Nash, and others, quote H. N. Guernsey “one of the best prescribers that ever lived” to the following effect. “No truer remark was ever written than that Carbo vegetabilis is especially adapted to weak and cachectic individuals whose vital powers have become weakened. This remark is made particularly clear in the light of those cases in which disease seems to be engrafted upon the system by reason of the depressing influence of some prior derangement. Thus for instance the patient tells us that asthma has troubled him ever since he had the whooping cough in childhood; he has had dyspepsia ever since a drunken debauch which occurred some years ago; he has never been well since he strained himself so badly (Rhus tox., Calcarea), the strain does not now seem to be the matter, but his present ailments have all appeared since it happened; he sustained an injury some years ago, no traces of which are now apparent, and yet he dates his present complaints from the time of the occurrence of that accident. It will be well for the physician to think of Carbo veg. in similar cases which are numerous, and may present very dissimilar phenomena, as these circumstances being suggestive of Carbo veg. it in all probability will be found to be the appropriate remedy, which the agreement of other symptoms of the case with those of the drug will serve to corroborate.”
The italics of the last phrase are ours, and for this reason: one used to “try” Carbo veg. where the illness dated from, or was ascribed to, a previous sickness or accident. But the results were poor, and the idea dropped out. But where such a history makes you think of Carbo veg. and you find on reference to Materia Medica that the symptoms agree, you will inevitably get your results. That is quite a different story. And that is what Guernsey emphasizes in his last sentence. Often a strange symptom, or a tip, such as the above, suggests a drug which would not have otherwise occurred to you, and when, by reference to Materia Medica, the symptoms are found to agree, you will succeed. There are more ways than one of finding the remedy: and the ultimate court of appeal is MATERIA MEDICA. No Repertory can possibly supersede the actual provings. And it is the peculiar symptoms, when they agree in drug and patient, that lead to a consideration of that drug, and a successful prescription.
One has seen, or knows of, the amazing effect of even a dose of Carbo veg. in GANGRENE, in one case with the most appalling fetor. Kent says of Carbo veg., “Ulceration, with relaxation of the blood vessels and feebleness of the tissues, you need not be surprised, if there is no repair, no tissue-making. So when a part is injured, it will slough. An ulcer, once established, will not heal. The tissues are indolent. Poor tissue-making or none at all. `The blood stagnates in the capillaries.’ You can see how easy it would be for these feeble parts to develop gangrene. Any little inflammation or congestion becomes black or purple, and sloughs easily—that is all that is necessary to make gangrene.”
But short of such end-processes as gangrene, one finds Carbo veg. extraordinarily useful in some cases of VARICOSE ULCERS, and VARICOSE VEINS. In the Carbo. veg. cases there are blackish patches or areas, caused by stagnation in venules and capillaries. It is here that Carbo veg. especially helps (Thuja has something of the sort). The blackness vanishes and the ulcer heals.
Here are some of the uses of Carbo veg. all suggested by, or brought out in, the provings.
Indifference; heard everything without feeling pleasantly or unpleasantly, and without thinking of it.
Headaches: all the provers had headaches, mostly occipital. Headaches, and can’t wear a hat. Hair falls out by the handful.
Face pale: cold: cold sweat on face (Veratrum). Tongue cold and contracted; white; coated; bluish; patched; sticky; black (Arsenicum). Looseness of teeth and bleeding gums. Foul taste and odours from mouth.
One of the mumps medicines (Pilocarpine).
Much catarrh.
Coldness. “cold limbs: cold knees: cold nose: cold feet: cold sweat. Face pale: cold, covered with sweat.”
In chest conditions with much dyspnoea, copious expectoration, exhausting sweat, great coldness–and the patient must be fanned.
Cold breath, coldness of throat, mouth and teeth, but desires to be fanned. Must have more air.
Cold knees at night. Ulcers burn at night;discharge offensive.
Haemorrhages: indolent oozings. “Even the tongue piles up that black exudate, that oozing of black blood from the veins.” “Vomiting of blood with icy cold body and breath.”
Kent says that the abdominal fullness aggravates all the complaints of the body. There may be “even flatulence in the tissues under the skin, so that it will crepitate”.
“Extremely putrid flatus: incarcerated flatus: collects here and there as if in a lump.” “Diarrhoea horridly putrid, with putrid flatulence.”
“One of the greatest medicines we have in the beginning of whooping cough.”
“Attacks of violent spasmodic cough in paroxysms, with cold sweat, cold, pinched face.”
“Pneumonia, third stage, with fetid expectoration, cold breath, cold sweat, desire to be fanned.”
“Feelings of internal heat and burning, with external coldness – -a common feature of Carbo veg.”
Burning in stomach. Great accumulation of flatus: distension of stomach and abdomen.
ASTHMA. Kent gives the Carbo veg. picture of asthma. ‘We see the patient propped up in a chair by an open window, or some member of the family may be fanning him as fast as possible. The face is cold, the nose pinched, the extremities cold, and he is pale as death. Put the hand in front of the mouth and the breath feels cold. The breath is offensive, putrid. Internal burning with external cold is a common feature with Carbo veg.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Indifference; heard everything without feeling pleasantly or unpleasantly, and without thinking of it.
Anxiety; as if oppressed with heat in face; accompanied by shuddering; on closing eyes; in evening, after lying down; on awakening.
FAINTING after sleep; after rising, or while yet in bed, mornings; belching; caused by debilitating losses, or abuse of mercury.
Dull headache in occiput; violent pressive pain in lower portion of occiput; feeling of weight.
HEAD feels heavy as lead.
Hat pressed upon head like a heavy weight, and he continued to feel the sensation even after taking it off, as if head was bound up with a cloth.
Sweat on forehead, often cold.
Burning in EYES.
Parotitis.
Looseness of TEETH, with bleeding of gums, which are very sensitive.
TONGUE turns black.
Tongue cold.
Stomacace.
Great accumulation of flatus in STOMACH.
Stomach feels tense and full; flatulence.
Distension of stomach and abdomen.
Burning in RECTUM.
Itching in anus.
Rawness of chafing of children in hot weather.
Cholera Asiatica, stage of collapse.
After sexual excesses and onanism.
Soreness, itching, and burning and swelling of pudenda.
Debility from nursing. Gastralgia.
Great roughness in larynx, with deep, rough voice, which failed if he exerted it, though without pain in throat.
Breathing short, with cold hands and feet.
Desires to be fanned, must have more air.
Weak, fatigued feeling of CHEST, particularly on waking.
Pneumonia; third stage, fetid sputum; cold breath and sweat; wants to be fanned; threatened paralysis of lungs.
Fine itching eruption on HANDS.
Cold knees, particularly in night.
Ulcer on leg burns at night; discharge offensive; mottled, purple.
Awakens often from COLD limbs, especially cold knees.
Adynamic and gastric fevers, occurring in hot weather from abuse of ice-water and other summer beverages.
Typhoid and yellow fever patients; cyanotic and coldness of limbs, almost in agony of death; impending paralysis of heart and collapse.
Yellow fever; thirst stage, haemorrhages, with great paleness of face, violent headache, great heaviness in limbs and trembling of body.
Swelling of GLANDS, in scrofulous or syphilitic persons.
SEPSIS, sunken features, sallow complexion, hectic, typhoid symptoms.
Blue colour of body, with terrible cardiac anxiety and icy coldness of whole surface. (Cyanosis).
ULCERATIONS, with burning pain.
Vital powers low, VENOUS SYSTEM predominant.
