It differs wholly from the Apis case, which has a rough rash. Belladonna is smooth and shining. Apis wants to be cool, wants to be uncovered; Belladonna wants to be warm, wants a warm room; Apis has no thirst, to speak of; in Belladonna it is the exception to have no thirst, generally very thirsty for water, little and often.
The intense dryness of the mucous membranes and skin. Coldness of the extremities with hot head. In Arum triphyllum there is a constant picking of the mouth, with suppressed or scanty urine; pale surface, only here and there a little rash; the itching of the fingers, toes, nose and lips will lead you to prescribe Arum.
You remember the Baptisia case, with that mental state where he is feeling all over the bed “to get the pieces together.”
On the other hand, where there is no rash to speak of, now and then a patch enough to make a diagnosis, or the diagnosis is made from the fact of some one else having the disease in the family, the child is swallowing ice water, but vomiting it up when it gets warm in the stomach, who would not give Phosphorus?
So it is at the bedside we pick out the distinguishing, things and see that these remedies are not at all alike.
Belladonna stands out with its heat, its redness, its turmoil. Remember it has, not continued fever; it is not suitable in typhoid. Belladonna in a night will bring down the fever, will allay the delirium; but how is it the next night?
On comes the fever, and the patient is worse than he was before. Simply because Belladonna cannot hold what it starts with. It is not suitable.
It has not that continued feature in it. We are led to a medicine that corresponds to continuous fevers, and such must be selected when we go into the typhoid state.
Our earlier practitioners often only thought of what they saw at the time. It was only after our school had considerable experience that it was found that periodicity constitutes a symptom.
Every remedy has its pace, its times of aggravation and its, times of amelioration.
So it is with Belladonna. Its time is 3 o’clock in the afternoon, commonly. Its complaints, are generally worse in the night. Its complaints commonly start about three o’clock in the afternoon, and run till three in the morning, or until after midnight.
So that during the night its fever is highest. The fever comes on, and rises rapidly, to a very high temperature, sometimes 104 ° or 105 °, and runs down again to almost normal; but not with a complete apyrexia.
It is not suitable in complaints with complete apyrexia, for that marks complete periodicity which Belladonna has not.
Skin: The heat, the redness and the burning characterize most of the skin symptoms.
It has a fine rash; not the coarse rash, but the fine, scarlet red, smooth rash. It has inflammation of the skin, phlegmonous, a deep inflammation.
First bright red, gradually grows bluish or purple, or mottled; and in this there is the heat, redness and burning.
It is not suitable generally for the erysipelatous inflammation of the skin and deeper tissues, covered with vesicles, like Rhus.
Vesiculation is sometimes present, but it is the exception, while in Rhus it is the general character. Rhus begins with inflammation; it has heat, redness and burning; but whenever Rhus begins an inflammation, just that instant it throws out a great blister and it fills with serum.
Almost any Belladonna surface that is inflamed is likely to throw out a red rash. In intense fevers, where there are not scarlet fever or any of the common rashes, a red, fine, glossy eruption is likely to come out.
It is not an uncommon thing in congestion of the brain, and in bilious fevers, for this rash to appear, and it sometimes deceives the physician into making a diagnosis of one of the eruptive diseases, whereas it is a mere hybrid.
The Belladonna skin, while it turns red, has such a passive redness that you can write your name, almost, on the skin. As you take your finger and make a line on it, it leaves a white line behind your finger.
That was an old diagnostic phase of scarlet fever, and it shows that Belladonna produces upon the surface that peculiar passive congestion very much like the scarlatina. So we have in the Belladonna provings a symptom that is even a pathognomonic symptom of scarlatina.
But we do not prescribe on a symptom. Of late years no homoeopathic physician ever thinks of giving a medicine simply for the purpose of bringing the pulse down, or bringing the fever down.
He prescribes for the patient. It is true that the temperature does come down, if we get the right remedy; but to prescribe a remedy to bring the pulse down is going at it wrong end to.
One who thinks homoeopathically never prescribes to remove a symptom; but guided by the symptoms he selects the remedy, no matter what follows.
It is true the symptoms subside. Others might say he prescribed to remove the symptoms, because they subside.
Learn to keep the ideal of Homeopathy in mind, and think rationally; in order to do that you will have to rid yourselves of a tremendous amount of inheritance.
We have inherited the way to think wrong end to.
“Yellowness of the skin from congestion of the liver, and catarrh of the duodenum.”
When persons have been over-medicated with quinine until they take cold on every occasion, and a sudden attack of congestion of the liver comes on, with the great soreness, and the skin becomes yellow with all the sensitiveness of this remedy, Belladonna will cure such cases.
There are conditions that follow Belladonna that relate to its chronic state. Where Belladonna has been suitable for the acute conditions, the congestions, but there is that periodicity that I have mentioned, it has its natural followers, and Calcarea is one of them.
In boys that are big-headed, plump, plethoric, precocious, that take cold easily, and come down, with headaches and congestion; school children that get headaches which Belladonna
At first helped; very commonly if you look carefully into the case it will turn out to be a Calcarea case.
It is so common for Calcarea to relate in this way to Belladonna
Now-a-days we frequently find the dry, backing cough in the hands of doctors who have given too much Lachesis.
Lachesis is commonly given to over-sensitive women, and it produces many of those conditions; it sometimes cures great troubles, but it leaves behind for weeks a dry, hacking cough that keeps her from sleeping.
Sometimes it comes on after the first sleep, which is commonly about ii o’clock; a dry, hacking cough from lying down.
Belladonna will cure this old effect of Lachesis, the nervous state and excitability and the cough. Belladonna will be suitable as an antidote for Lachesis, that is, for the acute symptoms.
Calcarea is an antidote for the more chronic effects of Lachesis
After the abuse of Belladonna, Calcarea comes in as one of the natural antidotes.
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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