“Water brash, with chilliness, with brown tongue; nausea and vomiting of what is drunk, worse in the morning; water tastes bad; vomits after drinking.”
The Silicea stomach is weak, in a do-nothing state; old dyspeptics that have been vomiting a long time, especially those who have an, aversion to hot food, who cannot take milk, are averse to meat, where, the mental and bodily symptoms agree.
Silicea was one of the greatest remedies for the chronic diarrhoea in the soldiers of our Civil War. It cured a fair percentage of those sick from sleeping on damp ground, eating all sorts of food until the stomach and bowels were prostrated, from long marches, from going into the South from the cold North, from becoming overheated. It is like Sulphur in these symptoms.
Silicea has some pain in the stomach and bowels, but there is more soreness to pressure; colic and flatulence and tenderness to pressure; a chronic soreness in the stomach and if it goes on too long, a tubercular state comes on.
Abdomen: Abdominal pain relieved by heat; distension of the bowels with flatulence and rumbling.
Enlarged abdomen in children and adults (Barayta carbonica); tightness across the abdomen. Disturbed by the pressure of the clothes and worse after eating; the decided feature is the amelioration from heat.
Constipation from inability of the rectum to expel the faeces. It is seldom that the stool lies in the rectum without urging like Alumina; there is much urging to stool but inability to expel. The stool may be in small balls or large and soft or large and hard, but there is much straining and sweating about the head and great suffering while straining; the rectum becomes impacted, he strains until he is weak and exhausted, the stool slips back; and he gives up in despair.
The only way he can relieve himself is by some mechanical method. Great straining at stool belongs to many remedies, but especially to Alumina, Alumen, China, Natr. mur., Nux vomica, Nux mosch., and Silicea.
Silicea has removed tape-worm, when the symptoms agree(Calcarea, Sulf.)
It has also cured fistulous openings. Patients who have a tendency to phthisis are subject to abscesses about the region of the rectum, that break inside or out and form complete or incomplete openings.
These seem to take the place of what would otherwise come, and if healed by operation or other external means, the tendency is to end in chest trouble, either in form of a fixed catarrh or tubercular infiltrations.
Silicea is one of the remedies that turns the constitution into order and in one to five years the opening ceases to be necessary and it will heal. Surgeons heal it up at once, and for a time the patient is comfortable, but in a few years he breaks down.
Causticum, Berberis, Calcarea c., Calcarea phos., Graphites, Sulphur, etc., are suitable; in such cases. Silicea here follows Thuja well.
Urinary: Suppurative conditions in the urinary tract, catarrh of the mucous membranes; old inveterate catarrh of the bladder with pus and blood in the urine; copious, stringy, deposits in the urine.
Prostatitis, suppuration, thick, fetid pus from the urethra. Gonorrhea, pus, or pus like discharge from the urethra, slight, shreddy discharge, bloody, purulent discharge. It is sometimes thick, or is curdy; this is from any mucous membrane.
Men: Abscesses along the penis, in the perineum, prostate gland, testes.
Chronic inflammation and induration of the testes with much pain; testes feel as if squeezed, sensitive, painful. Hydrocele in boys or adults.
In the male, impotence, weakness of the genitals after coition, easily exhausted, lacks power; exhausted if he has coition with anything like ordinary frequency; it takes him a week or ten days to rest up (Agaricus).
Much sweating of the genitals with exhaustion, tired out in the spine, weak back. Involuntary discharge of urine at night; enuresis in little boys and girls.
Women: In women a prostrated condition of the sexual functions.
Serous cysts in the vagina, fistulous openings and abscesses about the vulva, which heal with hard nodules or do not heal at all; little oozing fistulae, offensive, cheesy discharge. They heal in little nodules and then break out again in the same nidus. Women who are subject to these abscesses.
Bloody discharge between the periods. In Silicea there is very easy flow of blood from the uterus; a hemorrhagic flow comes on before the menses from excitement, and especially when nursing; when the child is put to the breast a flow of blood starts.
Notice the distinction between Calcarea and Silicea. Calcarea has a tendency to flow during lactation, but not when the child is put to the breast.
