Introduction
HAHNEMANN says this product of the interior of the earth ought to be fluid and light yellow if it is to be used as a remedial agent. He tells how it may be purified, by treating it with sulphuric acid, “which acts on the foreign oily matters, leaving the petroleum untouched. If pure, a drop of petroleum deposited on paper, will evaporate in air, without leaving a trace behind.”
Among the curious symptoms given by Hahnemann is, “Stitches in the heel, as if a splinter were lodged in it.” One remembers a case. A doctor who had been taking the Compton Burnett Lectures, coming, week by week from Yorkshire, wrote to the Lecturer, later on: “I have a sticking pain in my heel. Hurts to walk.” The answer was, “Take Petroleum.” Back came the report, soon after, “Damn you, W–, it’s gone.” Recently, at Out-patients, one had such a case, and remembered, and made a ready and successful prescription.
One is apt to remember any case, over which one first made contact with a real useful remedy, not previously realized. The introduction to Petroleum came in a case of deeply cracked palms, which had previously benefited by Petroleum in low potencies of frequent administration. It was most interesting and instructive, because a dose of Petrol. 10m was found to carry her through a whole winter with comfortable palms. This might have to be repeated, for slight threatenings, when winter sets in-not always. She would come up at very long intervals, year after year, always rejoicing: which glow of rejoicing was shared.
Another case, one remembers, of large and very painful lipomata on the outer surface of both thighs, just about the hip-joint, which made lying a problem. So far as one remembers, she got Baryta carb.-which is classical, but, in one ‘s experience, disappointing, for lipomata. Then her hands were found to be badly cracked, especially the palms, and she got Petroleum; whereupon the “lumps” became softer, and painless, and ceased to trouble her, and presently she came to more, so one cannot tell the absolute outcome, i.e. whether they “went” completely. BUT- and here is what makes Homoeopathy such an annoying, almost intolerable amusement-one began to wonder whether one had found a specific for lipomata; only to find that one had not. That particular patient needed Petroleum, and her palms betrayed the fact; and it could act curatively even on her fatty tumours. But the others, who did not need the drug, were not in the same way amenable to its action.
Among bleeding eruptions, Petroleum stands high.
ALLEN’S Guiding Symptoms puts it very tersely and delightfully. We will quote a few of his emphasized points.
Irritable: quarrelsome: vexed at everything.
Ailments from riding in carriage, car, or ship.
Symptoms appear and disappear rapidly (Belladonna).
Ailments before and during thunderstorm (Nat.c., Phosphorus Psorinum, Rhodo).
In sleep or delirium: imagines one leg double: that another person lies by him in bed: that there are two babies in bed (Val.). (Compare Baptisia, Pyrog.)
Vertigo, on rising: in occiput; as if intoxicated (Cocc.). Like seasickness.
Headache in occiput : which is heavy as lead. As if everything in head were alive.
Gastralgia: of pregnancy: whenever the stomach is empty: relieved by constant eating.
Diarrhoea gushing: after cabbage; in stormy weather: always in the day time.
Skin, hands, rough, cracked; tips of fingers rough, cracked, fissured, every winter. Tender feet, bathed in foul-smelling sweat.
Painful, itching chilblains and chapped hands, worse in cold weather: decubitus.
GUERNSEY, Keynotes:
Affections in general of any kind, appearing on the right eye; internal or external occiput; behind the ears; inner surface of the thighs; ball, or under part of the toes; knee joint.
Eruptions or itching at night (affecting scrotum especially, eruption being dry or moist; chilblains, particularly where they itch a good deal and a moist. Exanthema corroding and spreading; very difficult to heal; sensibility of skin in general; sores producing from lying in bed.
Strong aversion to fat food; to meat; to open air. Worse from eating cabbage.
Catalepsy; tonic spasms; cracking of joints; inflexibility of joints. Sprains: chronic sprains.
NASH sums up Petrol. thus:
Eczemas, on scalp, behind ears, scrotum, anus, hands, feet, legs. Hands chap and bleed. All worse in winter: get better in summer.
Diarrhoea preceded by colic, only in the day time.
