Mind again: Sepia has a hysterical diathesis.
Breaks out in spells of weeping, is sad one minute, gentle, yielding, and in another she is disagreeable, excitable, obstinate. You do not know what she is going to do next. She says and does strange things, makes errors, no dependence can be placed on her; no mental endurance; no affection for her family; whole Mind weak and disordered, not when there is fever, but it is a chronic manifestation of psora or sycosis.
Fear of ghosts; that something unusual will happen; atmosphere full of figures, not seen, but she knows that they are there; departed friends or other forms and very often in accordance with religions belief.
Never happy unless annoying some one; relating her grievances; sarcastic; insulting fear of insanity, poverty.
“Fears to starve, is peevish and feels mortified, easily frightened and full of forbodings.”
“Passionate, irritable; the greatest irritability from slight causes, very easily offended.
Vexed and disposed to scold.”
Head: The headaches are nervous, bilious, periodic, violent, involving the whole head; congestive.
Generally better lying down, keeping perfectly quiet; worse from ordinary motion, but relieved by violent motion, like most Sepia symptoms in general; she can walk off her sufferings. Stasis of the brain, slowness of thought, mind will not work and, mental labor aggravates the headache. A good substantial sleep relieves it, but if she is awakened after sleeping a short time, the headache is worse.
The same is seen in regard to motion; moving the eyes, head, or body, moving about in a warm room aggravates the pain, but a good, long walk in the open air until she becomes heated up, relieves. It is a sluggish state of the body which requires exercise, and violent exercise to keep it in a state of comfort.
The Sepia symptoms are worse in the open air unless combined with continued motion, better from exercise in the open air and worse in the house. The headache is worse from stooping, motion, coughing, going up stairs, jarring, light, turning the head, lying on the back and from thinking, but continued, hard exercise relieves, as does a tight bandage, and the application of heat, though worse in a warm room.
There are Sepia headaches that particularly affect the occiput, worse in the morning; great pain through the eyes and temples; relieved by sweat, worse on beginning to move; throbbing felt on stooping, worse on going up s airs.
The Phosphorus headache is relieved by sleep, but continued, rapid motion aggravates. Cannot endure it. Sepia is suited to the old fashioned bilious headaches. It is better from vomiting; the pain gradually increases, loathing of food, then nausea, vomiting and the patient falls asleep and wakens without the headache. Sanguinaria resembles it, is better vomiting, better in a dark room; the direction is different, however.
Neuralgia of the head; periodic sick-headaches in gouty people; violent, congestive headaches in young women sensitive to noise, women of extremely delicate fiber, especially those with dark eyes, dark skin, and who become sallow from sickness. Jaundice often sets in with the headaches; at the close of the headache vomiting, and in a few days jaundice, which passes away but returns again with the next headache.
Headache every morning with nausea; the smell of food repulsive. Sepia takes on a stupid state of mind as mentioned above; will not work; will not answer questions; as if intoxicated, benumbed; eyes and face swollen, sclerotics yellow and jaundice.
This sometimes ends in violent vomiting spells. Craves spicy, pungent, bitter things like beer – in old drunkards with headache; threatening apoplexy.
“Apoplexy in men addicted to drinking and sexual excesses, with a disposition to gout and hemorrhoids, etc.”
“Threatening apoplexy in a dissipated, middle-aged man, who is subject to arthritic and hoemorrhoidal complaints; they have usually passed through several light attacks of apoplexy and are frequently visited with prodromic symptoms!”
Under external head we have eruptions and falling out of the hair yellow crusts; oozing of pus and other fluids; vesicles eczema of infants.
Face: Eyes; catarrhal symptoms with vesicles and pustules granular lids ulcers and psoric manifestations; various infiltrative conditions of the eyes and about the eyes; pustules on the margins of the lids, pustules on the globe of the eye, seems as if looking through a gauze; tarsal tumors, agglutination of lids, styes, etc.
The ears discharge thick, yellow pus; offensive.
The nose is a favorite locality; loss of smell; yellow or green thick crusts fill the nose and cannot be blown out; inveterate discharge of thick yellow pus.
