Sulphur has also some weird mentalities. As GUERNSEY puts it, “fantastic illusions of the intellect, especially if one turns everything into beauty as an old rag or stick looks to be a beautiful piece of workmanship-everything looks pretty which the patient takes a fancy to. Wishing to touch something ” one has had this symptom in children, and failed to find it!
Sulphur is one of the remedies that has periodicity. Pains in head, for instance, every seven days, every fourteen days; “an intermittent, periodic neuralgia with aggravation every 24 hours, generally at mid-day or mid-night.” Diarrhoea at 5 a.m.
The Sulphur patient hates, or is the worse for a bath: and though a “warm patient” is worse for wet, or cold wet-weather.
Sulphur has a big reputation for clearing up acute conditions that hang fire: pneumonias-exudations into serous sacs, following inflammations (as pleural effusions-we have seen this). Complaints that are continually relapsing (Tuberculinum). But, in a “Sulphur patient.”
By the way, Sulphur has, in poisoning, produced convulsions, and it is one of the first things one thinks of for epilepsy-in a Sulphur patient, or when the patient has had a Sulphur-like eruption.
When first one started “working out” one’s cases, it seemed as if Sulphur must always come through, such a constant appearance does it present in the various rubrics, but that is by no means the case. Its symptoms are very definite and very striking : it has its own place and does its own work; and often comes in, as we said, to clear up difficult conditions, and those that hang fire-in a Sulphur patient.
To do rapid and at all creditable out-patient work, where the patients crowd in as they do with us, and where they have to be considered as individuals, and not as this or that disease, and treated accordingly, one must have the various drug pictures of Sulphur-Sepia-Lycopodium and a dozen other common remedies of common complaints at one’s finger-tips. And when you get one or two of the little Sulphur drug pictures by heart, and prescribe Sulphur correctly, it is surprising how long it will hold you patient-i.e. a chronic patient. Many of these return only after many months to ask for “the medicine you give me, which always puts me right”. Sepia is another of these medicines of very definite symptoms, easy to recognize; and when one turns to the patient’s page, and sees Sepia inscribed thereon, one nearly always knows that the patient will say, “Much better!” and that the call for repetition will be long-delayed.
One must be pardoned for dragging in “out patients” so often; but continuous heavy out-patient work for at least thirty years has impressed some things on one’s consciousness.
A few years ago we gave a Paper to the British Homoeopathic Society on “DRUG PICTURES” which still persists in pamphlet form. That little paper was so much appreciated, and one was urged so often to go on with such pictures, that it has led to the present efforts in the same direction. And the little Sulphur pictures in that paper-they only ran to a page-are so concise and to the point that we are minded to reproduce them here.
Sulphur has been called the “ragged philosopher”.
An argumentative, stoop-shouldered person, who is always on the look-out for a chair to drop into.
Untidy-unkept.
Coarse, lustreless hair, which takes its own rebellious way, likes its owner; not amenable to conventions.
Famished before meals: famished at II a.m.
Eats anything.
Craves fat. (Sulphur is the only WARM drug that craves fat.) Intolerant of clothing-of flannel on the skin.
Morning diarrhoea; but after that, safe for the rest of the day.
One Curious aspect of the sulphur mentality is the admiration for what is not admirable. Rags may seem beautiful. Ecstasies over things in which normal persons can see nothing to admire.
Sulphur exists in every tissue of the body: there is nothing that Sulphur cannot help, IN A SULPHUR PATIENT.
It is the greatest of polycrests.
Again, elderly women with flushes.
Throw off the bedclothes.
Starving at II a.m.
Put their burning soles out at night to cool. (CHAM. MED., PULS., and one or two others do this also.)
Again,-Warm, hungry babies. Kick off the bedclothes- impossible to keep them covered at night.
Very obstreperous hair-(?) sandy-harsh and lustreless- grows every way.
Dirty nosed children: sore discharging nostrils. (Aur).
Orifices brilliant red; anus, nostrils, eyelids, lips,
Itching at anus.
NASH says, :”Every true homoeopath knows the value of these and many more symptoms of this remedy. No one else appreciates them. Again. none but those who use potentized Sulphur can ever know what it is capable of curing.”
