He is full of cramps and is compelled to cry out with the pain from the contractions of the muscles. Camphor is the coldest of all the three remedies; the Camphor patient is cold as death. Camphor has the blueness, the exhaustive discharge, though less than Cuprum and Veratrum; but whereas in the two latter remedies the patient is willing to be covered up, in Camphor he wants the windows open and wants to be cool.
Though he is cold he wants to be uncovered and to have the windows open. But just here let me mention another feature in Camphor. It has also some convulsions which are painful, and when the pain is on he wants to be covered up and wants the windows shut. If there are cramps in the bowels with the pain, be wants to be covered up.
So that in Camphor, during all of its complaints in febrile conditions (and fever is very rare in Camphor), and during the pains he wants to be covered up and warm, but during the coldness he wants to be uncovered and have the air.
In cholera, then, the extreme coldness and blueness point to Camphor.
Again, with Camphor there are often scanty as well as copious discharges, so that the cholera patient is often taken so suddenly that he has the coldness, blueness and exhaustion and almost no vomiting or diarrhoea, a condition called dry cholera. It simply means an uncommonly small amount of vomiting and diarrhoea.
This is Camphor. Another prominent feature is the great coldness of the body without the usual sweat that belongs to the disease. Cuprum and Veratrum have the cold clammy sweat, and Camphor also has sweat, but more commonly the patient needing Camphor is very cold, blue and dry and wants to be uncovered. That is striking.
Now we go to Veratrum and see that we can have three remedies very much alike, and so perfectly adapted to cholera and yet so different. Veratrum is peculiar because of its copious exhaustive discharges, copious sweat, copious discharges from the bowels, copious vomiting, and great coldness of the sweat. There is some cramping and he wants to be warm; he is ameliorated by hot drinks, and by the application of hot bottles which relieve pain and suffering.
These three remedies tend downward into collapse and death. Now to repeat: Cuprum for the cases of a convulsive character, Camphor in cases characterized by extreme coldness and more or less dryness, and Veratrum when the copious sweat, vomiting and purging are the features. That is little to remember, but with that you can enter an epidemic of cholera with confidence.
In cholera-like states there are other remedies which relate to Cuprum and which ought to be considered. Podophyllum has cramps, mainly in the bowels. It has a painless, gushing diarrhea with vomiting as well, and hence is useful in cholera morbus.
The cramps in Podophyllum, are violent, they feel to him as if the intestines were being tied in knots. The watery stool is yellow, and, if examined a little while after, it looks as if corn meal had been stirred into it. The odor is dreadful, smelling like a Podophyllum, stool. If you say it smells like stinking meat that only partly describes it; it is not quite cadaveric but it is horribly offensive and penetrating.
The stool is gushing, copious, and is accompanied by dreadful exhaustion.
“It is a wonder where it can all come from,” says the mother, speaking of the exhausting diarrhea in an infant or in a child. The stool runs away gushingly, in prolonged squirts, with a sensation of emptiness, sinking, deathly goneness in the whole abdomen. Phosphorus also ought to be thought of in relation to Cuprum. It also has cramps in the bowels, exhaustive diarrhea, a, sinking as if dying, but commonly with heat of the skin, with burning internally, with gurgling of all the fluids taken into the stomach; as soon as they come to the stomach they commence to gurgle, and gurgle all the way through the bowel.
A drink of water seems to, flow through the bowel with a gurgle. Now this gurgling in Cuprum commences at the throat; he swallows with a gurgle; gurgling in the oesophagus when swallowing.
Convulsive cramps all over the body with twitching, jerking, trembling and blueness of the skin. Everything he does, all his actions are spasmodic, are convulsive. All the sphincters are convulsive, All the activities are irregular, disorderly and convulsive when poisoned with copper.
Bear these things in mind as we study every region in Cuprum. Repression or driving in of eruptions, attended with diarrhoea and convulsions, sometimes only convulsions. We note a case of measles or scarlet fever with a rash that has been suppressed by a chill or exposure to wind and convulsions have come on.
