The nasal catarrh is very troublesome. Old, atrophic catarrh with accumulation of crusts throughout the whole nasal cavity; post-nasal catarrh with ulcerations, granulations and copious, thick, yellow or yellowish-green discharge; nose-bled; frequent attacks of acrid, watery coryza. Much itching of the nose. A wart grows upon the tip of the nose.
Face and mouth: The pains in the face are violent. Neuralgic pains from exposure to cold. These pains often accompany the facial paralysis. Tearing pains in the face, stitching pains, pains of a rheumatic character.
Ulcerations about the mouth and nose. Fissures about the lips, the wings of the nose and the corners of the eyes. Fissures seem to form upon the least provocation. Fissures of the anus, of the skin about the joints. Old cases of salt rheum with fissures in the bends of the joints. Fistulous openings with indurated walls.
The gums become scorbutic and settle away from the teeth; bleeding and ulceration of the gums. Violent, tearing pains in the roots of the teeth from riding in the wind. Old rheumatic subjects suffer all through every dry spell with toothache.
Stitching, tearing, pulsating pains in the teeth; even in the sound teeth on drawing in cold air. Frequently recurring abscesses of the gums. Putrid sour or bitter taste in the mouth.
When the paralytic condition affects the tongue then we have stammering. There is also the condition of complete paralysis of both the pharynx and oesophagus. Hence Causticum is useful in the results of diphtheria when it has been maltreated or when the remedy has not been sufficient to cure the disease.
The food goes down the wrong way or enters the larynx or the post-nares. Paralysis of the organs of speech, paralysis of the tongue, awkward at talking, awkward at chewing; bites the tongue and cheeks while chewing. Post-diphtheritic paralysis is a serious condition and only a few remedies can cure- it.
Causticum is one of them. Lachesis and Cocculus are also important. Dryness of the mouth and throat; rawness of the throat; must swallow constantly on account of a sensation of fullness in the throat, a nervous feeling in the throat. This is often a forerunner of paralysis. The Staphysagria patient when excited will keep up a constant swallowing and this goes on until it becomes a source of great annoyance.
Burning in the throat; jerking in the throat; constantly scraping thick, tough mucus from the larynx. Study the sounds that patients make in order to ascertain where the mucus comes from. The presence of hoarseness shows that the trouble is in the larynx.
Desires and aversions, stomach: The Causticum patient sits down to the table hungry, but on seeing the food his appetite vanishes. The thought, sight or smell of food takes away the appetite. This is a common symptom in the pregnant woman.
Although hungry, on sitting down at the table, she cannot eat. Kali carbonicum has an empty, all-gone feeling in the stomach, with aversion to food. China has canine hunger, but loathes the sight of food.
Thirst after eating; thirst for cool drinks with aversion to water desire for beer, smoked meats, pungent things, aversion to sweet things and delicacies. Most remedies that have loss of appetite have desire for, sweet things, pastry, etc. The symptoms of thirst with aversion to drinking is very much like Lachesis.
The two run very closely together in the paralytic condition of the throat. There is a queer sensation in the stomach as if lime were slaking there. Trembling in the stomach; burning. Bread causes a sensation of heaviness and pressure, coffee seems to aggravate all the symptoms of the stomach, but a swallow of cold water relieves.
Many symptoms in this remedy are made better by a swallow of water. The violent spasmodic cough may be stopped at once by a drink of cold water. Cold water seems to tone up the paralytic condition. Warm water applied to the hands brings on pains in these old sensitive spinal conditions. Cold washing is their only relief.
Causticum has belching, nausea, vomiting, distension and violent pains in the stomach. Pinching colic.
Rectum: In the rectum there is the same tendency to paralytic weakness that is found in other parts of the body. It is inactive and fills up with hard faeces, which pass involuntarily and unnoticed. Aloe has involuntary dropping of little, hard balls, especially in children. Even when old enough to understand about such things, they will pass little balls unnoticed.
