Borax is one of those domestic remedies that has been long used for local conditions as a soothing substance and for a healing purpose.
In “nursing sore mouth” of mother or child Borax has been used in the families of old, in the form of Borax and honey, as a wash.
The extensive use that has been made of it would make the homoeopath wonder if the people had not hit upon something, and it is a fact that Borax will rapidly heal up a sore mouth.
It is not strange that it does so, for Borax, in its proving, produces aphthous conditions of the mouth, which extend to the throat and even into the stomach. It cures where the genitalia and anus are covered with these aphthous appearances.
Mind: Anxiety, fidgetiness, and sensitiveness are prominent in Borax. He is anxious about trifles. He starts at every noise, on hearing unexpected news, from music, from excitement.
This anxiety or nervousness, this indescribable feeling that is within him, is aggravated from upward or downward motion.
Such a motion as going up in one-of our elevators nearly drives him to distraction, but he is made worse going down. All complaints are aggravated from downward motion.
It has been said in routine practice, that in all cases of sore mouth in children, when the child is worse from downward motion, Borax is the remedy.
When the mother is in the act of laying the child down on the bed it often rouses up in its sleep and cries out in fright. The anxiety may be better appreciated if you will go to the top of one of these high buildings and go down in the elevator.
It is natural for every one to feel, with the rapid motion, an anxious feeling in the Stomach, a sensation of falling; that is natural to the healthy man, but if you exaggerate that intensely you have the Borax condition in which the slightest downward motion, of even riding down hill or walking down stairs, or, in the child, when being carried down stairs in the mother’s arms, produces a violent aggravation. All the nerves are in a fret.
We notice that Borax has an intensified activity throughout the body; all of his senses are made more acute.
His hearing is intensified, he is oversensitive to his surroundings, over-anxious. He has an excitable spirit throughout. Riding down hill produces vertigo.
On nervous excitement, fear and apprehension. This is a strong feature of Borax. It has many such symptoms, but the nervous elements, partake of this type.
As we go through the remedy many other things will be called out; but this may be said to be the principal feature of the mental state, and it is to a great extent the key to Borax cases.
“Anxious feeling during downward motion or rocking.”
The diarrhoea will be cured when that state is present. Aphthae will be cured when that state is present. The rheumatism, menstrual troubles and numerous other complaints will disappear upon the administration of Borax, when this key is present.
It has hysterical manifestations.
“Changes from one work to another.”
It has a restless, nervous, anxious, excitable state that runs through his body. The child screeches and screams when it is dandled and tossed up and down.
The motion of the brain, the upward and downward motion, as in swinging, rocking, etc., makes the patient lose himself, he hardly knows where he is; confusion and vertigo come over him. If one rocks the child, it has an anxious expression of face.
“Very anxious on riding rapidly down hill.”
“Anxiety increased until 11 P.M.”
That I have noticed in Borax as a peculiar time of aggravation of the anxiety. I have noticed it in women who had periods of insanity, whose nervous trouble and mental state would keep up until 11 P.M. You will notice sometimes in insane people that it seems as if they were possessed of the devil; and at once a lucid interval will come and they will talk just as if nothing had happened.
So it is in Borax that a great change may occur at 11 P.M.; this state of anxiety and nervous excitement may stop at that hour.
“Fretful, ill-humored, indolent” state increased until there is a stool and relieved by stool.
“He starts on hearing an anxious cry;” on hearing an unexpected noise, on bearing something drop from a chair to the floor, or if a door opens unexpectedly.
This is all in keeping with the nature of Borax. If you compare Borax with other Natrums you will find an astonishing likeness in the nervous excitability; Natrum carb. and Natrum mur.
Aggravation from noise, oversensitiveness to noise and overexcitement of the nerves run through all the Sodium family. They are wonderfully intense people.
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.