This remedy and Natr. sulph. were used by the homoeopaths to clear up chronic diarrhoea, the old army diarrhoea.
Natr. mur. is useful in the complaints of women, in troublesome menstruation. There is a great variety of menstrual complaints: menses too scanty or too free, too late or too soon. We cannot individualize from the menstrual symptoms, we must do it from the constitutional state.
Examine every possible function to be sure you have all the symptoms. Examine every organ, not by examining it physically, for results of diseases do not lead to the remedy, but examine the symptoms.
Observe the rapidity with which remedies affect the human system there are some that are long acting, deep acting. Natr. mur. is one of these. It operates very slowly, bringing about its results after a long time, as it corresponds to complaints that are slow, that are long in action.
This does not mean that it will not act rapidly; all remedies act rapidly, but not all act slowly; the longest acting may act in acute diseases, but the short acting cannot act long in chronic diseases. Get the pace, the periodicity of remedies.
Some remedies have a continued fever, some a remittent, others an intermittent fever. In Aconite, Belladonna and Bryonia we have three different paces, three different motions, three different forms of velocity; so in Sulph., Graphites, Natr. mur., Carbo veg. a different form, a different development.
Some would not hesitate in a continued fever to give Belladonna, but its complaints come on in great haste, with great violence and have nothing in their nature like a continued fever. This is not like typhoid. Belladonna and Acon. have no manifestations of typhoid, even if the symptoms are present.
Be sure that the remedy has not only the group of symptoms, but also the nature of the case. The typhoid case has a likeness in Bryonia or Rhus, but not in Bell. We owe no obedience to man, not even to our parents, after we are old enough to think for ourselves. We owe obedience to truth.
Natr. mur. is a long acting remedy; its symptoms continue for years; it conforms to slow-coming, long-lasting, deep-seated symptoms. It requires a long time for a man to be brought under the influence of it, even when moderately sensitive.
The chill comes in the morning at 10-30; every day, every other day, every third or fourth day. The chill begins in the extremities which become blue; there is throbbing pain in the head, the face is flushed; delirium, talking of everything, constant maniacal actions.
They grow worse until a congestive attack comes. During the entire attack there is thirst for cold water. During the coldness he is not > by heat, not > by piling on the clothing, but wants cold drinks.
We would naturally suppose that a person freezing to death would want warm things, but the Natr. mur. patient cannot bear them.
The teeth chatter, he tosses from side to side, the bones ache as if they would break, and there is vomiting as in congestive conditions. In the fever he is so hot that the fingers are almost scorched with the intense heat, and he goes into a congestive sleep or stupor. The sweat relieves him; the aching all over is > by the sweat, and in time the headache passes away.
There is intense chill, fever and sweat. Sometimes the attacks are in robust, strong people, but usually in the anaemic, in emaciated people full of malaria; lingering, chronic cases.
Complaints do not always have this long prodrome. Its most striking use is in cases that have been living a long time in malarial swamps; saturated with the malarial atmosphere; they are anaemic, often dropsical; in old cases that have been mixed with arsenic and quinine, the crude drugs used by the Old School to break the fever as long as the patient is under their sway, but the patient is sick internally even more than before, and when the condition comes back, it is generally in its original form; the crude drug is usually unable to change the type of an intermittent fever.
Remedies only partly related to the case will change the character of the sickness so that no one can cure the case. The homoeopathic remedy will cure intermittent fever every time if you get the right remedy. If there is a failure the case is mixed up so that no one may be able to cure it. First of all a master must realize the case and turn it into order so that it can then be cured. There are few men who never spoil a case of ague, because many cases come from partly developed, marked cases, the symptoms not being all out, especially in cases that have taken homoeopathic remedies. The homeopathic failures are the worst failures on earth.
Natr. mur. is irregular enough in its nature to develop the chills into regularity. When it has come into better order, wait: either the whole case will subside, or another remedy will be clear. There are other remedies that can turn cases into order. Often cases spoiled by homoeopaths can be turned into order by Sepia Marked cases with congestion of the head, aching in the back and nausea are turned into order by Ipecac.
The cure is permanent after homoeopathic prescribing; the chills do not return.
Natr. mur. not only removes the tendency to intermittents, but restores the patient to health, and takes away the tendency to colds, the susceptibility to colds, and to periodicity. It is the susceptibility that is removed. We know that every attack predisposes to another attack.
Each attack of ague is more destructive than the previous one. The drugs used increase the susceptibility; the homeopathic remedy removes$ the susceptibility. Homeopathic treatment tends to simplify the human economy and to make diseases more easily managed.
Unless this susceptibility be eradicated, man goes down lower and lower into emaciation, emaciation from above downwards.
Children born in a malarial region are likely to go into, marasmus. They have a voracious appetite, a wonderful hunger, eating much, but all the time emaciating.
Pregnancy: Conditions of pregnancy.
The mammary glands waste, there is wasting of the upper parts of the body. The uterus is intensely sore.
The leucorrhoea, which is at first white, turns green. Women take cold in every draft of air.
There is pain during sexual congress with dryness of the vagina, a feeling as though sticks pressed into the walls of the vagina; pricking pains.
There is dryness of all mucous membranes; everywhere the membranes are dry. The throat is dry, red, patulous; a sensation of a fishbone jagging into it when swallowing; there is inability to swallow without washing down the food with liquids; there is sticking all the way down the oesophagus.
Throat: Most prescribers give Hepar for every sticking or fishbone sensation in the throat; this is the old keynote, the old routine.
Nitr. ac., Argent. nit., Alumina and Natr. mur. all have it, but all differently.
Hepar sulfur: The tonsils are swollen, full, purple-quinsy.
The patient is sensitive to the slightest draught, there is pain in the throat even on putting the hand out of bed; he sweats in the night with no relief; he is sensitive to every impression; feels everything ten times amplified.
Nitricum Acidum: There are yellow patches in the throat; ragged, jagged ulcers in the throat, or it is inflamed and purple.
The urine smells like horses’ urine.
Argentum nitricum: There is much hoarseness, the vocal cords being disturbed.
The throat is swollen, patulous; the patient wants cold things, cold water, cold air. Adapted to those cases that have had ulceration of the os uteri with cauterization.
Natrum Muriaticum: There is extreme dryness of the mucous membranes, as if they would break; chronic dryness without ulceration.
There is much catarrhal discharge like the white of an egg, with dryness of the mucous membranes when not covered by this mucus. The patient is extremely sensitive, sensitive to a change of weather.
Every remedy has its own pace, its order or succession. We must bear in mind the order of succession.
Natr. mur. is useful in old dropsies, especially dropsy of cellular tissues. Sometimes there is dropsy of sacs, dropsy of the brain following acute diseases. In acute spinal meningitis with extreme nervous tension, where there is chronic drawing back of the head, chronic jerking of the head forward.
Acute diseases that result in hydrocephalus, or in irritation of the spine. Sometimes useful in abdominal dropsy, but more often in oedema of the lower extremities. Acute dropsies after scarlet fever; the patient is oversensitive, starts in his sleep, rises up in the night with confusion; there are albumen and casts in the urine,
In dropsy after the malaria, Natr. mur., when it acts curatively, generally brings back the original chill. The only cure known to man is from above down, from within out, and in the reverse order of coming. When it is otherwise, there is only improvement, not cure. When the symptoms return there is hope; that is the road to cure and there is no other.
The skin symptoms are sometimes very striking. In old lingering cases where the skin looks transparent as if the patient would become dropsical, a waxy, greasy, shiny skin; other remedies with greasy, shiny skin are Plumb., Thuja, Selenium
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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