You will find in an Alumina subject bleeding from all mucous membranes. He has catarrh of the nose and red eyes, and his nose becomes stuffed up and he has many acute colds; very severe throat trouble.
Discharges from all of the orifices. It is not a medicine that would be selected for a cold settling in the throat, not a remedy for acute sore throat, but it is a deep acting anti psoric, and act for months.
Its greatest usefulness is as a remedy for taking cold.
In this respect it is like Silicea, Graphites and Sulfur. It effects tissue changes, and it does this slowly, for it is a slow-acting medicine.
While the patient himself with these deep seated psoric affections feels better generally after the remedy, it will be months before his symptoms go away.
He may say: “I feel better, but my symptoms all appear to be here. I can eat better and sleep better.”
Then it would be unwise to change the remedy. You need not expect to get immediate relief of the catarrhs and pains in the back and other symptoms for which you gave this remedy.
You may be satisfied if you get the results after many weeks. You will find the same thing in the paralytic weakness produced by Plumbum.
There is a new drug that is coming into use, the proving of which is very full and rich, and it is analogous to the symptoms of this remedy. It is Curare.
Curare: I wish we had a finer proving of it, but it is rich with a great many things similar to Alumina and Plumbum, and especially in the weakness of the hands and fingers of pianists.
An old player will say that after she has been playing-for some time her fingers slow down. The weakness seems to be in the extensors. Lack of ability to life the fingers; the lifting motion is lost.
Curare to a great extent overcomes that, causes quickness to that lifting power of the fingers. But this remedy also runs through in general way such paretic conditions; while Curare is especially related to a paralytic condition of the extensors more than the flexors, the paralysis in Alumina is of both flexors and extensors.
Alumina: This medicine is one of the few that have been found to be aggravated from starch, especially the starch of potatoes.
Aggravation from eating potatoes. It has indigestion, diarrhea, great flatulence, aggravation of the cough from eating potatoes.
It has also aggravation from salt, wine, vinegar, pepper and from spirituous drinks.
Alumina is a spinal remedy and aggravation from spirituous drinks is in keeping with some other spinal remedies.
You find it in Zincum. The Zincum patient cannot drink wine, for all of his complaints are aggravated by it.
This medicine is so sensitive and so easily overcome by a small amount of liquor that he is obliged to abandon it. He is not only intoxicated by it, but it aggravates his complaints.
Stomach and digestion: Now the digestion has practically given out in this medicine. He is subject to catarrh of the stomach, to ulceration of the stomach, to indigestion from the simplest food. Sour and bitter eructations.
Vomiting of food, mucus or bile. Nausea, vertigo, heartburn, much flatulence. Vomits mucus and water. Stomach is distended with gas. The liver is full. of suffering. Both hypochondria are full of misery, but especially the right.
When going over Alumen I called attention especially to its antidotal relation to Lead.
This remedy also will overcome the poisonous effects of lead and sensitiveness to lead. Colic and paralytic weakness in lead workers, painters and artists and in those who are so sensitive to lead that from using hair wash containing lead they are paralyzed.
Not many years ago the acetate of lead was commonly used by women for leucorrhoea, but it was found that so many were sensitive to it that it was abandoned, Alumina is the most prominent antidote to the affections which have come about through that sensitive state.
Fissures: There is so much under stool and rectum that belongs to the general state that there is scarcely anything left to be presented except some important particulars. As you might suppose, this remedy has fissures; you would naturally expect these when you consider what kind. of mucous membranes and tissues this patient manufactures. He suffers greatly from constipation, he does much straining, the mucous membrane is thickened and swollen, and hence we have a fissure.
When you see a remedy manufacturing and producing such a state upon the economy, growing that kind of mucous membrane that would favour fissures, you do not have to wait until you have cured a fissure with that remedy to find out if it will suit the case.
You do not have to resort to the repertory to see what this remedy has done in fissure. From your general knowledge of the medicine, you will see that it ought to cure the patient, as it produces such a condition of the mucus membrane and skin as would be naturally found in one who has a fissure.
The skin indurates and ulcerates and becomes clumsy and unhealthy and constipation is produced, and so, after studying the remedy in that way, you are not surprised if it cures a fissure.
You can also think over what other medicines have this state of the economy and see what other remedies you would expect to cure a fissure with.
If you look into the nature of Nitric acid, Causticum and Graphites, you will see why they have had a wonderful record for curing fissure. That is the way to study your Materia Medica; see what it does to the man himself, to his organs and tissues.
Bladder: “Frequent micturition.”
“Urine voided while straining at stool, or cannot pass urine without such straining”
That is a high grade symptom, it is a peculiar symptom, and may be called a particular of first grade. He must strain at stool in order to empty the contents of the bladder.
“Urine smarting, corroding.”
“Feeling of weakness in the bladder and genitals.”
“Swelling and discharge of light yellow pus from urethra.”
“Burning with discharge of urine.”
Male: The symptoms of the male sexual organs are characterized by weakness, impotency and nightly emissions; suitable when the sexual organs are worn out from abuse or over use.
There is fullness and enlargement of the prostate gland and various disturbances of the prostrate, with sensation of fullness in the perineum.
Unpleasant sensations and distress in the region of the prostate gland after coition. Complaints at the time of, or after ejaculation, or after an emission.
The sexual desire is diminished and sometimes entirely lost. Paralytic weakness or paresis of the sexual organs; a state that is in keeping with the whole remedy.
“Discharge of prostatic fluid during difficult stool.”
“Painful erections at night.”
Female: The female has a great deal of trouble that can be cured with this remedy, but her troubles are mostly catarrhal.
An instance of this is the leucorrhoea; copious, acrid or excoriating, yellow leucorrhoea; leucorrhoea so copious that it runs down the thighs, making the parts red and inflamed.
Ulceration about the os. The mucous membranes are weak and patulous and ulcerate easily. All the parts are in a state of weakness.
There is dragging down from the relaxed condition of the ligaments. Sensation of weight; the pelvic viscera feel heavy. The discharge, stringy, looking like white of egg, copious and acrid; transparent mucus.
” Leucorrhoea, corroding, profuse; running down to heels.”
It is more noticeable in the day time, because these complaints are generally worse when walking or when standing, which is not really an important symptom, but a common condition.
After menstruation it takes the woman nearly until the next period to get straightened up. All her muscles are weak; there seems to be no tonicity about her. It is highly suitable to women drawing near the end of menstruation, about forty years of age; the menstrual period prostrates, the flow is scanty, yet prostrating; the sufferings are terrible and the patient is miserable at the menstrual period. After menses, exhausted in body and mind, is a strong feature of Alumina.
It is a suitable remedy again when the woman has a gonorrhoea which has been prolonged by palliation. She has been made comfortable by partly suitable remedies, but it seems that no remedy has been quite deep enough to root out the trouble, for it keeps coming back.
In a discharge that keeps returning, better for little while on Pulsatilla, and on this and that and the other thing, and even on Thuja, given more especially because it is gonorrhoea than because she is a sick woman.
The patient is tired and worn out, and when you come to look at the whole patient and you see the paretic condition, the continued return of the discharge that has been palliated by remedies, think of this medicine in both the male and female.
The discharge is a painless one in the male. The gonorrhoeal discharge has lasted a long time, going and coming, until now there is left but a few drops and it is painless.
The remedy has cured many of these old cases. Threatening chronic catarrh. The mucous membrane everywhere is in a congested state and is weak.
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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