KALI BICHROMICUM


Ropy and stringy discharges, in pharyngitis, laryngitis, in coryza, in the vomited matters of gastric catarrh: in leucorrhoea and discharges from urethra. In the children it helps, where there are tenacious, stringy and purulent ear discharges, with stitching pains shooting into head and down into neck: glands, especially the parotid of that side swollen, while pains shoot down into that parotid gland.


DRUG PICTURES : 74.

Kali bichromicum is a remedy with some very marked and characteristic features, all its own. It is a corrosive irritant poison, deeply destructive to the tissues it attacks. Therefore, acting gently and healingly in the potencies, it soothes and stimulates repair in certain, often terrible, conditions of mucous membrane and skin – i.e., where natural and drug-sickness match. “Drug are sick-making and sick-curing, and the sickness is the same”.

One spots Kali bich. by its stringiness, its spottiness, its yellowness.

In Crocus the haemorrhages, from whatever source, draw out into long black strings; but with Kali bich. it is the purulent, or mucous discharges, from whatever source, that draw out into long strings- strings even “from mouth to floor”. Stringy discharges from nose, throat, ear, eye, chest, vulva, urethra – “urine alkaline and ropy”; vomit of like character, even the milk looking like “Stringy matter and water”, suggest Kali bich. Though the drug also tends to produce “lumpy masses” (mucous), tough-and of all degrees from bland to very offensive; white- yellow – green.

Its most characteristic pains appear in spots. The characteristic pains of Berberis radiate from a centre: those that suggest Kali bich. occur in small spots which can be “covered with the tip of a finger”. Such pains occur in some of its headaches, – “semilateral headaches in small spots”; “dull pain or stitches in right chest over a circumscribed spot” – in right hypochondrium: just to left of ensiform cartilage: in sacrum. Though it has also shooting and stitching pains.

Its ulcerations, also, are typically round-deep-looking as if punched out. They occur in mucous membranes, especially stomach: in skin: in eyes: even in bones. And the scars they leave are of like character-depressed, round, “as if punched out”.

Then its yellowness:- yellow vision (Cina), yellow sclerotics (Chel., etc.), yellow discharges, yellow vomit, yellow sputum. Yellow discharges from ear, nose, eye, while the tongue may be glazed, red, cracked, or “coated as with yellow felt”. Clarke (Dictionary) makes a great point of its usefulness where large quantities of yellow watery fluid are vomited (these occur in the provings) and he gives cases.

HERING gives a case of the vomiting of pregnancy cured by Kali bich. “Sudden nausea; yellow coated tongue; inward coldness and heat of face; constipation; violent abdominal pains; faintness.” Again, “Long, and continued vomiting during pregnancy; can retain no food in stomach; great emaciation and debility”.

KENT (Lesser Writings) details a stomach case cured by Kali bich., where “There were no catarrhal symptoms of nose or chest, and no thick, ropy discharges, therefore Kali bich. was neglected. The stomach symptoms alone guided to its use, as he had no other symptoms of importance.” “Here the patient looked over the provings, and underscored such symptoms as he had suffered from”.

Among them, “Weak digestion; stomach disordered by mildest food (as with chrome washers). Incarceration of flatulence in stomach and lower abdomen. Feeling of emptiness in stomach, with want of appetite at dinner. Wakes in the night with great uneasiness in stomach, and soreness and tenderness in a small spot to left of xiphoid appendix. Sudden violent burning constrictive pain in anterior surface of stomach. Repletion after a mouthful of food, not helped by Lycopodium. Also, cutting as with knives: unable to digest potatoes or starchy foods”.

Among other characteristics of Kali bich. are its rheumatism: wandering in type: or alternating with catarrh, or with stomach troubles.

Kali bich. has been found especially useful in diseases of mouth and throat, in tonsillitis, diphtheria, croup; in asthma, bronchitis, whooping-cough, and in stomach troubles, especially in ulceration – the round variety. But everywhere it cures specifically mucous membranes affected in its own peculiar way, and finding them thus, proceeds to mend them.

Effect on the workers in chrome. “For the first few days there is discharge of clear water from the nose, with sneezing, chiefly on going into the open air; then soreness and redness of nose with sensation of fetid smell. Then they have great pain and tenderness, most at the junction of the cartilage, and the septum ulcerates quite through, while the nose becomes obstructed by the repeated formation of hard, elastic plugs (called by the workmen clinkers). Finally, the membrane loses its sensibility and remains dry, with the septum gone, and frequently loss of smell for years. HUGHES (Pharmacodynamics).

HUGHES: A fully proved and largely tried medicine.

