Alumina



With Aluminum metallicum I have, stopped fulgurating pains in old incurable cases, and improved the reflexes wonderfully, thus showing the general improvement of the patient.

Modalities: Most of the symptoms are < on rising in the morning.

In the morning as I have mentioned it, the urine is slower to pass than after, he has moved about and warmed up a little. His limbs are stiffer in the morning and in the morning he has to whip up his mental state. He wakes up confused and wonders where he is.

You will see that in children especially-they wake up in the morning in a bewildered state, such as you will find in Alumina, Aesculus, Lycopod.

He has to put his mind on things to ascertain whether they be so or not, as to how things should look and wonders whether he is at home or in some other place.

There are many headaches with nausea and vomiting. The headaches come whenever he takes cold. This probably is due to the catarrhal state.

Mucous membranes: The Alumina patient suffers almost constantly from dryness of mucous membranes, the nose is dry, stuffed up, especially in one side, commonly the left.

Nose feels full of sticks, dry membranes or crusts, old atrophic catarrh crusts in the posterior nares and in the fossa of Rosenmuller.

Large green, offensive crusts all through the nose. Now comes the relation to the headache. Every time he catches cold the thick yellow discharge slacks up and gives way to a watery discharge and be has pain in the forehead over the eyes, going through the head, with nausea and vomiting.

So when it says headache from chronic catarrh that is what it means. The headache > lying down. He has sick headaches and periodical headaches.

You will see that Alumina corresponds to a constitution that may be called psoric-old, broken-down, feeble constitutions, scrofulous constitutions, such as are inclined to tubercles and catarrhal affections.

The catarrhal tendency of this remedy is marked. Catarrhs are found wherever mucous membranes exist. Alumina affects the skin and mucous membrane extensively, i. e., the external and internal skin, the surfaces of the body.

The patient is always expectorating, he blows the nose much and has discharges from the eyes. There is much disturbance of vision belonging to this catarrhal state that may be spoken of now.

Dimness of vision, as if looking through a fog sometimes described as through a veil. A misty dimness of vision.

There is also disturbance of the muscles of the eye, of the muscles of the ball and of the ciliary muscle. Weak and changeable vision. The paralytic weakness, such as belongs to the whole remedy, will be found in certain muscles, or sets of muscles, so that it is with great difficulty that glasses can be adjusted. The activity of the eye muscles is disturbed.

Naso pharynx: The catarrhal state extends over into the back of the nose and the posterior nares are filled up with tough mucus and crusts, and on looking into the throat you will see that the soft palate and the mucous membrane of the tonsils and pharynx and all parts that can be seen are in a state of granulation, are swollen, congested and inflamed.

The pharynx feels dry and there is a chronic sensitiveness and soreness. When swallowing food there is stinging and sensation as if the throat were full of little sticks, especially after a moment’s rest, better by moistening and swallowing. In the night air, after keeping still a while, there in an accumulation of ropy mucus.

This extends into the larynx with soreness in the larynx and chest and chronic dry, backing cough. The same catarrhal state proceeds down into the oesophagus, so that it becomes sensitive and clumsy. He swallows with difficulty.

The bolus goes down with an effort and he feels it all the way down. There is soreness and clumsiness, paresis and difficulty of swallowing.

This paralytic weakness reminds the patient that he must put on a little force in order to swallow and this swallowing is felt while the substance goes down as if the oesophagus was sensitive. It has a catarrhal state of the stomach, bowels and rectum so that with the soft and difficult stool there is often an accumulation of mucus.

There is also a catarrhal condition in the bladder, kidneys and urethra and an old gonorrhoea will be prolonged into a catarrhal or gleety discharge.

Sometimes it is not a gleet, but the discharge remains for many months and instead of its being a light milky white, such as is natural in most prolonged cases of gonorrhoea, it remains yellow and is painless. So it is with the vagina.

The mucous discharge from the vagina is thick yellowish-white discharge, sometimes excoriating. Thus we see, in the constitution we have described, that an extensive catarrhal state belongs to the remedy.

Skin: When we come to the skin we find that it takes on a similar state of affairs. The patient is subject to all sorts of eruptions. The skin withers, becomes dry and is subject to eruptions, thickening, indurations, ulcerations, cracking and bleeding.

The eruptions itch worse in the warmth of the bed. The skin itches, even when there is no eruption, when becoming warm in bed, so that he scratches until the skin bleeds. This presents an idea as to eruptions that you will have to consider. A patient comes to you covered with crusts, and he says:

“When I get warm at night I have to scratch, and I scratch until the skin bleeds.”

Now in Alumina it is very important to find out whether these crusts were produced by the scratching or whether the eruption, came out as an itching eruption, for in Alumina in the beginning there is no eruption, but he scratches until the skin is off and then come the crusts.

You must here prescribe not for the eruption, but for the itching of the skin without eruption. Now in Mezereum, Arsenicum, Dolichos and Alumina the skin itches and he scratches until it bleeds, and then he gets relief.

Of course after this there is an apparent eruption because crusts form. As soon as the healing begins the itching begins, and he is only relieved when the skin is raw. With the bleeding moisture of the skin there is relief of the itching.

Now some of the books do not make the distinction between itching without eruption and itching with eruption, and hence mostly all young, doctors get to thinking that itching of the skin must always be associated with eruption, and make a mistake in figuring out what kind of an eruption it is.

The skin thickens and indurates and ulcerates, and there are indurations under the ulcers. There is a very sluggish condition of both mucous membrane and skin with a tendency to induration.

Thickening of the mucous membrane will be found anywhere; after the thickening come little ulcerations, and in the course of time indurations are formed at the base of the ulcers. The same thing is true of the skin. Dryness and burning through everything and may be said of all the mucous membranes and the skin in general.

Chronic granular lids. It we turn the eyelids down we will see that the mucous membrane is thickened. Sometimes this thickening or hypertrophy causes a turning out of the lids like ectropion.

“The eyelashes fall out;” that is in keeping with the general state.

The hairs all over the body fall out. Parts become entirely denuded of hair; the hair of the scalp falls out extensively. All sorts of sounds in the ears, buzzing, etc., and derangement of hearing; purulent otorrhoea.

“Point of nose cracked” is in keeping with the remedy.

Induration here and there so that it favors lupus and epithelioma in one who is subject to these swellings and eruptions.

Alumina and Alumen, like Arsenicum, Lachesis, Sulphur and, Conium, are medicines that relate to these troubles. Some of these have made brilliant cures where there is infiltration.

Upon the skin of the face and other parts of the body there is crawling Itching especially when getting warm. Sensation of tension. Peculiar sensation about the face and other parts not covered by clothing, a sensation of dried white of egg on the face, of dried blood or cobweb on the face.

If you have ever been going through a place where there are cobwebs and a little cobweb has strung across your face you will know what a peculiar sensation of crawling it produces, and you cannot leave it alone until it is removed.

That sensation particularly belongs to Alumina, Borax, Barayta carbonica

Little, crawlings and creepings in the skin. Itching of the face. These symptoms are so irritating that the patient will sit and rub his face all the time.

You will think that he is nervous. He has the appearance of being nervous as he sits rubbing the back of his hands. It is well to find out whether he does this because he cannot keep his hands still or because of the itching. Because of this itching sensation in the face he carries the hand to the face as though to brush away something.

Throat: Perhaps I have not said as much as should be said about the throat.

“Ulcers in the fauces, spongy, secreting a yellowish brown, badly smelling pus.”

It may be said that the patient is often a victim of chronic sore throat. There is this about Alumina, it has a special tendency to localize itself upon mucous membranes.

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.

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