Contractive spasm in chest and cough, only when moving and walking.
Spasmodic cough after meals with vomiting of all food taken.
Whooping-cough. Child vomits food with every coughing spell: great pallor and weakness.
Scanty, thin, frothy expectoration, with streaks of blood.
Haemoptysis: of onanists and consumptives: from severe exertion; from suppressed menses.
Erethitic chlorosis, worse in winter.
ANAEMIA masked behind plethora and congestions; pale colour of mucous membranes, with a nun’s murmur.
“Nun’s murmur” in veins.
RESTLESS: must walk slowly about.
The pain forces him to get up out of bed at night and walk slowly about.
Emaciation.
Red parts become white.
ANAEMIA, from whatever cause, chlorosis of defective menstruation, or simple poverty of blood induced by haemorrhages, deficiency of air, light and suitable food, or of exhausting diseases.
Chlorosis after great loss of blood.
General haemorrhagic diathesis. Haemorrhophilia.
Sleeps uneasily: is long awake before falling asleep again.
ITALIC, CURIOUS, OR NOTEWORTHY SYMPTOMS
Prone to weep or laugh immoderately, with choking sensation.
Anxiety as after committing a crime.
Fear of apoplexy.
Irritable: little noises, crackling of paper, drive to despair.
Many symptoms, better for moderate mental exertion.
Head muddled, with cold feet and stiff fingers.
Giddy as if drunk, as though would fall over obstacles (walking).
On looking at running water, as if everything went round with her. Staggering: reeling sensation on seeing flowing water.
Stitches as with a pen-knife in temples, especially at 3 a.m.
Headache, vertex, as if skull were pushed upwards.
Hammering, pulsating headache: congestion to head.
Head dull and full, eyelids heavy: apt to sleep when reading.
Head hot, feet cold.
Capability to see in the dark at night.
Pressure in eyes as if they would protrude.
Redness of eyes and swelling of lids.
Bleeding from nose, in the morning, on stooping.
Face becomes suddenly fiery red, with vertigo, ringing in ears; palpitation of heart and dyspnoea.
Persistent diarrhoea in morbid dentition, stools of mucus and undigested food: face flushes or has a red spot on each side.
Unbearable taste of food: taste like rotten eggs.
Bread tastes dry and bitter.
Appetite voracious: double amount of ordinary meal in evening hardly sufficient. Or, extreme dislike to all food.
Appetite for bread. Better for wine, except acid wines.
Vomiting after eggs, fat; worse for meat–milk; beer.
Vomiting when food has been taken, never at other times, not as a symptom of disease, or any organic affection of stomach.
Vomiting: easy; better from;of food, with a fiery red face.
Pulsation in stomach and through oesophagus: as if a nerve quivering: as if a valve rose in throat.
Marked swelling of liver: which is sensitive to touch.
Urging to urinate with tickling in urethra, extending to neck of bladder. Burning in urethra, as if urine were hot.
Oppression chest: hardly moves when breathing: nostrils dilated in expiration. Difficult inspiration: want of air in coughing out, and drawing in. Spasmodic cough: whooping cough.
Asthma: difficult, slow breathing. Better walking and talking, or by constant reading or writing. Worse sitting still: most violent lying, especially in the evening.
Cough, with copious purulent, blood-streaked expectoration.
Haemoptysis: blood bright red, coagulated.
Inflammation of lungs with roof of mouth white.
Women who blush easily.
KENT points out that the strange thing, in Ferrum is that the complaints–the palpitation, the breathlessness, the weakness even, come on during rest. The patient is better moving about: yet exertion tires and causes faintness. Rapid motion aggravates: but there is amelioration from gentle, slow, quite motion.
Often patient is puffed up and dropsical: flesh pits, skin is pale, yet face has the appearance of plethora and flushes. And during chill the face becomes quite red; flushes with wine also. Patient, though flabby, relaxed and tired gets no sympathy. She has palpitation, dyspnoea and weakness, feels she must lie down, yet face is flushed:–a pseudo-plethora. Blood vessels distended, veins varicose and their coats relaxed: therefore easy bleeding. Haemorrhages from all parts of the body–nose, lungs, uterus “green sickness”.
Heat in head and face not at all in proportion to the red appearance. Face may be red and cool.
Like China, complaints from loss of animal fluids:– prolonged haemorrhage, with long-lasting weakness. No repair: no digestion: no assimilation. Bones soft and bend. Sudden emaciation with false plethora.
Pains relieved when moving about gently and quietly, like Pulsatilla: but Ferrum is a very cold medicine: dreads fresh air or a draught.
Slight noises drive the patient wild. Nothing in stomach digests, yet no special nausea. Food goes in and is simply emptied out. Or, eructations of food, like Phosphorus As soon as stomach is empty vomiting ceases till he eats again. Ferrum is an interesting medicine, because of this peculiar stomach; it is like a leather bag, will not digest anything. (Compare Sepia. ED.)
Relaxation everywhere: i.e. prolapsus of rectum, of vagina, of uterus. As if organs would come out, and sometimes they do. Bladder also:–This relaxation runs all through the remedy and gives it character.
NASH. This is another of the abused remedies. It stands with Old School for anaemia, as does Quinine for malaria. Each can and does cure its kind of both condition, but can cure no other; and each, when it is the true curative, is capable of doing its work in the potentized form. Let no man prescribe Iron or any other remedy for anaemia, without indications according to our therapeutic law of cure. I have seen better cures of bad cases of anaemia by Natrum mur. in potentized form than I ever did from Iron in any form, although Iron has its cases, as have also Pulsatilla, Cyclamen, Calcarea phos., Carbo veg., China, etc.
Here is Nash’s summary of Ferrum.
Anaemia with great paleness of all mucous membranes; with sudden fiery flushing of the face.
Profuse haemorrhages from any organ! haemorrhagic diathesis: blood light with dark clots; coagulates easily.
Local congestions and inflammations, with hammering, pulsating pains: veins full; flushed face alternates with paleness.
Canine hunger, alternates with complete loss of appetite.
Regurgitation or eructations, or vomiting of food at night that has stayed in the stomach all day: undigested painless diarrhoea.
Worse after eating and drinking; while at rest, especially sitting still: better walking slowly about.
Ferrum is one of our best remedies for cough with vomiting of food. It is also one of the very few remedies having a red face during chill, and has led to the cure of intermittent fever on that symptom.
NASH also says, Palpitation of the heart, haemoptysis and asthma are relieved in the same way by walking slowly about. It would seem hardly possible that such complaints should be so relieved; but there are many such curious and unaccountable symptoms in our Materia Medica which have become reliable leaders to the prescription of certain remedies.
By the way, Ferrum is one of the four black-type drugs of obesity: they are CALC., CAPS., FERR., GRAPH.
It is also a drug to consider in exophthalmic goitre. One has hunted fro remedies for blushing. Ferrum is one.
A very ancient experience has it, that ill-sleeping persons may find rest, by ordering the position of their beds, so that they shall sleep North and South, i.e. in the magnetic field, with head to the North. Personal experience suggests strongly, TRY IT. The feeling of peace that streams down blissfully on the first occasion when this position is tried is not easily forgotten. And why not? In the blood, Iron is incessantly circulating. It is conceivable that its molecules will cruise placidly in the long axis of the body, instead of finding themselves butting about in agitation when the body lies crosswise to the polar current.
