Eyes: There are many inflammatory and congestive conditions of the eyes.
The eye symptoms are worse after sleep, and the eyes are oversensitive to touch and light. With the eye symptoms we have headaches, because the brain and eyes are so closely associated. In the sore throats, when the spatula or tongue depressor happens to touch the wall of the throat, the tonsil, or the root of the tongue, there is a feeling as if the eyes would be pressed out. Violent pain in the eyes from touching the throat.
Lachesis is a great jaundice medicine, because it produces much disturbance in the liver. Yellowness of the skin and whites of the eyes, and thickening of tissues about the eyes.
“Fistula lachrymalis,” which is accompanied by long standing eruptions about the face.
Oversensitiveness of the meatus auditorus externus. Anything introduced into the canal of the ear will cause violent, spasmodic coughing and tickling in the throat. So sensitive is the mucous membrane of the ear that a violent cough, like whooping cough, will come on from touching the mucous membrane of the ear. This only shows the oversensitiveness of reflexes, and the oversensitiveness in general. With the hearing there is the same oversensitiveness that we have spoken of elsewhere. The Eustachian tube becomes closed with a catarrhal thickening, stricture of the Eustachian tube.
Nose: The catarrhal symptoms of the nose are prominent. Frequent bleeding of the nose and body, watery discharge from the nose. Always taking cold in the nose. Stuffing up of the nose, with disturbance of smell. Oversensitiveness to smell, and oversensitiveness to odors, finally loss of smell.
Lachesis has inflammatory conditions, very chronic in character, with crusty formations in the nose, sneezing, watery discharges from the nose and catarrhal headaches. Sometimes the headache goes off when the catarrhal discharge comes, and when the catarrhal discharge stops the headache comes on. Violent headache with discharge, with sneezing and coryza. Congestive headaches with coryza.
This catarrhal condition has led to the use of Lachesis in syphilis. It is sufficiently similar to cope with the severe forms of nasal syphilis; syphilis where it has affected the nasal mucous membrane, producing crusts and finally affecting the bones. Fetid oezena; very offensive discharges from the nose. Bleeding from the nose need not surprise you, because Lachesis is a hemorrhagic remedy.
The blood from the nose or any part, when it dries or clots, looks like charred straw or becomes black. Parts bleed easily. Copious and prolonged uterine hemorrhage, copious and prolonged menstruation, bleeding front the nose, vomiting of blood, hemorrhage from the bowels in typhoids.
“Great sensitiveness of the nostrils and lips, swelling of the lips, great swelling and tumefaction of the nose in old cases of syphilis.”
The nose swells up and becomes purple. The nasal bones are very sore, soreness upon sides of the nose. Lachesis is an especially useful medicine in old drunkards who have red nose, and in heart affections with red nose. A red knob on the end of the nose, a strawberry nose.
Face: The face is purple and mottled, the eyelids are tumid, very much puffed; not bloated as in oedematous subjects, but puffed. There is not the pitting upon pressure that we find in oedema, although Lachesis has that, but there is a puffiness peculiar to Lachesis, the face looks swollen and inflamed, due to a venous stasis, so that the face is purple and mottled.
The nose is tumid, yet it will not remain pitted upon pressure. The lips feel as if inflamed, yet are not inflamed, simply sensitive to pressure. The face has also an oedematous appearance in which there is pitting upon pressure, in cardiac affections, in cases of Bright’s disease. On the other hand the face becomes very pale, pale and cold; the skin covered with scaly eruptions.
Eruptions that bleed easily, with crusty eruptions, with vesicular eruptions. Eruptions that fill with blood, bloody vesicles and large blood blisters, such as occur sometimes in burns, with burning. The face becomes jaundiced and very sallow. At times it takes on the appearance also of a chlorosis.
If you have once seen the chlorotic color, it need not be described. It is a condition of anemia, with yellowish pallor, ash colored or grey, intermingled with a sort of greenish color, so that the ancients often referred to it as green sickness. Again the face becomes livid and puffed like the bloated aspect of drunkards, the mottled purple appearance of drunkards who have been drinking for years, until they are bloated and broken down and have a besotted aspect. You see that in Lachesis.
