You will see a similar state running through Phosphorus; the complaints of the stomach and head are better from cold, i. e., he wants cold applications upon the head with head sufferings, and wants cold things in the stomach with stomach complaints, but in all the complaints of the body be is ameliorated from heat.
If he steps out into the cool air, he will commence to cough, if he have a chest trouble. So we see that the modalities that belong to the part affected must always be taken into account. For instance, you have a patient suffering from neuralgia or rheumatic affections and these same pains, extend, to the head, then he wants the head wrapped up because they are ameliorated from heat.
But when it comes to cases of congestive conditions of the head, he then is better with his head very cold. Now, as I have said, there is an alternation of these states in Arsenicum.
I will illustrate by mentioning a case.
Once a patient had been dragging along with periodical sick headaches. The sick headaches were better from cold water, cold applications to the head, could hardly get them cold enough, and the colder the better. These headaches came every two weeks, and so long as they were present he desired cold to the head.
Then these periodical headaches would be better, for long periods; but when they were away he was suffering from rheumatism of the joints, which was also periodical, and also more or less tenacious, and when this rheumatism of the joints and extremities, with more or less swelling and oedema, was present he could not get warm enough; he was at the fire and wrapped up; he was relieved by heat, and wanted warm air and a warm room.
This would last for a period and then subside, and back would come his sick headaches and last for a while. That is what I meant by the alternation of states. Arsenicum cured that man, and he never had any of them afterwards.
The alternation of states sometimes means that there are two diseases in the body, and sometimes the remedy covers the whole feature in alternation of states.
I remember another case, which will illustrate this peculiar nature of alternation of complaints, which is shared by other remedies besides Arsenic.
A patient suffered from a pressure in the top of the head, such as I recently described to you under Alumen.
She would suffer for weeks from that pressure on the top of the head, and the only relief she could get was from hard pressure; she tired herself out with hard pressure and would contrive all kinds of weights to put upon the head.
That would go away in the night and she would wake up the next morning with constant urging to urinate. The irritable bladder alternated with pain on top of the head.
Alumen cured. In many of these anti-psoric remedies we have an alternation of states.
This illustrates the necessity for getting the symptoms of all the states that present themselves for cure, otherwise you will many times prescribe in a chronic case of psoric character and temporarily relieve it, when back comes another aspect of it.
You have only hastened the disease a little faster than it would go if let alone. But that is not homoeopathic prescribing. Be sure, when a remedy presents one state, that it is a clearly indicated in the other state, otherwise that remedy is not the similimum.
You must hunt until you find the remedy that has both states, or you will be disappointed. We sometimes do not discover this alternation of states until we have brought it back two or three times by incorrect prescribing.
Some people are so reticent and so difficult to get symptoms from that we do not always get these symptoms.
But you examine your record and you find where – you have made a foolish prescription, that you drove a new condition away and back came the first trouble, and you kept on with this see-saw business.
Now remember in doing this your patient is not improving, and that you must re-study the whole case, taking the alternating states into, account. In Arsenic, the head symptoms alternate with physical symptoms.
You will find running through certain remedies, as a part of their nature, that mental symptoms alternate with physical symptoms; when the physical symptoms are present, then mental symptoms are not trates the necessity for getting the symptoms of all the states that is determined it is a good point, but sometimes you do not find a remedy, because many of our remedies are not well recorded; they have not yet been observed in their alternations and marked as such.
We find in Podophyllum the peculiar feature that the headaches alternate with diarrhea; he is subject to sick headaches and to diarrhea, and one or other will be present.
In Arnica the mental symptoms alternate with uterine symptoms. The uterine symptoms, when ob served, look like Arnica, but these go away in the night and mental symptoms come on, the mind being heavy, gloomy and cloudy.
When you have remedies that have these manifestations it requires a greater depth of vision to see the alternation of states, because these things are not always brought out in the proving, for the reason that one prover had one group of symptoms, and another.
Yet a remedy that is capable of bringing out the two groups of symptoms is sufficient to cure this alternation of states. The periodical headaches of Arsenic are found in all parts of the head.
They are the congestive headaches with throbbing and burning, with anxiety and restlessness; hot head and relief from cold, There are headaches in the forehead, which are throbbing, worse from light, intensified from motion, often attended with great restlessness, forcing him to move, with great anxiety.
Most of the headaches are attended with nausea and vomiting. The sick headaches are of the worst sort, especially those that come every two weeks. In some of these old, broken-down constitutions you will find he is cold, pallid, sickly; he is always chilly and freezing except when the headache is on, and it is better from cold; the face much wrinkled, great anxiety and no desire for water.
Remember that it was said in the acute state of Arsenic there is thirst, thirst for little and often, dry mouth and desire for water enough to moisten the lips, but in the chronic states of Arsenic he is generally thirstless.
Headaches: There are headaches on one side of the head involving the scalp, one-half of the head, worse from motion, better from cold washing, better from walking in the cold air, though very often the jar or stepping starts up a feeling as of a wave of pain, shaking, vibration or looseness in the brain; such are the sensations and these are conditions of pulsation.
Then there are dreadful occipital headaches, so severe that the patient feels stunned or dazed. They come on after midnight, from excitement, from exertion; they come on from becoming heated in walking, which produces determination of blood to the head. Nat. mur. is a medicine. analogous to this in its periodicity and in many of its complaints. It has congestive headaches from walking and becoming heated; especially from walking in the sun.
The Arsenicum headaches are generally worse from light and noise, better from lying down in a dark room, lying with the head on two pillows. Many of the headaches commence in the afternoon from I to 3 o’clock, after the noon meal, grow worse into the afternoon, lasting all night.
They are often attended with great pallor, nausea, prostration, deathly weakness The pain is paroxysmal; violent head pain during the chill of an intermittent fever; headache as if the skull would burst during an intermittent fever. Arsenicum has this head pain of a congestive character in intermittent fever, as if the head would burst.
A peculiar feature of the thirst is that there is no thirst during the chill except for hot drinks; during the heat there is thirst little and often for water enough to moisten the mouth, which is almost no thirst, and during the sweat there is thirst for large drinks.
Thirst begins with the beginning of the heat and increases as the dryness of the mouth; he desires only to moisten the mouth until he breaks out in a sweat, and then the thirst becomes a desire for large quantities very often, and the more he sweats the more desire he has for water.
The headache is during the chill; it increases, so that it becomes a congestive, throbbing headache during the chill and heat; this grows better towards the end of the heat as the sweat breaks out, it is ameliorated by the sweat.
In chronic headaches, congestive headaches and malarial complaints, a tendency to shrivel is observed upon the skin; a prematurely old, wrinkled appearance of the skin comes on. The mucous membrane of the lips and mouth often shrivels and becomes wrinkled.
This is also found in the diphtheritic membrane of the throat as a peculiar feature of Arsenic, and belongs, as far as I know, to no other remedy. The exudation in the throat is leathery looking and shriveled.
A shriveled membrane is not a sure indication for Arsenic, but when Arsenic is indicated you would be likely to find this kind of membrane; such cases as are very malignant in character, very offensive, putrid, those with a gangrenous odor.
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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