Bryonia Alba



Gastric inflammatory affections and disordered stomach, gastric affections in young girls from suppression of the menstrual flow, gastritis, gastroenteritis.

Bryonia has inflammation of the liver and many other liver symptoms. The liver, especially the right lobe, lies in the hypochondrium like a load, with soreness and tenderness to pressure, and he cannot move.

Every motion, every touch, every deep breath causes pain in this organ, as in the abdominal viscera. The breathing is short, quick, and when followed by, taking a deep breath it causes pain through the liver; it burns and stitches. With this, he has the disordered stomach, nausea and retching worse from motion; spitting up of bile. Stitching pains, sticking pains and burning in the liver.

“Transient stitches in right hypochondrium;” these are in the liver.

When he coughs it feels as if the liver or right hypochondrium would burst. Severe pains when coughing.

Stools and rectum: Bryonia furnishes many symptoms in connection with the stool and rectum. It has constipation, and it has dysentery. The pathogenesis is full of these conditions as well as many symptoms relating to the parts themselves. In the constipation the stool is dry and hard, as if burnt. No desire for stool, but after going many days there are passages of little hard pieces as if they had been burned.

No moisture about the parts, no mucus to often the hard stools. Any mucus that may be present will be discharged separately. Some times the stool is composed of little hard particles looking as if burned, at times scanty, again quite a lot, and then will follow the passage of mucus, as if lying about the mass of faeces was quite a lot of mucus.

In most inveterate constipations Bryonia is sometimes suit able. It has also diarrhoea that drives the patient out of bed in the morning; i.e., on first beginning to move in bed he begins to feel nauseated, he is bloated and distended with colic, and he has urging to go to stool; or a little while after getting up and moving about the bowel is distended causing colic, and be must hurry to stool.

The purgation is sometimes enormous, frequent, and no sooner does the patient finish than he is perfectly exhausted, lies down like one almost dead, covered with sweat; so tremendously fatigued he can hardly reach the vessel the next time, and then it comes a gushing, copious, bilious stool. If, while lying, he makes the least motion, he must hurry to stool.

Bryonia cures dysentery with all the tormina and tenesmus possible to imagine, with pain in the abdomen; with bloody and mucous discharges. In the constipation the straining is often ineffectual. He has urging to stool and goes several times before there is any result. The stool seems to remain in the rectum, although he seems to be compelled to strain; there is inactivity and inability to strain.

Ordinarily he has plenty of power and is quite likely to have a passage, but it is so dry. Bryonia has another kind of diarrhoea. It is like the yellow corn meal mush. just such a stool as this you will find in the typhoid patient, a yellow, mushy stool.

This is sometimes intermingled with mucus and slime, sometimes with blood. It may be useful to the physician to, know whether this is in the typhoid state or in the form of chronic diarrhoea. Bryonia has cured many cases of chronic diarrhoea where this yellow, mushy discharge was present, and frequent; several times a day, but more frequent in the morning.

Sometimes he has several stools in the morning that will satisfy for the whole twenty-four hours, or only one or two in the afternoon and five or six in the morning; during the night no stools at all, because when be keeps quiet in bed and comfortable he has not very much urging to stool; every motion or keep ing upon the feet increases the urging to stool.

So that some would think of it as a diarrhoea only in the day-time, and would associate it with Petroleum; but with Petroleum, no matter how much he moves about in the night, he will not have a stool, but will have all of the stools in the day-time. It says here:

“Diarrhoea putrid; smelling like old cheese.”

“Very offensive.”

“Brown, thin, faecal stools.”

Some times chronic Bryonia patients will diet themselves, eating only thin liquids, avoiding solids, etc., and yet the food will come right through the next morning, almost undigested; lienteric stools.

“Urging followed by copious pasty evacuations.”

“Involuntary stools while asleep.”

“Burning of the anus with every passage.”

