The camphor bottle is, a great mischief in the house, as camphor antidotes most of our remedies. Camphor in potentized form will cure many complaints.
It is suitable in some acute complaints attended with nervous excitement, even to frenzy, with spasms and convulsions and finally exhaustion. The Camphor state is one of convulsions or coldness.
In the most acute period of the Camphor excitement, the excitability and frenzy of the patient are extreme, or he goes into the other extreme, in which the irritability is lost and there is loss of sensation, unconsciousness and coldness.
The two extremes may be seen in one patient, one earlier and the other later. He may go from the extreme of mental excitement and violence to one of prostration and exhaustion, in which the body is blue and cold and yet must be uncovered.
Mind: In the mental state, there is anxiety and extreme fear; fear of persons, of strange spheres, of the dark; the dark is filled with imaginary specters; he dare not get out of bed in the dark; everything that moves is a specter and the inanimate things of the room become alive and terrify him.
Frenzy. Coupled with this, there is kidney and urinary trouble, like that of Cantharis, and because of this similarity, the two remedies are both complementary and antidotal to each other. If a woman has poisoned herself with Cantharis, and there is present the frenzy and excitement, Camphor will act as an antidote.
The details of the mental symptoms are worthy of much consideration. The patient goes into a state not unlike imbecility, and the appearance is as if it had come on slowly. The mind and memory are gone. He closes the eyes, seemingly asleep, and answers no questions. Delirious with the heat, rage and mania, wants to jump out of bed or out of the window. Screams and calls for help. Tosses anxiously in bed.
Anxiety and almost loss of consciousness. These symptoms will indicate Camphor in puerperal fever, in congestion of the brain, or in shock from violent inflammation of organs. Confusion comes from the shock and comes with violence.
The more violently the patient suffers, the sooner he is cold, and when he is cold, he must uncover even in a cold room. This is somewhat like Secale. In Secale the patient, when cold, wants to uncover and to be in a cold room, and it also has frenzy, and so there is nothing in what we have yet seem to distinguish Secale from Camph.
But there is another thing that runs through Camph., by which a distinction can be made. The coldness, frenzy and heat very often intermingle. When the Camphor patient is becoming cold, he has spells of heat which come over him; flashes of heat intermingle with rending, tearing, burning pains, either in the inflamed organ or along the nerves.
The patient is a most troublesome patient to nurse; nobody and nothing suits. If an inflammation of the bladder comes on, there is intense pain and tenderness, and from the shock of the suffering the mind is in a state of frenzy.
Coldness then comes on and the patient wants to be uncovered, wants cold air, wants the windows open, but before all this can be done, a flash of beat comes on and then he wants the covers on, and the register turned on, and wants a hot iron and hot bottles; but this stage now passes off, and while the nurse is bringing the hot irons he wants her to open the windows and have everything cool.
You will see at once that these are serious cases. This occurs with opisthotonos, convulsions, inflammation of the brain, liver, kidney, bladder, coming on from violent shock and cold with great exhaustion. You will see this in one who has worked for hours for his life, and when the excitement is over reaction sets in and it is like a whirlwind; he has worked until he is exhausted and now he is prostrated, cold and blue; here is the sphere where the old woman with her Camphor bottle has established a reputation, but potentized Camphor will do more for him than the Camphor bottle, it will put him into a refreshing sleep.
Menopause: It is useful in the climacteric period with flushes of heat and sweat in a warm room; the limbs and abdomen are very cold and she suffers from cold when uncovered and sweats copiously when covered. She cannot endure covering to warm her limbs though she suffers from cold.
Head: The head is full of pain; throbbing pain. Contractive feeling as if laced together in the cerebellum. The whole back of the head and neck throb like hammers, worse from bending head forward; burning and stinging. Frontal headaches.
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.