Eruptions on face; ulcers spread; itching and ulceration among the whiskers; whiskers fall out. Disturbances from shaving. In girls and boys acne and ulcerating, pustular eruptions on face. Nitric acid stands high in this condition. Unhealthy skin everywhere, small wounds and bruises suppurate, and there is lack of healing. Waxy face; yellow, sallow skin, and sickly cachectic state such as those have who are going in consumption or cancer. It has the puffy, waxy, transparent face of albuminuria. It has cured diabetes.
This drug will keep the oculist away many times. Our oculists are a poor set, as a rule; they rarely attempt to apply the remedies to a condition of the eyes. Ulceration of the eyes, of the cornea, inflammation with ulcerous patches. White patches as a result of bad healing.
There is never any excuse for making a local application to the eyes. You do not need atropine to dilate the pupil in iritis. The iritis is a symptom, and being the last to come will be the first to go under the proper remedy. There will be no adhesions; that is, there will be no results of the inflammation. It is an acute condition and must be treated as such.
Whenever you say that atropine is necessary, it is an acknowledgment that you do not know your Materia Medica. I remember a case where an oculist was called in to satisfy the family. He pretended to be a homoeopath, but he said to the physician attending to the case: “This is a case of syphilitic iritis. You must use atropine or you will be responsible,” and there was talk of paying all around.
The physician would not use the atropine. He came to me, and on a study of the symptoms he saw that Staphisagria was the remedy and Staphisagria removed the symptoms at once. All sorts of ulceration of the eyelids, of the corner of the eyes, and of the surface of the eyes with sticking, jagging pains. “Ophthalmia neonatorum; scrofulous, gonorrhoeal, syphilitic.” The worst forms are easily cured if the symptoms agree.
Fistulous pipes anywhere that will not heal; fistula in ano; abscesses that have formed do not heal and flow from fistulous openings. Diseased bone with fistulous openings. It so improves the integrity of the bone that the opening is no longer necessary. A patient, by operation, had a part of the femur removed, but the fistula would not heal, although it was known that there was no bone there. The patient had not had any remedy. Nitric acid cured him. The tissues will not heal, there is no repair going on.
Full of rheumatic pains and aches. The pains cease suddenly and other complaints come on. Pains again come on suddenly and extend all over the body, from change of weather, taking cold, a cold bath, or getting wet. Pale and sickly people with gouty attacks; in old Calcarea subjects. Pains with swellings, swollen joints, sticky, tearing, tingling pains in joints at night, especially in old syphilitic and sycotic rheumatism. Ulceration at the root of the nails, felons, inflammations at the root of the nails; ulcers.
The Nitric acid patient is fetid, offensive, full of odours; the discharges smell strong, the urine smells like that of a horse; there is offensive leucorrhoea, offensive nasal discharge, offensive breath; fetid footsweat, sour at times, but more often of a strong pungent odour. Coloured people who take Nitric acid, if their other symptoms agree, lose their offensive odour.
“Great weakness, trembling; shocks on going on to sleep, depressed in spirits.” Haemorrhages bright, profuse; bleeding of all mucous membrane. Post scarlatinal complaints; dropsies.
I have given you the generals. When the little symptoms you find in the text are present without the generals Nitric acid will not cure. These common symptoms may be found in any remedy.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.