On account of the paralytic condition the stool passes with less straining while the patient is standing. Retention of urine except when standing; unable to pass it in any other position is Sarsaparilla. Constipation, frequent, unsuccessful urging to stool. The stool is tough and shining, and is passed with great difficulty and exertion.
Fissures in the anus; itching and stitching in the rectum, excessive itching day and night; hemorrhoids, pulsating in the perineum I fissures and hemorrhoids pulsate and burn like fire.
The hemorrhoids become infiltrated and hardened.
Bladder: This remedy has two kinds of paralysis of the bladder, one affecting the muscles of expulsion and the urine is retained, and the other center ing upon the sphincter vesicae, and then the urine is passed involuntarily.
“He urinates so easily that he is not sensible of the stream and scarcely believes, in the dark, that he is urinating, until he makes sure by sense of touch.”
Causticum is unconscious of the stream as it passes.
It is a very useful remedy in children that wet the bed. Especially is it a wonderful remedy in the woman. The urine escapes involuntarily when coughing. Retention of urine in the woman. Retention after labor.
Paralysis of the bladder. A woman who is too greatly embarrassed to pass through a crowd of observing men to the closet at the end of a railroad car, at the end of the journey finds that she is unable to pass the urine.
Retention of urine from straining the muscles of the bladder. If the patient is chilled at the time the remedy may be Rhus.
Rhus and Causticum are the two great remedies for paralytic weakness of muscles from being overstrained, or from being overstrained and chilled. Great weakness at the time of the menses.
Menstruation: Anxious dreams before menstruation; melancholy; cramp-like spasms; pains in the back. The woman suffers from many annoyances during menstruation just about the time for the flow to start violent cramp-like pains come on. In a woman who is nursing a child the milk almost disappears in consequence of fatigue, night watching and anxiety. The nipples get sore and crack, another instance of the tendency to form fissures.
Voice: The Causticum patient has trouble with the voice. You remember, when we were going over the symptoms ofCarbo vegetabilis, I told you that the hoarseness was worse in the evening. Now observe that the hoarseness of Causticum is worse in the morning.
He gets up in the morning with a hoarse voice; if it is an ordinary case, after moving about and expectorating a little mucus, it is better. Sudden loss of voice from paralysis of the vocal cord.
It sometimes begins with the morning aggravation, gradually increasing until it lasts all day and all night.
Cough: The Causticum cough is a hard cough and racks the whole body. The chest seems full of mucus and he feels if only he could cough a little deeper he could get it up, and he struggles and coughs until exhausted or until he finds out that a drink of cold water will relieve. But it must be ice cold.
The cough is hollow, it sounds as if he were coughing into a barrel. It is relieved by expectoration if it can only get deep enough to reach the mucus. Sometimes such a cough precedes quick consumption. It is a deep-acting medicine; it cures phthisis, especially mucous phthisis or quick consumption.
“Cough with a sensation as if the patient could not cough deep enough to start the mucus; produced by tickling, accompanied by rawness. Cough wakens her from sleep in the evening and morning.
Cough relieved by a swallow of cold water. Cough worse by bending forward. Continual, annoy ing cough; with each cough escape of urine.”
Influenza with tired aching of the limbs as if they had been beaten.
“Whooping cough in the catarrhal stage.”
Great soreness and tightness of the chest, oppression of the chest it feels as if a load were upon it. It seems to be filling up with mucus, and the patient coughs until he raises a mouthful and then he feels a little better for a time. Pale as death, covered with sweat.
Back: There are many symptoms in the back. Pain and stiffness; stiffness on rising from a seat. Stiffness in the limbs, through the hips and in the back, so that he rises up from sitting or the recumbent posture with great difficulty.
In most cases the pains and aches are ameliorated by the warmth of the bed and by applied heat. Only the pains in the fingers are sometimes brought on by heat.
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.