Pains in throat, chest and head are sharp, cutting and coughing causes splitting head and chest pains, so that patients will hold those parts to lessen such pains. The cough is always hard and dry with little or no expectoration. Pains shoot about the chest on coughing. The patient will be very constipated with hard dry stools, as if baked. Tongue thickly coated. Taste insipid or bitter. Patient exceedingly irritable or angry. Headache commences in the morning on first opening the eyes, with feeling as if head would split open.
(4) Arsenicum album (6x, 30). The patients requiring this remedy will have great and sudden prostration and sinking of vital forces, with great mental disturbance, such as anguish, and intense restlessness. Pains and sensations are described as “burning” in character. Intense thirst, but for little sips only (the opposite of Bryonia). The patient, though burning, craves heat, hot drinks, etc. All symptoms much worse from 1 to 3 a.m. and worse from cold air and cold things; all symptoms better from warm air, rooms and applications. Whilst complaining of internal heat there are many shiverings and creepy sensations of chilliness.
There are often intense shudderings even when burning with internal heat. Heavy and rheumatic pains in the head; profuse watery and corrosive discharge from the nose, with burning sensations. Severe aching and burning in the limbs; oppression in the chest with difficulty in breathing. Eyes burn and water, with scalding tears. Cant bear light.
Dry fatiguing cough, worse after sundown and especially after midnight, and after drinking. Stools are generally small, dark and offensive, with much prostration after each stool. Fever runs high. (N.B.-Be careful of pneumonic complications suddenly setting in. Such devitalized patients must use bed pan for safety.) In passing I should like to say to dog-lovers that this remedy is oftenest required in “Distemper”, because of the perfect “similarity” of the disease and drug symptoms. Dont forget this.
(5) Veratrum viride (6x to 30). Note that this acts more quickly in 6x and higher. If a serious case has intense fever with very foul breath, and note well, with a narrow red streak down the centre of the tongue with twitchings and spasms, it will be well to read up this drug in a Materia Medica to see if patients other symptoms fit in with what is recorded. It is all important in many grave cases.
(6) Rhus toxicodendron (3x, 6x and 30). To start with, note how the tongue differs from the tongue of all other remedies given. The patient will have a triangular red tip to the tongue. The rest of the tongue is coated and very dry. The patient is very restless, wants to change position continually in order to obtain relief of the aches and pains. Movement only affords temporary relief of symptoms.
Complains of lameness and stiffness. Severe cases, untreated, would run on to stupor with mild persistent muttering or even delirium. Great sensitiveness to cold air or draughts. Exposing hands out of bed in cold room will bring on coughing fits. Cough is dry, teasing, continuous and very fatiguing. The reader must consult a Materia Medica for further details.
(7) Euphrasia (3x, 6x or 30). This is the “Eye-bright” of the countryside.
(8) Allium cepa (3x, 6x or 30). The wild Mediterranean-shore onion.
These are two very important influenza remedies, each of which has a clear and opposite indication, impossible to confuse. Euphrasia has acrid tears and NON-excoriating discharge from the nose. allium cepa has copious watery, and extremely acrid nose discharge, and whilst the tears may feel to burn, they do NOT excoriate, and the Allium symptoms are all better in the open air. Both these remedies have many other influenza symptoms which space forbids me to detail. Study your Materia Medica to enable you to choose the curative remedy.
(9) Baptisia (3x, 6x or 30). To close this abbreviated lesson I must draw your attention to a totally different and extremely fatal type of influenza, if not treated homoeopathically. It covers and typifies the fatal epidemic of 1918, when thousands of lives were lost because orthodoxy did not know and would not study homoeopathy. Let us see how this drug acted in 1918. The late Dr. Byres Moir, one of Britains best and known by my family since 1876, though vastly “over-age” was placed in medical command of an Atlantic transport during the War.
During the height of that epidemic scores of poor American soldiers were sewn up and consigned to the ocean from all the transports-but one! Dr. Moir told me that he did not lose a single soldier, due to his being able to “diagnose Baptisia for his flu cases”. I asked him why he had not reported this remarkable success to our journals. He replied that he could not, because he was a public servant in the employ of the Government. The “disease-picture” of that type of influenza, which fits the “drug-picture” absolutely, is as follows, and some medical readers will recognize the precise similarities.
The symptoms are somewhat of a typhus- typhoid nature, putrid, highly septic, and infectious. The mind is confused, running fast to stupor; face dark to dusky, with a heavily besotted expression. Eyes bleared. Early in the disease the mind becomes confused; falls to sleep before he can answer a question, or he stops in the middle of a sentence. Mouth putrid, ulcerated, with foetid breath. The tongue yellow at first, becomes darkly streaked down the middle, with many red papillae standing out edges dark red and shiny.
Tongue soon becomes cracked and ulcerated, with tendency to putrid ulcers throughout the mouth, and with sordes (back patches) on lips and teeth. Breath becomes terribly foul, in fact all secretions and discharges (urine, stools, and sweat) are extremely offensive. Some patients think that they are in several pieces, and feel around the bed, trying to collect the scattered portions.
Can only swallow liquids. Solids gag. Breathing is difficult. Lungs feel compressed. Body feels sore and bruised. Livid spots and areas appear all over the body and extremities, and without Baptisia these cases are doomed. (Compare our Lachesis for under- skin hemorrhages, especially in Yellow fever) Remember Dr. Moir did not lose a case of Septic flu, or diagnose it what you will. What a pity for humanity that orthodoxy wont study homoeopathy!.
