Calcarea has a kind of indigestion, a fermentation that favors the formation of worms, so that Calcarea babies are sometimes wormy.
Pass worms in the stool, and vomit worms. Calcarea so corrects this indigestion, when the symptoms agree, that worms no longer hatch out. The symptoms disappear, and we really wonder what becomes of the worms.
The idea with the homoeopathic physician is not to give vermifuges, but to so correct the digestion that worms will not thrive; and it is true that worms will not thrive in the healthy stomach and intestines. Whether they leave by expulsion or whether they are destroyed, or what becomes of them, I do not know.
To remove them by physicking them out, and by vermifuges, only makes a bad matter worse, because it increases the indigestion, it increases the turmoil. So it is with all worms in the stomach and rectum; all those worms will come if they are favored with just exactly the right kind of fluids to hatch out in.
They come, and they grow. I suppose at least twenty-five times in the last twenty years have I known Calcarea to bring away tape worm, and in most instances I did not know it was present; but I simply prescribed for the patient. I was not aware of its existence. It is so with many remedies, but this more than others.
Genitals: The Calcarea patient is weak sexually, with general relaxation and weakness. Sometimes an inordinate carving, sometimes an overwhelming desire keeps him awake at nights. But weak; weak in this way, that any indulgence is followed by weak back, sweating, weakness in general, so that he is compelled to abstain because of the sufferings.
The woman is affected in a similar way. You need not be surprised, when you hear all of the constitutional weakness, that it is a common, thing for Calcarea women to be sterile. So tired, so relaxed; wholly unfit for reproduction.
And the same as in the male, she suffers from lassitude, swelling, wakefulness, and weakness in general after every coition. The parts feel relaxed. The uterus drags down. Sensation as if parts would be forced out. State of general weakness and general relaxation of the sexual organs of both male and female. Calcarea has a tendency to grow warts and polypoid growths, pedunculated growths, that bleed easily, that are soft and spongy.
The woman flows too much at the menstrual period; too long, and, of course, this naturally brings her around too soon. Often every three weeks, lasting a week, with a copious flow. Menstrual period too soon, lasting too long, and profuse. Calcarea is not always indicated; not unless all of the symptoms go together to make up the Calcarea patient.
Sometimes it may occur to your mind to say, that with five or six key-notes, certainly you would give Calcarea; but suppose you did have five or six key-notes of Calcarea, and the patient should be a Pulsatilla patient, would you expect to cure her with Calcarea?
Suppose the patient always avoided warm things and much clothing, and wanted the cold open air, and still had a dozen key-notes, you would find every time that Calcarea would fail. Unless you combine the particulars with the things that are general, and the generals with the particulars, unless the remedy fits the patient from within out, generally and particularly, a cure need not be expected. That is why I say, do not prescribe on key-notes, but upon the symptoms of the patient.
This great state of relaxation which we always have in every Calcarea patient is also manifested in leucorrhea, copious, thick, constant leucorrhea, discharging day and night. Leucorrhea that is acrid, keeping up an itching, and smarting, and burning,
“Leucorrhoea thick and yellow,” from one menstrual period to another, and some times it intermingles with the menstrual flow.
“Vaginal polypi. Burning soreness in the genitals” from leucorrhoea.
“Itching and rawness” from leucorrhoea.
Hemorrhage of the uterus from over-lifting; from excitement; from shocks; from anything that greatly disturbs; from fear, from any great emotion, or from straining the muscles. Such are the conditions of relaxation and weakness. Inability to strain the muscles, or to exert himself mentally or physically.
The complaints of pregnancy are generally those of great relaxation and weakness. Threatened abortion. After delivery, weakness and prostration; sweating. Weakness from nursing.
Voice: The Calcarea voice is that of painless hoarseness. The vocal cords are tired, and cannot endure strain; almost a paralytic weakness. Sometimes a copious flow of mucus from the larynx. Much irritation in the larynx, but weakness. Not that burning and rawness that we find in Belladonna and Phosphorus, but painless hoarseness. In Phosphorus it is painful, in Belladonna it is very painful. He cannot speak without pain.
But in Calcarea he wonders why he has so much trouble in the larynx, because he has no feeling in it. This goes on from bad to worse, and with the tubercular tendency, look out for tubercular laryngitis. Given early it may keep off such a tubercular tendency. It has cured tubercular laryngitis.
Much rattling of mucus; rattling breathing; coarse rattling; that is, much mucus in the trachea, in the larynx, in the bronchial tubes, in the chest. Great dyspnoea.
The dyspnoea comes on from going up stairs, from walking against the wind. Anything that bas any exertion in it will bring on the dyspnoea. We find this in asthma, weak heart, weak chest and in threatening phthisis.
That state of the lungs you will know very often by the kind of breathing; because all that are going into phthisis are tired and weak. He is too tired and weak to make any effort at breathing, so that he has difficult in going up stairs, climbing a hill, walking against the wind.
Chest: The chest troubles furnishes one of our best fields for Calcarea.
We having spiting of blood prolonged cough; copious expectoration of thick yellow mucus, or even pus; ulceration, or abscess. Tickling cough. We have, in threatening chest trouble, the beginning emaciation, the pallor, the sensitiveness to cold, changes, and to the cold air and to wet weather and to winds.
He takes colds and they all settle into the chest; gradual emaciation in the limbs; always so tired. It corresponds to just such constitutional weakness as precedes, or is present in the first stages of phthisis. It stops the patient taking cold, which is the very beginning of it. The patient will begin to feel better after taking Calcarea, and it improves his general state, and it will even encyst tubercular deposits.
It turns them from a caseous into a calcareous form, and cysts have been found in the chest long afterwards. Patients have lived a long time and improved, and gone into a general state of health, when quite well advanced with tubercular deposits. Of course, when any person is well into a tubercular condition, it may be expected that he will go.
Do not believe or think favorably of cure for consumption. Every little while we have some one. Coming out with something or other that cures consumption, a new cure.
Every one who know much about the real nature of phthisical conditions, cannot have much confidence in such things, and I certainly lose respect for an individual who has a consumption cure. He must either be crazy or something worse.
Generally he is after the money that may be in it. Hardly any one who knows anything about it can conscientiously present a consumption cure to the world.
To prevent those things is what we want to do, and this is the great sphere of Calcarea. The expectoration is sweetish very often, like Phosphorus and Stannum. White, yellow, thick.
We might go over all the general symptoms here, the soreness, the tenderness, the kind of pains, the lassitude, and a great many symptoms of that sort, they are too numerous to mention, but they are non descriptive, for the reason that after you get these pains and study them carefully, you are no better off. You must study the constitution of Calcarea, the nature of Calcarea, its character.
There are spine symptom s; plenty’ of them. Weak; all degrees of weakness. The Calcarea patient is so weak in the back that he slides down in the chair while sitting; cannot sit right in his chair.
Rests on the back of his head. The back of his chair and the back of his head come in contact. A weak spine, a sensitive spine, and the glands of the neck are swollen. Again, a marked condition of the spine is where the lime element is deficient, and we soon get deformity; curvature.
It may be surprising to you to hear that Calcarea is a great help, and has sometimes cured that without any brace or support whatever, when taken early.
You take infants manifesting a weakness of the spine, let them lie flat on their back in bed, put them on the indicated remedy – it is sometimes Calcarea – and in a little while that knuckling will cease, and the little one will sit up straight.
Such wonderful things occur under the use of Calcarea, when the symptoms agree. In the extremities we have all the rheumatic conditions that it is possible to describe.
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.