So markedly do her troubles alternate with each other that alternation is in the nature of her case. You will commonly find that all the rest of her troubles have passed away, and that now nausea has come on. In all the years past she has had a hysterical constitution, but now when she is pregnant she has nausea all the time.
You will find when one set of symptoms becomes extremely severe others have temporarily subsided, and so they change about like Pulsatilla.
But the symptoms have to be taken collectively to get at the image of the patient. A woman will come to you with one group of symptoms today and may come back to you with an entirely different group in a couple of weeks.
These are very troublesome cases to prescribe for, and you have sometimes to take the symptoms a dozen times and put them all together as if she had felt them all in one day, and so make your prescription.
A hysterical patient is difficult to manage because of this changing of symptoms, and also because she has a tendency to deceive the doctor.
“Shivering in the first stage of labor. Hysterical manifestations through labor.”
Pains have all ceased or are irregular, so that they do not good. No dilatation has taken place. But when the regular pains come on we have some important symptoms.
A pain comes on and it seems to be about to finish satisfactorily; it has been regular and prolonged until about two-thirds through, and all at once she screams out and grasps her hip-the pain has left the uterus and gone to the hip, causing a cramp in the hip, and she has to be rubbed and turned over.
This medicine will regulate the pains, and when the next pain comes it will hold on to the end.
So impressionable is this woman during confinement that if she is subjected to any emotion – such as having an emotional story told in the room – or if anything excitable occurs, the pain will stop.
If she has passed through the labor and the lochia has been established, from such a cause the lochia will stop, as if she had taken cold, and she will have cramps and troublesome after-pains, the milk will be suppressed, she will feel sore and bruised all over, and have fever.
This remedy should be compared with Caulophyllum, which has the following symptoms:
Weakness in the reproductive system of the woman. From weakness she is sterile, or she aborts in the early months of gestation. During parturition the contractions of the uterus are too feeble to expel the contents, and they are only tormenting.
Labor-like pains during menstruation with drawing pains in the thighs and legs, and even the feet and toes. Uterine haemorrhage from inertia of the uterus. Relaxation of muscles and ligaments. Heaviness, and even prolapsus. Subinvolution. Excoriating leucorrhoea. Menses too soon or too late.
She is sensitive to cold and wants warm clothing-quite unlike Pulsatilla. She is hysterical, like Ignatia. She is fretful and apprehensive. She is rheumatic, like Actea, only the small joints are most likely to be affected.
Later she suffers from after-pains, and they are felt in the inguinal region. Rheumatic stiffness of the back and very sensitive spine.
She is sleepless, restless and withal very excitable. This remedy has cured chorea at puberty when menstruation was late.
You need not be surprised that such an emotional subject has a fluttering, quick pulse, and irregular, action of the heart, but many of the most marked hysterical features are present without any disturbances whatever in the action of the heart.
“A feeling in the region of the heart as if the heart were sore, and as if it were enlarged.”
“Back of head and neck sore.”
The head is drawn back from contraction of the muscles at the nape. Violent aching down the back.
Rheumatism in the back. Impossible to lie upon the back because of the contraction of the muscles of the back. impossible to lie upon the slide of the body because of the contraction and jerking of the muscles.
“Numbness of the limbs. Trembling. Soreness.”
The symptoms of the nerves are simply a reiteration of what I have said.
“Hysterical spasms. Convulsions. Trembling of the legs; hardly able to walk.”
The numbness is such as is associated with paralysis. Paralytic weakness.
The best effects have resulted from the 30th, 200th, 1000th and still higher potencies, and from the use of medicine in single doses.
It is similar in some of its conditions to the Blue Cohosh.
Compare it with Pulsatilla, Sepia, Natr. mur., Lit. t., Caulophyllum, and Ignatia
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.