Headache, or heaviness like lead in occiput; sometimes with nausea or vomiting: worse by motion, as in riding in boat or carriage.
He calls it one of our best psoric remedies its eruptions are very similar to those of Graphites.
“There is one very marked characteristics symptoms that guides to this remedy, out of a large number having similar eruptions, and that is that the eruption is worse during the winter. There is not other remedy that has this so prominently. The hands chap, crack and bled, and are all covered with eczema during the winter and get well in summer.” He says, “I have cured a case of eczema of the lower legs of twenty year’s standing, always worse in winter, with one prescription of the 200th. I have cured chapped hands the same way. A case of obstinate, chronic diarrhoea, and as soon as the fact that he had eczema of the hands in winter came to light, I cured him quickly of the whole trouble, with Petrol. 200th.” He says, chilblains which are moist and itch and burn much in cold weather, are cured by it. The slightest scratch or abrasion suppurates (Hepar).
Petrol, is also one of our best remedies for seasickness (Cocc.). Another curious symptoms is cracking of the joints (Causticum). Both are valuable in chronic rheumatism, especially with this cracking. petrol. has, with Chelidonium and Anacardium, pain in stomach relieved by eating. Dysentery and diarrhoea, worse by day.
KENT. Petroleum is one of the abused remedies: when used in rheumatism and bruises, externally, it acts, by counter irritation, by establishing a disease on the surface: this is not homoeopathic action.
One of the early things it does to a prover, is to put him in a state of confusion and dizziness: so dazed that he loses his ways in the street. Imagines that there are persons near, who are not present. That the atmosphere is full of strange forms: that her limbs are double: that another person is on bed with her: another child in the bed. Dreams that he is two or more.
Eruptions, herpetic, vesicular tend to form thick yellow crusts: or break early and ulcerate: may become phagedenic. Petrol. builds up eruptions on the site of old eruptions, with increasing hardness in the base of the old eruption. Crusts dry, indurate; and the induration cracks, looks purple. Cracks about the ends of fingers, and the backs of hands. Skin rough, ragged, exfoliates, cracks, bleeds: the tissues are hardened: this also about the palms and nails.
All eruptions itch violently: can’t rest till he scratched the skin off, when the part became moist, bloody, raw and inflamed, keeps on scratching till skin bleeds (even without eruption) and the part becomes cold.
Coldness in spots is a feature of this remedy: in stomach, abdomen, uterus; cold spot between scapulae: sensation as if heart were cold.
Mucous membranes (internal skin) has little patches of ulcers, with induration about patch: useful in syphilitic ulcers. Nose, posterior nares and pharynx thicken. Larynx involved with loss of voice. Dry, hacking cough, alternating with copious expectoration.
A striking feature of the drug is that the cough is worse during the night, and the diarrhoea is worse during the day. Diarrhoea during the day: better at night. Constant hunger with diarrhoea, yet can’t eat without pain. Hungry, all-gone sensation after stool, drives him to eat.
“Emaciation: skin eruptions; unhealthy, ragged fingers which never look clean : he can’t wash them, as this causes them to chap.”
Offensive foot sweat (Silicea), offensive sweats all over, especially in axillae, where it is so pungent that it can be observed as the patient enters the room.”
Occipital headache:- “All carbonaceous products (as Graphites, Carbo veg.), affect the back of the head more or less.”
Then the peculiar vertigo of Petroleum, when on shipboard, riding in the cars or carriage, with nausea like seasickness. He says, “occipital headache, with vertigo from focusing eyes on the waves, or on passing objects, with relief in a dark place, and with the all-gone, hunger or pain in stomach driving him to eat, may be helped by Petrol.; whereas, the awful, deadly nausea, with pallor, cold sweat, exhaustion, better in open air, in dark quietness, and worse from warmth, suggests Tabac.”
Then the eye symptoms: fissures in the corners of eyes, with much itching. All Petrol. congestion of mucous membranes itch as eustachian tubes. Itching deep in ear, too deep to scratch. Itching in pharynx.
Skin hot in places: with coldness in spots. Parts that burn and itch much. Can tell when it will thaw, by the itching in chilblains. Chilblains which itch, burn and become purple.
