Face: About the first thing we see in the study of an Antimonium tart. patient is expressed in the face.
The face is pale and sickly; the nose is drawn and shrunken; the eyes are sunken and there are dark rings around the eyes.
The lips are pale and shriveled. The nostrils are dilated and flapping, and there is a dark, sooty appearance inside of the nostrils.
The face is covered with a cold sweat and is cold and pale. The expression is that of suffering. The atmosphere of the room is pungent, more pungent than foetid or putrid, and makes you feel that death is in it.
The family is disturbed; they are going hither and thither, and the nurse is in an excited and busy state, and you enter upon this scene to make a homoeopathic prescription.
It is one of excitement and one that you cannot act rapidly in, but one in which you must make a very quick prescription.
These things will interfere somewhat with your thinking at the time that you must do the best thinking and the most rapid thinking.
Now, in what kind of cases do we find this state and appearance, where all the features and symptoms conform to the nature of the remedy?
Catarrhal patients: First, in catarrhal patients, in broken down constitutions, in feeble children, in old people.
Catarrhal conditions of the trachea and the bronchial tubes. Our ears being open we hear coarse rattling and bubblings in the chest.
If you have ever been in the room of the dying you have heard what is called the death rattle. It is coarse like that.
Now and then there is expectoration of a mouthful of light-colored, whitish mucus. The condition is one in which the chest is steadily filling up with mucus, and at first he may be able to throw it out; but finally he is suffocating from the filling up of mucus and the inability of the chest and lungs to throw it out.
Lungs: It is a paralytic condition of the lungs. It may occur in cases of grippe. At first it may be a case that comes on quite rapidly, running a rapid course.
It may be a case that produces early prostration, that is, in three or four days or a week. The first few days of the sickness will not point to Antimonium tart.
So long as the reaction is good and his strength holds up you will not see this Hippocratic countenance, sinking, and coldness and cold sweat.
You will not hear this rattling in the chest, because these symptoms are symptoms, that indicate a passive condition.
Antimonium tart. has weakness and lack of reaction. Hence we see that it is suitable in those cases that present this state, or in such patients as are so feeble, when they are taken down, that they at once enter upon a passive or relaxed state.
Bronchitis: In cases of bronchitis with pneumonia, inflammation of the trachea, inflammation of the air passages in general, the inflammation is likely to be attended with dryness or a scanty flow of mucus.
If this be violent in a few days it will reach a state of relaxation and weakness. But the first state does not indicate Antimonium tart.
Such medicines as Bryonia and Ipecac. come in for the first period, and your impression is, when administering those medicines, that they will be sufficient for the whole case, and they will be, except in those states wherein this weakness is present from the beginning, or where there is lack of ability to react sufficiently from your remedy to recover under it.
Then comes in a second remedy, and that is the time when this medicine begins its operation.
Ipecac. has some of this coarse rattling, but it is attended with great expulsive power of the lungs.
This medicine has the coarse rattling that comes after many days. Ipecac. has it the first days of the sickness. This remedy has the coughing and gagging and retching, but in the stage of great relaxation, prostration and coldness. It seems as if he will die.
When you hear him cough you are at once impressed with the idea that there must be some profound weakness in his lung power. We know that it is in the power of the lungs to produce an expulsive action with the deep inspirations.
They have no such power in Antimonium tart. The chest is full of mucous and it rattles; the cough is a rattling cough, but the mucus does not come up, or only a small quantity comes up, but it does not relieve him.
His chest is full of mucus, he is suffocating and he is really passing away, dying from carbonic acid poisoning due to a lack of expulsive power.
Pneumonia: In cases of pneumonia; when first coming down with a chill, it may be a very violent attack, such an attack as from its violence produced prostration early, that is, after three or four days.
It is not indicated in the beginning during the chill, and during the high grade of inflammation, but during the stage of exudation. But the violence of the attack leads him to a state of prostration, or he is already feeble as if he were old, and therefore he becomes easily relaxed and prostrated from the disease.
Altogether unlike Aconite, Belladonna, Ip.. and Bry., for they come down with violence – the very opposite is present in Antimonium tart.
Little fever, cold sweat, coldness, relaxation, Hippocratic aspect. So it is the remedy that closes out the scene with the severe cases of bronchitis, pneumonia; most of these cases die in an Antimonium tart. state.
This patient is an old gouty patient, debilitated from long illness, always shivering, pale, with enlarged joints. Every spell of wet weather brings on a catarrhal state of the chest, larynx and trachea which runs into a state of copious secretion of mucus.
He is in bed at once, prostrated, with coarse rattling.
Children: In children that have frequent attacks of bronchitis, from cold wet weather, from cold rainstorms in the autumn, in the spring and in cloudy weather.
No sooner do they get over one cold than another cold comes on. The acute stage is never violent with them, but they keep having these passive rattling colds. Recurrent rattling in the chest. Chilly, and pale.
Those florid children that do not look sick when they have a cold, are more or less vigorous, who have rattling in the chest, but do not come down with weakness and are not prostrated from it, but keep on rattling, they call for Kali sulph.
That is quite a distinguishing feature, the weakness at once speaks for this remedy.
Old people: In very old people this weakness occurs, old broken down people who have for years had catarrh of the chest.
Every sharp cold spell in the winter brings on catarrh of the chest, with thick white mucus, and attended with great dyspnoea, driving him to bed. He must sit up in bed and be fanned; cannot lie down because of the difficult breathing, and filling up of the chest.
Antimonium tart. will, ease him over a number of these attacks before he dies. When the mucus is yellow and purulent in one of these old people, Ammoniacum will tide him over a good many winters. We see a good many old people that suffer from catarrh of the chest during the winter; they have had it for years, and do not expect to be any better.
When the expectoration is yellow, Ammoniacum will pull them through and Antimonium tart, when it is white and attended with prostration, sweat, coldness, pallor and blueness of the face. These are the principal uses of this remedy in practice.
Modalities: it has many pains and aches. To a great exent Ant. tart. builds upon the Antimonium crudum basis. It forms its chest symptoms to a great extent upon that basis.
Many of the symptoms are like Antimonium crudum; many symptoms are worse when warmed up, and from too much clothing. You will see this patient sitting up in bed with no clothing around the shoulders or neck, and the night-gown wide open in order to breathe. Suffocates if the room is too warm. It gets that from the Antimonium crud. It is worse from bathing in cold water, like Antimonium crud. The mucous membranes are covered with thick white mucus, like Antimonium. crud. Also he does not want to be meddled with or bothered. Everything is a burden.
The child when sick doesn’t want to be touched or talked to or looked at. Wants to be let alone. The infant is always keeping up a pitiful whining and moaning. Many times the respiration is a moaning respiration. Rattling and moaning. Always in bad humor, that is, extremely irritable when disturbed.
Any disturbance seems to increase the breathing and is an annoyance and makes the patient irritable.
No wonder the patient is wonderfully anxious, because from his appearance we would say that he must have the feeling that he is dying. He looks as if he were sinking, and if he does not get relief soon he certainly will die, for there is a filling up of the chest that is suffocating him, and the feeling is that of suffocation, dyspnoea, which is steadily increasing.
The wings of the nose move as in Lycopodium. Lycopodium competes with it very closely and resembles it very much.
There are many headaches laid down under Antimonium tart., but Antimonium crud. is more likely to work out for Antimonium headaches, while this medicine is more likely to work out for Antimonium chest troubles.
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.