“Large offensive-smelling plugs from the nose, often so large that they have to be drawn back into the mouth and expectorated, causing vomiting.
Dry coryza especially of left nostril, following of large lumps of yellow or green mucus or yellow-green crusts with blood from the nose.”
This is descriptive of the worst forms of catarrh; very few will let it run on thus far, they apply local treatment and heal the nose up, and, the process at once going to the chest, phthisis pituitosa comes on.
The gums settle away from the teeth. Toothache and neuralgia from taking cold.
Sensation of a lump in the throat (like Lachesis), but the latter is better from swallowing. (The same in worm troubles indicates Cina.) Uneasiness of the collar and corsets like Lachesis Worse in the first, sleep like Lachesis
Stomach: Sepia brings out many things in connection with the appetites, thirst, eating, drinking and stomach, etc.
The Sepia patient is generally conscious of a spoiled stomach, sour and bitter eructations of food, of mucus and bile, sour and bitter vomiting of food and mucus; all-gone, hungry, empty feeling in the stomach sometimes not relieved by eating.
At times a gnawing pain, a sinking, a gnawing hunger which is not always relieved by eating. Almost constant nausea, especially in the morning, nausea and eructations and vomiting of milky fluid; when the stomach is empty, vomiting, spitting up, eructations of milky fluid.
Aversion to food, to the smell of food cooking, like Colchicum and Arsenicum The patient gets up in the morning with an all-gone feeling, distress and fullness in the stomach followed by belching and uprisings of mucus, and milky fluids; vomiting of pregnancy; vomiting of milky water in the morning; this is a characteristic of Sepia.
Acrid, burning eructations; heartburn; rancid eructations, excoriating the throat; pyrosis which is another form of eructation; acrid, sour fluids burning all the way up, causing contraction, tingling, smarting.
Nausea violent; deathly sinking accompanied with an awful anxiety in the stomach.
Phosphorus has more of the typical hunger which is relieved by eating. The Ignatia patient is always sighing; cannot get rid of “that feeling.”
Oleander has an all-gone empty feeling as if he would die; food does not relieve, is not digested, but panes undigested the next day.
Lycopodium has an all-gone feeling sometimes not better by eating, felt as markedly before as after eating, and after eating there comes a throbbing.
Kali carb. has it also, without the amelioration from taking food; it is even intensified by eating, which is followed by a sensation of fullness and throbbing.
In severe liver and heart affections the stomach is not able to keep up assimilation; palpitation, great weakness, liver congested, white stool.
Digitalis comes in here with its deathly sinking not better by vomiting. In Sepia this symptom is associated with the loss of affections, the lump in the rectum, with the constipation, etc.
“Pain in the stomach after the simplest food.
Stitches and burning in the stomach.
Pain in the stomach worse by vomiting.”
This is peculiar, for vomiting usually relieves the distress. The Sepia stomach becomes like a leather bag, fill it up and the food comes up just as eaten or at times sour or mixed with bile. Inflammation of the liver, enlargement with jaundice, pain, fullness, distension, distress in the region of the liver.
Abdomen: distended with flatus, rumbling and distension. These disturbances are often chronic as in pot-bellied mothers; abdomen covered with brown spots. Sepia has removed tape-worm.
Chronic diarrhea, stools jelly-like, lumpy; alternating diarrhoea and constipation; a great amount of mucus with the stools, whether constipated or diarrheic; hard stool covered with a great quantity of jellylike mucus.
Goes for days without a stool and then sits and strains until a copious sweat breaks out and yet no stool, but after assistance with the finger and prolonged strain a little stool is passed, followed by a cupful of jelly-like mucus, yellow or yellow-white and very offensive.
The acute diarrheas and dysenteries with jelly-like stools are more in keeping with Kali bichromicum and Colchicum This is chronic diarrhoea or in constipation with stool covered with or followed by jelly-like mucus is Sepia.
Do not confound with Graphites, which has an enormous stool with much straining and sweating, and coated with and mixed with a substance looking like the cooked white egg, as if covered with albumen.
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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