Carbo Vegetabilis



A dose of Carbo veg. in such cases will improve matters very much, and minor cases of whooping cough may be wiped out in a few days. When the remedy does not cure permanently, it brings out more clearly the symptoms calling for another remedy. Most cases of whooping cough, in the care of a homoeopathic physician, will get well in a week or ten days under a carefully selected remedy.

When allowed to run, they continue a long time, gradually increasing for six weeks, and then declining according to the weather. If it is in the fall, the cough will sometimes keep up all winter; so whooping cough furnishes an opportunity for the homeopathic physician to demonstrate that there is something in Homoeopathy.

Respiration: The Carbo veg. patient suffers very much from difficulties of breathing. Suffocation; cannot lie down. A feeling of weakness in the chest, as if he could not get another breath. Sometimes it is due to cardiac weakness, and sometimes to stuffing up of the chest. The latter is most common. Sometimes the difficulty is asthmatic. The remedy cures asthma. We will see the patient propped up in a chair by an open window, or some members of the family may be fanning him as fast as possible.

The face is cold, the nose pinched, the extremities cold and he is as pale as death. Put the hand in front of the mouth, and the breath feels cold. The breath is offensive; putrid. The extremities are cold clear to the body; not only the hands, but the whole upper extremities; and not only the feet, but the limbs clear to the body, are cold. The body only feels warm; even the skin is cold.

Carbo veg. has a rattling cough with retching and vomiting. A morning cough, with much rattling in the chest; the chest fills with mucus, and on endeavoring to expectorate he coughs and gags, or coughs and vomits. At any time during the day a peculiar choking, gagging, retching cough may develop from the mucus in the chest. He cannot get it up; it is tough, purulent, yellow and thick.

Greatly reduced vitality; great relaxation; worn out persons, old people. Persons worn out from coughing or from prolonged exertion. Prostration. Catarrh of the chest, with copious expectoration. At times there will be a hard, dry hacking cough, but finally, after prolonged coughing, it commences to loosen and he throws up great quantities of mucus.

A dry, hacking cough, yet there is rattling in the chest, and the cough does not seem to do any good. He seems to cough and become exhausted, sweats and strangles. It seems as if he would suffocate with the cough.

Finally he succeeds in getting up some mucus, and the follows mouthful after mouthful of thick purulent expectoration. Frequent attacks of spasmodic cough in violent paroxysm lasting for many minutes, sometimes an hour.

Cold sweat, coldness and pinched appearance of the face. This increases as he goes into the paroxysm of coughing. His face looks haggard, so distressed does he become while in a paroxysm of coughing. This state is present in old phtisical cases, in the advanced stage, when they are incurable. Under such circumstances Carbo veg. furnishes an excellent palliative.

It seems to strengthen the muscles of the chest so that the patient can expectorate better. It mitigates the cough; the gagging and retching and dyspnoea are relieved, and he is temporarily improved. It is a wonderful palliative in many incurable conditions with dyspnoea and weakness of the chest. In Bright’s Disease, in phthisis, and in cancerous affections Carbo veg. stops the violent symptoms and mitigates greatly.

This remedy is one to begin whooping cough with. It simplifies the case greatly, and sometimes cures it in a few days. The patient coughs until the chest is sore, as if he had been beaten all over the chest.

All night he has paroxysms of coughing. He sleeps into a paroxysm of, coughing, like Lachesis. He rouses up from sleep with coughing, gagging, sweating and suffocation. He will go two or three hours without a paroxysm, and then on comes one that will last an hour. He has two or three hard paroxysms of coughing during the night. He commences to fill up, he hears the rattling breathing and he knows that before long he will have a hard time of it.

This goes on and on, to the end of his life in asthmatic cases-what is called “humid asthma”.

Real humid asthma comes on in persons who suffer from contractions of the small bronchial tubes, so that even at the best there are little whistlings in the chest. Every time such patients take cold their whistling increases.

