Great heat internal and external, with great nervousness.
SWEAT day and night, as soon as one sleep, s or even when closing eyes.
Swelling and induration of GLANDS, with tingling and stitches, after contusions and bruises.
With all his efforts he could not keep off SLEEP: must lie down and sleep; or he only gets sleep after midnight.
QUEER SYMPTOMS; SUGGESTIVE SYMPTOMS; CURED SYMPTOMS
Like to wear his best clothes, makes useless purchases; cares very little for things, wastes or ruins them: done not want to work, prefers to play.
Dislike to society, yet a dread to be alone.
Superstitious and full of fear, with frequent thoughts of death.
Feeling at times of a foreign body under skull, in vertex.
Sensation in right half brain as of a large foreign body.
Headache with inability to urinate.
Tremulous look as if eyes were trembling.
Eyes feel as if pulled outwards from nose.
Lids only opened with great difficulty, and when done, a flood of hot tears spurts out.
Smell of animals in back part of nose.
Ulcers on face and lips: cancer of cheek : cancerous tumours lips and face. Cancer lip from pressure of pipe.
Spasmodic constriction of throat.
Lump in throat, with involuntary attempts to swallow.
Graves, coffee, salt, sour things. Aversion to bread.
Violent vomiting; of mucus; black masses like coffee grounds, of chocolate-coloured masses.
Pain in liver with accumulation of ear-wax.
Acute inflammation of pancreas.
Hypogastric pain goes down legs.
Twitchings right side face, with curious noise in larynx.
Loose cough with inability to expectorate: must swallow what is raised.
Clothes lie like a weight on chest and shoulders.
Tickling behind sternum.
Sharp thrusts from sternum to spine.
Violent palpitation, with pain as if knife were thrust through occiput with each pulsation.
Itching breast and nipple. Inflammation of breasts with stitches above nipple.
Mammary induration following breast abscess, remains without change for two years.
Hard and painful lumps in mammae.
Stony hard lumps in breast after contusions.
Hypertrophy of breast, followed by atrophy.
Complete atrophy of mammary gland, leaving a flaccid, bag-like skin.
Peculiar tumour in centre of back, as large as a cherry, on half-an-inch pedicle: tumor and pedicle bluish.
After falling from a height on back, pain in lower part and small of back, worse laughing, sneezing, taking a quick breath.
Axillary glands swollen. Arms when lifted fall like inert masses and remain immovable.
Painless loss of power, lower limbs: faltering, vacillating gait; staggers as if drunk: drags legs after him.
Red spots on calves, turning yellow or green, as from contusion; preventing movement.
Heaviness, weariness, bruised sensation in all limbs.
Paralysed feeling: difficulty in using limbs: unable to walk.
Unpainful lameness: trembling of limbs.
Paralysis of lower, then upper extremities: or reverse.
Numbness of fingers and toes: fingers look as if dead.
Letting limbs hang down relieves pain.
Sick-headache worse when lying in bed:-worse after going to bed: must sit up or walk about for relief.
Violent pain in stomach, better knee-elbow position.
Vertigo downward motion.
Paralysis of old people, especially old women.
Paraplegia after concussion of spine.
Five minutes after falling asleep wakes up bathed in sweat: most profuse on head and upper part of body.
Always feels worse after going to bed: must sit up or walk about.
Blueness of whole body.
Blackish ulcers; bloody, fetid, ichorous discharges, especially after contusions.
In the Repertory we find, “Coldness in anus during flatus and stool, Conium” And CLARKE gives a case of the cure by Conium of diarrhoea where the stools were cold. (Nit. acid has cold urine.)
HALE WHITE, in his Materia Medica, Pharmacy, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, discusses Conium and its constituents for the benefit of medical students. Its therapeutics, external and internal, occupy about half a page. His main point is the uselessness and unreliability of its derivatives. He ends his little paragraph on its uses and uselessnesses with, “Conium has been given in spasmodic diseases, as whooping-cough, chorea, tetanus, asthma, and epilepsy, but in all it does little or no good.” No wonder Old School doctors are such poor prescribers. What they are not taught about Materia Medica would fill a whole bookshelf of big volumes.
But the action of Conium would, of course, appeal to the unenlightened medical, mind, for spasm-because it paralysis: to us it makes appeal, for paralysis. It is evidently a poor palliative: but a magnificent remedy-where the symptoms, in drug and patient, agree. Groping in the dark is poor amusement compared with walking in the light!-that is, if you want to get along. But that mental darkness which hates the light, and refuses to come to it is the most hopeless of all. For the darkness of might is dispelled by the rising sun: and yields to the glad light of day.
The Cyclopaedia of Drug Pathogenesy, gives a number of poisonings, some lethal, by Conium. They all bear out inter alia the experiences of Socrates. Here are some condensed illustrations:
After taking 3 iii of “succus conii”, set out walking. After a bit, felt a heavy clogging sensation in heels: distinct impairment of motor power-“the go” taken out of me: as if a drag was suddenly put on me, and I could not have walked fast. On putting a foot on the scraper, the other leg shaky and almost too weak to support me: my movements seemed clumsy, and I must make an effort to control them. At the same time a sluggishness of the adaptation of the eye: vision good for fixed objects, but on looking at an uneven object in motion there was haze and dimness of vision causing giddiness. Accommodation was more or less paralysed-retarded.
In another experimenter,-on raising eyes from a near to a more distant object, vision confused and giddiness came on suddenly: but so long as eyes were fixed on a given object, the giddiness disappeared, and the definition and capacity of vision for the minutest objects were unimpaired: but all was haze and confusion on directing the eyes to another object, which continued till the eyes rested securely on one subject again. Then, muscular lethargy with heavy lids and dilated pupils weakness in legs, which became cold, pale, and tottering. Legs felt as if they would soon be too weak to support me: to complete paralysis as far as hamstrings, and it required a great effort to open the lids. The mind clear and calm, the brain active, but the body heavy and well-nigh asleep. (Symptoms declined rapidly, and disappeared.)
A young woman, remained calm, but without the power to move arms or legs.
Such are, again and again, the effects of big doses: the rapidly extending-upwards-of paralytic phenomena: and not only muscles of the extremities, but all eye muscles affected, with those of the lids. The pulse generally rises, then quickly subsides to normal: and the mind remains clear and calm!
In one prover, with the paresis, he found that even with eyes shut any movements involving the balance of the body was attended with a singular uncertainty, and falling short of the desired effect, invariably accompanied by a fresh rush of sea-sick feelings. He settled himself in an arm chair, and kept absolutely still and relaxed, when the sea-sickness completely disappeared and he lost consciousness of the poison, till he opened his eyes,” to find out whether the enemy was still with me, or not.”
In some of the poisoning quoted, there was delirium, even convulsions in some. One doctor who experimented with Conium found that provided that his eyes were shut, he could walk straight and steadily, whereas when he tried to walk with eyes open, he had giddiness, nausea, and staggering gait (reverse of locomotor ataxia).
In addition, then, to its action on muscle-even to eye muscles and especially to those of accommodation, one must remember Conium as one of the drugs of indurations, infiltrations, stenoses and strictures.
By the way, the Conium death is from paralysis of diaphragm and muscle of respiration. It should be useful in some forms of asphyxia.
