Time: As to time aggravations, nightly complaints are a feature.
Headaches begin after evening meal and increase into the night; he cannot get to sleep because of the pain. There is nightly aching and nightly thirst; nightly distress and symptoms of the skin coming on after becoming warm in bed.
“Intermittent periodic neuralgia, worse every 24 hours, generally at 12 A.M. or 12 P.M.”
Midday is another time of aggravation of the Sulphur complaints. It has chills at noon, fevers increase at noon, increase of the mental symptoms at noon, headache worse at noon. Complaints that come once a week, a seven-day aggravation, is another peculiar condition of Sulphur.
Diarrhea: it is a common feature for a Sulphur patient to have a peculiar kind of diarrhoea which has been long known as “a Sulphur diarrhoea,” though many other remedies have a similar condition, viz.: diarrhoea coming on early in the morning.
The Sulphur diarrhoea belongs to the time between midnight and morning, but more commonly the time that he begins to think about rising.
The diarrhea drives him out of bed.
It is generally thin, watery; there is not much gushing, and it is not very copious, sometimes quite scanty, sometimes yellow faecal. After this morning stool he has, in many cases, no further trouble till next morning.
There are many people who go on year after year with, this urging to stool driving out of bed in the morning. The patient suffers from pain, griping, uneasiness, and burning soreness through the bowels. The stool burns while it is passing, and all parts that it comes in contact with are made sore and raw, and there is much chafing.
Desires and aversions: The Sulphur patient is very thirsty.
He is always drinking water. He wants much water.
He also speaks of a hungry feeling, a desire for food, but when he comes to the table, he loathes the food, turns away from it, does not want it.
He eats almost nothing, takes only the simplest and lightest things. There is a craving for stimulants, for alcohol, and an aversion to milk and meat; these latter make him sick and he loathes them.
One of the old men invented out of these things the keynote “drinks much and eats little.”
This is true under Sulphur, but many other remedies have the same thing. As to the use of keynotes I would impress on you that it is well to gather together all the symptoms with their associations. It will not do to place much dependence on one little symptom, or even on two or three little symptoms. The symptoms of the whole case must be considered and then, if the keynotes and characteristics and everything else cause the remedy to be well rounded out and full, and to look like the whole patient, only then is it suitable.
There is emptiness occurring at 11 o’clock in the forenoon. If there is any time in the whole twenty-four hours that he feels hungry it is at 11 o’clock. It seems as though he cannot wait for his dinner.
There is this also about the Sulphur patient: he is very hungry about his customary mealtimes and, if the meal is delayed, he becomes weak and nauseated. Those that are accustomed to eat at about 12 o’clock will have that all-gone hungry feeling at 11 A.M. Those accustomed to eat about 1 or 1-30 will have it about 12 o’clock. The all-gone sensation is about one hour before the accustomed time of eating with many people.
In a sort of condensed way a strong Sulphur group is this: an all gone hungry feeling in the stomach at 11 A.M., burning of the soles and heat in the top of the head.
These three things have been looked upon as a sine qua non of Sulphur, but they are scarcely the beginning of Sulphur.
Skin: There is an unhealthy condition of the skin in Sulphur aside from the eruptions.
The skin will not heal. Small wounds continue to suppurate; abscesses formed under the skin become little discharging cavities with fistulous openings, and these leak and discharge for a long time.
Sulphur produces an infiltration in inflamed parts, so that they become indurated and these indurations last for years. When the inflammation is in a vital organ, like the lungs, this infiltration cannot always be endured; it leaves infiltrations after pneumonia called hepatization.
Sulphur produces this same tendency in inflamed parts throughout the body and hence its great use in hepatization.
Sulphur is a very useful remedy when the patient does not react after a prolonged disease, because of a condition in the economy, a psoric condition. When a patient is drawing near the end of an acute disease he becomes weak and prostrated. The inflammatory state ends in suppuration and infiltrations; the patient is in a state of weakness, much fatigued and prostrated, and has night sweats.
He does not convalesce after a typhoid or other acute disease. There is slow repair and a slow, tired economy, and order is not restored after the acute disease. Sulphur often becomes very useful in such conditions. Old drunkards become debilitated and have violent craving for alcohol; they cannot let liquor alone. They crave strong and pungent things, want nothing to eat, but want cold water and alcoholic drinks, They go on drinking till greatly exhausted and then their complaints come on. Sulphur will for a while take away this craving for drink and build him up.
The tissues seem to take on weakness, so that very little pressure causes soreness, sometimes inflammation and suppuration. Bed sores come on easily in a Sulphur patient, as there is feeble circulation. Induration from pressure is also a strong feature.
Sulphur has corns from pressure, callosities from pressure. These affections come easily. If a shoe presses anywhere on the skin a great corn or bunion develops. Where the teeth come in contact with the tongue and other parts of the buccal cavity nodules form and these little nodules in course of time commence to ulcerate.
It is a slow process with burning and stinging. They may go into cancerous affections. They may be postponed for a long time and afterwards take on a state of malignancy. Cancer is an outgrowth of a state in the body, and that state may come on from a succession of states. It is not one continuous condition, but the malignant state may follow the benign. Sulphur removes these states when the symptoms agree.
We notice a marked evidence of disturbance of the veins under Sulphur. It is a venous remedy, has much vein trouble. The veins seem to be relaxed and there is sluggish circulation. There is a flushed appearance of the face here and there from slight irritation, from the weather, from irritation of the clothing.
Tumefaction of the face. Sulphur has varicose veins; most marked of these are hoemorrhoidal veins, which are enlarged and burn and sting. Varices of the extremities. The veins even ulcerate, rupture and bleed. When going out of a cold into a warm atmosphere the patient suffers from enlarged veins, from puffiness of the hands and feet, from a sense of fullness throughout the body.
The Sulphur patient emaciates, and a peculiar feature is the emaciation of the limbs with distended abdomen. The abdomen is tumid, with rumbling, burning and soreness, and with the distended abdomen there is emaciation of all other parts. The muscles of the neck, back thorax and limbs wither, and the muscles of the abdomen are also wasted, but there is much distension of the abdomen itself. This condition of affairs is found in marasmus.
You will find a similar state under Calcarea; and, in women needing Calcarea, you will notice great enlargement, distension and hardness of the abdomen with shriveling of all other parts of the body.
Under Sulphur there are flashes of heat to the face and head, like those which women have at the climacteric period. The flash of heat in Sulphur begins somewhere in the heart region, generally said to be in the chest, and it feels as if, inside the body, a glow of heat is rising to the face. The face is red, hot and flushed, and finally the heat ends in sweat.
Flashes of heat with sweat and red face; the head is in a glow. Sometimes the patient will describe a feeling as if hot steam were inside the body and gradually rising up, and then she breaks out in a sweat. At times you will see a woman having little shiverings followed by flashes of heat and red splotches in the face, and then she fans vigorously; cannot fan fast enough, and she wants the doors and windows open.
Such is Sulphur as well as Lachesis and many others. When the flashes begin in the chest, about the heart, it is more like Sulphur, but when in the back or in the stomach it is more like Phosphorus.
Among other general aggravations we have an aggravation from standing in Sulphur. All complaints are made worse by standing for a length of time. Standing is the most difficult position for a Sulphur patient, and there is an aggravation of the confusion of mind, dizziness, the stomach and abdominal symptoms, and a sense of enlargement and fullness of the veins and dragging down in the pelvis in women, from standing. The patient must sit down or keep moving, if on her feet. She can walk fairly well, but is worse when standing quiet.
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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