KENT (Lectures): Its principal use is in diseases of mucous membranes catarrhal affections with its peculiar symptoms. It has been able to bring out in its provings symptoms from all the mucous membranes of the body. Slow, but intense inflammations of mucous membrane wherever it attacks. Of course he gives the thick, ropy or stringy, yellowish or yellow-green discharges eye, ear, nose, throat, trachea, etc.

Pains are aggravated by cough.

Mouth, often foul odour: teeth loose; gums sore, oozing blood. Tongue ulcerated, becomes thick, dry, smooth, red, cracked, shines like glass bottles. Tongue, thick, dry, bright red.

Pains wander, shoot, tear: wander form joint to joint and bone to bone, sometimes felt deep in the bones.

Worse beer: morning diarrhoea, worse beer.

Besides the round ulcers, Kent notices, ragged, eating ulcers: especially useful in old leg ulcers. The peculiar feature being that when the old ulcer heals in heals with a depressed surface, deep in, as if it had had a false healing.

Stomach like a leather bag. Digestion seems to have ceased. Food lies in stomach like a load.

Pains most violent in a spot you could put your finger on. Headache of that spot: patient says it is all there-at that spot – or that it begins there, or spreads from there.

Alternation of complaints, or complaints that move. When rheumatism in on, the other complaints cease. As the gouty state increases the catarrhal state of diarrhoea disappears.

FARRINGTON is especially illuminating in regard to Kali bich. We will extract and cull.

While there are evident general resemblances to the Kalis, there are decided differences arising from the acid combined with it. Chromic acid is a highly irritating acid: a powerful escharotic destroying animal tissues very rapidly, and penetrating quickly into the part, producing a deep ulcer.

Acts especially on fat persons, on fat, chubby children more than on adults.

Possesses great virtues in inflammations of mucus surfaces, with tendency to plastic exudation and pseudo-membrane. Causes on mucous membranes first violent inflammation with much redness and swelling, and produces an excessive amount of mucus rapidly turned into a fibrinous exudate: tending to formation of false membranes. This character of exudation gives us the well-known characteristic of Kali bi. – discharges ropy and stringy.

Ropy and stringy discharges, in pharyngitis, laryngitis, in coryza, in the vomited matters of gastric catarrh: in leucorrhoea and discharges from urethra. In the children it helps, where there are tenacious, stringy and purulent ear discharges, with stitching pains shooting into head and down into neck: glands, especially the parotid of that side swollen, while pains shoot down into that parotid gland.

Useful in diphtheria, with thick, yellow-looking membrane like wash-leather, and stringy discharges.

Specific ulcers on the fauces, which tend to perforate, surrounded by coppery-red colour.

Nasal catarrh: first dry with tickling and sneezing; worse in open air: the secretion ropy and stringy, collects in posterior nares: may or may not be offensive.

Or in ozaena: with plugs, or “clinkers”. Lumps of hard green mucus are hawked form posterior nares especially in the morning. Or, ulcers which carry out the penetrating character of Chromic acid, and tend to perforate.

Croup in light-haired, fat and chubby children, with smothering spells which wake them from sleep, choking. Membrane forms thickly in larynx, narrowing it. Expectoration tough and stringy with pieces like boiled macaroni. Worse from 3 to 5 a.m. May extend down to bronchi: not common but very dangerous. Farrington says he remembers a patient who, after taking Kali bich. expectorated pieces looking like vermicelli and having numerous little branches – probably casts of the ramifications of the bronchial tubes. (Ipec.) See HOMOEOPATHY, 1937, P. 321.

Then the effect of Kali bich. on the mucous membrane of the stomach. The drug is so irritating as to produce gastritis. Its symptoms vary in severity from those of simple indigestion to those of malignant disease. Dyspepsia with supra-orbital headache, or with a peculiar headache. The patient is affected with blindness-objects becoming obscured and less distinct, and then the headache begins. It is violent: worse for light and noise, and sight returns as headache grows worse. He says, there are a number of remedies having blinding headache Caust. (but it does not diminish as headache increases), Nat. mur., Iris, ver., Psor., and Sil.; but with Sil. the blindness comes after the headache.

Margaret Lucy Tyler
Margaret Lucy Tyler, 1875 – 1943, was an English homeopath who was a student of James Tyler Kent. She qualified in medicine in 1903 at the age of 44 and served on the staff of the London Homeopathic Hospital until her death forty years later. Margaret Tyler became one of the most influential homeopaths of all time. Margaret Tyler wrote - How Not to Practice Homeopathy, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, Repertorising with Sir John Weir, Pointers to some Hayfever remedies, Pointers to Common Remedies.