Graphites



Face: The face is pale, waxy and sickly.

Eczema and herpes are found on the face with glutinous moisture. Itching with or without eruptions. A sensation as of a cobweb on the face. The commissures of mouth are fissured and the fissures ulcerate and the edges become bard and there is great burning in them. The skin chaps and cracks and often becomes excoriated and bleeds. Erysipelas of the face, spreading from right to left. The beard falls out.

Crusts form on the lips and the chin is covered with eczema. The submaxillary gland is swollen and indurated.

Mouth: The gums are settling away from the teeth; the teeth burn and sting; drawing pain in teeth in cold wind; tearing in teeth worse from warmth.

Taste in the mouth is bitter, salty, sour and like spoiled eggs; nauseating taste in the morning; sour taste after eating. The tongue is coated white; burning blisters on lower lip and on tip of tongue, painful ulcers on under surface of tongue, putrid odor from gums and mouth; breath smells like urine.

Dryness of the mouth in morning on waking; also in the night on waking; saliva flows from the mouth during the night.

Throat: Chronic sore throat with ulceration and swelling; swollen tonsils; nightly pain in throat; copious white, viscid mucus; a continuation of the nasal and post nasal catarrh.

Constant choked feeling or constriction in the throat that makes swallowing difficult. Constant spasms in the throat compelling swallowing.

Stomach and abdomen: Ravenous appetite.

Violent thirst in the morning with dry mouth and internal fever. Aversion to meat; to cooked food; to fish; to salt, to sweets. He is driven to eat to relieve a feeling of suffocation and burning gnawing in the stomach.

Pain in the stomach, relieved by eating. Eructations bitter; sour; putrid; tasting of food eaten; of greenish water. Rancid heartburn after eating; nausea much of the time during menses, with trembling; vomits all she eats; vomiting, purging and cold sweat.

The stomach feels constantly in a spoiled state or as from indigestion. Flatulence is as marked as in Carbo veg., and the relief from belching is just as great. Burning, constriction, pulsation and cramping are frequent symptoms. Fullness, distension, pressure are constant features of Graphites.

Retching on swallowing food (like Mercurius c.). Gastric catarrh with internal heat drive him to eat and drink. Gastric pains worse from cold drinks and better by warm milk; periodical gastralgia with vomiting of food soon after eating. It is a wonderful remedy for old drunkards when the gastric symptoms agree (like Carbon bisulphide).

It is a most useful remedy in hard, swollen, sore liver with weight and distress in the liver; stitches in both hypochondria, burning in left hypochondrium when lying on it; sensitive to clothing in the liver region. Great suffering in the abdomen from flatulence; incarcerated flatus causes cramping pains, distension, and a continual source of distress.

Everything eaten seems to ferment and turn to gas; rumbling and movements felt in the abdomen; there is great burning and griping; cramping in the abdomen soon after eating; the clothing distresses the abdomen. The slightest indiscretion in eating causes increased flatus, rumbling and diarrhoea; the abdomen is distended with dropsy. Herpes zona oil the side of abdomen; herpes over lower abdomen and groin; hard swelling of inguinal glands; oedema of the abdominal walls.

Anus and stools: From the anus there is copious discharge of very offensive flatus day and night. While diarrhoea is not so common as constipation, yet it is a marked condition in some patients, The diarrhoea is painless with much flatus, with watery, brown, putrid, lienteric stools; excoriating stools, extreme soreness of the anus; fissures of the anus; great burning. Chronic diarrhoea; from the slightest indiscretion in eating on comes a renewed attack.

With the loose stools, and with the constipated stools copious white jelly-like mucus is often found. Discharge of mucus from anus and a constant moisture about the outside parts. Large hemorrhoids extremely sore with fissures.

Constipation with large, hard, knotty, difficult stools passed with extreme pain from soreness and fissures of the anus. Long narrow stools (like Phosphorus). Violent burning in the anus, prolapsus of the anus.

It has cured many cases of bleeding piles of long standing where there was extreme soreness and fissures and great burning. Violent pains during stool. No desire to go to stool for many days. It requires a long time with hard straining to pass the stool.

