urinating. Leucorrhoea milky, acrid, gushing, worse during urination. Itching of vulva and vagina, which is very sensitive. Bloody discharge worse nursing; between periods. Nipple; retracted like a funnel, sore. Hard lumps, fistula, in mammae. Serous cyst in vagina fistulous opening and abscess about vulva. Threatened abscess of mammae. Scirrhus, with itching. Sharp pains in mammae and uterus. Menses; early, scanty. Amenorrhoea for months. Too violent motion of foetus. Fistulous abscess or fistulous openings in or around vagina with thick, curdy discharge. Salpingitis, with accumulation of pus or serum which escapes from uterus from time to time. Cutting pain around the navel with leucorrhoea. Watery discharge instead of menses. Abortion from weakness or they do not conceive because of weakness. Nausea during coition. Bloody discharge between periods. Sterility. Nymphomania. Itching of pudenda.

Respiratory

      Cough gagging, shaking, retching worse cold drinks; talking, lying and after waking. Dyspnoea; from draft on neck; chronic colds which settle in chest and bring on asthmatic attacks; after being over heated or exertion. Sycotic asthma. Profuse foul, yellow, lumpy sputum; granular; offensive when broken. Cold fails to yield. Slow recovery from pneumonia. Rattling in chest. Stitches in chest, through the back. Shortness of breath, from manual labour; walking fast. Stone-cutter’s affections. Emphysema after pleurisy. Neglected pneumonia. Painless throbbing in sternum.

S.R. Phatak
A pioneer of Homoeopathy in Maharashtra, Dr Shankar Raghunath Phatak was born on 6th September, 1896. He did his MBBS from Grant Medical College, in 1924. Started his practice but somehow not satisfied with Allopathic Treatment.

He was convinced about Homoeopathy while going through Sir William Osler's writings on 'History of Medicine' so switched over to an entirely Homoeopathic Practice in 1932. He also started working on Homoeopathic literature along with his Practice.

He has contributed immensely to homoeopathic literature. He was an ardent follower of Dr Boger. His Repertory is based on Boger's ''A Synoptic key to Materia Medica'.