Eyes. Catarrhal symptoms. Pustules about the lids and over the ball; on the cornea. Inflammatory features. Thick, yellow-green pus. Granular lids. Continued formation of little pustules. Isolated granules on lids, grow out here and therein bunches as large as pin leads. Eyelids inflamed and bleed easily. Every time he catches cold it settles in the eyes and nose.
Eyes red, inflamed, and discharge, In infants catarrhal diseases of the eyes of a gonorrheal character; ophthalmia neonatorum. In early days the infant often needs the same constitutional remedy as the mother. Yellow green discharge from the eyes; eyes are ameliorated by washing in warm water, or tepid water; even cold water feels good to the eyes.
The Sulphur patient is made worse by bathing; the eyes smart, burn and become increasingly red after washing in water. Pulsatilla causes a tendency to the formation of styes; recurrent styes; always having styes. Pustules, papules and little nodosities on the lids.
Prior to menstruation, in young girls especially, things get black, before the eyes, like a gauze or a veil. Nervous manifestations, twitchings, spell of blindness and fainting. In the early stages of paralysis of the optic nerve Pulsatilla is a great remedy. The patient is always rubbing the eyes; whether or not there is mucus in the eyes it matters not; but it is a sensation of gauze before the eyes, ameliorated by rubbing.
Pulsatilla has cured incipient cataract. Itching of the eyes, in keeping with the skin symptoms. Itching in the ears, nose, tickling in the throat, in the larynx.
Ears: In the ears we have the same catarrhal condition.
Thick, yellow, offensive, purulent, bland discharge; very foetid, sometimes bloody. Pulsatilla is commonly indicated in earache of children; when the child, is a gentle, fat, plump, vascular red-faced child always pitifully crying. If it is a case of earache in a nondescript child Pulsatilla will also prove to be a temporary remedy, so closely is it related to pain in the ear. Pains in the ears in the evening or in the night, ameliorated by walking slowly about the room.
In Chamomilla you have a snap. ping and snarling child, never pleased, scolds the nurse and mother ameliorated by walking about. The irritability decides for Chamomilla. You can detect a pitiful cry from a snarling mad cry. Both are ameliorated by motion, by being carried. Both want this and that and are never satisfied; they want amusement. But the Pulsatilla child when not amused has a pitiful cry and the Chamomilla child a snarling cry. You will want to caress the one and spank the other.
Ear troubles with a ruptured drum and no healing; otitis media. Abscess in the middle ear; inflammation of the middle ear; copious thick bloody discharge, then yellow-green. The case goes on night and day until rupture takes place. I have found this condition as an endemic, in which Mercurius, Hepar., and Pulsatilla were the most frequently indicated remedies.
Ear troubles following eruptive diseases. Offensive catarrhal discharge dating back to scarlet fever or measles; badly treated and drugged patients. Inflammation and swelling of the external ear; erysipelatous purple conditions. Scabs on the tragus.
Nose: The patient is subject to repeated attacks of coryza, with sneezing and stuffing up of the nose; a febrile state; sometimes with chills, fever and sweat.
Pains in the face through the nose. In the evening considerable watery discharge with sneezing; in the morning stuffing up of the nose with thick yellow-green discharge. Pulsatilla is suitable to chronic catarrhs, with thick yellow-green discharge which is bland; stuffing up of the nose; copious discharge; patient has a bad smell in the nose; smells various offensive things, sometimes like manure, but more commonly described as the offensiveness of a stinking catarrh.
Large bloody, thick, yellow crusts accumulate in the nose, harden down and are blown out in the morning, accompanied by thick yellow pus. In old lingering cases, loss of smell and taste. The mucous membrane is in a state of thickening and suppuration, with the formation of crusts and ulcers. Fullness high in the nose; stuffing up and fullness in the posterior nares. Hawks up thick yellow mucus in masses, with crusts in the morning, very often offensive to others.
