Skin: Another feature of this medicine is its tendency to throw out eruptions over the body. It is a wonderfully eruptive medicine, producing vesicles, crusts, dry, brown crusts, humid crusts, herpes. Dulcamara produces eruptions so nearly like impetigo that it has been found a useful remedy in that condition. i.e., multiple little boil-like eruptions; it produces little boils, and the boils spread.
Enlargement and hard ness of the glands. Eruptions upon the scalp that look so much like crusta lactea that Dulcamara has been found a very useful medicine. Extreme soreness, itching, and the itching is not I relieved by scratching, and the scratching goes on, until bleeding – and rawness take place.
Eruptions that come out upon the face, upon the forehead, all over the nose, but especially on the cheeks, which become completely covered with these crusts; eczema of infants. Children only a few weeks old break out with these scalp eruptions, and Dulcamara is one of the medicines that you will need to know.
It is about as frequently indicated as any of the medicines. Sepia, Arsenicum, Graphites, Dulcamara, Petroleum, Sulphur and Calcarea are about equally indicated, but of these, in this climate at least, I think Sepia is probably more frequently indicated.
All of these catarrhal symptoms, the rheumatic symptoms, the eruptions upon the skin, are subject to the peculiar aggravations of the constitutional state. No matter what the symptoms are, the constitutional state is worse in cold, damp weather.
“Catarrhal and rheumatic headaches in cold, damp weather.”
Headache: When the headache is the main trouble, the catarrh takes a different course from what it does when the catarrh is the principal ailment. There are two ways in which that conducts itself. In some Dulcamara patients, whenever he takes cold from the cold, damp weather, he commences to sneeze, and to get a coryza, and soon comes a copious, thick, yellow flow from the nose.
On the other hand, Dulcamara has a dry catarrh in its first stage, and a fluid catarrh only in the second stage.
One who is subject to Dulcamara headaches, has the dry catarrh; whenever he takes cold instead of the usual catarrhal flow with it, he at first sneezes and then feels a dryness in the air passages, a slacking up of the usual discharge, which would give him relief, and then he knows that he must look out, for along will come the neuralgic pains, pains in the occiput, and finally over the whole head. Congestive headaches, with neuralgic pains and dry nose.
Every spell of cold, damp weather will bring on that headache. The catarrh is not always acute enough for him to pay attention to it. He does not say very much about it. The Dulcamara headache is very severe, is accompanied by tremendous pains, and he may go to the doctor with the idea of getting rid of the headache, but it is a catarrhal state that is suppressed, that has slackened up, and the nose becomes dry.
As soon as the flow starts up his headache is relieved. Then headache of this catarrhal kind that comes on from every cold, damp spell, or from getting overheated, from getting into a cold draft after being overheated, or get ting overheated with too much clothing, and then throwing the coat off, will also belong to the Dulcamara state.
A form of eruption that is very likely to be a Dulcamara eruption is the ringworm, herpes circinatus. It comes sometimes upon the face and scalp. Children sometimes have ringworms in the hair. Dulcamara will nearly always cure these ringworms in the hair.
Ear: The Dulcamara child is very susceptible to earache.
“Coryza dry, relieved by motion, worse during rest, and renewed by the slightest exposure, and worse in cold air.”
Some coryzas cannot tolerate the warm room, and others want a warm room. The Dulcamara coryza is worse going out in the open air and better from motion. The Nux vomica coryza is better in the open air. The patient feels much aching distress in the nose. The Nux vomica patient ordinarily wants warmth and warm air and a warm room, but with the coryza he is the very opposite; he wants motion in the open air, he looks for cool air, for it relieves the distressing sensation.
In the warm room there is a tickling sensation in the nose, and the nose will drip, night and day. The Nux vomica coryza is worse in the house, and worse in the night, and worse in the warm bed, so that the discharge will run all over the pillow.
In Dulcamara it is more fluent in the house, in the warmth, and less fluent in the cold air in a cold room. With the Dulcamara coryza, if the patient should go into a cold room pain will commence in the nasal bones and he will begin to sneeze, and water will be discharged from the nose. That very state would relieve a Nux vomica patient. Allium cepa is made worse in a warm room; like Nux vomica, is better in cold, open air. Commences to sneeze as soon as he gets into a warm room. So that we see the meaning of such things, the necessity of going into particulars and examining every case.
Here is a state that you will often find in the fall of the year, somewhere about August 20 th. They sometimes call it hay fever. Every year as the nights become cold, and there is cold, damp weather and fall rains, he has a stuffing up of the nose with constant sneezing and wants the nose kept warm.
I have known these cases at times to sit in a warm room with cloths, wrung out of hot water, over the face and nose to relieve the distress, the catarrhal state of the eyes and the stuffing up of the nose. Heat relieves the stuffing up of the nose.
These patients can sometimes breathe with these hot cloths over the nose, but if they go out into the night air, or a cold place, and especially if there is a damp, fall rain, they suffer much. Other cases of hay fever suffer during the day, and they go to as cold a place as they can find, and are even driven to the mountains for a cool place.
These things are indicative of a state of the constitution; the state gives out signs and symptoms to lead the intelligent physician to cure. If that state had no means of making itself known by signs and symptoms, there could be no curing it by remedies.
“Profuse discharge of water from the nose and eyes, worse in the open air,” “better in a closed room, on awakening in the morning, ” etc.
The Dulcamara patient is so sensitive to newly mown grass and drying weeds, that he is obliged to absent himself from the country where they are found.
Hay-fever: For hay fever we have especially to look up such remedies as have complaints worse in the fall of the year. There are other conditions that are just as much hay fever, for instance, “rose cold” that comes on in June.
There are other conditions that come on in the spring, sometimes cured by Naja and Lachesis. So that we have to observe the time of the year, the time of the day, night or day aggravations; the wet and the dry remedies, the hot and the cold remedies. We have to study the remedy by circumstances.
The Dulcamara patient often becomes a sickly patient, with threatening of the catarrhal discharges to centre in the bronchial tubes, i.e., in the mucous membrane of the breathing apparatus. Many adults die of acute phthisis that might have been cured by Dulcamara, and you will find very commonly among this class of patients those that are worse from every cold, damp spell of weather. Such enter right into the Dulcamara sphere. They are better by going South where there is a continuously warm climate. The Dulcamara patient is a sickly patient, threatened with acute phthisis; pallid face, sickly yellow and sallow. This shows that it goes deeply into the life, creating such disorders as are found in very sick patients, i. c., those chronically sick, in persons whose vital economy is so much disordered that it cannot keep the body in repair.
Throat: The throat comes in for its share of trouble. Persons who in every cold damp spell have a sore throat, from getting overheated, throwing off the wraps, getting into a cold place. The Dulcamara patient says:
“Well now, I know I am fixed; I am now chilled; I begin to feel hoarseness in my throat.”
On comes the sore throat; it fills with mucus, with yellow slime; the tonsils become inflamed; even quinsy comes on.
Or it may affect the throat uniformly; it may become red and inflamed and dry at times, and at other times filled with mucus, and at night the throat fills with thick, yellow, tough mucus, which is hawked up in great quantities. These colds that settle first in the nose and throat, post-nasal catarrh, of the very worst sort, gradually creep on until the whole respiratory apparatus is in a state of catarrhal Inflammation.
Every cold that be taker aggravates his catarrh wherever that may be. If it be in the nose, then the nose is aggravated; if in the chest, then those parts are aggravated. A continual rousing up. Every experienced physician must have met with many cases where for a time he felt unable to cope with the case because of his inability to reach the constitutional state that underlies this continual taking cold.
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.