KENT says, “From the time of Hahnemann to the present day this has been one of the polycrests, one of the most frequently indicated medicines, and one of the most extensively used. In the old School it is most extensively abused, in the form of Fowler’s solution.
“Arsenic affects every part of man: it seems to exaggerate or depress almost all his faculties, to excite or disturb all his functions it has certain prevailing and striking features. Anxiety, restlessness, prostration, burning and cadaveric odours are prominent characteristics. The surface of the body is pale, cold, clammy and sweating, and the aspect cadaveric.
“The Arsenicum patient with this mental state is always freezing, hovers around the fire, cannot get clothing enough to keep warm, a great sufferer from the cold.
“Arsenic produces a tendency to bleeding. The patient bleeds easily and may bleed from any place. Anywhere that mucous membranes exist there may be haemorrhage (Phosphorus).
“Many of the mental troubles, as well as the physical troubles, come on and are increased at certain times most of the sufferings of Arsenicum are worse from 1-2 p.m. and from 1-2 a.m. After midnight, very soon after midnight sometimes, his sufferings begin, and from 1-2 o’clock they are intensified.
“Sensitiveness is a feature of Arsenic: sensitiveness to smell and touch, and every other circumstance; oversensitiveness of all the senses oversensitiveness to the circumstances and surroundings of the room. The Arsenicum patient is an extremely fastidious patient. Hering once described him as `the gold-headed cane patient’. If this is carried out in a woman who is sick in bed she is in great distress if every picture on the wall does not hang perfectly straight. A morbid fastidiousness has its similimum in Arsenic.” (Nux.)
Arsenic has “Rigors and chills of a very violent character, and at such times he describes a feeling as if the blood flowing through the vessels were ice water. He feels a rushing through the body of ice-cold waves. When the fever comes on and he is intensely hot from head to foot, before the sweat has appeared, he feels that boiling water is going through the blood vessels.”
Kent points a peculiar feature of the Arsenicum thirst. “During the chill, there is no thirst, except for hot drinks: during the heat there is thirst, little and often, for enough water to moisten the mouth, which is almost no thirst; and during the sweat there is thirst for large drinks. He will say, `I can drink the well dry,'”
NASH gives the characteristic symptoms of Arsenic thus–
“Great anguish and restlessness, driving from place to place.
Great and sudden prostration: sinking of vital force.
Intense burning pains.
Intense thirst: drinks often, but little. Cold water disagrees.
Vomiting and stool simultaneously: worse for eating and drinking.
Dyspnoea worse on motion; especially ascending.
Worse in cold air (except the head pains)– from cold things–cold applications:–1 to 3 a.m. From movement.
Better by warm air or room, or hot applications: relieved by sweat.”
Arsenicum is pre-eminently one of the remedies that cures by bringing back–to cure–old suppressed skin troubles. Even asthma is seen to cure up, with the return of an old eruption, under Arsenicum. Nash gives such a case.
He once had a case of severe gastralgia, and prescribed Arsenicum because the pains came on at midnight, lasting till 3 a.m., during which time the patient had to walk the floor in agony, and there was great burning in the stomach. She had but one slight attack after taking Arsenicum, but when he saw her next she asked whether that medicine would send out “salt rheum?” And then he discovered that she had had eczema of the hands cured by ointment; and he told her that she could have back the pain in her stomach any time she wanted it, by again suppressing the eruption. “She did not want it.”
He says, “The pains of the stomach are terrible, and aggravated by the least food or drink, especially if cold. Abdominal pains are also intense, causing the patient to turn and twist in all possible shapes and directions. Diarrhoea of all kinds of stools, from simple watery to black, bloody and horribly offensive finally, haemorrhoids. But in all these affections, of the whole alimentary tract, we are apt to find the characteristic burning of this remedy and the not less characteristic amelioration from heat: with usually the midnight aggravation.”
He says Arsenicum is particularly efficacious in lung troubles, where breathing is very much oppressed. Wheezing and frothy expectoration. Patient cannot lie down; must sit up to breathe, can’t move without being greatly put out of breath. The air passages seem greatly constricted. “It is especially useful,” he says, “in asthmatic affections caused or aggravated by suppressed eruptions, or pneumonia from retrocedent measles–even chronic lung troubles from suppressed eczema.”
