Skin: This remedy has so many symptoms on the surface of the body we will study the outer aspect first. All over the body is found a thick rash, sometimes of a rose color.
It is rough and can be felt as a rough rash under the fingers. The patient at this time is greatly distressed by heat and the skin is sensitive to touch with the rash or without it. Nodular swellings here and there come and go.
Then comes an erysipelatous inflammatory condition, in patches, here and there, about the head, with great tumefaction about the face, eyes and eye-lids.
Erysipelas may occur anywhere, but it more commonly belongs to the face and runs to a high degree of inflammatory action, with stinging, burning and oedema. In the extremities we have a marked dropsy, swelling with pitting upon pressure.
A general anasarca may appear. The face is greatly swollen at times, the eyelids look like water bags, the uvula hangs down like a water bag, the abdominal walls are of great thickness and pit upon pressure, and the mucous membranes in any part look as if they would discharge water if they were punctured.
Puffing or oedema, with pitting upon pressure, is a general condition that may be present in any inflammatory state, There is a general amelioration from cold and aggravation from heat. The skin symptoms and the patient are aggravated from heat.
This prevails also in the mental state, in inflammatory conditions; in cardiac conditions, in dropsy, in sore throat, etc. Sometimes this aggravation amounts to aggravation from warm drinks, warm room, warm clothing, warmth of the fire, etc.,; if it is heat the patient is greatly disturbed.
Brain: In brain troubles, if you put an Apis patient with congestion of the brain into a warm bath he will go into convulsions, and consequently warm bathing is not always “good for fits.”
It is taught in old school text-books so much that the old women and nurses know that a hot bath is good for fits, and before you get there just as like as not you will have a dead baby.
This congestion of the brain, with little twitchings and threatening convulsions, makes them put the baby in a hot bath, and it is in an awful state when you get there. If the baby needs Opium or Apis in congestion of the brain the fits become worse by bathing in hot water.
If the nurse has been doing that kind of business you have learned the remedy as soon as you enter the house, for she will say the child has been worse ever since the warm bath, has become pale as a ghost and she was afraid he was going to die.
There you have convulsions worse from heat, pointing especially to Opium and Apis. That is the way with Apis all through. It is not laid down in the books that Apis is worse in the throat symptoms from warm drinks and wants altogether cold things, and will not take warm things which aggravate, but one of our graduates wrote me that by making use simply of the generals, as he had been instructed, Apis conforming to all the rest of the case, he made a beautiful cure of a case of diphtheria which had the relief from cold, which shows how generals are continued into particulars and how they can be made use of.
The generals continue to build and enlarge our Materia Medica. Upon the outer surface then we see that Apis is full of dropsy, red rash, eruptions, urticaria, erysipelas, which inflammations extend to the mucous membranes.
The outer part of man is his skin and mucous membrane. When we are dealing with man from centre to circumference, we think of the innermost as the brain and heart and internal organs that are vital, while their coatings and coverings are external.
Apis affects the things that are external; it affects the envelopes, the coverings. You notice how frequently it affects the skin and the tissues near the skin, and it also affects the envelopes or coverings of organs; for example, the pericardium. It establishes serous inflammations with effusion. Apis produces an inflammation of the membranes of the brain. In the serous sac which encloses the heart, pericardium, and also in the peritoneum it produces the same kind of inflammation.
Thus we see that the coverings are especially affected by Apis, viz., the skin and mucous membranes and the coverings of organs; and with these we get dropsy, catarrh and erysipelas.
In all of these inflammatory conditions there is stinging and burning; burning like coals of fire at times, and stinging as if needles or small splinters were sticking in.
Mind: The mental symptoms of Apis are very striking, and the most striking thing throughout the mental state is the aggravation from heat and from a warm room,
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.