This is especially at night if he moves, but motion is more common in the day-time, and every motion will bring on urging to stool.

Urines: There are plenty of urinary symptoms in this remedy; inflammatory condition of the kidneys; pinkish urinary deposits, uric acid crystals; urine profuse.

Whenever he strains himself in lifting, or any unusual motion, there is pain in the kidneys, a rousing up of congesting and long-lasting pain. It is a gouty constitution with kidney troubles, so that after overheating or overexertion he gets pain in the back.

“Pressure to urinate and involuntary discharge of urine.”

“Burning in urethra, when not urinating;” relieved by passing urine.

Female organs: There are many symptoms of the female sexual organs of great interest. Painful menstruation, dysmenorrhoea; pain in the ovaries at the menstrual period. Every menstrual period is associated with marked congestion of the ovaries, with sensitiveness to touch.

The sensitiveness at the approach of every menstrual period, in both groins, will be spoken of by the patient, increasing as the menstrual period comes on, until the soreness proceeds across the abdomen and meets, and then the whole abdomen is painful during the menstrual period.

The uterus is sore, the hypogastrium is tender. Inflammation of the uterus. Burning pain mostly in the body or fundus of the uterus.

The Bryonia patient is subject to amenorrhoea, or the flow is suppressed upon the slightest provocation. If she becomes overheated from exertion, such as from ironing or washing a few days before the menstrual period, it will be suppressed, and the next time she will have a harder time than ever.

In young plethoric women, after violent exertion, these complaints come on in that way. Violent exertion then scanty urine. Soreness of the abdomen, but the flow does not come, or is postponed a good many days after violent exertion; scanty urine and suppression of menses in plethoric girls.

From overexertion and becoming overheated, threatened abortion. In inflammation of the breasts and stopping of the milk flow in the lying in period. Bryonia must be consulted. In milk fever and pains and swelling of the breast Bryonia must be studied.

During confinement a woman becomes overheated and naturally perspires; just at the close of it as the delivery takes place, if the nurse and the doctor do not observe and throw more clothing over her, or at least keep the room warm enough, there will be sudden suppression of the sweat, and this will bring on milk fever and other febrile symptoms which will need Bryonia.

Threatened peritonitis, from such causes, gonorrheal troubles, old rheumatic troubles, pains or aches, if made worse from the slightest motion.

If due to septicemia rather than to suppression of the sweat, very commonly a deeper acting remedy is required. In inflammatory conditions of the breast one of the most striking things is the stony hardness of the breasts, hardness and heaviness.

Bryonia is often suitable for inflammation of the breasts at other times; heaviness and hardness of the breast prior to menstruation.

Respiratory: Then we come to the respiratory tract again, which we have only hinted at, and here we have a tremendous study before us.

Very commonly the Bryonia conditions commence with a cold; it may be at first loss of voice, with rawness in the trachea and great soreness in the chest; dry, hacking cough, as if the chest would burst from coughing.

The Bryonia patient sits up and holds the head, or holds the chest; presses both hands upon the chest when coughing, feels as if the chest would fly to pieces when coughing; pains in the chest on both sides, but mostly the right side.

Bryonia prefers the right side when the condition is pneumonia. We see a patient who had first a cold, and the cold has traveled down the air passages, with hoarseness and rawness in the chest and cough; the cough shakes the whole body, then comes a hard chill.

He is now down in bed, and when the physician sees him be sees the state of inflammation and knows the meaning of it, and listening confirms the diagnosis of pneumonia.

The patient cannot move hand or foot; the pain is mostly in the right lung, and he is compelled to lie on the right side or back and dreads motion. Sometimes the pleura is involved and we have the sharp pains; every respiration causes intense pain, whether it be pleuro-pneumonia or a simple pneumonia.

But we see the Bryonia patient lying upon the side that is affected, upon the painful side, in order to diminish the motion that respiration causes; and every often he will have a hand under it to see if he cannot hold it still.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
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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