Hepar . . Sensation of hard body in stomach, immediately followed by haemoptysis.
Empty sinking sensation, better by eating.
Desire to loosen clothes p.c. (Lyc., Lach.).
Dull aching pain, p.c. Burning in stomach.
Gnawing as from acids: acrid sensation in stomach.
Sticking pain, hepatic region, when walking.
Sour regurgitation of food: heartburn.
Sour, or bilious vomiting.
Great desire for vinegar.
Longs for condiments; sour pungent, highly flavoured foods: wine. (Comp. Nux.)
Hasty speech and hasty drinking.
Obstinate; cross; passionate; fretful; extreme discontent. Does not laugh.
Sudden, violent, insane impulses.
Chilly; oversensitive to cold.
A young man of 23 (an out-patient 7 years ago) had been treated and dieted for “stomach ulcer”. His pain was worse 12 hours p.c relieved at once on eating. He had vomited blood 4 months previously. He liked his boiled fish, “but not without vinegar sauce”. His strange craving for vinegar led to the consideration of Hepar, a drug that would not have occurred to one. He got. 1m (1) and in a fortnight reported, “A world better. No vomiting. Eating a lot of things he had been told not to, and most the worse.” Hep. had to be repeated at long intervals. four times in a year. “Stomach splendid”.
Nux vom. . . In perforating ulcer (Kali bi., Arg. nit., Phos.); vomiting whether she eats or no. Swallowing a mouthful of water causes spasmodic contractions of stomach, and vomiting.
Clawing, cramping stomach pains, with pressure and tension between scapulae. Pains extend to chest, and down back to anus.
Worse food; better hot drinks. (Graph., Chel.)
Pressure after eating, as from a stone: < a.m. and p.c. Constant pain; throbs; cramps; claws; in brandy and coffee drinkers (Sulph.).
Burning in stomach: at pylorus.
Sensitive to pressure; cannot bear tight clothing (Lach., Lyc.). Caused by worry, and too much mental with too little bodily exertion. In business men.
Excessive acidity and flatulence: worse from starchy foods.
Longs for brandy, beer (Sulph.). fat food which disagrees, or chalk (Comp. Alum).
Aversion to meat, to tobacco, to coffee; to water; to ale; to food just eaten.
Milk sours in stomach (rev. of Phos., Chel.).
Oversensitive; particular, careful, zealous persons. Angry, irritable, quarrelsome. Every harmless word offends.
“Always selecting his food, and digesting almost nothing”.
Chamomilla . . Pressure in stomach, as from a stone pressing down (Nux, Ars.).
Constrictive gastralgia in coffee drinkers.
In highly irritable persons, or following vexation: with. dyspnoea, anxiety, fear.
Restlessness; tossing about; worse after a meal or at night.
Burning, pressing, cutting in stomach, with anxiety. Thirsty and hot with the pains.
Great thirst for cold water; iced drinks (Phos.).
Aversions to beer; coffee; warm drinks; broth.
Hates being spoken to: cant bear anyone near; short and snappish.
Irritable: impatient; rude; oversensitive to pain, which seems unbearable and drives to despair.
Bad effects following anger.
$ ALUMINA
[Alumina].
Homoeopathy By Dr M L Tyler.
# 1938 Nov Vol VII No 11.
^ Tyler M L.
~ Materia Medica.
` Alum.
Pure Aluminium Oxide.
DRUG PICTURES: 83.
WE have been asked for a drug picture of Alumina. People are much interested in this metal and its compounds, because of its extensive use, now that it can be cheaply produced, as a strong, light, heat-defying material for domestic cooking pots. In fact, we are told that it is almost impossible, in these days, to procure anything else. A great controversy has been raging intermittently in regard to these useful cooking utensils.
The public has even been officially reassured in regard to their harmlessness:- by those who have not our exact knowledge of the symptoms of any poisoning, or the smallness of the dose that may, in sensitives, give rise to symptoms. Occasional ingestions of any deleterious substance may be practically harmless-easily dealt with by the organism and overcome, whereas constant small poisonings must tell on health:- in the way that, as we are told, the smallest quantity of lead in drinking water may produce a profound anaemia.
As a matter of face, if there were no danger in the use of aluminium for cooking purposes, why should purchasers be warned that soda not be used cleansing them ? and why should we be assured that there is far less danger in the employment of the more expensive Aluminium saucepans, made of pure material. If there were no danger, could there be less.
