Numbness hands and feet: extends over whole body. Hands cold and clammy.
Bowels so sore he can hardly breathe. So sore, can bear no pressure over right side abdomen.
Tongue coated white: yellow-brown streak down centre (Baptisia). Tongue dry: dry down the centre: not a particle of moisture on it. Bitter taste.
(Allen gives also, tongue clean, smooth and dry; fish fiery red, then dark and intensely dry; smooth and dry; glossy, shiny as if vanished; dry, cracked, articulation difficult.)
Rolling of head from side to side.
And a most curious symptom. Bearing-down pain and prolapsus uteri, only relieved by holding the breath and bearing down. Pain starting at umbilicus, or just above, passing down towards uterus, but intercepted by just the same kind of pain starting from the uterus and passing up till they met midway and died away till another came.
Dr. Sherbino calls Pyrogen a “grand nosode–one of the greatest monuments to Hahnemann and to Homoeopathy, as it covers a very wide range of action, and fills a place of its own that no other full”
The above is greatly condensed, as are the cases that follow. Dr. Sherbino uses Swan’s very high potencies of Pyrogen in these cases. As we said, Burnett’s work was done with the sixth potency, which is a very useful one.
PNEUMONIA. Girl of 14. Had been ill for a week. Temp. 105 1/2; resp. 52; pulse 120; rusty sputum. Part rt. lung and shoulder, worse talking and coughing. Fan-like motion alae nasi. Restlessness. Temp., on succeeding days, 1021/2 (improving fast); 100; 971/2–subnormal in three days. She took four doses of Pyrogen CM. “Cured” on the third day. (But pneumonias have a way of resolving rapidly by crisis or lysis. So, much cannot be claimed for this case.)
MRS. X. Aching all over: so very restless all last night; couldn’t keep still. Pyrogen dmm. Cured by next morning.
LITTLE GIRL with paralytic symptoms. Couldn’t stand on her feet, and when they set her up in bed she would wave back and forward as if she had no control of herself. Her pulse was 120. Taking the increased heart-action as a leading symptom, I gave her Pyrogen cmm. which cured her quickly.
MRS. A. Fever began yesterday. Had a miserable night. Temp. 103, pulse 130. Very restless, especially after midnight; constantly changing her position in bed. Rhus did not help. Next morning no better. Had had a bad night: no sleep: says it keeps her busy trying to get into an easy position, and she noticed that she was better while she kept up this motion all the time. Pyrogen cmm. Began to improve at once, rested better at night, and next day aching gone, pulse 108, temp. normal. She had a great deal of throbbing in vessels of thorax and neck, so violent it would shake the bed.
CHILD WITH LA GRIPPE. Her father called to ask for medicine. Said she was very restless, worse lying down, better sitting up. Vomited after drinking as soon as it gets warm in stomach. Better by vomiting. Cured with one dose of Pyrogen cmm.
LA GRIPPE. Mr.–Coldness and chilliness no fire can warm. Grew more restless towards night. Had been breathing hot air from fire, now had a desire for fresh air, or his lungs would burn up. Groaned all night, and rolled and tumbled from one side of the bed to the other, not lying on one spot but a moment at a time. The bed was as hard as a board, the pillow was hard, and he was as sore as if a train had run over him. He tried to lie on his face, but found that that side of his body was sore too.
Before daylight he awoke and told his wife he was so glad that he had got rid of those arms and legs that had crowded him all night; if he turned over they were there, and he was trying all night to get them out of the bed. He took two or three doses of Pyrogen cmm.
DYSMENORRHOEA. Mrs. W.F.F. has had painful menstruation for several years, always preceded by aching in bones, causing her to complain of the bed being hard, and accompanied by intolerable restlessness. Better when first beginning to move– and she has to keep this up, as it affords some relief to the restlessness. I saw her have one of these spells, and she was on the floor, and she would curl up and then straighten out, and then turn and twist in every possible position. The cmm. of Pyrogen would always relieve her, till now she does not have the aching. This remedy has cured this condition, but other remedies had to be used.
I was called to see A COLOURED GIRL about twelve years old, who seemed to be partially paralysed. She could not sit up or stand; nor walk a step without help. She was very restless and kept rocking back and forth while sitting on the edge of the bed. She said that this rocking motion relieved her and so she kept it up. I gave her a dose of Pyrogen cmm. and she was all right in a day or two.
