One who makes a study of the proving of Hypericum will be reminded of a class of injuries involving sentient nerves and it is not surprising that Hypericum has come into use for the results of such injuries.
Hypericum Injuries: The surgery of Homeopathy largely involves the use of Arnica, Rhus tox., Ledum, Staphysagria, Calcarea and Hypericum. These remedies are used in a routine way when a physician runs into semi-surgical conditions, or the results of injuries.
For the bruised, “black-and-blue,” sore appearance and sensation Arnica comes into use it corresponds especially to the acute stage until the soreness and bruised condition have disappeared from the parts injured or from the whole body; but for the strains of muscles and tendons Arnica proves insufficient and a thorough study of Rhus will show that that remedy is suitable for the resultant weakness of tendons and muscles, and the bruised, rheumatic feelings that come on in every storm and often wear off on continued motion.
For the final weakness that persists even after Rhus we have Calcarea carb. In these three remedies we have a series, but to distinguish these from Hypericum is the important thing. Hypericum is only a minor remedy for bruised and strained tendons and muscles; it goes into a different class of complaints.
Hypericum and Ledum run close together, and they have to be compared. Ledum, as much of the sore bruised feeling of Arnica and will often take its place; but Hypericum and Ledum come together for consideration when an injury to a nerve has taken on inflammatory action. Instead of the muscles and bones and blood vessels, as in Arnica, Rhus and Calcarea, the nerves are the sphere for these two remedies.
Hypericum Nerves injuries: When the finger ends or toes have beer, bruised or lacerated, or a nail has been torn off, or when a nerve has become pinched between a hammer and the bone in a blow, and that nerve becomes inflamed and the pain can be traced up along the nerve, and it is gradually extending toward the body from the injured part with stitching, darting pains, coming and going, or shooting up from the region of the injury toward the body, a dangerous condition is coming on.
In this condition Hypericum is above all the remedies to be thought of and hardly any other medicine is likely to come in. It hardly need be said that lock-jaw is threatening.
Sometimes a vicious dog will take bold of an individual through the thumb, or through the hand or the wrist and run one of his great teeth through the radial nerve or some of its branches in the hand, causing a lacerated wound. You may not find in the earlier stages the symptoms of Hypericum, but they will develop gradually and you will have them to treat. Do not cut the off, but cure it. We cure all these injuries with medicines-punctured, incised, contused and lacerated wounds, painful wounds.
A wound will sometimes yawn, swell up, no tendency to heal, look dry and shiny on its edges, red; inflamed; burning, stinging, tearing pains; no healing process. That wound needs Hypericum. It prevents tetanus. Every practitioner knows that lock-jaw develops after an injury to sentient nerves. The old school doctor is frightened by these shooting pains up the arms after an injury. A shoemaker may stick his awl into the end of his thumb or a carpenter may stick his finger with a brass tack and he does not think much of it, but the next night shooting pains extend up the arm with much violence.
The allopathic physician looks upon that as a series matter, for he sees lockjaw or tetanus ahead. When these pains come on Hypericum will stop them, and from this stage to advanced states of tetanus with opisthotonos and lock-jaw Hypericum is the remedy. Hypericum is full of just such symptoms as are found in tetanus and such symptoms as lead to tetanus and it is full of all the manifestations of an ascending neuritis.
Again, you may have an old scar, and it comes in contact with a hard body and is injured, bruised, torn internal) smashed, and stinging, tearing pains come in that cicatrix, and it burns and stings, and there is no relief, and the pain runs toward the body along the course of nerves. A painful cicatrix with pain shooting up toward the centre of the body following up the nerves.
Hypericum is the medicine for that.
Now there are other remedies – all know about Arnica, but be sure you keep it in its place. The first stage of the injury, where much bruising has been done, and there are none of these pains that I have described, for the first hours for bruised conditions and concussions and shocks Arnica is routine, because it produces states upon the human body like it had been bruised. But you will find Arnica only fits into that one place.
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.