Now, if we take into consideration its great depth of action, we will see furthermore that it is suitable in some brain diseases. In persons who have overworked, who have been working day and night to establish a business, or to keep it up, and when there has been constant use of the brain it is suitable.
Mind: In mental depression and melancholy, with great sadness, in young men who have destroyed the nervous system by vicious practices, by secret vice. It is particularly suitable for that disorder of the human economy where men have continuously changed their mistresses.
There is a state in which a man is never satisfied with one woman, but continually changes and goes from bad to worse until he is a debauchee. If a young man cannot keep away from women, he is not so bad off if he will only keep to one, but he goes from one to many, until he stands upon the street corners and, in his lust, craves the innocent women that go along the street.
Fluoric acid is suitable in that state, like Picric acid and Sepia, and these medicines are particularly suited to that condition of enfeeblement of the mind and that disorder of the human economy that makes man so low, that we have the state described as “low mindedness.”
It takes that form in one who is a sort of debauchee, running after alt sorts of things to tickle his fancy, but it takes another form in a man who stays at home with his good wife. He takes an aversion to his children and to his dearest friends and his wife, that is, he has lost that true and noble and orderly affection and friendship and companionship which ought to exist, and he fights against it.
An orderly man considers his wife his best friend and he would rather stay with her than go anywhere else. To him there is no place like home. Now, when man arrives at the state when he wants to go somewhere else, that he wants to go away from home, that be is disturbed at home, that everything annoys him at home, that be no longer loves his children as he once did, he needs Fluoric acid.
“Feeling of indifference towards those he loves best.”
The Sepia state is like this, but Sepia is more frequently indicated in women. The woman will say,
“Doctor, there is one thing that I regret very much, and that is, I do not seem to enjoy my children, my home, my companions, my husband and my friends.
There is a sort of alienation.”
Such is the way it is told where it is Sepia. In the man it is more commonly Fluoric acid, in the woman more commonlySepia, but this need not necessarily be so. Sepia corresponds more closely to the condition of the uterus and ovaries, and such conditions, as the woman alone can have. (Compare Calcarea.)
Men: Fluoric acid has with this state an overwhelming sexual erethism.
He is kept awake nights by erections. This state of desire forces itself upon him, not only when he is with the opposite sex, but at all times. At times, in the beginning of a gonorrhea, this condition of priapism and intense uncontrollable sexual desire, with swelling of the foreskin is overcome by Fluoric acid. There are times when this priapism demands Cantharis, but that remedy differs wholly in its nature from this.
Mind: Reticence and silence; sitting and saying nothing. This reticence is like Pulsatilla, and often belongs to the insane who will sit in the corner and say nothing all day, never uttering one single word, and hardly answering when spoken to.
A patient sits in the corner and says nothing and does nothing, eats when food is offered, is led to her room when the time comes, resists nobody, answers nothing; such a state is found in Pulsatilla, and is closely allied to this remedy.
There, is some insanity in it, but especially the fatigue and mildness of a the brain. Mental exhaustion from overwork or from vices.
It is suitable after Silicea in the spinal affections that are attended with paralysis, trembling and numbness in the soles of the feet. It will often stop the progress of structural nervous diseases and prevent the, case from getting worse.
Veins: An excellent and very useful feature of this remedy is its ability to produce varicose veins and varicose ulcers.
The veins become varicosed anywhere, but particularly upon the lower limbs, especially following pregnancy.
Hemorrhoids protrude after a stool; the anus and rectum protrude, and there is some bleeding, because of the hemorrhoidal condition. Varicose conditions with very old ulcers upon the lower extremities; the varicose veins ulcerate.
You might predict what kind of ulcer and what kind of a margin Fluoric acid would produce. We see the feebleness of its circulation, we see its tendency to create hard crusts, and hardened, horny skin and eruptions.
We might now easily assume that the inflamed borders of an ulcer would become indurated, hard and glassy. The margins of ulcers are indurated and the ulcer is an old, indolent ulcer.
Parts once broken will not close up. Union will not take place between the broken ends of bones, there is no repair. From bones and from ulcers, we have the foetid, acrid, thin, watery discharges, or at times very scanty discharges, but acrid, burning the parts all around, raising eruptions and scurfs around the ulcers.
From the feebleness of the circulation one might suppose that numbness would naturally be present, and it is true.
The ears become numb, the scalp becomes numb, there is a sensation as if the back of the head were made of wood. The scalp loses its sensation, the hair falls out and crusts form. The extremities become numb and there is numbness of the feet and bands extending upwards; numbness, with or without dropsy; numbness in spinal affections; numbness in brain diseases. Numbness of the limb not laid on.
“Crusta lactea; dry scales; itches very much, bald places.
Caries of the temporal bone; discharges offensive smelling pus periodically.” “whole left side of the head retarded in growth, left eye seems smaller.”
Skin: That is a clinical state, but it is significant.
Its use in syphilis must not be overlooked. in old cases with exostoses, caries and necrosis, cases that have been mercurialized, and treated by other drugs until ulcers have developed or those affections of the nose that we have often observed in syphilitic states. He blows small pieces of bone out of the nose; great pain in the nose; nasal bones all destroyed, and the nose becomes flat as though only a soft piece of flesh with perforations.
The uvulva is eaten off and the tonsils become honeycombed by syphilitic ulcers.
Lingering, low forms of ulcers and eruptions. The teeth decay or break off or ulcerate at the roots; fistulous openings from the root of the tooth, continuing to discharge.
Many a time has this remedy taken away that ulcer of the root, closed up that fistulous opening, cured the pain, saved the tooth.
“Craves cold water and is continually hungry.”
Often that “all gone” sensation in the stomach. Is always eating and is relieved from eating, but like Iodine it does not last long, for soon be becomes hungry again. Such medicines are very deep. We see that they go, to the very root of assimilation and nutrition.
Chronic ulcers of the throat not necessarily syphilitic, but it is particularly useful in the old forms of syphilis; not generally so suitable in the earlier ulcers as in those that are associated with the tertiary forms, with debilitated states, with brain disease, with nervous symptoms that go on for years when the patient is supposed to be cured.
Very often the trouble will come back in the throat, and the ulcers consist of little gummatous growths. Silicea especially covers such a condition, and Silicea is also one of the most useful medicines for rooting out Mercurius.
In potentized form sil. and Mercurius are inimical, yet the high potencies of Silicea will antidote crude Mercury.
This patient craves pungent, highly seasoned things. The appetite must be tickled; there must be some inducement to eat. At times the appetite is changeable in spite of the fact that he is overwhelmingly hungry; he cannot eat, yet he is > when the food is in the stomach, > after eating.
The most vicious kind of chronic diarrhea with this low feeble constitution, in insidious complaints.
“Morning diarrhoea.”
The itching of the anus is sometimes intense; protrusion of the anus during defecation; profuse haemorrhage after stool; constipation with piles; itching around and in anus, in perineum, etc,
This drug is also suitable in the dropsy of drunkards. They are very often liver dropsies. Old cicatrices become red around the edge surrounded by itching vesicles, itching violently; squamous eruptions upon the body; dry, cutaneous eruptions upon the body, very scaly.
“Sensation as if a burning vapor were emitted from the pores of the body.”
Especially under the covers there is this sensation of great heat, tremendous, like steam. It is not in fever. He has no fever but it is a chronic state of giving out heat without thirst, or increase of temperature.
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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