Or the patient has been in the hands of a surgeon who has passed his knife down the threatening suppurating bubo and it has been followed by red, angry, erysipelatous appearance and shows no tendency to heal.
The edges have been removed by ulceration, and now the surface has cleared off, leaving a surface the size of a dollar; sometimes becoming serpiginous. These ulcers are sensitive to touch and burn like fire.
Genitals: In the male and female sexual organs there are many symptoms of importance. In the male organs a dropsical condition, dropsy of the penis, oedematous appearance, so that the penis is enormously swollen and looks like a water bag; the scrotum, especially the skin of the scrotum, greatly swollen and humid round about, the parts.
In the female the labia are enormously swollen with burning, stinging pains, hard and swollen. Erysipelatous inflammation of these organs, ulcerations, of a syphilitic character; these when such symptoms burning, smarting and stinging are present.
In the female, violent, burning pains in the genitals with or without swelling, burning that extends up into the vagina, with great dryness and itching of the vagina.
The leucorrhoeal discharge excoriates the parts, causing itching and burning with great suffering. Whitish, watery, thin discharges that excoriate; so copious sometimes that it will run down the thighs.
The Arsenicum menstrual flow is very often excoriating in character. Copious leucorrhoeal flow intermixed with menstrual flow, very profuse and very acrid.
Suppressed menstruation going on for months; amenorrhoea in prostrated, nervous patients, wrinkled, careworn, haggard facet.
Of course, Arsenic has a wonderful reputation in the old school for anaemia, and it is said to be as good as Ferrum for anaemia.
Ferrum and Arsenic are the strong drugs for anaemia, so that it is not to be wondered at that these pallid mortals find benefit from Arsenic.
“During menstruation, stitches in the rectum.”
“Leucorrhoea acrid, corroding, thick and yellow,” etc.
After parturition the woman does not pass the urine; no urine in the bladder; suppression, or the bladder is full and it does not pass.
In connection with this subject you will find Causticum the most frequently indicated remedy when you go back and the woman has not passed the urine and it is time that she should; you will frequently find it indicated when you have no other symptoms to go on. Aconite will be more frequently indicated than any other remedy if the infant has not passed the urine.
This is keynote practice and is to be condemned when there are other symptoms to indicate a remedy.
If there are no other symptoms study Aconite and Causticum and see if there is any reason why they should not be given.
Cancer: Another feature in connection with the woman, Arsenic is a wonderful palliative in cancerous affections, such as occur in the uterus and mammary glands.
Burning, stinging pains have entirely disappeared, in incurable cases, of course. It becomes one of the palliatives.
Larynx and chest: Arsenic has loss of voice, laryngitis, with dry teasing cough; a cough that does not seem to do any good; hacking constantly, dry, hacking cough.
Study its relation to asthma and difficult breathing, dyspnoea. Arsenic has cured some long standing cases of asthma of a nervous character; asthma that comes on after midnight, in patients who suffer from the cold, those who are very pallid, dry wheezing cough, must sit up in bed and hold the chest, anxious restlessness with prostration.
The heart symptoms are troublesome to manage when they get to be like Arsenic; the symptoms correspond to a state of great weakness, great palpitation, palpitation from the least exertion or excitement, great anxiety, anguish, weakness; he cannot walk, he cannot go upstairs, he can hardly move without increasing the palpitation; every excitement brings on palpitation.
“Severe paroxysms of palpitation or attacks of syncope during endocarditis.”
Arsenicum corresponds to most serious complaints of the heart, corresponds to many of the incurable complaints of the heart; i. e., when you see Arsenic corresponding in all of the symptoms with these marked cardiac affections, dropsy of the pericardium, etc., you have a class of cases that are very serious,
“Angina pectoris,” etc.
“Rheumatism affecting the heart,” etc.
“Hydropericardium with great irritability,” etc.
“Pulse frequent, small, trembling.”
“Pulsation through whole body,” etc., etc.
Again this goes on to another state when the heart becomes weak, pulse thread-like, patient pale and cold, covered with sweat, pulse very feeble. When this is not a state of the heart itself then Arsenic becomes a wonderful remedy; that is, it is capable of cure.
Fever: I want to say a few things concerning a few essentials, some few things most general to the Arsenicum type of intermittent.
You can read the general state of intermittent fever and fevers generally and apply what has been said.
Arsenic has all the violence of the chill that you can find in any remedy, with excitement, headache, prostration, dry mouth, desire for hot drinks and to be covered up warmly, with all the anxious restlessness and prostration that you can find in any medicine; but the time of the Arsenic case is an important thing.
A striking feature of the Arsenic time of chill is its irregularity, coming not twice alike, coming at any time. It has afternoon chill and after midnight chill, sometimes in the morning, sometimes at 3 or 4 P.M., sometimes at 1 P.M.
It has a striking periodicity in its nature. Hence it has an intermittent nature. It has a striking feature of thirst.
During the chill, while there is sometimes great thirst, he has aversion to cold things, hence can take only hot drinks, hot teas, etc.
During the fever the thirst increases because he has dry mouth, and he drinks little and often, just a teaspoonful to wet his dry mouth.
Water does not quench his thirst, for he wants but a tablespoonful, little and often. This runs on into the sweat with prostration, increased coldness, desire for copious drinks, unquenchable thirst for cold drinks.
The chill is attended with great aching in the bones, likely to commence in the extremities, and during the chill there is a great head congestion with purple fingers and toes.
Put these things together and the prostration that occurs with the awful anxiety, and you can most always in a general way pick out the Arsenic case.
But it has so many details in its chill, fever and sweat that if you take the details of symptoms and leave these general features out you will be likely to be able to cover almost any case of chills, i.e., you may think you will, but unless some of these general nates are present that stamp it as Arsenic you will fail.
It is one thing to stamp the whole case as Arsenic and another thing to say that these are Arsenicum symptoms.
So it is with China and Quinine; they have numerous particular symptoms, and yet to make the case a China or Quinine case the striking general features must be present.
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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