Case I.-Short, plump, married woman, aged 36. For several months her menstrual :flow has been but a mere stain, and the enlarged abdomen made her suspect she might be pregnant. Her menstrual habit has always been profuse. Her ankles are oedematous and her hands slightly swelled. Marked nausea when hungry. When in one position long becomes stiff in all the limbs. Great weakness from simply walking up a flight of stairs. Great prostration during menses, and so tired and heavy all the time. Sudden spells of overpowering sleepiness. All her morbid feelings are made worse in a warm room and greatly improved when she is in the open air. Must urinate frequently day and night, copiously during the night. Sense of soreness, perhaps in the region of the uterus; on “sitting something pushes up that is painful.” Great sense of heat in the dorsal spine. Hot flushes from spine to face. Brown spots on abdomen. The slightest exertion causes profuse sweat. “Today I could not eat my dinner; every time I swallow my hearts jumps so;” Feet go to sleep.
“There is a yellow, sandy deposit in the urinal, hard to wash off; soap suds will not wash it off.”
She received Lycopodium 43m, a single dose on the tongue.
Three weeks later she reported; “The swelling of the abdomen has gone, and I can breathe easily.” Sac. lac.
Four weeks later she reports: “I do not think I am quite so well. I have been going back again for a week.” The difficult breathing had returned, and the feet are beginning to bloat; the abdomen is again distended with flatus.
Lycopodium cm, one dose.
No report for two months. Word was sent that all the symptoms had disappeared.
Some three months later was sent for in haste. She had passed a quantity of limpid fluid from the vagina, so suddenly that she was alarmed. It looked like a muco-purulent fluid that had been followed by the disappearance of a lump in the left side of the abdomen the size of a fist. There was no more of it, and no more symptoms. Evidently a pyosalpinx. Upon re-examination, several of her old symptoms had returned, and it was thought proper to give her another dose of her old remedy.
As she had made a great constitutional gain, Lycopodium c. m. was given, a single dose, dry.
She reported some three months later for the first time, thinking herself well up to within a few weeks. The painful pushing up feeling on sitting down has returned.
Menstrual flow scanty and clotted.
Pain in ovaries before menses.
Abdomen distended and hard with flatulence.
The uterus is sore to a jolt in the street car.
The whole abdomen seems sore to the concussion of riding or stepping.
Frequent urination during the night.
As soon as there is any urine in the bladder she must pass it. Nausea all day.
Eating often to relieve the hunger and nausea.
Cannot endure clothing about the waist.
Pain in the uterine region at the beginning of menstruation that passes off after the flow begins.
Sick stomach from riding in a carriage.
Must make haste when the desire to urinate comes or she will lose it.
Petroleum 45m., one dose, dry
She sent word some weeks later that all her symptoms had gone, and that she would report if they returned.
It was nearly four months when she called to report that she had menstruated once, perfectly normal, but the next time not quite right, and the last time she was very sick.
Great tenderness in the region of the uterus, compelled to keep her bed; clotty, scanty, coffee-coloured menstrual flow. Jar of the bed made her suffer very much.
The mammae and nipples extremely tender.
Pains ceased when the flow became free.
Pains through ovaries, and in the back (sacrum) before menses, until flow
became free.
She had been troubled with pains all during the month as if her menses would come on.
Seems that the very sensitive uterus pushed up when she sits down.
Belladonna 50m., one dose, dry.
She is perfectly well and says she is much stronger than ever in her life. She says, “I am now a perfectly healthy woman.”
Ferrum iod, gave me a very interesting study in comparing it with remedies in this case, but I could always feel safer among the remedies that I have so often tested. I neglected to say that there was never any albumin in the urine.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.