Colch is aggravated by cold, damp weather, by the cold rains in the Fall it has also a summer rheumatism. Heat will slack up the flow of urine or the quantity of solids in the urine.
A striking feature running through the remedy is its tendency to move about from one joint to another, from one side to another, from below upwards, or from above downwards:-with swelling or without swelling: first here, then there.
Another striking feature is, the general dropsical conditions. Dropsy when hands and feet swell and pit: dropsy of abdominal cavity: of pericardium, pleurae, of serous sacs with pale urine. Whether copious or scanty, still it is pale
Rheumatic conditions that have gone on some time and end in cardiac troubles the cardiac condition is but a continuation of the rheumatic state.
Colchicum has cured dropsy after scarlet fever.
All complaints- of head–bowel-liver-stomach-are worse from motion: he dreads to move: almost as marked as we find in Bryonia. Chilly, sensitive to cold (rev. of Ledum). Colch is better for heat, for wrapping up, for being warm.
A curious symptom, touch and motion bring on a painful sensation in the body as of electric vibrations.
Is almost constantly sweating, even with fever, and sometimes the sweats is cold.
Then, the nausea, gagging and retching at the bare mention of food he is so sensitive to odours that he smells things which others do not smell (just as Coffea hears sounds that others cannot hear.) He smells odours from which he gets sick in typhoid, prostrated beyond the usual, he cannot take milk, cannot take raw eggs, cannot take soup, because he gags at the mere thought of them. He has gone on for days, and his family are afraid that he is going to starve. This enters into his very life, because it involves hatred to odour, and becomes a general. Do not say “food” in the presence of a Colchicum patient, but give him Colchicum first, and pretty soon he will want something to eat. It removes that hatred of food. What a vital thing it must be when a man hates that very thing that will keep him alive.
He may have much thirst, or no thirst, or these may alternate.
Nausea and inclination to vomit by swallowing saliva.
He describes the bloating of the farmer’s cows that have got into a fresh clover patch, and become so distended you are afraid they are going to explode. Farmers have been known to put a knife into the pouch of the cow between the last short ribs to let the wind out: but put a few pellets of Colchicum on the tongue of each cow, and it will be put a few minutes before that wind will get out of there-to your surprise and the farmer’s. When the abdomen is violently distended and tympanitic, Colchicum is often a suitable remedy.
Then the diarrhoeic stools that are like jelly-they form in the pan a solid mass of jelly putrid, dark, bloody mucus, watery, jelly-like mucus, passes as a thin watery flow, but soon as it cools, forms a jelly.
Young doctors, poring over the provings of Materia Medica, often think that everything comes under every drug:-they are so much alike-how to distinguish? But, get their characteristics and peculiarities of action, and each one stands out distinctly as an entity-almost a personality: and when you have once grasped that personality, and as it were made friends with the drug, you will recognize, as with your friends, not only what he looks like, but his little tricks of manner and speech, how he will behave on all occasions-in regard to noises-foods-friendly overtures-rudeness- sympathy-his restlessness, or placidity-his extreme neatness and order, or the opposite-his easy emotion-chilliness-meteoric reactions-his attitude, in short, to environment physical and mental. You will see him in friends and patients, when prescribing becomes comparatively easy, and successful.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Memory weakened, ideas not so clear as usual: forgetfulness, absence of mind.
External impressions, bright light, STRONG ODOURS, contact, misdeeds of others, make him quite beside himself.
Strong odours make him quite beside himself.
Aversion to FOOD: loathing the sight and still more the smell of
it.
No thirst.
Smell of cooking nauseates to faintness.
Nausea, eructations and copious vomiting of mucus and bile.
Violent retching, followed by copious and forcible vomiting of food and then of bile.
Violent burning in epigastrium.
Very painful urging to STOOL. Only a little faeces passed. then followed transparent, gelatinous, and very membranous mucus, with some relief of the pain in the abdomen.
Extremely painful stools.
Discharge from bowels like gelatine.
Watery. jelly-like mucus passes from anus with violent spasm in sphincter.
Bloody stools with scraping from intestines and protrusion of anus.