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Foolish happiness and pride, thinks himself in possession of beautiful things; even rags seem beautiful.
Indisposed to everything, work, pleasure, talking or motion; indolence of mind and body.
Melancholy mood; dwelling on religious or philosophic speculations; anxiety about soul’s salvation; indifference about lot of others.
Too lazy to rouse himself up, and too unhappy to live.
Hypochondriasis after suppression of eruption.
Dread of being washed (in children).
Heat on crown of HEAD; cold feet; frequent flushing.
Brain affections in children who do not like to be washed, have pimples, boils and other eruptions on head, face, and everywhere, pick at nose, have red lips, crave sour things, feels faint in forenoon, may have diarrhoea early in morning; sleep restless, start when falling asleep, cry out during sleep, or murmur, whine, moan or snore; feet cold in morning, hot in evening; they run about but do not like to stand, sit hunched and walk stooping.
Severe itching on forehead and scalp.
Itching pimples on forehead; inflamed, painful to touch.
Inflamed and suppurating pimples on hairy scalp.
Humid, offensive eruption on top of head, filled with pus, drying up into honey-like scabs.
Dry, offensive, easily bleeding, burning eruption, begins on back of head and behind ears; pains and cracks; (>) from scratching.
Humid, offensive eruption, with thick pus, yellow crusts, bleeding and burning.
Dimness of vision; as of a veil or gauze EYES; as from a fog; with headache; as if cornea had lost its transparency; sudden paroxysms of nyctalopia; while reading; objects seem more distant; for near and distant objects; with weakness of eyes, blindness, cataract, glaucoma; with innumerable, confused, dark spots floating before eyes.
Keratitis parenchymatosa in a scrofulous subject, cornea like ground glass, photophobia, lids swollen and bleed easily.
Burning heat in eyes; painful smarting.
Lachrymation; in morning, followed by dryness; and burning in morning; profuse and burning from acrid, excoriating tears; in open air, dry in room; itching and biting in eyes.
DEAFNESS; preceded by oversensitiveness of hearing; especially for human voice; from disposition to catarrh; (<) after eating, or blowing nose.
Otitis; in psoric patients with tendency to skin eruptions, coryzas, and cerebral congestion; from a furuncle in meatus; in children who suddenly cry in pain, while they appear listless and unobservant, and where it seems doubtful whether irritation is in brain or in intestinal canal; in complication with meningitis to head and throat, (<) by disturbance, musical sounds, and all noises, and human voice is heard imperfectly; chronic with a purulent discharge.
Smell before nose as of an old catarrh; as of old offensive mucus.
Frequent sneezing.
Swelling and inflammation in nose; red nose.
FACE : Painful eruptions about chin.
Bright redness of lips, particularly with children, complexion sallow.
Lips dry, rough and cracked.
TOOTHACHE: coming on in open air; from least draught, at night in bed; from washing with cold water; with congestion to head or stitches in ear.
Stomacace; aphthae.
Dryness of THROAT; exciting cough; at night; constant desire to swallow salvia in order to moisten affected parts.
Stitches in throat on swallowing; painful contraction.
Swelling of palate and tonsils, elongation of palate.
APPETITE : excessive; canine; ravenous, obliged to eat frequently, if he does not he has a headache and great lassitude, and has to lie down; feeling of faintness with strong craving for food at 11 a.m.; voracious children put everything they see into mouth, swallow everything, watch everyone eating.
Drinks much, but eats little.
Desire for sweets; diseases from eating sweet things, candy, etc.
Desire to imbibe alcoholic drinks, from morning until night.
Drinks much, eats but little.
Weak, empty, gone or faint feeling in stomach about 11 a.m.
Heaviness in stomach; feeling of weight. Inflation of ABDOMEN with wind; rumbling and gurgling in bowels.
Emission of flatus; especially in evening and night; having odour of bad eggs or sulphuretted hydrogen; inodorous.
Rumbling and gurgling in bowels; painless diarrhoea, driving patient out of bed at 5 a.m.
Big belly and emaciated limps; children disliked to be washed.
Portal stasis; haemorrhoidal congestions; with indigestion, constipation, etc.
Sudden call to STOOL on morning.
