At times the head is in constant motion when there are complaints in the body, because parts of the body are too sore to be moved; then the motion of the head comes on because of restlessness and uneasiness, and he keeps it in motion even though it does not ameliorate.
The face and head are subject to oedema; dropsy of the scalp and erysipelatous inflammation of the face and head.
The scalp pits upon pressure and there is a little crepitation under it from pressure. The scalp is subject to eruptions and is very sensitive. So sensitive is the scalp that the hair cannot be combed; it seems as if the touch of the comb or brush when rubbing over the scalp went into the brain.
Sensitiveness is a feature of Arsenic; sensitiveness to smell and touch; over sensitiveness of all the senses. A peculiar feature that perhaps I have not brought out is the over sensitiveness to the circumstances and surroundings of the room.
The Arsenicum patient is an extremely fastidious patient. Hering once described him as “the gold headed cane patient.” If this is carried out in a woman who is sick in bed she is in great distress if every picture on the wall does not hang perfectly straight.
Those who are sensitive to disorder and confusion and the disturbed and made worse until everything is placed in order have a morbid fastidiousness which has its similimum in Arsenic.
Eyes: The eye symptoms of this remedy are very prominent. In old cases of suppressed malaria, in broken down constitutions, in pallid, sickly people who are subject to general catarrhal conditions, and such catarrhal conditions as localize more especially in the nose and eyes, the eye symptoms will be troublesome.
There are discharges from the eyes. It may be a conjunctivitis, in a general way involving the lids and the globe, going on sometimes to ulceration with thin, bloody discharge, increasing to thick, acrid discharge that excoriates the eye, making the canthi red and causing granulation with burning.
The burning is better from washing in cool water and also better from dry heat. Very often ulcers appear on the globe of the eye, often upon the cornea.
It has various kinds of hypertrophy beginning in patches that will form scars, and in old ulcerated patches little growth similar to a pterygium growing towards the centre of the eye and threatening blindness.
The inflammations are sometimes attended with swelling, burning and excoriating discharge; this swelling is bag-like in character, and so we find “baggy” lids and little bags forming under the eyes.
The face is waxy and pale, presenting the appearance of a broken down constitution or a dropsical condition.
The catarrhal state involves throat and nose, and it is sometimes difficult to separate the nose symptoms, from the throat symptoms.
The Arsenicum patient is always taking cold in the nose, always sneezing from every change in the weather. He is always chilly and suffers from drafts, and is worse in cold, damp weather; always freezing, chilled through.
These pale, waxy, broken down constitutions with catarrhal discharges from the nose on looking at a bright light become blind.
Sneezing and coryza with inflammatory conditions through the whole nasal cavity, throat, larynx and chest.
The cold begins in the nose and goes down into the throat, very often causing hoarseness with dry, tickling, hard, rasping cough.
It is a difficult matter to find remedies for a coryza that begins in the nose and extends into the chest with bronchial troubles; very often you require a change of remedy, as the chest symptoms often run to a different remedy. It is difficult to find a remedy that covers the symptoms of both nose and chest.
Arsenicum is the remedy for old, chronic catarrhal troubles of die nose where the nose bleeds easily, and he is always sneezing and taking cold, always chilly and pallid, tired, restless, full of anxiety in the night and has troublesome dreams.
The mucous membrane is easily inflamed, producing patches of red and ulcers that bleed easily. Great crusts form in the back of the nose.
There is a striking tendency too ulcerate in Arsenicum. If it is a sore throat it ulcerates; if colds settle in the eyes, they may end in ulceration; catarrhal troubles in the nose end in ulceration; and this ulceration tendency, no matter where the troubles locates, is a very strong feature of Arsenicum.
It is the remedy for catarrhal complaints of the nose and other places in broken down constitutions from syphilis or malaria, or a constitution that has gone through blood poisoning of some kind, either poisoning from a dissecting wound, or from erysipelas or typhoid fever or other zymotic states improperly treated, or poisoning with quinine and like substances that break down the blood and establish a state of anaemia. If an ulcer comes upon the leg, if a leucorrhea comes on, if any discharge is established the patient is relieved thereby.
Now let some of these discharges slack up and you have a chronic state apparently from retained secretions, but it is a form of blood poisoning. So it is with suppressed ear discharges, suppressed throat discharges, suppressed leucorrhea and ulcerations.
Arsenicum is one of the medicines that will conform to the anaemic state that follows each suppression. At the present day it is fashionable to use the cautery, to make local applications to stop leucorrhoea and other discharges and to heal up ulcers.
Now, when these external troubles go there is an anaemic state established in the economy, the patient becomes waxy and pallid, sickly looking, and these catarrhal discharges come on as a means of relief because of the suppression of some other condition.
For instance, since the suppression of a leucorrhoea the woman has had thick, bloody or watery discharge from the nose. It is frequently suitable to the constitution when an ulcer has been dried up by salves, or an old car discharge has been stopped by the outward application of powders. The doctor thinks he has done a clever thing in stopping such discharges, but he has only succeeded in damming up the secretions which are really a relief to the patient.
Such medicines as Sulphur, Calcarea and Arsenicum are suitable for the catarrhal discharges that come from these suppressions, in broken down constitutions.
Arsenic is also like unto the condition that has been brought about from the absorption of animal poisons. It goes to the very root of the evil, as it is similar to the symptoms brought on from a dissecting wound. Arsenic and Lachesis are medicines that will go to the cause at once and antidote the poison, establishing harmony and turning things into order.
The nose symptoms, then, of Arsenic are very troublesome and furnish and extensive part of the symptom image of an Arsenicum patient. They always take cold easily, are always sensitive to cold and the catarrh is always roused up on the slightest provocation.
When an Arsenicum patient is at his best he has discharge more or less of a thick character, but when he takes a little cold it becomes thin; the thick discharge that is necessary to his comfort slacks up, and then he gets headache and on comes thirst, restlessness, anxiety and distress.
This goes on to a catarrhal fever of two or three days duration, and then the thick discharge starts up again and he feels better; all his pains and aches disappear. It has been of great service in epithelioma of nose and lips.
Inflammation of the throat and tonsils with burning, increased by cold and better by warm drinks. There is redness and a shriveled condition of the mucous membrane.
When there is blood poisoning going on, as in diphtheria, and exudate appears upon the mucous membrane and it becomes gray and shriveled, ashy colored, and this sometimes covers the whole of the soft palate and the arches. It looks withered. He is prostrated, anxious, sinking, weak, not a great deal of fever, but much dryness of the mouth.
The catarrhal state goes down into the larynx with hoarseness, and into the trachea with burning, worse from coughing, and then comes constriction of the chest, asthmatic dyspnoea and dry, hacking cough with no expectoration.
This testing cough is attended with anxiety, prostration, restlessness, exhaustion and sweat, and the cough does not seem to do any good.
The cough is the early part of it and keeps on as a dry, rasping, harsh cough for several days without doing any good; and then asthmatic symptoms come on, when be expectorates great. quantities of thin, watery sputum.
There is constriction about the chest a great sense of tightness and wheezing, and he feels he will suffocate. Bloody mucus is expectorated at times, but the symptoms are more generally of a catarrhal character.
Symptoms of pneumonia sometimes appear with the rusty expectoration. The expectoration is excoriating. There is in the chest a sense of burning, as if coals of fire were in the chest, and it goes on to bleeding and liver-colored expectoration.
Arsenicum is a bleeding medicine, one that predisposes to haemorrhage, and bleeding takes place from all mucous membranes; commonly of bright red blood, but in this region the parts take on a gangrenous state and the hemorrhages become black and there are little clots like portions of liver.
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.
Comments are closed.