Aconitum Napellus



Never give Aconite in blood poisoning, such as we find in scarlet fever, in typhoid fever, etc. We find nothing of the violent symptoms of Aconite in such conditions. The nervous irritation is never present, but the opposite, the stupor, the laziness, the purple skin – whereas Aconite is bright red.

Never give Aconite for any form of zymosis, for it has no zymotic history. There should be no thought of Aconite in the slow coming, continued fever. Aconite has no symptoms like the slow types of continued fevers.

The Aconite fever is generally one short, sharp attack of fever. It is in no way related to an intermittent fever, as it has no such symptoms.

You might find something that would deceive you in one attack of intermittent fever, but the very fact that there was a second one would shut out Aconite. Some remedies have periodically or waves, Aconite has no such a condition.

The most violent attack of fever will subside in a night if Aconite is the remedy. If it is not it is a pity that you made a mistake in giving it, for it will sometimes do mischief. All things that exist in a sickness must be taken into account, not only what the remedy does cover, but what it does not cover.

Aconite has inflammation of the eyes, with burning and sudden swelling; the lids swell so rapidly that they cannot be opened except with great difficulty, and when they are forced open by seizing the margins of the lids with a pair of forceps drops of hot water will fall out, but no pus.

This comes on rapidly from taking cold. Whenever there are inflammations of the mucous surfaces bloody water is apt to flow.

Suddenly the blood vessels become engorged and ooze, the blood vessels rupture and the capillaries ooze.

Ears: Inflammation of the ear comes on just as suddenly.

“Throbbing, intense, cutting pains in the ear.”

The child comes home after being out in the cold north wind, and is not sufficiently clad, and now it screams and puts its hand to the ear. The attack comes on early in the evening, after being out in the daytime.

Fever and anxiety; child must be carried. The suffering is intense. Noise intolerable. Music goes through every limb, so intense is the sense of hearing.

Everywhere in the body will we find that same intense condition of the nerves. Wherever there are complaints they are intense, violent, and the patient is always in a state of anxiety and irritability.

“Stinging, burning, rending, tearing, cutting pains in the ear.”

Coryza: Coryza if attended with violent headache, coming on in the night after exposure and taking cold during the day, suddenly, this short acting, very quick-acting remedy will be indicated.

The coryza that comes on from Carbo veg. comes on several days after the exposure. The coryza that comes on from Sulphur also develops several days after the exposure.

The Carbo veg. patient becomes overheated and takes cold by keeping on his overcoat when he comes into your office. In Aconite he goes out in cold air with his light clothing, and comes down, if he is a plethoric individual, before midnight.

But especially is it often indicated in the coryza of the rosy, chubby, plethoric baby. Not in the sickly or pale ones.

These sickly ones will come down later; their vital activities are so reduced that their complaints do not come on sometimes for two, or three days.

So that if you take a sickly one and a vigorous one in the same family and expose them both one will have croup tonight and need Aconite, and the other will have it the next morning and need Hepar.

Face: The symptoms likely to occur with coryza are nosebleed, headache, anxiety and fear. The anxious expression is one of the first things observed in the Aconite sufferer. The Aconite pneumonia will often show itself on the face.

Look at the face; there is great anxiety. It shows much of the proving of Aconite. You know there is much in the expression of the face that will enable one to read all that is going on in the body; it tells the story,

The pleasures and sadness, and the distress of the human family, much of which you can generalize, and see at a glance that some great thing has happened. You have only to guess once or twice before you hit it. Here you have the anxiety.

“One cheek red and the other pale” is in a good many remedies, but the anxious expression, and the fear, and the heat, and the restlessness, and the suddenness with which it comes on in a plethoric individual yesterday it was very dry and windy – and you will at once place this symptom with Aconite.

But it might be one of several other remedies, were other conditions present.

“Neuralgic pains in the face, like hot wires running along either side of the face.”

The individual rides in the cold, raw wind, and his face was exposed to the cold wind. He becomes numb, then pain sets in, intense pain.

He cries out and shrieks with the knife-like cutting pains. Aconite will relieve.

“Crawling, creeping like ants”; Aconite has that sensation along the course of the nerves. It has a sensation like ice water poured along the course of the nerves.

Sciatica when the sensation is felt down the nerve like ice water.

“Creeping, tingling and crawling in the face, with or without pain.”

There is intense heat intense fever in the face. The side of the face laid on will often break into a sweat, and if the patient turns over, that side will at once become dry, and the other side will at once break out in a sweat.

Mouth and teeth: Oh, what a comforting remedy it is for toothache.

It has been so useful in toothache that nearly every old lady nowadays knows enough to put a drop of Aconite on a bit of cotton and put it in the old hollow tooth. It will quite often palliate.

A dose of Aconite will act much better. But the violence of the toothache; again the same old story, from the dry, cold winds, plethoric individuals, with hollow teeth, pain intense, cutting, shooting pains in the teeth.

Sometimes these pains are in sound teeth and affect the whole row of teeth. Violent pains from exposure, such as riding in the wind. The pains are relieved and go away speedily after a dose of Aconite.

Disturbances of taste, disordered stomach. Everything tastes bitter, except water; and, oh, how the Aconite patient longs for water. It seems almost impossible for him to get water enough and it agrees well.

Burning is a symptom that runs all through the remedy, you will find it descriptive of all the pains. Burning in the head, burning along the course of nerves, burning in the spine, burning in fever, sometimes burning as if covered with pepper.

Throat, palate and tonsils: Aconite is a very useful medicine in inflammation of the throat, when there is burning, smarting, dryness, great redness of the tonsils, or the fauces, the whole throat.

Sometimes the soft palate is greatly swollen. A high grade of inflammation, acute inflammation of all that can be seen and called throat. But that alone would not indicate Aconite.

It cures that kind of case, it cures inflammation of the throat, but every homoeopathic physician knows that forty or fifty remedies could be selected just as well as Aconite from all that I have said.

I have only mentioned a nondescript case. No homoeopathic physician could prescribe upon that kind of evidence.

But you note the kind of throat – every physician must ask himself the question:

“What would make that kind of a throat an Aconite case?”

And then the question would come up, could he not prescribe for it as well if he had not seen, the throat?

The throat does not do much towards representing, to an intelligent physician, the patient.

If it was necessary to represent to the mind of the physician the inflamed part itself, how would he treat the liver?

He cannot see it. How would he prescribe for the stomach? He cannot see it. We are then compelled to fall back upon that which represents to the intelligent physician the very nature of the patient himself, and then at once we will see the reason for some of these things.

If you present and Aconite patient well before the mind you can prescribe. It would be well to see anything that is visible. If you could see, the liver, I would say look at it. If you could see the heart, I would say examine it.

What is it in this throat that really represents the patient?

Of course, any soreness of the throat makes it difficult swallow. I mean to infer that there is nothing in the soreness to represent to the physician the Aconite patient. If that individual were a plethoric individual, if he had been riding in a cold, raw wind a good part of the day, and he had wakened in the night with a violent burning, tearing sore throat, and he could not swallow, and the fever came on high, and he had thirst for cold water and he could not get enough of it, he was in an anxious, feverish state, you have then a patient to prescribe for.

Many times will patients become intelligent enough under your observation to write just what some member of the family acts like. You know just what the patient looks like.

The black man will sometimes give the best kind of a description, better than the Vassar girl, who writes us:

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
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.

Comments are closed.