Chelidonium is a remedy more suitable for acute diseases, though it cures certain chronic conditions. It is not a very deep acting remedy. It is about like Bryonia in its general plane, length and depth of action.
It has been used principally in gastric and intestinal catarrhs, in acute and semi-chronic liver troubles, and in right-sided pneumonia.
Skin: The skin is likely to be sallow, and gradually increases to a marked jaundice in connection with these complaints. Semi-chronic gastritis, with jaundice.
“Gastro-duodenal catarrh.
Congestion and soreness in the liver, with jaundice.
Right-sided pneumonia, complicated with liver troubles, or jaundice.”
This remedy seems to act throughout the system, but almost always along with it the liver is involved, and it is suitable for what the old people and the doctors called “biliousness.” The patient is generally bilious, has nausea and vomiting. Distension of the veins. Yellowish grey color of the skin.
Mind: Very few mental symptoms have been brought out in its proving not enough to give us a good idea of the desires and aversions. We do not get a clear idea of the intellectual faculties. It needs further proving, yet in many regions it has had superabundance of proving.
“Sadness and anxiety.”
Brooding over some sort of trouble generally runs through the mental state.
“Anxiety, allowing no rest,” keeping the patient uneasy day and night.
Sadness, as if she had committed a crime; as if some dreadful thing was going to happen. So sad that she thinks she must die
“Weeping despondency.
Distaste for mental exertion and conversation.
If you examine those medicines that act primarily upon the liver, that slow down the action of the liver, you will find the word melancholia.”
With heart troubles, great excitement, With liver troubles, slowing down of the mental state, inability of the mind to work, sluggishness of the mind, inability to think, inability to meditate, slow pulse. Sluggishness of the whole economy.
Dizziness: The sensorium is very commonly disturbed, and the patient is dizzy.
“Things go round in a circle.”
Dizziness comes, and it does not let up until nausea, and sometimes vomiting, follows.
“So much turning in the head that he vomits.
Confusion of mind.
Loss of consciousness and fainting.”
These are also common features with liver troubles.
The mind symptoms are present more or less with the following liver symptoms; there are pains of a dull aching character, “soreness.” Bruised pains. Tenderness of the liver to touch. Aching pains, that seem to involve the whole right lobe of the liver; creating a sensation of fullness. Pressure upwards, with difficulty of breathing. Pressure downwards, sympathetic with the stomach, with the nausea and vomiting.
Right scapula: And then more intense pain felt under the right scapula.
“Dull aching pains under the right scapula; sharp, shooting pains under the right scapula”; these complicate themselves again with pneumonia, with pleurisy.
It cures pneumonia and pleurisy; it cures various forms of congestion in the liver, when these pains go from before backward, and seem to be felt through the back.
“Stitching in the region of the liver, extending through to back.
Hard pains felt through the back.”
Some patients will describe these pains as shooting pains; some as tearing pains, and others as sharp pains, going through the right hypochondrium or through the right lobe of the liver to the back.
“Pains from the region of the liver, shooting towards the back and shoulders.
Spasmodic pain in the region of the liver.
Pressing pain in the region of the liver.”
In congestion or inflammation, fullness and enlargement, semi-chronic cases, or even acute, this medicine proves suitable for such conditions. The right hypochondrium is tense and painful to pressure.
This remedy has cured gall stone colic. Practitioners, who know how to direct a remedy, relieve gall stone colic in a few minutes. We have remedies that act on the circular fibres of these little tubes, causing them to relax and allow the stone to pass painlessly.
In a perfect state of health, of course, there are no stones in the bile that is held in the gall bladder, but this little cystic duct opens its mouth and a little gall stone engages in it, and it creates and irritation by scratching along the mucous membrane of that little tube.
When this pain is a shooting, stabbing, tearing, lancinating pain, extending through to the back, Chelidonium will cure it. The instant it relieves the patient says:
“Why, what a relief; the pain has gone.”
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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