That belongs to Zincum and Cuprum, sometimes to Bryonia, but to Zincum and Cuprum particularly. Twitching of the limbs from a sudden suppression of a scarlet fever, with suppression of urine, chorea, etc.
Cramping of the muscles of the chest; cramping of the calves; cramp ing all over. Suppressed eruptions. Discharges that have been in existence quite a long time. The individual has become debilitated and worn out with excitement, but this discharge barely kept him alive. He has gradually grown weaker, but he has kept about because he had a discharge.
It has furnished him a safety-valve, If stopped suddenly convulsions will come on. That is like Cuprum. A woman has suffered a long time with a copious leucorrhoea and some unwise doctor tells her she must take injections and she checks it up for a few days, hysterical convulsions, crampings and tearings of the muscles come on; contractions of the fingers and toes. Discharges from old ulcers, fistulae suppressed.
Cuprum will re-establish a discharge that has been suddenly suppressed and convulsions followed. It stops the convulsions and reestablishes the discharge. It has caries, it has senile gangrene, or the gangrene that belongs to old age; old shriveled up octogenarians, whose toes and fingers get dark in spots; feeble circulation.
Mind: In the Cuprum patient the nerves are all the time wrought up to the highest tension; wants to fly, wants to do something dreadful.
Impulsiveness. Compelled to do something; restless and tossing about a constant uneasiness; nervous trembling; always tired. Great weakness of the muscles, and relaxation of the body when the convulsions are not on.
Twitching and jerking and starting during sleep. Grinding of the teeth with brain affections. Inflammations ceases suddenly and you wonder what has happened. All at once comes on insanity, delirium, convulsions, blindness; evidence of cerebral congestions and inflammation appearing with wonderful suddenness. Metastasis. A perfect change from one part of the body to another.
The same thing may occur from a suppressed eruption, or suppressed discharge, or a suppressed diarrhoea, and it goes to the brain affects the mind and brings on insanity; a wild, active, maniacal delirium.
Cuprum is not passive in its business. Violence is manifested everywhere. Violence in i ts diarrhoea, violence in its vomiting, violence in its spasmodic action; strange and violent things in its mania and delirium.
Hysterical cramps and hysterical attitudes may change in a night or in a day to St. Vitus’ dance, and go on with it as if nothing had happened. Such is the suddenness with which it changes its character. This is not generally known of Cuprum – this constant changing about. Spasmodic affections in general. Spasmodic coughs, spasms all over the body.
Chest: The face becomes purple. He loses his breath; suffocated. The mother thinks the child will never come to life again. Spasms of the chest; spasms of the larynx; spasms of the whole respiratory system of such a character that the child seems to be choking to death.
Whooping cough. With every spell of whooping cough comes this awful spasmodic state, this spasmodic coughing. Jerking of the muscles. Cuprum has spasms of the limbs with all sorts of contractions such as are found in hysterical constitutions.
Puerperal convulsions. Convulsions where a limb will first flex and then extend an alternation of flexion and extension. In a child you will see the leg all at once shoot out with great violence, then up against the abdomen again with great violence, and then again shoot out. It is hard work to find another remedy that has that. Tabacum has it, but not many others. Convulsions with flexion and extension are common to Cuprum. Convulsions of the limbs, twitching and jerking of the muscles. We get a part of the symptom-picture in one and part in another.
Head: Violent congestion in the head, violent pains in the head. Tingling pain in the vertex, severe pain in the vertex, bruised pain. Crawling sensation in vertex, stitches in the temples. Congestion of the brain, Meningitis. Headache after epileptic attacks. Paralysis of the brain with symptoms of collapse. Metastasis to the brain from other organs.
About the face; convulsions, jerking of the eyes; twitching of the lids. Bruised pain in the eyes. Spasms of the muscles of the eye so, that the eyes jerk and twitch, first from one side and then the other. Rolling of the eyes.
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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