Carbo Vegetabilis



They have headaches, worse from pressure of the hat. A long time after taking off the hat they still feel the pressure. Sweat, cold sweat; particularly sweat of the head and of the forehead.

The Carbo veg. patient breaks out into a copious sweat, appearing first on the forehead, and the sweat is cold. The forehead feels cold to the hand, and any wind blowing upon it will produce pain; he wants it covered up. Head sensitive to cold.

If he becomes overheated and like head perspires, and then a draft strikes that sweating head, his catarrh will stop at once and headaches will come on. His knees and hands and feet get cold, and he sweats without relief.

Eyes: The eye symptoms are troublesome, and they often occur along with the headache. Burning pain in the eyes. The eyes become lustreless, deep-set, and the pupils do not react to light. He feels sluggish mentally, and does not want to think.

He wants to sit or lie around, for every exertion gives him a headache. Whenever this state is present the eyes show it. You know he is sick because the bright, sparkling look has gone out of his eyes. If he could only get somewhere by himself and lie down-provided it was not dark, he would be comfortable.

He wants to be let alone; he is tired; his day’s work wears him out. He comes home with a purple face, lustreless eyes, sunken countenance, tired head and mind. Any mental exertion causes fatigue. Weight in the head, distress and fullness in the head, with cold extremities.

The blood mounts upward. Hemorrhages from the eyes; burning, itching and pressing in the eyes. The eyes become weak from overwork or from fine work.

Ears: Carbo veg. is one of the medicines for discharges from the ears. Offensive, watery, ichorous, acrid and excoriating discharges, especially those dating back to malaria, measles or scarlet fever, particularly to scarlet fever.

A sluggish condition of the venous system. The veins seem to be most affected in all old complaints, especially whenever a patient says of himself, or a mother says of her child, that he has never been quite well since an attack of malarial fever.

The daughter has never been quite well since she had the measles, or typhoid fever, or scarlet fever; Carbo veg. is one of the medicines to be thought of when symptoms are in confusion, and the patient has been so much doctored that there is no congruity left in the symptoms.

Old ear discharges, or old headaches, when all the symptoms have been suppressed. It is then Carbo veg. often becomes one of the routine remedies to bring symptoms into order and to establish a more wholesome discharge from that ear. it brings about reaction, establishes a better circulation and partially cures the case, after which a better remedy may be selected.

Inflammation of the parotid glands, or mumps. When mumps change their abode, from being chilled, and go in the girl to the mammary glands, and in the boy to the testes, Carbo veg. is one of the medicines to restore order; very often it will bring the trouble back to its original place, and conduct it on through in safety.

Pains in the ear. Passive, badly-smelling discharges from the ear. Loss of hearing. Ulceration of the internal ear. Something heavy seems to lie before the ears; they seem stopped; the hearing is diminished, especially in those cases that date back to some old trouble.

Nose: The Carbo veg. patient is always suffering from coryza. He goes into a warm room, and, thinking he is going out in a minute, he keeps his overcoat on.

Pretty soon he begins to get heated up, but he thinks he will go in a minute and he does not take off his coat. A procedure like that is sure to bring on a coryza. It will commence in the nose, with watery discharge, and he will sneeze, day and night.

He suffers from the heat and is chilled by the cold; every draft chills him; and a warm room makes him sweat, and thus he suffers from both. He can find no comfortable place, and he goes on sneezing and blowing his nose.

Perhaps he has bleeding from the nose. At night he is purplish. The coryza extends into the throat and brings on rawness and dryness in the mouth and throat. A copious watery discharge, filling the posterior nares and the throat.

Larynx and chest: Then he begins to get hoarse, and in the evening he has a hoarse voice, with rawness in the larynx and throat. Rawness in the larynx on coughing; soreness to the touch. The more he coughs the worse the rawness becomes.

This condition extends into the chest. Secretion of much thin mucus, finally becoming thick yellowish-green, and bad-tasting. Such is the coryza. Now, with it there comes a stomach disturbance that is commonly associated with Carbo veg. complaints.

Great distension of the abdomen with gas. With this coryza he has belching, and sour, disordered stomach. Every time he disorders his stomach he is likely to get a coryza. Every time he goes into an overheated room he is likely to get a coryza, with sneezing, chest complaints, and catarrh.

This catarrhal state in the nose is only a fair example of what may occur anywhere where there is a mucous membrane. Catarrhal conditions with a flow of watery mucus and bleeding. Carbo veg. has catarrhs of the throat, nose, eyes, chest, and vagina.

Old catarrhal conditions of the bladder; catarrh of the bowels and stomach. It is pre-eminently a catarrhal remedy.

The woman feels best when she has more or less of a leucorrhea, it seems a sort of protection. These discharges that we meet every day are dried up and controlled by local treatments, by washes, and by local applications of every kind, and the patient put into the hands of the undertaker, or made a miserable wreck.

If these catarrhal patients are not healed from within out, the discharges had better be allowed to go on. While these discharges exist the patient is comfortable. It is quite common for the Carbo veg. patient to be feverish with the coryza, but with many other complaints he is cold; cold limbs; cold face; cold body; cold skin; cold sweat.

It is not so common for the earlier stages of the coryza, and the catarrhal conditions to have these cold symptoms. He is feverish in the evening and at night. But after he passes into the second stake, when the, mucus is more copious, then come the cold knees, cold nose, cold feet, and cold sweat.

Face: The face of Carbo veg. is a great study. In the countenance and in the expression we see much that is general.

The patient shows his general state in his expression, especially in the eyes. He tells you how sick he is; he tells you the threatening points.

In Carbo veg. there is great pallor and coldness, with lips pinched and nose pointed and drawn in. Lips puckered, blue, livid, sickly, deathly. Face cold, pale, and covered with sweat.

As the tongue is protruded for examination it is pale and cold, and the breath is cold, yet he wants to be fanned. This is true whether it be cholera, diarrhea, exhaustive sweats, or complaints after fevers.

Sometimes, after a coryza has run its course and ended in the chest, there is great dyspnea, copious expectoration, exhaustive sweat, great coldness and the patient must be fanned.

Cough followed by dyspnea, exhaustion, profuse sweats, with choking and rawness and he wants to be fanned. Cold face; pinched face. So the sufferings are expressed in the face. The pains and aches, and anxiety and sorrow are all expressed in the face.

The study of the face is a delightful and profitable one. The study of the faces of remedies is very profitable. It is profitable to study the faces of healthy people that you may be able to judge their intentions from their facial expressions. A man shows his business of life in his face; he shows his method of thinking, his hatreds, his longings, and his loves.

How easy it is to pick out a man who has never loved to do anything but to eat: the Epicurean face. How easy it is to pick out a man who has never loved anything but money: the miserly face. You can see the love in many of the professional faces; you can single out the student’s face.

These are only manifestations of the love of the life which they live. Some manifest hatred; hatred of the life in which they have been forced to live; hatred of mankind; hatred of life. In those who have been disappointed in everything they have undertaken to do we see hatred stamped upon the face.

We see these things in remedies just as we see them in people. The study of the face is a most delightful one. A busy, thoughtful and observing physician has a head full of things that he can never tell: things he knows about the face.

So the face expresses the remedy. In Carbo veg. the face flushes to the roots of the hair after a little wine. This is a strong characteristic. All over the body the skin will become flushed. Sometimes a flush appears in islands, which grow together and become one solid flush, creeping up into the hair.

So great is the action of this remedy upon the capillary circulation that sometimes a tablespoonful of wine is sufficient to cause this flushing of the skin.

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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