Autumn dysentery, with discharges of white mucus and violent tenesmus; bloody stools, mingled with a slimy substance.
Bloody discharge from bowels with deathly nausea from smelling cooking. Tenesmus in rectum.
Discharge from bowels containing a large quantity of small white shreddy particles.
Pain in region of KIDNEYS.
Urine like ink.
Stinging and tearing in muscles of CHEST: pleurodynia.
Oppression of chest, dyspnoea, a tensive feeling in chest, sometimes high, sometimes low down.
Oppression of chest with violent palpitation.
Hydrothorax with oedema of hands and feet.
Pulse thread-like, imperceptible.
Effusion into pericardium after inflammatory affections of heart.
A paralytic pain in the ARMS, so violent he cannot hold the lightest thing firmly.
Lameness after suddenly checked sweat, particularly on FEET, by getting wet all over.
At the beginning of ACUTE RHEUMATISM, before fully developed.
Pains in shoulder and hip-joints, and in all bones, with difficulty in moving head and tongue.
Great weakness and exhaustion, as after exertion, cannot move head from pillow without help.
Fall dysentery.
Constant chilly feeling, even when sitting near the stove; with flushes of heat.
Pain goes from left to right, in gout.
Rheumatic pains excited by or worse for cold, damp weather.
Acute dropsy with renal affections.
Uric acid diathesis.
Gout in persons of vigorous constitution.
NOTABLE SYMPTOMS, IN ITALICS, OR PECULIAR.
Can read, but cannot understand even a short sentence: cannot understand the words: vision is heightened, but intellectual faculties dulled.
His sufferings seem intolerable: external impressions, light noise, strong smells, contact, etc., disturb his temper.
Smell morbidly acute; odour of meat broth causes nausea and that of fresh eggs nearly fainting: excessive sensitiveness of smell to cooking.
Tongue: bright red: heavy, stiff and numb: cold: moved and projected with difficulty.
Enormous appetite-for different things: but as soon as he sees them, or still more smells them, he shudders form nausea, and is unable to eat anything.
Obliged to bend himself up and lie quite still the whole day without the slightest movement, else he was seized with the most violent vomiting.
Epigastrium pierced by a knife.
Stomach deranged after eating too many eggs.
Colic, worse by eating; after flatulent food, great distension; better when bending double.
Distension of gas under short ribs
In inflammatory irritation of abdominal viscera, by metastasis from gout.
Profuse watery stools, in hot damp weather, or in the autumn.
Long-lasting, agonizing pain in rectum and anus, after stool causing screams and crying.
Haemorrhage from anus in autumnal cold damp weather.
Child falls asleep on the vessel as soon as the tenesmus ceases.
Nephritis: bloody, ink-like, albuminous urine.
Urging to urinate; discharge of hot, highly coloured urine; burning and tenesmus.
Night cough with involuntary spurting out of urine.
Stinging pain, or knife pains region of heart.
Serous effusion in chest, in rheumatic or gouty persons.
Hydropericardium.
Heart disease, following gout or acute rheumatism.
Violent writhing in regions of loins and urinary passages.
Knees strike together; can hardly walk.
Feet feel heavy: difficult to lift feet or go upstairs.
Cramps feet, especially soles. Heels contracted.
Pain in ball of left big toe.
Violent pains in arms and legs: cannot use limbs.
Drawing, tearing pains in limbs, changing places.
Stiffness joints, and swelling hands and feet.
Attacks of rheumatism break forth suddenly and disappear suddenly: Pains shifting: acute attacks merging into chronic form, or during chronic form acute attacks set in.
Pains in joints, especially if knocked: stubbing the toes hurts exceedingly.
Great irritability with the pains: very sensitive to touch: the least vibration makes pain unbearable.
METASTASES to internal organs.
Dropsy of internal organs and cavities-hydropericardium- hydrothorax-ascites-hydrometra.
Stands in close relation to fibrous tissues: redness, swelling, heat, etc., not tending to suppuration; quickly changing location.
Inflammation of joints with excessive HYPERAESTHESIA, slightest concussion of air, floor or bed renders the pains unbearable. Large joints intensely red and hot acts more on the small joints.
It hastens relapses of gout if abused.
