Carbo Vegetabilis



There is suppression of urine. In both the male and the female organs there is a weakness and relaxation. The male organs hang down. Relaxation of the genitalia; cold and sweating genitals. The fluids escape involuntarily.

Women: In the woman the relaxation is manifested by a dragging down sensation; dragging down of the uterus, as if the internal parts would escape. The uterus drags down so that she cannot stand on her feet. All the internal organs feel heavy and hang down.

Another strong feature of Carbo veg. is dark, oozing haemorrhage from the uterus. It is not so often a copious gushing hemorrhage, the remedy has that also – but it is an oozing. The menstrual flow will ooze from one period almost to another.

The blood is putrid and dark, even black, with small clots, and considerable serum escapes with it. it says in the text:

“Metrorrhagia from uterine agony.”

Atony is a good name for the condition; lack of tone; relaxation; weakness of the tissue. Atony is everywhere present in the Carbo veg. constitution. The muscles are tired, the limbs are tired, the whole being is tired and relaxed.

This is in contradistinction to the gushing found in Belladonna, Ipecac, Secale and Hamamelis, where the blood escapes in great gushes, followed quite naturally by a contraction of the uterus, for there is more or less tonicity in connection with it.

In Carbo veg., either in connection with confinement or menstruation, or in an incidental haemorrhage, the uterus does not contract. Subinvolution from mere atony; no contraction; no tonicity; weakness and relaxation.

After menstruation, confinement and the various complaints that woman is subject to, there is a period of weakness that Carbo veg. often fits.

When there is a retained placenta, with scanty hemorrhage – just an oozing, with no tendency to a gush of blood – the physician remembers that throughout the whole pregnancy and confinement there has been sluggishness and slowness of pains, and he says:

“Why did I not think of Carbo veg. Before?”

The woman has needed Carbo veg. for a month. He administers a dose, and before he has time to think about it, the uterus will expel that placenta and fix up matters so nicely that he will not need the mechanical interference that might otherwise have been necessary.

Now-a-days we hear so much about this meddlesome midwifery, this curetting, and doing this and that and the other thing, that it makes a homeopathic physician disgusted, just as if those parts were not made by Nature, and could not take care of themselves; as if they must be swabbed out and syringed out.

These injections of bichlorides, etc., to keep the germs out of a woman are all nonsense. If a state of order is maintained there will be no germs.

A homoeopathic physician can manage hundreds of these cases, and have no trouble. If he sees clearly beforehand what remedy the woman needs there will be no bad cases; they will all take care of themselves.

Irregular contractions that bring on abnormal conditions are all avoided if the woman is turned into order before she goes into confinement. Carbo veg. is one of the medicines that prepares a woman well for confinement, that is, the symptoms calling for Carbo veg. are often present in such conditions. She is often run down, relaxed and tired. Pregnancy brings about a great many unusual conditions.

There is the nausea in pregnancy; the flatulence; the offensiveness; the weakness; the enlarged veins. They will tell you that the enlargement of the veins of the lower limbs is from pressure, but it is generally not from pressure, but from weakness of the veins themselves.

Suppression of milk; prostration or great debility from nursing. It is not natural for a woman in a healthy state to become prostrated when nursing her child. She becomes so because she is sick. She was in a state of debility before she began nursing, and the weakness should be corrected by an appropriate remedy.

Then she can make milk and feed her child without feeling the loss of it. Such is the state of order. Carbo veg. is a friend to the woman, and a friend to her offsprings. You will be astonished, after ten years of real homoeopathic practice, that you have so few deformed babies; that they have all grown up and prospered; that their little defects and deformities have been outgrown, and that they are more beautiful than most children, because they have been kept orderly.

The doctor watches and studies him, and feeds him a little medicine now and then, that the mother suspects is sugar, to keep on the good side of the baby. She need not know that it is medicine, or that anything is the matter with the baby.

So he watches the development of that little one, and grows him out of all his unhealthy tendencies. The children that grow up under the care of the homoeopathic physician will never have consumption, or Bright’s disease; they are all turned into order, and they will die of old age, or be worn out properly by business cares; they will not rust out.

It is the duty of the physician to watch the little ones. To save them from their inheritances and their downward tendencies is the greatest work of his life. That is worth living for. When we see these tendencies cropping out in the little ones we should never intimate – that they are due to the father or mother.

It is only offensive and does no good. The physician’s knowledge as to what he is doing is his own, and the greatest comfort be can get out of it is his own. He need never expect that anyone will appreciate what he has done, or what be has avoided.

The physician who desires praise and sympathy for what he has done generally has no conscience. The noble, upright, truthful physician works in the night he works in the dark, he works quietly; he is not seeking for praise.

He does this when called to the house, and when members of the family bring little ones to the office. In this manner children can be studied and their symptoms observed and enquired into.

Whenever the mother brings the child. expecting medicine, she may know that he is receiving medicine, but when she docs not ask for medicine let her suspect that Johnnie is getting sugar so the doctor can get on the good side of him. That is sufficient.

Voice and larynx: In Carbo veg. the voice manifests a great many symptoms. I described a part of them when going over the coryza. I explained how it began in the nose, and traveled to the throat, the larynx, and the chest.

Now many of the complaints of the larynx begin with a cold, in the nose, which finally locates permanently in the larynx and in that way we bring out the Carbo veg. cases.

It is only now and then that the Carbo veg. cold settles in the larynx first; it usually travels through the nose. Most remedies have a favorite place for beginning a cold. For instance, the majority of Phosphorus colds begin in the chest or larynx. Not so with Carbo veg.; its cold generally begins in the nose, with a coryza, and the larynx is simply one of the stopping places.

If the Carbo veg. cold goes down into the chest it may have its ending in the bronchial tubes or the lungs. There is a favorite place for it to settle, and it seems as if it were going to remain there. Weakness in the larynx from talking. Tired larynx of speakers and singers, and feeble, relaxed persons.

The hoarseness comes on in the evening. The larynx may be fairly well in the morning, but as soon as it becomes evening his voice becomes husky. In more serious forms he may be speechless in the morning, but hoarseness and huskiness in the evening are more characteristic. Huskiness and rawness in the evening. Rawness in the larynx when coughing. Some will say there is burning, some will say rawness. Rawness in the larynx and trachea when coughing.

A continual formation of mucus in the larynx, which he has to scrape and cough out. We see the same tendency to weak ness in the mucous membranes. No tendency to repair; no tendency to recover. He goes on from bad to worse, with a catarrhal condition of the larynx and trachea. Hoarseness and rawness from talking, worse afternoon and evening.

He is obliged to clear his throat so, many times in the evening that the larynx becomes raw and sore. Let me tell you another thing about the Materia Medica. Most of the provers were laymen, and hence there is some confusion of terms in the provings. This the physicians must see. Irritation in the throat from coughing nearly always means irritation in the larynx, though the prover said “throat.”

Now here is an expression,

“obliged to clear his throat so often in the evening that the larynx becomes raw and sore.”

Clearing the throat would not make the larynx sore.

Scraping the throat does not scrape the larynx; but he is obliged to clear his larynx so often that the part feels raw. Ulcerative pain, scraping and titillation in the larynx. Irritation in the larynx causing sneezing. Laryngeal phthisis. This catarrhal condition and lack of repair in the larynx goes on so long that tuberculosis begins.

Whooping cough: Carbo veg. is one of the greatest medicines we have in the beginning of whooping cough. Its cough has all the gagging, vomiting and redness of the face found in whooping cough. It is one of our best medicines when the case is confused; when the cough indicates no remedy or when it remains in a partially developed state.

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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