Many Pulsatilla patients in this catarrhal state get relief from this horrible stench by blowing out great crusts. Thick clinkers of dried up pus or dried mucus and pus accumulate for several days and this terrible catarrhal smell comes on; but as soon as he blows out these clinkers the odor goes away and he has relief until they form again in a few days.
The patient himself feels better in the open air, and worse in a warm room. He breathes better in the open air; feels stuffy in a warm room. But there are times when his nose stuffs up more in a warm room, where he sneezes more in a warm room,
The loss of smell is present in chronic and acute catarrhs. Much stuffing up of the nose occurring in the evening; he blows the nose easily and cleans it out during the day, but it stuffs up in the evening and he cannot clear it out.
Remember that the mental symptoms are worse in the evening. He gets up in the morning with a stuffed up nose, but can clean it out; his mouth is foul, tongue coated, rancid taste, requires much brushing of his teeth and washing out of his mouth before he can take his breakfast.
So you see the mouth and stomach symptoms are worse in the morning, the mental symptoms are worse in the evening and there is also a stuffing up of the nose in the evening. Compare this with the cough. There is a dry evening cough in Pulsatilla and a loose morning cough.
Copious expectoration in the morning, but a dry, tight, constricted feeling in the chest in the evening. Stuffed up in the evening, making breathing difficult. To repeat, then, Pulsatilla is one of our sheet anchors in old catarrhs with loss of smell, thick yellow discharge, and amelioration in the open air; in the nervous, timid, yielding, with stuffing up of the nose at night and copious flow in the morning.
With the catarrhs and acute colds there is often bleeding of the nose, blowing blood from the nose; the crusts cling tight, and when blown out they are torn loose, and this causes bleeding; but the nose bleeds easily, subject to epistaxis. Nose-bleed during the menstrual period; nose-bleed before the menstrual period; nose-bleed with suppressed menses; bleeding dark, thick, clotted, almost black, venous blood.
Especially do we find catarrhal subjects in women who have late, scanty, light colored menses; scarcely more than a leucorrhoea; if bloody, then only a little black stain or clot. Chlorotic patients who have their menses once every two or three months; chlorotic girls who are irregular, and are subject to these catarrhal states.
Pulsatilla is very useful in hay fever. The management of hay fever requires considerable study because you have to deal with the troublesome imaginations of the patient, he will refuse to let you study him; he wants the hay fever treated; he don’t want the hemorrhoids, the thick skin on the soles of the feet, the pains in the sacrum, the diarrhea which alternates with constipation, talked about or inquired into; these are always better when the hay fever is present.
Sometimes he will tell you that he is always well except when he has hay fever. He may feel well, but it is impossible for him to be well; he has always had these complaints and he does not want you to bother with them. The hay fever will hardly ever reveal the indications for a remedy for the patient.
Another individual has epilepsy, and if you expect to find in the fit the remedy that cures the patient you will be mistaken. When an acute mimicking manifestation of disease follows several times the same beaten track the details are hard to find. He does not know much about his hay fever. If you suggest several things he has them all. In nearly all these acute expressions you do not find in the exaggerated attack the symptoms that will lead you to the remedy.
You will find these symptoms by getting the state of the patient before he was taken with bay fever. These primitive symptoms are of more importance. Sometimes it is important to know what region was affected before the nose was affected. At times you will find spinal symptoms; great soreness in the back relieved by lying on something hard. Few remedies have that. They do not tell you that at first but continue to dwell on the bay fever. In many nervous women the attack comes on with sneezing and watery discharge and then a copious, thick, yellowish-green discharge. These are the natural symptoms of hay fever, but in the “back” symptoms you see something.
In Pulsatilla the menstrual symptoms and the prolapsus come in. When the hay fever comes on, all the other symptoms are better, she feels nothing except the hay fever, however, all the symptoms interweave with each other.
The Natrum mur. symptoms will be worse in the morning and until toward noon, while in Pulsatilla they are worse in the evening, the nose filling up with thick, yellowish-green, ropy mucus, and when the nose has been cleared, a dry, burning, smarting feeling remains; if the room is warm at night, she cannot sleep.
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.