Kalium Carbonicum



Dropsies: Another general state that belongs to this remedy is a tendency to dropsies.

It has dropsies all over the body. The feet bloat and the fingers puff; the back of the hands pit upon pressure, the face looks puffy and waxy. The heart is weak. I can look back upon quite a number of cases of fatty degeneration of the heart in which I could have prevented all the trouble with Kali carb. if I had known the case better in the beginning.

These cases are insidious, and the indications calling for Kali carb. must be seen early or the patient will advance into an incurable condition. That peculiar state of weakness and feeble circulation that finally ends in dropsy and many other complications has its likeness in Kali carb.

There is an insidiousness about Kali carb. in the approach of all of its complaints.

He has a sort of nondescript appearance, he is withered, has much dyspnoea upon going up hill or even walking on the level. Examination of the lungs shows them to be in very fair condition, but finally complications come on, there is a break down and organic changes and you look back over these cases and say, if I had only seen in the beginning of this case what I see now it seems as if the patient ought to have been cured.

We learn the beginnings of remedies as we learn the beginnings of sickness. It is a prudent thing for a homoeopathic physician to glance back over a case that he has failed on, or someone else has failed on, to study its beginnings and see what the manifestations were. This kind of study to the homoeopathic physician is as delightful as post mortems are to the old school.

Teeth: The teeth present a peculiar state. The gums take on a scorbutic or scrofulous character. The gums separate from the teeth and the teeth decay and become discolored and loose, so that they have to be extracted early in life.

He suffers from pain in the teeth whenever he takes cold from riding in the wind and raw weather. The pains come on even when the teeth are not yellow or decayed: stitching, tearing, rending pains in the teeth. Offensive smell from the teeth; pus oozing out from around the teeth. The mouth is full of little ulcers, little aphthous patches. The mucous membrane is pale and ulcerates daily. The tongue is white with offensive taste; coated gray, with sick headaches.

While many of the symptoms of Kali carb, are aggravated after eating, some symptoms are relieved after eating. There is throbbing in the pit of the stomach when the stomach is empty. There is also throbbing all over the body, pulsation to the fingers and toes; there is no part that does not pulsate, and he is kept awake by this pulsation. Pulsation even when there is often no feeling of palpitation in the region of the heart. It has also violent palpitation of the heart.

Stomach: Kali carb. fits many old dyspeptics.

After eating be feels as if he would burst, so bloated is he. Great flatulence; belches wind upwards and passes flatus downwards; offensive flatus. The belching up is also attended with fluid eructations, sour fluids that set the teeth on edge; they excoriate, or cause smarting in the pharynx or mouth. Pain in the stomach after eating; burning in the stomach after eating.

Gone feeling in the stomach, that is not even relieved by eating. A peculiar condition in Kali carb. is a state of anxiety felt in the stomach, as though it were a fear. One of the first patients I ever had expressed it in a better way than it is expressed in the books; she said,

“Doctor, somehow or other I don’t have a fear like other people do, because I have it in my stomach.”

She said when she was frightened, it always struck to her stomach.

“If a door slams, I feel it right here” (epigastric region).

Well, that is striking, that is peculiar. It was not long before I developed another feature of Kali carb.

By a little awkwardness on my part my knee happened to hit the patient’s foot as it projected a little over the edge of the bed, and the patient said, “Oh”

Sure enough that was Kali carb. again, for you will find in Kali carb. a patient that is afraid and everything goes to the stomach and when touched upon the skin there is an anxiety or fear or apprehension felt in the region of the stomach.

You might imagine that it is connected with the solar plexus, but the symptom is the all in all to the physician.

Feet: A Kali carb. patient is so sensitive in the soles of the feet that the mere touch of the sheet brings a sensation of thrill throughout the body. Hard pressure is all right, it does not disturb, but something that comes unawares excites.

The Kali carb. patient is over sensitive to all the surrounding things, over sensitive to touch; shivering from the simplest and lightest touch, even when hard pressure is agreeable. Violently ticklish in the soles of the feet. I have often examined the feet when a patient would shiver and draw up the feet and scream out,

“Don’t tickle my feet.”

I had probably touched it so lightly that I did not know that I had touched it at all.

In Lachesis also gentle touch is painful, while hard pressure is agreeable but here it is not so much the ticklishness. In Lachesis the abdomen is so sensitive that the touch of the sheet is painful. I have seen Lachesis patients using a hoop to keep a light sheet from touching the abdomen. You may know then that you are in the realm of Lachesis, and that it is like those persons who are unable to bear the slightest touch upon the neck and suffer from uneasiness on wearing a collar.

All that, however, is different from this state of ticklishness. I have seen patients who are really so sensitive in the skin that I would not dare touch it, unless they knew just where I was going to touch.

“Now I am going to feel your pulse, hold still.”

If I were to touch the hand, or reach out to feel the pulse without warning there would be a thrill.

Such a state is in keeping with Kali carb. These things often have to be dug out by observation in studying the nature of provings, and associating things. These things that run into the oversensitiveness of patients are of great value clinically. The capabilities of our Materia Medica are something wonderful, but they could be developed much more rapidly if a number of homoeopathic physicians would make application of the Materia Medica with accuracy and intelligence, observing what they see and relating it literally.

At the present day there is only a very small number of homoeopathic physicians that can come together in a body and say things that are worth listening to, a shamefully small number when we consider the length of time Hahnemann’s books have been before the world.

Liver: There are many old chronic liver subjects who talk about nothing else but the liver.

Every time they go to the doctor’s office they talk about the liver, and about a condition of fullness in the region of the liver and pain through the right shoulder blade and up through the right side of the chest, with a good deal of oppression and distension; vomiting of bile and a good deal of stomach disorder, fullness after eating; attacks of diarrhoea, alternating with constipation lasting for many days with great straining at stool.

Periodical bilious attacks, when a constipated state is present; cannot lie down at night; difficult breathing at night or at 3 o’clock in the morning, especially when it is in a patient over-sensitive to cold, damp weather, one who wants to sit by the fire all the time.

These liver subjects are often thoroughly cured by Kali carb. Sometimes they have been resorting to all sorts of liver tappings, taking such medicines as purge or cause vomiting, drugs that really aggravate the trouble. Kali carb. goes to the bottom of these cases, and roots out the evil.

Abdomen: In the abdomen we have many Kali carb. symptoms.

Persons subjected to repeated attacks of colic, cutting pains, with distension, with pain after eating, constipation or diarrhoea. Colic, with cutting, tearing pains, doubling him up, coming on every little while. Tremendous flatulence. When the attack of colic is on it might remind you of Colocynth or of some other of the acute remedies that cure colic in two or three minutes, but you will find that these acute remedies that relieve colic so speedily when given the second or third time do not produce so marked an effect.

You will find it necessary to hunt for an antipsoric, a remedy that will control the whole case. In the study of the colic alone during its attack you only get a one-sided view of the case, and after the colic is over (say he has been cured by Colocynth) you now study the patient and go over the case, and behold all the symptoms are covered by Kali carb. After giving that remedy you may expect that the patient will not have another attack.

Such is the nature of Kali carb. It is deep-acting, long-acting, goes deep into the life. It cures conditions due to psora, or to the suppression of eruptions in childhood, or to the closing up of old ulcers and fistulous openings with a history of troubles ever since. All these wandering pains and the chilliness are again relieved by eruptions, by the outbreak of discharges, by haemorrhages, by ulcers that eat in deep and flow freely and fistulous openings.

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.