You will see this is also true in Belladonna; it has all of this congestion and pressure; but remember Bryonia is slow, sluggish, passive and insidious in its approach and progress, while in Belladonna the mental symptoms and everything in connection are marked by activity. With the headaches there is more or less burning, and sometimes throbbing.
The throbbing is seldom felt until he moves. After any movement, like going up stairs, walking, or turning over in bed during the headache, he feels the violent throbbing; on keeping still a moment it settles down into a bursting, pressing pain as if the skull would be pressed open.
There are many other pains in connection with the Bryonia headache; in the text it is described:
“tearing and stitching pains.”
“Shooting pains,” sharp pains.
Some of the pressing pains are described as if a great weight were on the head, but the same idea prevails; it is an internal pressure; a sluggishness of the circulation in the brain, a stasis as if all the blood in the body were surging in the head.
“Stitches in the head.”
“Splitting headache.”
“Rush of blood to head.” Threatened apoplexy.
“Headache after washing himself with cold water when face was sweating.”
That is, taking cold from suppression of perspiration.
“Always on coughing, motion in head like pressure.”
The headache is so bad in many cases of pneumonia or bronchitis, in fact in any of the inflammatory or congestive conditions, that very often you will see the patient grasp the head when he knows he is going to cough.
He holds his head because it hurts so from the action of coughing. Many remedies have this, but it is in keeping with the general aggravation of Bryonia from motion, from jar, from any effort.
“The headache is expanding, aggravated by the slightest motion; after eating.”
The aggravation after eating is in keeping with the Bryonia state in general. The Patient himself, in all complaints, feels worse after eating. It hardly matters what the trouble is, it is worse after eating; the cough is worse after eating, the gouty, state is increased by eating.
The Bryonia patient will finally sum up the whole subject and say,
“I am always worse after eating;” so that it becomes a general.
The headaches are often accompanied by nose-bleed.
“Obstinate headache with constipation.”
Bryonia is particularly suitable in venous, sluggish constitutions, with sluggish heart, poor circulation, yet apparently plethoric, apparently rugged, but subject to gouty exacerbations from change of weather.
Dandruff is common; sensitiveness and great soreness of the scalp worse from the slightest touch of the scalp, feels as if the hair were pulled; women must always have the hair hanging down. In the Bryonia headaches, as well as rheumatic attacks, if he can perspire a freely, he will get relief.
Eyes: Bryonia is ameliorated in all its complaints as soon as the perspiration becomes free and general. Catarrhal conditions of the eyes are found in Bryonia; it is not so often thought of as an inflammatory remedy for the eyes when there are no other symptoms, but eye symptoms will be found, redness, inflammation, congestion, heat, enlargement of the veins, burning and smarting, associated with headaches, with coryza, with troubles in the air passages, bronchitis, etc.
Sore aching in the eyes, the eyeballs can hardly be touched, so tender to touch, as if bruised, increased from coughing or pressure.
Such conditions come with chest complaints, with colds and headaches.
“Soreness and aching of eyes when moving them.”
“Pressing, crushing pains in eyes.”
“Inflammation of eyes and lips, especially in new-born infants.”
Think of Bryonia when gouty conditions have left certain parts and all at once the eyes are affected, tumefaction of the lids, the conjunctiva looks like raw beef, so highly inflamed is it, red and oozing blood. You find out that a few days before the patient, an old gouty subject, had rheumatic attacks of the joint, and now he has sore and inflamed eyes.
“Rheumatic iritis, caused by cold.”
Rheumatic inflammation of the eyes, i. e., in inflammatory conditions and congestion with redness, associated more or less with gouty affections. In olden times it was described as “arthritic sore eyes,” which means sore eyes in a gouty constitution,
Nose: Many of the complaints of Bryonia commence in the nose; sneezing, coryza, running at the nose, red eyes, lachrymation, aching through the nose, eyes and head the first day; then the trouble goes down into the posterior nares, the throat, the larynx, with hoarseness, and then a bronchitis comes on, and if not checked it goes into pneumonia and pleurisy, so that the trouble has traveled from the beginning of the respiratory tract, the nose, to the lung tissue.
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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