Face: The face is sallow, sickly, pale, often withered, shriveled and emaciated.
In deep-seated chest troubles, bronchitis or pneumonia, where the chest is filled up with mucus, it will be seen that the face and forehead are wrinkled from pain, and that the wings of the nose flap with the effort to breathe.
This occurs with all forms of dyspnoea. We see something like it in Ant. tart., the sooty nostrils being wide open and flapping. In Ant. tart. the rattling of the mucus is heard across the room and the patient is seen to be in distress, but if you see the patient lying in bed with the nose flapping and the forehead wrinkled, with rattling in the chest, or a dry, hacking cough and no expectoration, you will often find the particulars of the examination confirm your mind that it is a case for Lycopodium.
In that exsudative stage of pneumonia, the stage of hepatization, Lycopodium may save the life of that patient. It is closely related in the period of hepatization to Phosphorus and Sulph.
The Sulph. patient is cold; there is no tendency to reaction; he feels the load in the chest, and examination of the chest shows that hepatization is marked. He wants to lie still and is evidently about to die. Sulphur will help him.
It does not have the flapping of the nose, nor the wrinkles upon the forehead, like Lycopodium In the brain complaints of Stramonium, the forehead wrinkles, and in the chest complaints of Lycopodium the forehead wrinkles, and their wrinkles are somewhat alike. You go to a semi-conscious patient suffering from cerebral congestion and watch him; he is wild, the eyes are glassy, the forehead wrinkled and the tendency is to activity of the mind.
That is not Lycopodium but Stramonium By close observation these practical things will lead you to distinguish, almost instantaneously, between Stramonium in its head troubles, and Lycopodium in the advanced stage of pneumonia.
The face is often covered with copper-colored eruptions, such as we find in syphilis, and hence it is that Lycopodium is sometimes useful in old cases of syphilis, cases which have affected the nose, with necrosis or caries of the nasal bones, and the catarrhal symptoms already described. About the face also there is much twitching.
You will see by the study of the face that his face conforms to his sensations. lie is an oversensitive patient and at every jar or noise, such as the slamming of a door, or the ringing of a bell, he wrinkles his face. He is disturbed, and you see it expressed upon his countenance. He has a sickly wrinkled countenance, with contracted eyebrows in complaints of the abdomen as well as in chest complaints.
We also see that the jaw drops as in Opium and Muriaticum acid. This occurs in a state marked by great exhaustion and indicates a fatal tendency, It is especially marked in typhoid when the patient picks at the bed clothes, slides down in bed, wants almost nothing, and can hardly be aroused.
It is the expression of the last stage of the disease, a low type of fever, typhoids, septic and zymotic diseases. Under the jaw there is often glandular swelling, swelling of the parotid and submaxillary glands. The swelling is sometimes cellular and the neck muscles are involved. The tendency is to suppuration of these glands, and swellings about the neck in scarlet fever and diphtheria.
Throat: The next important feature we notice are the throat symptoms.
It was mentioned when going over the general state that the striking feature of Lycopodium in regard to direction is that its symptoms seem to spread from right to left; we notice that the right foot is cold and the left is warm; the right knee is affected; if the pains are movable they go from right to left.
Most complaints seem to travel from right to left, or to affect the right side more than the left. This is also true of sore throats; a quinsy affecting the right side will run its course, and when about finished the left tonsil will become inflamed and suppurate if the appropriate remedy be not administered.
The common sore throat mill commence on the right side, the next day both sides will be affected, the inflammation having extended to the left side. This remedy has all kinds of pains in the throat and fauces. It is useful in cases of diphtheria when the membrane commences on the right side of the throat and spreads over towards the left.
Patches, will be seen one day on the right side and the next day on the left side. We have noticed also that complaints in Lycopodium spread from above down, so it is with these exudations.
