OUR minute quantities of medicines, as offered the public, are incapable, of harm. We wish you to try Homoeopathy. Millions of laity have done so and thousands are doing so daily in the absence of qualified men who are trained in Homoeopathy. The allopathic profession simply wont learn of Homoeopathy for your benefit. My readers must understand that whilst I am trying to teach you how to aid yourselves, I am not oblivious of the danger of sudden changes for the worse in any case under treatment.
The initial chill” spoken of in common colds” may skin both nose and head and become a throat or chest trouble. A neglected cough may become a pneumonia. So pay attention to very slight cough at once and prescribe homoeopathically with care. Some emphasize that “there is never a chill without microbes”. Forget them as far as in consistent with the law and observe instead the individual symptoms apart from any diagnosis, because Homoeopathy properly administered will cure promptly, or reduce case to a very mild attack.
Purely “throat symptoms can best be treated of in a separate article, but a few word here may be opportune, even if the first symptoms are those of a simple cough. One must be specially careful with any salts of Mercury so often needed in throat cases. The lowest limit with this class of drugs will be the 12th potency unless otherwise instructed. Never with drug go below the lowest n numerals given, and then you may even infants the named drug without fear.
There is another precaution which it is wise to observe, and I am supposing the reader is called upon to treat an illness when there is no doctor within reach, as I know that “HEAL THYSELF” goes to many remote corners of the world. So under these circumstances the attendant of every cough or throat attack will look at the back of the throat at least twice daily, noting the conditions as to swelling, colour and deposits, lest spots and ulcerations appear suddenly, in which cases there are special homoeopathic remedies very potent for cure, microbes notwithstanding.
In presenting the following remedies, it is be understood that every symptom has been produced on the bodies of our human produced” (experimenters), not once, but scores of times, in successive experiment Hence the information is exact and verifiable and therefore their curative range of actions are well known.
As to the subject-Acute Coughs-one must aim to observe whether the cough is deeper than a mere laryngeal or bronchial trouble, but even then the symptom prescribing of Homoeopathy will replace and overcome the chance of a mistaken diagnosis.
The well known and precise spheres of action of our remedies, called by us drug pictures, will cure multiple lesions if proper attention is paid to the patients verbal and the objective symptoms, which are peculiar to his or her ailment. These peculiarities are but as Nature telling the attendant the exact drug needed.
I hope to detail the phases of, and remedies for, pneumonias at some future time, confining this article to acute coughs less serious in character. But no attendant should allow a patient with a descending cough and mounting temperature, accompanied by increasing distress, to run about on duties. Take the temperature, even in so-called slight cases, twice, daily, and record same on a self-made chart if you have not a printed one which will show at a glance how the cases is tending. Put the patient to bed if the fever stands at, or above, 99.5 F. It is the shortest way out of trouble.
The most common practice is to give the medicine every two to four hours. If drops are used, put five or six in a tumbler of water, then give a dessertspoonful at a time and hold this liquid in the mouth a minute. If the medicine is in pill form, then place three to five pills dry under the tongue, spacing them likewise according to the urgency of the case. Thee mouth will taken up the medical stimulus every time. Stop all medicine the moment improvement is seen. Review the case before giving more medicine and choose according to the symptoms noted at the moment.
Following the name of the drugs given, you will find certain figures (3x,m 6x, 12x and 30th potency). These potencies are suggestive only, but lower than the 3x you must not go, while for some few drugs the lowest potency permissible is specially marked, which you will pay attention to. Some people prefer to employ the 2000th potencies. This is in order, as the dose of the drug is still smaller. The 30the was Hahnemanns favourite potency (or strength) towards the end of this career.
If at any time you think that the patients disease-picture corresponds with the drug symptoms but you are not satisfied with the progress of the case, you must vary the potency of the same before changing to another medicine. Patients are not all sensitive to the same drug strength.
So I present a few of the most important homoeopathic drugs in acute coughs, with their clear indications for your study and aid.
Belladonna (3x, 6x or 30th0. The patient requiring this drug stimulus will be the full-blooded type. The keynotes are a bright red, congested, flushed appearance of the face, with dilated pupils. The head is hot with some vertigo and headaches worse with every movement, noise and jar, and worse on lying down pulses bounding with throbbing in the brain and in the carotid arteries (on either side of the throat); the throat appears bright red and the membranes smooth and glistening; cough is short, dry barking, with very cutting pains, as if the flesh were torn, cough is caused by tickling and irritation from the mouth down to the pit of the throat (supra-sternal fossa).
If the 3x or the 6x has been taken for a chill, now give,m or take, the 30th potency every two or three hours until relieved or there is a decided change of symptoms. If a person has previously taken Belladonna at allopathic hands and in their huge dosage, such a patient should begin with the 30th potency immediately. (A cough or cold brought on by having a haircut, which is common with some, will be checked at once by taking a few doses of Belladonna 3x or 6x.).
Bryonia alba (3x, 6x or 30th) cures the coughs of winter and spring or chill after exposure to could dry winds, which display the following symptoms: cough worse on going into warm rooms from the cold air; coughing causes acute pains in distant parts of the body. especially with bursting pains in the head; stitching and stabbing pains in the throat and chest.
Cough is hard, dry, racking, the patient holds chest walls or head to reduce the pains caused by the cough; pleuritic stitches in the chest, very scanty expectoration, or none at all; urine scant and dark; great, for large quantities of water at a time; excessive dryness of all mucous membranes, lips and tongue parched and cracked,m stools large and dry as if baked (if lungs seem to be involved seriously, question pneumonia and take necessary precautions). Bryonia is the most frequently called for remedy we homoeopaths have the beginning of a pleurisy or pneumonia, which will be explained in a subsequent article.
Iodine (6x, 12x or 30th). NOTE:-Lower than the }x is not advised. This and higher potencies act much better. For this remedy the patients voice will be very hoarse, the cough dry, raw barking with wheezing and saw-like respiration. Children grasp their throat on coughing, face pale and cold, tickling causing cough, lower down than for Belladonna, being behind the breast bone (sternum), difficult inspiration, type of patient most often requiring Iodine is a very thin, scrawny, dark-skinned individual, with ravenous appetite, yet remaining thin.
Rumex crispus (3x, 6x or 30th). This remedy cures the dry, short cough caused by a tickling at the pit of the throat, just above the collar bone, which is teasing, persistent, incessant and fatiguing and which is much worse from breathing cool or cool air, so much so that the patient will breath through a handkerchief during the day and breathe under the bedclothes at night in order to obtain warm and moist air which gives decided relief from this coughing. Deep breathing starts the cough at once. There is very tough mucus in the throat which cannot be coughed or hawked up.
Aralia racemosa (3x, 6x or 30th). This cures the spasmodic, dry, wheezing coughs which come on at night on lying down or after the first sleep, caused by a tickling low down. The patient has to sit up when coughing violently, whistling breathing, worse on inspiration, which is very constricted; sense of impending suffocation. Sputum generally salty.
Spongia tosta (6x, 12x or 30th). NOTE:-Better results are obtained with the 6x and higher. This cures the extremely hard, barking, racking, ringing, sawing, metallic sounding coughs, which also include the “sawing wood” sounds croupy in fact, worse from deep breathing, suffocative feeling, great hoarseness, soreness and burning; all symptoms worse from talking, reading or swallowing. This remedy is excellent for the hard stage of croup, but the later, or loose, stage of this croup needs Hepar sulphuris.
