Canine hunger. It says in the next:
“Double the amount of an ordinary meal in the evening was hardly sufficient.”
All food tastes bitter; solid food is dry and insipid. After eating there are eructations. Heat in the stomach;regurgitation of food. Spasmodic pressure in the stomach after the least food or drink, especially after meat. Aversion to meat, to eggs, to sour fruit. Aversion to milk, and to his accustomed tobacco and beer. Sweet wines agree, but sour wines and all sour things disagree. The tongue feels as if burnt. As soon as the stomach is empty vomiting ceases until he eats again. Vomiting of food, immediately after midnight, Vomitus tastes sour.
Pregnancy: Ferrum is occasionally indicated during pregnancy. A few weeks after becoming pregnant the woman commences to throw up her food by the mouthful.
There is no nausea, but the face is flushed and the woman is flabby and weak. She vomits without becoming sick. Fullness and pressure in the stomach; pressure in the stomach after eating. Ferrum is an unusually interesting remedy because of this peculiar stomach. It is like a leather bag; it will not digest anything. Fill it up and it empties itself just as easily as it was filled.
Ferrum has a troublesome diarrhoea, with acrid watery excoriating stool. Morning diarrhoea. Many of these patients are old sinners with broken-down constitutions, who have suffered long from constipation. Chronic constipation with ineffectual urging and hard, difficult Stools.
Relaxation runs through the remedy. From this relaxation there is prolapsus of the rectum, vagina and uterus. Dragging down in the lower part of the body, as if the organs would come out-and sometimes they do come out.
Bladder: The bladder is also relaxed. Its sphincter is weak, and there is no regularity of its muscular action. Hence, we have involuntary urination from sudden motion, from walking, or from coughing. In little children the urine dribbles all day just as long as the child plays the urine dribbles and keeps the clothing wet, but this better while keeping perfectly quiet.
The bladder is so relaxed and tired that it cannot hold the urine, and as soon as it is partially filled it allows its contents to escape. This relaxation runs through the remedy and gives it character, just like a human being. You know what each one of your friends is likely to do on every occasion. So it is with a remedy. You ought to know what it is most likely to do, in order to know what it will accomplish in curing the sick.
Genital: Weakness and relaxation of the genital organs is common to Ferrum. The menstrual flow comes in for its share. Copious, watery flow; haemorrhage or suppression – amenorrhoea – no flow at all, only a leucorrhoea. Suppression of the menses with great nervous excitement; with flushed face; with weakness and palpitation. Prolapsus of the vagina. Insensibility of the vagina during coition. Metrorrhagia. Menses too soon too profuse and lasting too long.
Respiration: Difficult respiration; pains and disturbances in the chest. Difficult breathing, with a sense of a great load on the chest. Suffocating fits at night; catarrhal conditions of the respiratory tract; congestion of the chest; dyspnoea.
Spasmodic cough, such as we find in whooping cough, coming on in violent paroxysms. Cough after every meal, with gagging, emptying the stomach of its contents. Cough felt in the head. Cough worse from the abuse of brandy, tobacco or tea. Cough coming on after the loss of fluids, as after haemorrhages.
Chest troubles following uterine hemorrhage, and after other hemorrhages. Coughing up blood; bleeding from the lungs. Persons debilitated by secret vices, with a tendency to go into tuberculosis.
Palpitation of the heart from fear, excitement, or exertion. Rapid action of the heart, or sometimes slow action. Fatty degeneration of the heart. Pulse accelerated toward evening. Pulsations throughout the body, feeling like little hammers.
Rheumatic pains: in the extremities, ameliorated by heat and by gentle motion; aggravated by cold, by exertion, or by rapid motion. Pains through the deltoid muscles are spoken of more prominently than pains in other parts, but these pains are no more striking than the pains anywhere in Ferrum.
Tearing pains through the limbs. Inability to raise the arm; paralytic pains, – that is, pains that are benumbing. Pains that make him feel as if he were going to lose the power to move the part. Violent pains in the hip-joint are just as common as the pains in the shoulder.
Lippe says,
“Rheumatism in the left shoulder,” but it is just as common in the right. Rheumatic pains in the deltoid muscle of either side. Violent pain in the muscles and along the nerves. Pinching in the right deltoid; boring in the right shoulder; aggravated by motion and by the weight of the bedclothes; ameliorated by heat.
Tearing and stinging pains. The Ferrum pains come on in the night, because the patient attempts to keep still in bed.Rest brings on the Ferrum pains. When moving gently about in the daytime be will not have so much pain. Coldness of the limbs; and again, heat of the soles and palms, they change about. With all this weakness and prostration dropsical conditions come on, so that the feet and hands become bloated.
Evening chill or chilliness with fever, cold hands and feet and red face. Icy cold feet with the chill. Chill ameliorated after eating. Thirst with the chill. Copious sweat which stains yellow. All symptoms worse while sweating. Strong-smelling night sweats. All the febrile symptoms are better by slowly moving about. In intermittent fever after the abuse of quinine.
We read in the text that Ferrum is a remedy for diarrhea in the last stages of consumption. Well, sometimes it is, if the patient is prepared to die.
Ferrum will stop the diarrhea, but after it is stopped the patient will not live long. The diarrhea is not usually painful. It is annoying, but it is painless, and the night sweats are painless. Do not suppress them; they had better be let alone. Let the patient go on to a peaceful termination.
The best remedy for diarrhoea in the last stages of consumption is Saccharum lactis in the crude form, given in very small quantities and repeated as often as is required by the patient and the bystanders.
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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