“Why, if you produce a resorption of that pus into the system you will have blood poisoning and death.”
But under Calcarea this resorption does take place in some manner, and the patient improves every moment, he stops his sweating, his rigor has disappeared, he becomes perfectly comfortable, his appetite improves, he is stronger by the time it is over, and remains well.
Judging from the old standpoint, we cannot conclude anything about the problems that will come up under Homoeopathy. We can only judge from our standpoint, and from what we know.
And if you hear that somebody has tried this and tried that without success, remember that somebody has only demonstrated his own failure. Homoeopathy is capable of demonstrating itself in all intelligent hands; wherever the physician has intelligence and makes use of the law and applies the remedy in accordance with the symptoms he will see the case turn out as described.
Polypi: Another grand feature running through this remedy is its ability to grow polypi. Those who need Calcarea will grow polypi in the nose and ears, in the vagina, in the bladder, and here and there. Cystic growths also and strange little papillomata.
Exostoses: Another strange thing that it does is to cause exostoses. This state of disorder comes from the irregularity in the distribution of the lime. You would think that nature would try to distribute it around evenly where it can do the most good.
But when this bone salt inanition has commenced the lime may be piled up in one place, and almost absent in another. One bone will be cartilaginous and another will have bony growths on it. Softening of the bone.
Defective formation of bone. A keynote has grown out of this, viz:
“Late learning to walk,” because the legs are so weak.
It is not late learning to walk, but it is late walking.
It knows how to walk, but it can’t walk. Natrum mur. has brain trouble, in which the child is late learning to do things.
“Tardy development of bone tissues. Curvatures.”
Muscles flabby, joint affections, like hip-joint disease. It is full of rheumatism. Rheumatic and gouty conditions of the joints.
The Calcarea patient is a chilly patient. Sensitive to the cold air. Sensitive to the raw winds. Sensitive to the coming of a storm; sensitive to the coming of cold weather, and when the weather changes from warm to cold it seems impossible for him to keep warm; he wants the body kept warm.
Head: The head is sometimes congested; and it is hot to the touch; but it often feels cold to him. His scalp feels as if it were cold. But the body is nearly always cold to the touch and he feels cold, and he wants plenty of clothing.
The feet are cold. He sweats in various places, sweats in spots. Sweats upon the forehead, or upon the face, or upon the back of the neck, or the front of the chest, or his feet.
Sensitiveness to cold and weakness run through the remedy. Weakness in the legs. Inability to endure. Worse from every kind of exertion. Out of breath. Fat, flabby anemic subjects, sometimes they look plump, often flushed in the face, but they have no endurance, and if such a patient undertakes a little exertion he is down sick with a fever, or a headache.
Calcarea is full of complaints brought on from lifting, from exertion, from walking, from walking enough to get into a sweat; and these come very suddenly, because he cannot stop that perspiration by keeping still without getting sick.
If he gets into a sweat, and stops long enough to be comfortable, the perspiration will stop so suddenly that he will have a chill, or he will have a headache. Weak, tired, anxious.
Difficulties of breathing. Weak heart. Weak all over. No ability of the muscles to sustain prolonged effort, and it is the same way with the mind. No ability of the mind to sustain prolonged mental effort. Calcarea is a tired patient.
He is suffering from want of lime. He has been unable to digest lime, and he goes into a state with enlarged glands, emaciation of the neck and of the limbs, while the fat and the glands of the belly increase. Especially is this noticed in children. A big bellied child, with emaciated limbs and emaciated neck.
Enlarged glands. Pale, and flabby, and sickly. Those that take on flesh without any increase of strength. They take on flesh and grow flabby. Remain feeble. Those that get up from sickness take on flabby flesh, and in a little while they become dropsical.
The Calcarea patient can’t go upstairs; he is so tired in his legs, and so tired in the chest; he pants and suffocates from going upstairs. He has every evidence of muscular weakness and flabbiness. Nutrition is impaired everywhere.
This is the kind of patient that used to be called scrofulous; now we call the condition psora; and Calcarea is one of our deepest anti-psorics. It is a medicine that goes deep into the life, and takes a deep hold of every part of the economy.
Mind: Now we will take up the mental symptoms. All the mind symptoms represent Calcarea as in a state of great weakness; in ability to prolong mental operation.
Becomes very tired from mental work. Full of anxiety. He is tired mentally, and tired physically, from mental work and breaks down in a sweat, and becomes excited and irritable and disturbed. Great disturbance of the emotions; complaints lasting for days and weeks from excitement of the emotions; from worrying, from vexation, or a general emotional disturbance is prostrated.
“Inability to apply himself.”
Inability to do good thinking for some time after such excitement, disturbance or worry. It is very useful in complaints from prolonged worry, from prolonged application to business, from excitement.
It is full of a peculiar kind of mental feeling, differing quite considerably from most remedies; he feels his exhaustion of mind, and it seems to him that this weakness, and this inability to do and to think connectedly, must be going towards insanity, he broods over it, he is convinced that he is insane, or about to become insane, that he is getting weak-minded, and he looks it, too, because what he has in his mind is this: that he is becoming insane or weak-minded and he thinks people will observe it.
He thinks people look at him suspiciously, and he looks at them suspiciously, and he wonders why they do not say something to him about it.
He thinks he is going insane, and that other people are observing his state of mind, and he keeps that in his mind most of the time. He thinks of it day-times, and he gets greatly roused up over it; he thinks of it nights, and it keeps him awake.
He lies awake late at night thinking. Calcarea leads to little ideas, that is, it compels the mind to littleness, to little ideas, or to dwell on little things, but his mind, as it were, is forced to dwell upon things that he cannot put aside.
When the Calcarea patient begins to relate to his friends how he feels they all naturally say to him,
‘Why don’t you put that aside; that doesn’t amount to anything,”
but to him it is a big thing, and he cannot put it aside; all these little things combine to convince him that he is going crazy. he cannot calculate, he cannot do deep thinking, he cannot dwell upon deep things; he may have been a philosopher, and he has lost his ability to think out things in philosophy.
He has lost his mental depth. he forms conclusions out of his emotions rather than from his intelligence. He forms conclusions about things as he wants them to be. You would almost think he wants to grow crazy, he keeps talking about it so much.
He is unable to accept any sort of argument, and this grows worse and worse. He is unable to accept the assurance of his physician, in whom he has always had confidence. It is no use, it seems, to try to reason with him; yet he is not so far gone but he can reason about other things except his own mental state.
He imagines things; and the things he imagines you will really wonder at his dwelling upon them so, because they are such little things. And so it is when he goes into insanity, or imbecility, or a general breakdown.
It is a passive state, in which he sits and thinks about his little affairs, and his little things that amount to nothing at all, and he sits and sits, the text says,
“Sits and breaks sticks, or bends pins all day long with his fingers.”
Does little things, and in this way he keeps himself busy, wears himself out more and more. Any amount of thinking be comes impossible. It is almost impossible for him to come to a conclusion, for he never figures it twice alike.
He cannot add and subtract even in the simplest forms. Now, he thinks about this matter so much and thinks everybody else is watching him, until finally the instant he closes his eyes he has visions, just as soon as he gets down quiet and thinks
“Now I will go to sleep, I will get rid of all this,”
and he closes his eyes to sleep, then he must get them open as quick as possible, he is in a state of excitement, for he sees horrid little spooks; he cannot keep his mind clear.
He cannot go to sleep because his thoughts trouble him, and he sees all sorts of things. There is no congruity in his mind. We know that strong intelligence puts aside such follies, but these are just the things that Calcarea patients dwell upon.
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.