One must know these short- cuts to cure in some very striking and at times desperate conditions. They are easy to learn up, and to recognize when once mastered. One may not often need them, but when one does, one DOES. Here is the advantage of constantly reading Materia Medica, the little known and unusual remedies, as well as those in constant request.
Phosphoric acid is a drug of rather narrow, yet very definite and great utility. Look at the types that need its help. The weedy, over-grown, over-wrought school children, with growing pains that may spell heart-destruction. The tired and apathetic from unequal struggling with adverse circumstances, mental and physical. The “neurasthenics” that plague us; those, at least, who are worn out, indifferent, apathetic and emaciated.
Many of these children have never had a purgative in their lives, and the maternal pride when weaning brings three motions a day is gratifying if amusing. Often the crying of a slightly underfed baby us attributed to the infrequency of the bowel evacuation; purgation follows, and depletes it still further. In an effort to retain its fluids the body extracts more water from the intestine, and true constipation result, and is followed by further purgation.
Erythema from exposure to suns rays. Ulcerative pain in skin when touched. Burns before blisters form, and after. Swelling, heat, redness of parts. Erysipelatous, vesicular conditions. A far more deep-acting remedy: even to destruction of tissues. Characteristic: scanty, burning urine, passed drop by drop.