Aconite, remember, is a very great FEVER remedy: but is only the fever remedy of Aconite fevers. Kent says, “Never give Aconite in blood-poisoning, such as we find in scarlet fever, typhoid, etc. We find nothing of the violent symptoms of Aconite in such conditions. The nervous irritability of Aconite is never present, but the opposite; the stupor, the laziness, the purple skin: whereas Aconite is bright-red. Aconite has no symptoms like the slow types of continued fevers. The Aconite fever is generally one short, sharp attack. Some remedies have periodicities, or waves: Aconite has no such thing. The most violent attack of fever will subside in a night if Aconite is the remedy.”
The sensations of the various drugs are suggestive and helpful, as, for instance, Aconite tingles, Lachesis hammers, Arsenicum may stitch with hot needles, Bryonia, Kali carb., and Spigelia stitch and stab, the first and the last on movement especially; Kali carb. independently of movement also, and so on.
We will conclude with extracts from the actual provings of Aconite, given in black type of Hahnemann, in Allen’s Encyclopedia and in Hering’s Guiding Symptoms; that is to say, symptoms again and again brought out in healthy provers, and again and again found curative in the sick of a like sickness.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS (Hahnemann and Allen)
Nightly raging delirium.
Variable humour, gay, then dejected.
He did all things hurriedly.
Great vexation about trifles.
Great anxiety: great internal anxiety.
Inconsolable anxiety.
Extremely disposed to be cross.
Fear of approaching death.
Lamentable fears of approaching death.
Apprehension : sadness: solicitude.
Fear of some misfortune happening to him.
Inconsolable anxiety and piteous howling, with complaints and reproaches about (often trivial) evils.
Excessive restlessness and tossing about for hours.
Very restless nights. Restless tossing in bed.
Palpitation of the heart and great anxiety, increased heat of body, especially in the face. She is as if stupefied from flying redness in the face.
Unsteadiness of ideas: if she wants to pursue a train of thought a second chases this away, and a third again displaces this, until she becomes quite confused.
Want of memory, as if what he had just done were a dream, and he can scarcely recall what it was.
Weakness of memory.
HEAD in front as if nailed up.
Pain in intolerable, drives him crazy.
Fullness and heaviness in forehead, as if an out-pressing weight lay there, and as if all would be forced out at the forehead.
Heat in head. Burning headache as if brain were agitated by boiling water.
Fullness in head. Semilateral drawing in head.
Throbbing left side forehead: while strong beats occur in the right side by fits.
Vertigo: staggers especially to the right.
Vertigo with nausea, especially rising from sitting.
Vertigo worse shaking head, whereby complete darkness comes before the eyes.
Dilated pupils. Photophobia.
Inflammation EYES with lachrymation, which causes so much pain and fright that he wishes for death.
Inflammation of eyes, extremely painful.
Great sensitiveness to NOISE.
EPISTAXIS.
Great sensibility of olfactory nerve.
Creeping pain in CHEEKS.
Sensation of the face growing large.
Penetrating fine stitches in tip of TONGUE.
Tongue swollen.
Dryness of mouth.
Burning in THROAT.
Great thirst.
Empty eructations. Nausea.
Vomits lumbrici.
Inclination to vomit, as if had eaten something disgustingly sweet or greasy.
Violent vomiting.
Pressive pain, STOMACH, like a weight.
Tensive pressing pain like a weight in stomach and hypochondria.
Swollen, distended ABDOMEN, like ascites.
Flatulent colic in hypogastrium as if he had taken a flatus- producing purgative.
Burning in umbilical region.
Sensitiveness of abdomen to touch, as from slight peritoneal inflammation. Burning in abdomen.
Cutting in intestines.
Great swelling of abdomen which is painful to touch.
White STOOL.
Pain in rectum. Shooting and aching in anus.
Anxious desire to urinate.
URINE hot, dark-coloured.
Fetid breath.
Sensitiveness of LARYNX to touch.
Hoarseness. Hoarse, dry, loud cough.
Expectoration of bright red blood. Haemoptysis.
Difficult respiration.
Squeezing pain in chest.
Creeping pain in chest. Stitches in chest with cough.
Anxiety about HEART. Palpitation and anxiety.
Pulse contracted, full, powerful, febrile, exceeding 100 beats to minute.
Rheumatic pain nape of NECK: only on moving.
Violent, shooting, digging pain left of spine.
Bruised pain in articulation of lowest lumbar vertebra with sacrum: sacrum feels hacked off.
Cool sweat on PALMS.
Creeping pain in fingers.
Coldness of feet.
Weakness and laxity of the ligaments of all joints.
Yawns often without being sleepy.
Light SLEEP.
Very restless nights: tossing in bed. Excessive restlessness.
Anxious dreams: wakes with a start.
Chill of whole body, with hot forehead: hot ear lobe, and internal dry heat.
Slight perspiration all over body.
Very fine stinging, or stinging burning pain in many parts, skin.
Redness and heat of one, coldness and paleness of the other cheek.
Towards evening, burning heat in head and face, redness of cheeks and out-pressing headache.
Towards evening, dry heat in face with anxiety.
NOTABLE OR QUEER SYMPTOMS AND INDICATIONS
Constriction at throat. Scratching and constriction. Dryness, as if something had struck in throat.
He frequently pulled at the throat.
The abdomen seemed as if full of water.
Burning feeling from stomach up through oesophagus to mouth.
White faeces and red urine.
Slight sensation of splashing in bladder when urinating.
Numb sensation, small of back into legs.
Whole body sensitive to touch: child will not allow itself to be moved: it whines.
Most of the symptoms are accompanied by shivering and anxiety.
Fine pricking, as from needles here and there on body.
Convulsions of teething children: heat, startings, twitching of single muscles. Child gnaws its fists: frets; cries.
Violent chills, dry heat.
After a violent chill, dry heat with difficult breathing, lancinating pain through chest.
Inflammatory fevers and inflammations, with heat, dry and skin, violent thirst, red face, or alternate red and pale face; groaning and tossing about; shortness of breath; congestion to head.
Bad effects from suppressed sweats, etc.
Pain intolerable. Numbness: tinglings; formications.
Measles; dry barking cough; painful hoarseness; cannot bear light.
Tongue red.
Local congestions and inflammations.
Neuritis with tingling. Gastric catarrh from chilling stomach with ice water when heated. (Arsenicum).