In Lachesis we have a remedy for erysipelas and gangrenous affections, and about the affected part there is the Lachesis appearance, that is the mottled, purplish appearance. Lachesis has become clinically a marked remedy for erysipelas and for gangrene. As provers do not follow up remedies until they produce these things, we have to gather them from the poisonous effects and clinical observation.
Mouth: In Lachesis there is oozing of blood around the teeth, the gums bleed easily. Dry crusts appear upon the teeth in zymotic diseases, often black formations, sordes, and the tongue takes part in the appearance of the mouth and becomes slick. This occurs in typhoid conditions when there is a total loss of assimilation, the appetite is entirely gone, the stomach will not take food, and when food is put into the stomach it is rejected. There is also paresis of the tongue. The tongue seems to be like leather in the mouth, it is moved with great difficulty. And the speech is like that of one half intoxicated; he is unable to articulate.
The tongue swells and is protruded very slowly. It is dry and catches on the teeth and seems to have lost its stiffness. Seems like a rag, or as if the muscles did not act upon it so that it cannot be protruded, or if it is protruded it trembles and quivers and jerks and catches on the teeth. Again it is swollen, it is denuded of its papillae, and smooth, shiny and glassy as if varnished.
In the mouth there is a soapy appearance of the saliva. The saliva runs into the mouth copiously and the patient will often lie with the head over the side of the bed, and the saliva dripping into a pan or commode. The saliva is stringy and can be pulled out of the mouth in strings; white mucus or saliva.
This is not an uncommon feature in diphtheria, in sore throat, in inflammation of the tongue and mouth and gums, and in inflammation of the salivary glands. When this mucus is thick, tough, yellow, stringy and ropy it is like Kali bichromicum. You will often find in severe sore throat that the patient will lie and gag; and cough, and attempt with difficulty to protrude the tongue to expel the saliva from the mouth.
Very often the pain is so severe in the root of the tongue that he cannot expel the saliva by the tongue and he will lie with the open mouth over a commode, or with a cloth over the pillow, to receive the thick, ropy saliva. In such a state with sore throats, especially those that commence on the left side and go to the right, you hardly need to question longer, for it is the aspect of Lachesis.
This state of affairs would lead to Lachesis in ordinary inflammatory conditions of the tongue and in cancerous affections of the tongue. Lachesis has in its nature the tendency to formation of malignant scabs and malignant ulcers, such as we find in epithelioma. It has cured a number of cases of epithelioma. It has been a very useful remedy in lupus. It is an important remedy in syphilitic sore throat, in syphilitic ulceration of the throat, tongue and roof of the mouth with this copious, stingy saliva.
Pharynx: The muscles of the pharynx become paralyzed and will not act, and hence the food will collect in the pharynx, that is, the bolus to be swallowed goes to the pharynx and stops, and then a tremendous effort at swallowing, with gagging and coughing and spasmodic action of the chest, takes place in order to carry on respiration, and he will not again attempt it. This state often occurs with diphtheria.
I have a number of times seen it brought about by the physician, who has, instead of giving just enough Lachesis, high enough and similar enough to the disease to cure, given it as low as he could get it, the 8 th or 10 th, dissolved it in water and fed it all through the diphtheritic state.
When you come across cases that have been treated in this way you need not be surprised if a post-diphtheritic paralysis comes on, because Lachesis will produce it. It may cure the diphtheria, but it will leave its poisonous effects which will last that patient a lifetime. Every spring the symptoms of Lachesis will crop out. In all the circumstances of aggravation described the symptoms of Lachesis will crop out if he has once been poisoned by it.
In the sore throat we have a combination of symptoms. Lachesis has produced this state, going from left to right; but with the sore throat there is a sensation of fullness in the neck and throat, difficult breathing, pallor or plethoric appearance of the face, choking when going into sleep, the peculiar kind of saliva and aggravation of the throat symptoms from warm drinks.
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.