They expectorate mucus, at first copious, then tough and finally purulent. During all this there is great asthmatic dyspnoea. Carbo veg. is an excellent remedy in all those cases of asthma where the shortness of breath is so marked that there is only a partial oxidation, as a result of which he suffers much from occipital headache and wants to be fanned.

Old cases of recurrent asthma. Every time there comes a warm wet spell his asthma comes on. It is common for Carbo veg. asthma to come on in the night. He goes to, bed without warning of an oncoming attack, only. He says,

“I don’t like the weather;” and he wakes up with asthma.

He wakes up suffocating, springs out of bed and goes to the window or wants to be fanned. Carbo veg. required in old, badly-treated cases of pneumonia, with a remaining bronchitis; in cases where there has been hepatization that was not cleared up, and there are bad places in the lungs and bronchial tubes, with weakness of the chest.

Weakness of the chest when coughing. He feels that there is not enough force in the muscle of the chest to get up a good cough, or to help him carry on the breathing. Pneumonia, third stage, with foetid expectoration, cold breath, cold sweat, desire to be fanned.

Threatened paralysis of the lungs. This is a combination of clinical states that the remedy covers well. Sometimes these asthmatic cases go on for a while, and then comes an infiltration of tubercle. If Carbo veg. can be given early it will prevent infiltration.

There is pain in the chest, and burning. Burning in the lungs; burning in the sides of the chest; burning with the cough; burning behind the sternum – the whole length of the trachea; burning aggravated when coughing; a sense of rawness even when breathing. He feels a load upon the chest, an oppression, a great weight. These are the various words that he uses, all descriptive of the same thing.

Heart: The heart comes in for a great deal of trouble. It appears to be struggling. Of course it is the venous side of the heart that is in distress. The veins are engorged. it is a venous condition of the whole patient; the veins are performing their labor with great difficulty. A state of relaxation, struggling, and there are orgasms of blood – described by some of the authors as an orgasm, by others as a tumultuous action of the heart felt throughout the body.

Pulsation felt all over the body. Flushes of heat mounting upwards, ending in a sweat. Suitable, sometimes for women at the turn of life. Especially suitable to persons in advanced years.

Carbo veg. complaints come on in a weakly state in young people as if it were a premature old age in the middle-aged people; or in the breaking down that naturally belongs to old age. It is a great comforter for aged people with enlarged veins, or fullness of the veins and coldness of the extremities. Oozing of blood, with palpitation tumultuous action of the heart. The pounding goes on like a great machine, shaking the whole body.

The pulse is almost imperceptible. It seems as though the volume of blood ought to be tremendous, but it is not. Weakness of the whole vascular system. Pulse irregular, intermittent, frequent. Blood stagnates in the capillaries. Complete torper; impending paralysis of the heart. Burning in the region of the heart. With this there is an awful feeling of anxiety in the chest – in the region of the heart as if he were going to die, or as if something were going to happen. He feels that tumultuous action and tires out under it.

In going over the remedy I have said so much about the limbs, their coldness and the cold sweat, that I have practically covered most of the symptoms that belong to the extremities. Carbo veg. is an excellent remedy for the general constitutional disorder where there arc indolent varicose ulcers upon the lower limbs – the legs above the ankles.

There is no activity in these ulcers; thin watery discharge or it is thick. bloody and ichorous. Burning indolent ulcers; varicose, ulcers; swelling of the limbs. A gangrenous state from the extremely feeble circulation.

Gangrenous condition such as old people have, senile gangrene. The limbs wither; the toes and lower parts wither and look dusky. There are blisters upon them and they ooze a bloody, watery fluid. Burning like fire. Loss of sensation. Stiffness in the joints. Excoriating sweat between the toes, and numbness. Numbness in the limb lain on. If he lies on the right side, the right hand gets numb. It he turns over on the left side, the left arm gets numb.

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.

Comments are closed.