“Cutting in abdomen, as if torn to pieces.”
“Violent cutting, must sit bent over pressing with both hands, or lean far back for relief; cannot sit upright.”
“Cutting and drawing like false labor pains.”
There is great coldness with the pains, with the cutting in the abdomen; he wants heat, hot drinks, hot water bags. A chronic coldness is felt in the abdomen, cold externally and internally.
It would sometimes be cruel to give a dose of Kali carb. when the colic is on, because if the remedy fitted the case constitutionally, if all the symptoms of the case were those of Kali carb., you would be likely to get an aggravation that would be unnecessary.
There are plenty of short acting remedies that would relieve the pain speedily, and at the close of the attack the constitutional remedy could then be given. If the patient can bear the pain to the end, it is better to wait until it passes off without any medicine.
That sometimes is cruel, and then the short acting medicines should be given. All recurrent troubles, those that come periodically, or after eating certain articles, or from exposure, or with a periodicity that belongs to time – all these states are chronic; they are not acute troubles.
They are simply a small portion of a chronic miasm, a side view and all such cases must have a constitutional remedy sooner or later. You can, it is true, relieve violent pain at the first visit, but then you must look deeper and prevent your patient having more trouble.
Otherwise, if you should give Belladonna or Colocynth or any medicine that simply fits the colic, the trouble will come back again; you have not cured your patient; you have only palliated. But, on the other hand, you take such a colic as is described here and Kali carb. fits just these symptoms alone and does not fit the whole constitution of the patient.
Then it is that a constitutional and long-acting remedy like Kali carb. acts in fullness. It does not take the usual long time to act and is not attended with an aggravation.
“Abdominal muscles painful to touch; swelling of glands.”
In the abdomen, also following troubles in the bowels, or following peritonitis, we have effusion into the peritoneal sac, which is usually associated with dropsy of the extremities, but not always. In liver dropsies especially is that remedy useful.
Rectum: It has a great many complaints of the rectum and anus and of the stool.
It has most persistent and enormous hemorrhoidal tumors that burn, that are extremely sensitive to touch, that bleed copiously, that are extremely painful, making it impossible for him to sleep. He is compelled to lie upon the back and hold the nates apart, because the pressure is very painful to the external piles.
The piles cannot be put back; there is great distension and swelling inside. Haemorrhoids that come out after stool and bleed copiously and are very painful; they must be pushed back, and long after going to bed they burn like fire.
There is great aggravation from stool, which is hard and knotty and requires great straining to expel. Fistulae of the anus. Burning temporarily relieved by sitting in cold water.
It has chronic diarrhoea and also diarrhea alternating with constipation. Many times where there are numerous particulars, we have to rely upon the generals that are characteristic of the remedy. The text gives much less of diarrhea than has been developed by clinical uses.
“Diarrhoea painless, with rumbling in the abdomen and burning at stool, only by day; chronic cases with puffiness under the eyebrows.”
It gives few symptoms, but it is a large and extensive remedy in diarrheas that are chronic. In old, broken down subjects, in weakly, pallid subjects, with poor digestion, with great flatulence, with much distension, with disordered liver.
Kidneys, Bladder: Then the kidney, bladder and urethra come in for their share of trouble, which is of a catarrhal nature.
Discharges from the bladder, purulent discharges of a thick, tenacious, copious mucus deposited in the urine. In keeping with this there is much burning; burning in the urethra, during and after micturition.
“Urine flows slowly with soreness and burning.”
Kali carb. runs very close to Natr. mur. in many of its old, long-standing bladder troubles, In old cases of gleet and long-standing cases of urinary troubles that follow gonorrhea these two medicines are useful, both suitable in the scanty, white, gleety discharge that remains. In both the urination is painful.
In Nat. mur. the burning is after urination. Where there is scanty, gleety discharge and the burning is very marked and only after urination, and the patient is extremely nervous and fidgety, Natrum mur. will cure.
If the burning is during and after urination and you have the broken down constitution we have described then the remedy may be Kali carb. Some of these old cases are entirely painless, having no pain either during or after micturition.
Then you get an entirely different class of remedies. The old chronic discharges following a gonorrhoea are as troublesome for the young doctor as anything that will ever fall into his hands. The remedies are numerous, the symptoms are scanty, and many times the patient has not been long under the doctor’s care, therefore he does not know the patient’s constitutional state well and the patient can only tell him of the discharge.
“Nothing but the discharge, doctor.”
You cannot get his mind on his symptoms; he has forgotten that he wakes at 3 o’clock in the morning and cannot get to sleep until 5 o’clock, he has forgotten all the nervous manifestations. With the patient you have had under control, whose constitutional state you get before this condition comes, you ought not to have much difficulty.
One of the evidences that the Kali carb. patient is of a weakly constitution and is on the road to a break-down is that all of his symptoms are aroused and brought into action after coition, after sexual excitement. Now you will take notice in practice and remember it, that coition is a natural thing with man, when it is carried on in order, and when that which is natural is followed by prostration, and this has been so for a long time, there is a break in the constitution, there is something radically wrong.
Genitals: All the symptoms are likely to be worse after coition in Kali carb. He has weak vision, weakness of the senses, tremulousness, and is generally nervous; he is sleepless, and weak, and he shivers and trembles for a day or two after coition.
Similar symptoms are observed in the woman. In spite of the fact that the patient is weak, the sexual desire is excessive. It is not orderly. There is a sexual erethism, which is not under the command of the will, and in the male he is subject to copious and frequent pollutions, nightly dreams, sexual prostration. Young men who have abused themselves, or who have indulged excessively in sexual pleasure, go into marriage with weakened genitals, incapacitated; and then there comes a disgust, and it is not strange that there are so many divorces in the world. When the patient is young, some of this trouble can be overcome by living an orderly life and correct Homeopathy.
In Kali carb. there are many complaints affecting the male genital organs; uneasiness and sensitiveness of the testicles. One is in a state of swelling and hardness. Itching and smarting and annoying sensations in the scrotum and sensations that constantly remind the patient that he has genital organs. Constant irritation calling his attention to the genitals, brought on from abuse, from vice, from excesses. Phosphorus is a medicine that is abused in this sphere. Many physicians look upon it as one of the great remedies for the weakness of the genital organs.
In Phosphorus the genital indications are extreme excitement, too active erections, a disorderly strength of the genital organs. Beware of giving it in impotency or in weakness, as this is often associated with very feeble constitutions, and Phosphorus not only fails to cure, but seems to add to the weakness. It is a weakness that you will learn is a vital weakness. Phosphorus will set patients to running down more rapidly who are suffering from a vital weakness, who are always tired, simply weak, always prostrated and want to go to bed.
The female has a great friend in Kali carb. It is full of her complaints and has many symptoms likely to be found in a sick woman. It is useful in cases of uterine hemorrhages that have been incessant in pale, waxy, hemorrhagic women; incessant haemorrhage following an abortion.
She has been curetted and has had all sorts of treatment, but still that oozing keeps right on. At the menstrual period the flow is very copious and clotted, and then after prolonged menstruation of ten days or so, during which she has had a copious flow, she settles back into a state of oozing and flowing until next month and then it rouses, up into another ten days of copious menstruation. Kali carb. has cured a number of cases of fibroid tumor long before it was time for the critical period to cure.
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.