Silicea cures hydrosalpinx and pyosalpinx, with copious, watery discharge from the uterus. Sometimes a woman has a lump on one or the other side of the uterus, which steadily increases and all at once there is a flooding of watery, bloody, purulent fluid and the lump disappears, soon to fill up again and empty in the same way in a gushing flow.
Such are the manifestations of hydrosalpinx and pyosalpinx. Entire absence of the menses for months; amenorrhoea.
Serous, cysts in the vagina as large as a pea or an orange, projecting from the vagina or projecting upwards and flattened out in conformation with it. Many little cysts like hickory-nuts grouped together. Rhododendron and Silicea have cured these even when there is a paucity of other symptoms.
“Leucorrhea, profuse, acrid, corroding, milky, preceded by cutting around the navel, causing biting pain, especially after acrid food; during urination; in gushes; with cancer of the uterus. Hard lumps in the mammæ.”
Threatened abscesses of the breasts. If the remedy is given in time, it will abort the entire trouble. Where the remedy has come too late and suppuration is inevitable, Silicea comes in for its share. There may be throbbing, tenderness, and weight, yet the remedy controls the pain, hastens the conclusion, and the opening comes naturally, discharges little and closes at once. As sure as an anodyne is given, a hot poultice applied, you will fail with your remedies.
There is too much blood in the part, and the application of a poultice increases the trouble; it causes an increased determination of blood to the part, and if suppuration takes place it causes more breaking down of tissue. Instead of a thimbleful of pus you will have cupfuls for days and half of the gland is destroyed
Women who are so weak they tend to abort, or no conception takes place. It would seem if the organs were tired out and unable to perform their functions.
The infant has all sorts of troubles. It grows up sickly; cannot tolerate its mother’s milk or indeed any kind of food; vomiting and diarrhoea. A healthy child will digest even unwholesome milk.
Chest: The Silicea cough is a dangerous one; the remedy suits the early stage of phthisis, when the lung is not extensively involved; it suits cough of catarrhal character when the symptoms agree.
If there is small abscess in the lung with no tendency to heal, it brings about repair, causes contraction of its walls. Inveterate cases of catarrh of the chest with asthmatic wheezing, overexertion. After violent exertion and overheating, gets in a draft, or takes cold from a bath, becomes chilled.
Humid asthma, coarse rattling, the chest seems filled with mucus, seems as if he would suffocate. Especially the asthma of old sycotics, or in children of sycotic parents. It competes with Nat. sul. in such cases. The patient is pale, waxy, anaemic, with great prostration and thirst.
Asthmatic attacks from suppressed gonorrhoea, with liability to develop complaints from over-exertion and over-heating, as in most sycotics.
Dry, teasing cough with hoarseness, threatening tuberculosis of the larynx, peculiar cracked voice from thickening of the laryngeal mucous membrane or tubercular involvement; soreness of the chest threatening miliary tuberculosis, with aggravation from cold and amelioration from warm drinks.
Pulmonary affections in stone-cutters. The fine dust causes chronic irritation. Silicea establishes a suppuration and throws off these particles of stone.
Expectoration profuse, foetid, green, purulent; only during the day viscid, milky, acrid-mucus, at times pale, frothy blood.
Chronic tendency for colds to settle in the chest and bring on asthmatic symptoms. Chronic bronchitis; inflammation of the lungs with suppuration. Silicea especially suits the later stages of pneumonia and the old, chronic complaints following pneumonia.
Slow recovery after pneumonia (Lycopodium, Sulphur, Phosphorus, Silicea, Calcarea). Flushes, rattling in the chest. Flushes in the face during the day (Sulphur, Sepia, Lachesis), rattling like Ant. tart., flushes like Sulph. and Lycopodium
Phthisis; thick, yellow, green, foetid sputa, more pronounced coldness than Calcarea, and head sweat, pains in the lungs, sore lungs, stitches.
In the extremities we have inflammation of the periosteum. Corns (Ant. cr., Graphites). Ingrowing toe-nails. Rheumatism of the soles of the feet. Cannot walk (Ant. cr., Medorrhinum, Ruta, Silicea). Begins to sweat as soon as he falls asleep (Pulsatilla, Conium).
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.