Well, anyway, aluminium becomes interesting to us all now that we are absorbing it, most of us, all day long and every day. It is not needed in our make-up, and is at best, a foreign body. If we have been wise, and discarded aluminium for any cooking purpose in our homes, yet in places away from home, where Londons millions get at least coffee and light foods at mid-day and in the tea hour, they are exposed to the danger of milk boiled in aluminium saucepans and to eggs contaminated in the same way.
Curiously enough, cases have been reported where persons have declared that they could not eat eggs; that they found eggs absolutely poisonous: and yet, when induced to “venture on an egg” cooked in iron or enamel, it has proved to be perfectly digestible.
One had an idea that aluminophobia was just a fad about which tiresome persons were always writing and making a fuss. But ones scepticism was first shaken a couple of years ago, when a very level-headed doctor described the curious condition of her precious puppy, dying at three-and-a-half months old of what no, one, even a very eminent “vet.”, could diagnose. She had been doing his cooking herself in the best aluminium saucepan procurable, and in few days he began to vomit p.c. After a month of incessant vomiting, he was emaciated, and after six weeks he could not stand.
He was “a dreadful sight,” and vomited even after drink of water. She was going to have him “put to sleep” when the post brought a pamphlet on aluminium poisoning in dogs. She got an enamel saucepan, and the dog at once improved and never looked back. A friends dog was suffering in the same ways, and her dog-and husband-both improved in health when aluminium was banished from the kitchen.
But all persons do not seem to suffer equally from aluminium Why ? Doubtless because what we call idiosyncrasy, for want of wider, or more particular knowledge, comes in here. One man is poisoned by strawberries-by mushrooms-by dates: a thousand are not. “One mans meat is another mans poison”:-is it not in proverbs that the collective experience of mankind is embodied ? Probably it is n individual question of certain conditions of blood, of secretion-of food or drink ingested that make for poisonous compounds of aluminium in certain persons.
A rather alarming case of supposed aluminium poisoning is given in an American medical journal-mislaid at the moment, but doubly interesting because of a similar cases just now in ones private practice. It was malignant disease of oesophagus, which cleared up when aluminium cooking vessels were discarded !It there, in the provings of Alumina, anything suggestive here ?
We will quote from Allens Encyclopedia of Pura Materia Medica: “Sense of constriction from the oesophagus down to the stomach every time he swallows a morsel of food. . . . Contraction of the oesophagus. . . . Violent, pressive pain, as if a portion of the oesophagus were contracted or compressed in the middle of the chest, especially during deglutition, but also when not swallowing, with oppression of the chest. . . . Spasmodically pressive pain in middle of chest, on swallowing food and drink.” One would point out that in these cases it is the lower end of the oesophagus that is the site of the mass, and therefore constriction-“the middle of the chest”.
Again to quote Allen, a compound of Alumina, Alum (a double sulphate of aluminium and potassium) is responsible for the following, quoted from Hufeland:.
“Alum causes induration and scirrhus uteri, if continually used for copious menstruation and haemorrhages”.
Evidently Alum may be one of the irritants of tissues on which cancer grafts itself.
Alumina, of course, is one of our greatest remedies in constipation,-that is, of he peculiar from of constipation it induces: “on desire for stool; and-no power to strain at stool, however soft”. Here one has used it from time to time with great success. And from what one has observed of the effects of Alumina, one opines that the almost universal use of aluminium cooking vessels must be worth thousands a years to the chemists who sell laxatives and purgatives galore to the public.
As said, idiosyncrasy no doubt comes in: but whatever else the aluminium salts may do in the way of vitiating health, interference with the normal bowed function os certainly one. No power to strain even for a soft stool; and no desire for stool-for a week or two, even: and as one has observed, the hold-up seems to be in the neighbourhood of the splenic flexure, or the upper part of the descending colon.
But not only here, but in many parts of the body, Alumina is a remedy of paresis and paralysis. In the ptosis of eyelids, one thinks of Causticum. Again in its paralytic effects on intestines, one thinks of Plumbum, to which, by its similarity of symptoms, it stands in the relation of antidote.
Hahnemann's three major publications chart the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine, we see the fundamentals laid out. Materia Medica Pura records the exact symptoms of the remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he showed us how natural diseases become chronic in nature when suppressed by improper treatment.