They often commence in the upper part of the pharynx and spread down into the throat. Lycopodium has cured many such cases. It is the case sometimes that Lycopodium is better lay holding cold water in the mouth, but the usual Lycopodium sore throat is better from swallowing warm drinks. It is a feature whereby it is possible to distinguish Lachesis from Lycopodium. Lachesis is better from cold and has spasms of the throat from attempting to drink warm drinks, while Lycopodium is better from warm drinks, though sometimes better from cold drinks. Lycopodium does not sleep into the suffocation and constriction of the throat and dyspnoea as in Lachesis The throat is extremely painful, it has all the violence of the worst cases of diphtheria. It has the zymosis.
Stomach and abdomen: The stomach and abdominal symptoms are intermingled.
There is a sense of satiety, an entire lack of appetite. He feels so full that he cannot eat. This sense of fullness may not come on until he has swallowed a mouthful of food; he goes to the table hungry, but the first mouthful fills him up. After eating he is distended with flatus, and gets momentary relief from belching, yet he remains distended. Nausea and vomiting; gnawing pains in stomach as in gastritis; catarrh burning in ulcers and cancer; pains immediately after eating; vomiting of bile, coffee ground vomit, black, inky vomit.
Under Lycopodium apparently malignant cases have their life prolonged. The case is so modified that, instead of culminating in a few months, the patient may last for years. Right hypochondrium swollen as in liver troubles.
Pain in liver, recurrent bilious attacks with vomiting of bile. He is subject to gall stone colic. After Lycopodium the attacks come less frequently, the bilious secretion become normal and the gall stones have a spongy appearance as though being dissolved.
Lycopodium patients are always belching; they have eructations that are sour and acrid like strong acid burning the pharynx.
“Sour stomach,” sour vomiting, flatus, distension and pain after eating, with a sense of fullness.
Awful goneness,” or weakness, in stomach, not relieved by eating (Digit.).
The stomach is worse by cold drinks, and often relieved by warm drinks. In the stomach and intestines there is a great commotion, noisy rumbling, rolling of flatus as though fermentation were going on.
Lycopodium, China and Carbo veg. are most flatulent remedies and should be compared.
The stomach symptoms are worse or brought on from cold drinks, beer, coffee or fruit, and a diarrhoea follows. Old chronic dyspeptics, emaciated, wrinkled, tired and angular patients, everything eaten turns to wind. Lycopodium is useful in old tired patients with feeble reaction and feebleness of all the functions, with a tendency to run down and not convalesce.
This patient has most troublesome constipation. He goes for days without any desire, and although the rectum is full there is no urging. Inactivity of intestinal canal. Ineffectual urging to stool. Stool hard, difficult, small and incomplete.
The first part of the stool is hard and difficult to start, but the last part in soft or thin and gushing following by faintness and weakness. Lycopodium patients have diarrhoea and all kinds of stool. So you will see from reading the text that the characteristic of Lycopodium is not in the stool. Any kind of diarrhoea, if the other Lycopodium symptoms are present, will be cured by Lycopodium. It has troublesome hemorrhoids, but they are nondescript. Any kind of hemorrhoids may be cured by Lycopodium if the flatulence, the stomach symptoms, the mental symptoms, and the general symptoms of Lycopodium are present, because the hoemorrhoidal symptoms are numerous.
Kidneys: The kidneys furnish any symptoms and may be the key to Lycopodium in many instances.
There seems to be the same inactivity in the bladder as in the rectum. Though he strain ever so much, he must wait a long time for the urine to pass. It is slow to flow, and flows in a feeble stream. The urine is often muddy with brick dust, or red sand deposits, or on stirring it up it looks like the sediment of fermenting cider. We find this state in febrile conditions. In acute stages of disease; where the red sand appears copiously, Lycopodium is often the remedy.
This is a very prominent symptom. In chronic symptoms when the patient feels best the red sand is found in the urine Lycopodium has retention of urine and suppression of urine. It has “wetting of the bed” in little ones, involuntarily micturition in sleep, involuntary micturition in typhoids and low fevers.
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.
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