In haemorrhages of the nose in an old man of broken down constitution, where none of the remedies usually applied did the least good, Crot. acted promptly and no doubt saved the man’s life. This was a patient of my own, and through he had frequent attacks before, he never had another after the Crot.. As would be expected with such a remedy, there is great prostration at such bleedings.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Yellow colour of eyes.
Blood oozes from ears.
Bleeding from nose and all orifices of body.
Tongue protruded.
Black vomit.
Jaundice: malignant jaundice; dark haemorrhages from nose, mouth, etc., dark scanty urine.
Easily tired by slightest exertion.
Sudden and great prostration of vital force.
Yellow fever: haemorrhagic tendency, oozing of blood from every orifice, and even pores of skin. Skin yellow. Vomiting of bile or blood.
Fetid, bilious or bloody stools; liver tender; heart weak; fainting.
Fever resulting from septic absorption and in purpuric cases of zymotic diseases; puerperal fever.
Yellow colour of whole body.
Broken down constitutions.
ITALIC, OR PECULIAR SYMPTOMS
Delusions: as mistakes in keeping accounts: forgetfulness of figures, names, places. Surrounded by imaginary foes or hideous animals.
Loquacious delirium: desire to escape from bed.
Suspicious and snappish.
Frightful headache. Cerebral congestion.
Epistaxis, in broken down constitutions or depraved state of blood; blood thin, uncoagulable, dark: (?) with flushes of face, vertigo, or fainting.
Yellow colour of face: or livid, bloated; purple; face tumid; blueness round sunken eyes: chalky: death-like: leaden coloured.
Distended red face.
Tongue and all round throat feels tied up: cannot speak a word.
Tongue swollen to nearly twice the normal size.
Swelling of tongue till there is no more room in mouth.
Tongue protruded.
Cancer of tongue with haemorrhages. Tightness, constriction of throat.
Deglutition impossible, from spasm of oesophagus.
Malignant diphtheria: blood poisoning: oedema or gangrene of fauces.
Swelling, angles of lower jaw.
Unquenchable, burning thirst.
Nausea on movement. Bilious vomiting.
Cannot lie on right side or back without dark green vomiting.
Everything looks yellow: at first everything looked blue.
Pylorus constricted. Agonizing pain, or violent cramp, in stomach.
Cannot bear clothes around stomach and hypochondria.
Sinking sensation: craving for stimulants.
Haematemesis: little or no tendency to coagulate.
Pain in liver and top of shoulder.
Skin very dark brown.
Jaundice: malignant jaundice.
Red tipped tongue.
Urine jelly-like and red like blood.
Dysentery: of septic origin: excessive flow of dark, fluid blood, or involuntary evacuations. Great debility and faintness.
Urine: extremely scanty, dark red with blood; jelly-like; green- yellow from much bile.
Dull, continuous aching pain, region of heart, down left arm and through to left shoulder blade.
Feels a drawing from sole of right foot through bone of leg.
HERING (Guiding Symptoms) gives the relationships of Crot..
Antidoted by Lachesis. Compare: Lachesis, Naja and Elaps. Crot. is preferable in fluid haemorrhages, yellow skin (hence in yellow fever with black vomit, etc.), epistaxis of diphtheria. Naja has more nervous phenomena. Lachesis has skin cold and clammy, rather than cold and dry: haemorrhages with charred straw sediment;a nd more markedly ailments of the left side. Elaps. is preferable in otorrhoea, and in affections of the right lung. The Cobra poison coagulates blood into long strings. The Crot. poison is acid: the Viper neutral. The Rotten snake causes more sloughing than any other.
KENT has much to say about Crot. hor., and the fully realizes its unique importance.
The diseases that call for the use of such a substance as Crot. are very grave. Its symptoms are peculiar. There can be no substitute for it, as there is no other remedy, taken as a whole, that looks very much like it. The other snake poisons are nearest, but this is the most dreadful of all.
Alcohol has been used in great quantities in snake bites, and it has frequently prolonged or even saved life. But, if he lives through the violent attack he goes on forever manifesting the chronic effects. A peculiar periodicity has been manifested, every spring, as cold subsides and warm days begin. The periodicity of the snake poisons is related to the Spring.
The patient sleeps into an aggravation.
In its earliest manifestation Crot. is like unto the zymotic changes we find in scarlet fever, in diphtheria, in typhoid and in low forms of blood poisoning: cases which come on with great rapidity, breaking down of the blood, relaxation of the blood vessels, bleeding from all orifices of the body, rapidly increasing unconsciousness like one intoxicated and besotted in appearance. Scarlet fever when it becomes putrid: typhoid when it becomes putrid, diphtheria with much bleeding and putridity. The body appears mottled, blue intermingled with yellow. Jaundice comes on with astonishing quickness black and blue spots intermingled with yellow. Haemorrhages (as already noticed). Crot. is indicated in disease of the very lowest, the most putrid type, coming on with unusual rapidity, reaching that putrid state in an unusually short time. As the blood oozes out it becomes black.
Awful nervousness: trembling: tremulous weakness. Sudden and great prostration of the vital powers. The forms of yellow fever with great prostration. Loquacity. But, with Lachesis the loquacity is so rapid that if any one in the room commences to tell something, the patient will take it up and finish the story, though he has never heard about it. No one is permitted to finish a story in the presence of a Lachesis patient. Crot. does that too, but he will take it up and mumble, and jumble and stumble over his words a low passive state like intoxication; in Lachesis it is wild excitement.
He sleeps into his symptoms. All the snake poisons more or less sleep into troubles. Headaches; dull, heavy, throbbing occipital headaches: or whole head in a state of congestion. Head feels too full: as if it would burst. Headaches that come on in waves from the back: a surging of blood upwards. Worse change of position.
This is a wonderful bilious remedy: sick headaches, vomiting of bile in great quantities. Cannot lie on right side or back without instantly producing black, bilious vomiting.
Coldness like a piece of ice in stomach or abdomen. Has cured ulceration of the stomach: greatly restrained the growth of cancer of the stomach when there was much vomiting of bile and blood cancer of uterus, etc.
Boils, carbuncles and eruptions are surrounded by a mottled blue, splotched or marbled state. But the peculiar feature is the doughy centre. Around the boil or carbuncle for many inches there is oedema, pitting on pressure: and it will bleed a thick, black blood that will not coagulate. In puerperal fever there is a continuous oozing of black, offensive blood that will not coagulate. In abortion, with like bleeding. Or in menstruation during typhoid, with dark, liquid offensive continuous oozing.
Sleep terrible. Rises from sleep in a fright: has horrible dreams of murder, death, dead bodies; even the smell of the cadaver is dreamed of. Suspicious. Craves intoxicating drinks: delirium tremens. KENT thinks that, properly used, it may remove the appetite for strong drink.