It often suits patients who have no stool except by injection or cathartic. Violent itching of the anus; eczema and herpes near the anus or involving the anus. It has cured the stomach and abdominal conditions that favor the tapeworm.

Genitals and urines: The urine flows in a feeble stream, becomes very putrid after standing and deposits much red or white sediment; after standing the urine is covered with an iridescent cuticle.

After urination there is some dribbling; burning in the urinary passages and neck of the bladder when not urinating; pain in the sacrum and coccyx when urinating.

Violent sexual excitement and nightly emissions; the excitement is so strong that ejaculation comes instantly after intromission. The opposite state is also found where there is aversion to coition and erections are wanting. It is a most useful remedy for impotency following secret vice and sexual excesses. Emissions with feeble erections.

Herpes on the prepuce; excoriated and fissured glans penis; dropsical swelling of the scrotum and penis, hydrocele in small boys and baby boys. Itching and moist eruptions on the scrotum. It has cured gleety, viscid discharge from the urethra. It has cured swollen testes.

In the female it causes aversion to coition; enlarged, hard ovaries great tenderness in uterus and ovaries. It has cured ovarian tumor. Pain in the uterus when reaching high with hands; bearing down in uterine region.

It cures cauliflower excrescence of the uterus; it has restrained the growth of cancer in the cervix uteri, when there was burning and putrid bloody discharge; in this it resembles Carbo animalis Menses late, irregular, scanty, pale or mixed with scanty dark, small clots, short duration. Menses six or eight weeks apart.

Menses suppressed or very late in chlorotic girls. First menses delayed. Leucorrhoea instead of the menses (Cocculus). Oedema of the vulva. Leucorrhoea in gushes day and night. Dryness and heat in the vagina; coldness in the vagina.

Extreme lassitude during the menses. Many symptoms come during menses; dry cough, copious sweat; oedema of feet; hoarseness; coryza; headache; nausea; morning nausea. Violent itching of the vulva before menses; marked excoriation of the genitals and between the thighs during menses; excoriating leucorrhoea before menses.

Leucorrhea white; yellowish-white; thin; viscid; offensive. Sore, cracked nipples in nursing women. Cancer of the breast coming in the cicatrix of an old cancer.

Larynx and cough: sensitive to touch.

Hoarseness in the evening (like Carbo veg.). Dryness in the larynx in the night; copious glutinous mucus in the daytime.

He suffocates when falling asleep (like Lachesis) and often wakes up in the night gasping for breath; constriction of the chest.

Paroxysmal cough like whooping cough, cough is followed by expectoration of copious white viscid mucus; paroxysms come at any time It has cured whooping cough. Cough from tickling in the larynx or trachea; violent night cough; deep inspiration causes cough.

Rawness in the trachea; stitching pains in the chest.

Constriction of the heart; electric shocks in the heart; palpitation on motion or exertion with strong pulsation all over the body and in the extremities, pulse full and heard, slow during day but fast in the morning; fast pulse in evening after eating, with fever. Itching herpetic eruption on the chest; herpes zona on left side of chest with pain. It is a useful remedy to ward off phthisis.

Enlarged hard painful glands of neck. Painless swollen glands of neck. The spine is very sensitive to the jar of the bed; pain in lumbar region as if “spine were broken “; pain in sacrum with numbness down the limbs; pain in sacrum and coccyx while urinating; itching and moisture over the coccyx.

Drawing and tearing pains in limbs; weakness of all limbs; sensation of paralysis of limbs; herpes and eczema on the limbs; marked numbness of the upper limbs, during rest and when lain on; numbness and coldness of fingers and hands.

Skin: Rheumatic and tearing pains in shoulders, worse in left.

Herpes in axilla and bend of the elbow; horny callosities on the palms; skin of the hands hard, fissured, hot and bleeding. Psoriasis of the hands and fingers; raw, moist places between the fingers; the finger nails thick and brittle; the finger nails become black and fall off. Great heat of palms.

Smarting and sore between the nates; excoriation from walking. Many eruptions on the thigh, but especially herpes and eczema; eruptions that ooze a glutinous fluid. Numbness of lower limbs during rest; the legs are weak and heavy as if paralyzed; oedema of the legs and feet.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
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.