Intolerable ennui: no disposition for any kind of work.
Headache; violent stitches in brain; stabs: as with a knife.
Headache, as if hair pulled.
Vertigo.
Inability to walk, except with eyes open and in daytime.
Cloudiness and drunken feeling, alternating with pain in kidneys.
Easily made drunk, by weakest spirituous drink.
Sees fiery spots; white stars.
Objects appear yellow.
As if looking through a fog, or feathers.
Itching, corners of eyes, and of lids.
Upper lids seem to hang down, as if paralysed, especially the left.
Ears hot and red: especially evenings.
It seems as if, in right ear, he had an entirely different voice.
Skin of face tense, even round eyes, as if the while of an egg had dried upon it.
Stitches in throat on swallowing; something pointed seems to stick in throat.
Sense of constriction, oesophagus down to stomach, every time he swallows a morsel of food.
Violent Pressive pain, as if part of oesophagus were contracted or compressed in middle of chest.
Rabid hunger; or aversion to food; no desire to eat.
No taste in food; or everything tastes like straw or shavings.
Rancid eructations; pyrosis; waterbrash. Worse after potatoes; a loathing which makes him shiver.
Crawling at pit of stomach, as from a worm.
Crawling in rectum as from worms.
Dropping of blood, or a stream of blood during, or after evacuation.
(Aluminas characteristic constipation is given elsewhere.).
And, can only urinate when straining for stool. Can only pass stool when standing, is one of its curious symptoms.
Oppression, chest: constriction round chest.
Twitching and involuntary movements of limbs and fingers.
Heaviness of legs, can hardly lift them.
Heaviness in feet, with great lassitude of legs.
Pain in sole of foot, on stepping on it, as if it were too soft and swollen.
Lassitude: great; of whole body; slow, tottering gait; excessively faint and tired; great fatigue especially upon talking.
Different teachers emphasize one point, or another, in regard to a drug, and in accordance with their own experience of its utility: we endeavour to cull the experience of many.
HUGHES says: “In mucous membranes, the characteristic feature seem to be dryness with more or less irritation: . . . in morbid sensitiveness of nasal mucous membrane to cold; in chronic dry catarrh of conjunctivae, even when granular; in chronic pharyngitis, where membrane looks dry, red glazed; in dry, hacking coughs from pharyngeal irritation; in dyspepsia from deficiency of gastric juice; in constipation from lack of intestinal secretion. Has also cured a frequent desire to urinate during the night. Chronic affections of old people, or dry, thin persons.” He says, Dunham recommends it for violent cough excited by an elongated uvula.
GUERNSEY: “Peculiarities about rectum and stool afford hints to the use of this remedy. . . . Inactivity of her the rectum, requiring great straining to evacuate even a soft stool. No desire for stool for days, sometimes a week, until there is large accumulation, and even then evacuation seems only after great effort. Even if the accumulated stool be very soft, the same effort required to pass it. One must strain at stool in order to urinate. We see this in dysentery, typhus, and in many other disorders, when Alumina will be very likely the remedy.
FARRINGTON says: “Alumina has been used in nervous affections of a very grave character. Boenninghausen used the mental Aluminium for the following symptoms in that dreaded disease, locomotor ataxia: frequent dizziness; objects turn in a circle; ptosis; diplopia or strabismus; inability to walk in the dark or with the eyes closed without staggering; feels as if walking on cushions. Formication, or sensation of creeping as from ants in the back and legs. The nates go to sleep when sitting. The heels become numb when walking. A feeling in face as though it was covered with cobwebs, or as if white of egg had dried upon it. Pain on the back, as though a hot iron were thrust into the spin. These are the symptoms indicating Alumina, and these are the symptoms which led Boenninghausen to Alumina, and enabled him cure four cases of the disease”.
“Hypochondriacal men, with lassitude nd indifference to labour or to work. An hour seems to them half a day. Peevish and fretful, here rivaling Nux and Bry. . . .
“Alumina acts on skin just as if does on mucous membranes; produces dryness and harshness; indicated in rough dry eruptions which crack, and may bleed, but not often-but which itch and burn intolerable, and are worse in the warmth of the bed. . . .
“Feeling of constriction along oesophagus when swallowing food. Always worse from potatoes is a good indication for Alum. There is aversion to meat, and a craving for indigestible substances.
“There are diseases of the blood to which it is applicable. Anaemia, chlorosis, especially young girls at puberty. Menses pale and scanty. Abnormal craving for indigestible articles, such and scanty. Abnormal craving for indigestible articles, such as slate pencils, chalk, whitewash, Leucorrhoea may be profuse, even running down to the feet (Luet.)”.
Farrington also says, “Alumina acts best in spare aged persons, rather wrinkled and dried-up looking; and in girls at puberty, especially if chlorotic. Also in delicate children, especially those who have been artificially fed, i.e. nourished by the many varieties of baby foods with which the market is glutted. Such children are weak and wrinkled; nutrition is decidedly defective. Bowels inactive-(with the characteristic constipation as described). The child too my suffer, when teething, from strabismus; from weakness of internal rectus of affected eye”.
As so frequently, we must ask KENT to make Alumina live for us, in his graphic manner. From his we best get its mental symptoms. “It affects intellect; confuses intelligence; so that patient is unable to make a decision. Judgment is disturbed. Unable to realize; things he knows seem to him to be unreal” (for unreality, compare Med.). Kent quotes Hahnemann, in Chronic Diseases, as giving the best expression of Alumina mentality that occurs anywhere. . . . “When he says anything, he feels as if another person had said it; when he sees anything, as if another person had seen it, or as if he could transfer himself into another and only them could see. . . .” The consciousness of personal identity is confused. He is dazed; makes mistakes is writing and speaking; uses words not intended. .
“Then, another phase; gets into a hurry. Nothing moves fast enough; time seems slow, everything delayed.
“Then, impulses: when he see sharp instruments or blood, impulses rise within, him, and he shudders because of these impulses. An instrument that could be used for murder of for killing causes these impulses. Impulse to kill herself.
“Thinks surely he is going to lose his reason. Thinks about this frenzy and hurry and confusion of mind; how he hardly knows his own name, and how fretful he is, and finally thinks he is going crazy”.