CHILD had a fever for several days and was getting worse. (Belladonna and Rhus had failed). I sat up all night with the case and it had all the restlessness of approaching death. There was more motion of the right leg and arm, and she would make a semi-circle from left to right, and her feet would get up upon the pillow, and she was not still for one moment all night long. She would make this peculiar circle and would have to be put on the pillow, and in a very short time she would be kicking the headboard with her feet. All of these symptoms passed away under the action of Pyrogen dmm.
MRS. M. has been troubled for some time with bearing down feelings in the uterine region, relieved by holding her breath and pressing down as if in labour. She was very restless at night and had to keep in motion, as only then could she get any relief. (Better when first beginning to move.) Cured by Pyrogen dmm.
Other cases, Pneumonia–typhoid pneumonia–relapse after typhoid fever, cured by Pyrogen, in very high potencies, are too lengthy to quote here. They are all on the same lines, as regards symptoms.
Dr. Yingling collates the reliable indications of Pyrogen, giving them in schema form. He “omits any symptoms where the action of other remedies used in connection with Pyrogen might have influenced its curative range.”
Among his additional symptoms, one may quote:
Very loquacious. “I never talked so much in one day in all my life. I could think faster than ever I could.”
Frightful throbbing headache, better for a tight band. Every pulsation felt in head and ears. Excruciating, bursting, throbbing headache with intense restlessness: with bleeding of nose, nausea and vomiting.
Sneezing every time he put his hand out from under the cover.
Terrible fetid taste, as if mouth and throat were full of pus, as if a broken abscess in mouth. (Proving.)
Tired feeling about the heart, “feels like taking it out to let it rest; it would be such a relief to stop it, let it lie down, and stop throbbing”.
Perspiration horribly offensive, carrion-like: disgust, up to nausea, about any effluvia arising from her own body.
Great restlessness. “Thought she would break if she laid too long in one position.”
Septic states. Typhoid conditions.
Yingling also gives a few cases–Neglected pneumonia: cough, night-sweats, frequent pulse, and to all appearance as if the last stage of pneumonia consumption. An abscess had burst that day was discharging a great amount of pus; tasted like matter. Made a rapid recovery on Pyrogen cm., a few doses.
“Knew he was going to have typho-malarial fever, which he had two years previously, after a malarious exposure on a foreign mission field.” Had every other day what he called “dumb ague”. Pyrogen cured.
Yingling says, Pyrogen has cured cases of blood poisoning. It should be thought of in dissecting wounds; and he quotes: “In all fevers when other remedies do not act, think of Pyrogen” (Swan).
“In septic poisoning from wounds–after abortion– accouchment, etc., etc., think of Pyrogen” (H. C. Allen).
“Pyrogen resembles Ipecac. very closely in uterine haemorrhage. If you have an Ipecac. case, and that remedy fails you, think of Pyrogen.”
Kent says: “Septic conditions, where there is a continuous intermingling of little chillinesses and little quiverings throughout the body and the pulse has lost its proper relationship to the temperature, Pyrogen must be administered.” Allen’s Nosodes has a chapter on Pyrogen: and here is a little quotation from “Notes from Lectures by H. C. Allen”, which sums up well the “inwardness” of this powerful and rapidly acting remedy.
I have found this remedy invaluable in fevers of septic origin, all forms; when Baptisia, Ech., Rhus or the best selected remedy fails to relieve or permanently improve, study Pyrogen.
The bed feels hard (Arnica); parts lain on feel sore and bruised (Baptisia); rapid decubitus (Carbolicum acidum); of septic origin.
Chill:–Begins in the back between scapula, severe general coldness of bones and extremities.
Heat:–Sudden skin dry and burning; pulse rapid, small, wiry, 140-170; temp. 103-106*.
Sweat:–Cold, clammy, profuse, often offensive, generally exhausting.
Pulse abnormally rapid, out of all proportion to temperature (Lilium).
In septic fevers, especially puerperal, where foetus or secundines have been retained, decomposed; foetus dead for days, black, horribly offensive discharge.