He says the symptom, “Acute, sharp, fixed or darting pain in apex and through upper third of right lung” is a gem. (Burnett also emphasizes this somewhere.)
Of the Arsenicum WEAKNESS he says, You may say it is common for sick people to be weak. True, but the Arsenicum patient is weak out of all proportion to the rest of his trouble, or apparently so: and it is a general prostration, not local.
Arsenicum affects, as he points out, all the tissues.
Attacks the blood, causing septic changes, exanthemata, ecchymoses, petechiae, etc.
Attacks the veins; varices burn like fire, especially at night.
Attacks serous membranes, causing copious serous effusions.
Attacks glands, which indurate and suppurate.
Causes inflammatory swellings, with burning lancinating pains.
Attacks the periosteum.
Attacks joints causing pale swellings, burning pains, etc.
Causes general anasarca; skin pale, waxy, or earth coloured; here great thirst (Apis none).
Causes rapid emaciation; atrophy in children.
Causes ulcerations, constantly extending in breadth. They burn like fire, pain even in sleep; discharge may be copious or scanty, the base blue, black or lardaceous.
Anthrax burning like fire (Anthracinum), cold blue skin dry as parchment, peeling off in large flakes.
Gangrene, better from heat (worse Secale).
(Indeed one of Hahnemann’s “polycrests!”)
Nash adds, “Notwithstanding this, Arsenicum is not a panacea. Like every other remedy it must be indicated by its similar symptoms, or failure is the outcome.
“Its great keynotes are RESTLESSNESS–BURNING–PROSTRATION-and MIDNIGHT AGGRAVATION.”.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Very violent delirium, especially at night, with great restlessness.
Her desire exceeds her need (eats and drinks more than is good for her; walks further than she needs to do).
Despairs and weeps: imagines no one can help him, that he must die; is cold and chilly, and afterwards generally weak.
Anguish. Excessive anguish.
Anguish and despair driving from one place to another, for relief.
With great anguish he turns and tosses to and fro in his bed.
Anxiety at 3 o’clock after midnight.
Violent anxiety at 3 o’clock in the night; he now felt hot, now as if he would vomit.
Dread of death coming on suddenly when alone.
The greatest fear and anguish (sees ghosts day and night).
(Great heaviness in the head; it goes off in the open air; but returns as soon as he enters the room.)
Burning in eyes.
Eyelids oedematous, often completely closing the eyes.
Corrosive tears, making cheeks and eyelids sore.
Excoriating discharge from nostrils.
Watery discharge from nose–went off in the open air; watery nasal discharge causes smarting and burning, as if nostrils, were made sore by it.
Face expressive of genuine mental agony.
Deathly colour of face. Pale, yellow cachectic look.
Swelling of face, or sunken face.
(Tongue furred, with a red streak down middle) and redness of tip.
Dryness of tongue.
Dry and brown-coated tongue.
Feeling of great dryness in mouth, with violent thirst; he drinks little at a time.
Burning in mouth along the pharynx and in the pit of the stomach.
Loathing of food.
Excessive thirst: drinking did not refresh him.
Excessive thirst: he drinks much, but little at a time.
(Long-lasting hiccough) at the hour when the fever ought to have come.
Nausea.
(Vomiting violent and incessant) and excited by any substance taken into the stomach.
(Even water is) immediately thrown off the stomach.
Vomiting every time after drinking.
The vomiting brings no relief.
(Frequent vomiting) with apprehensions of death.
Anxiety in the pit of the stomach.
Burning in the stomach.
Violent burning pains in the stomach.
In the stomach fearful burning pains.
Swollen abdomen.
Distention and pain in abdomen.
Pains in abdomen with unbearable anxiety: with intolerable anguish.
Burnings pains in abdomen.
The evacuations excoriated the skin about anus.
Burning like fire at anus.
Purging and extreme coldness of extremities. Constipation.
Burning in urethra during micturition.
Involuntary micturition.
Scanty emission, and burning during emission.
Frequent oppressive shortness of breath in every position of the body, causing anxiety. (Chest.)
