Sometimes this figure is seen toward one side of the object looked at, sometimes on the other side, but it is seen equally distinct with both eyes at the same time.
These saw teeth are flashes of light, and the base of the figure grows increasingly darker until you get all the colors of the rainbow. Whenever he disorders his stomach he has this peculiar vision. Sometimes it comes in the morning after eating and sometimes at noon after eating. It comes also when be is hungry in the evening and delays his eating. These zig-zags come very often with that hungry all-gone feeling in the stomach.
We have the same state of affairs, similar appearance of zig-zags and flickerings in both Natrum muriaticum and Psorinum before the headache. They are warning of headaches. These zig-zags, flickerings, sparks, stars and irregular shapes appear before the eye periodically, and may last an hour or so. In the head there is much throbbing. Morning headaches and headaches coming on at noon. Headaches also, as mentioned before that begin after the -evening meal and increase into the night, hindering sleep.
Scalp: Upon the external head the itching is indescribable; constant itching, itching when warm in bed.
It is worse from the warmth of the bed and yet it is also worse from cold. itching eruptions; scaly, moist and dry eruptions; vesicles, pimples, pustules and boils; eruptions in general upon the scalp. Much dandruff in the hair, and loss of hair There is slow closing of the fontanelles.
“Humid, offensive eruption on top of the head, filled with pus, drying up into honey like scabs. Tinea capitis.”
“Humid offensive eruption with thick pus, yellow crusts, bleeding and burning.”
Hair dry, falling off, etc.
It has many symptoms, such as in olden times would be called scrofulous, but which we recognize as psoric. There is a tendency for every “cold” to settle in the eyes. Discharge of mucus and pus from the eyes. Ulceration and thickening of the eyelids, lids rolled outwards or inwards, loss of eyelashes; red and disturbed condition.
Eyes: Now, if we would say “complaints of the eyes in a Sulphur patient,” it would cover all kinds of eye troubles.
Sulphur has extensive eye symptoms. Eye symptoms with eruptions on the face and scalp, with itching of the skin, especially when warm in bed. Catarrhal eye symptoms that are made worse from washing.
When not only the eyes are aggravated by bathing, but the patient himself is aggravated from bathing and he dreads to bathe, and he has itching which is made worse from the warmth of the bed, and is subject to chronic sick headaches and has heat on top of the head, with such concomitants his eyes symptoms, no matter what will be cured by Sulphur. Sulphur has cured, cataract and iritis, inflammatory conditions and opacities, and all sorts of “hallucinations of sight” (coming with headaches)
“Flickering before the eyes” (as described)
“small dark specks; dark points and spots; black flies seem to float not far from the eyes; gas or lamp light seems to be surrounded with a halo,” etc.
There are so many of these peculiar images before the eyes, but all have the Sulphur constitution.
“Burning heat in the eyes, painful smarting.”
Every “cold” settles in the eyes, i. e,, the eye symptoms, when present, are increased and, when he has no eye symptoms, these are brought on from every “cold.”
Ears: The ears are subject to catarrh.
You have learned in the generals, that the catarrhal state is a very strong feature of Sulphur. No mucous membrane of the body escapes, all have catarrhal discharges, copious, sometimes purulent, sometimes bloody. The eyes and ears are no exception.
The catarrhal state goes on in a patient until deafness follows. Thickening of the mucous membrane and of the drum. All sorts of strange noises in the ear until the hearing is lost. After structural changes have taken place and deafness comes on even if there is no cure for the deafness, you may cure the patient.
When a patient wants to know if he can be cured of his deafness you can never tell him. Many of the troubles are in the middle ear, and as you cannot examine it, you do not know how much structural change has taken place. You can only say that if the patient can be sufficiently cured then it can be ascertained. If the structural changes are not very great they will disappear after the patient is cured.
If the internal parts are destroyed, if there is a dry, atrophic catarrh of the middle ear, you can hardly expect to restore that middle ear. It has been destroyed; the parts that are necessary for sensation no longer register sensation, because they have become atrophied. You can only talk to the patient about the prospects of curing him.
Do not entertain in your mind the idea of curing an organ. Keep that idea out of your mind as much as possible, and, when people want you to locate the disease in organs, keep quiet, because only the patient is sick.
Think as much as possible about the sick patient and as little as possible about the name or the pathological conditions of organs. So, when patients say,
“Doctor, can you cure my hearing?” answer them:
“First, you must be cured. The first and most important thing is to cure you.”
Cure the patient and then it will be seen afterwards what can be done for the ear, for the hearing. That keeps your mind in proper form, keeps you in right relation to the patient. If you were all the time talking of the ear, the patient would worry your life out about his ear.
“When are you going to do something for ear? When am I going to hear?”
Start out with the understanding that the whole patient is to be treated. Remember the patient first, and let him understand that. The idea of a patient going to a specialist for diseases of the ears should be discouraged unless a homoeopathist is at hand.
It is a disease of the whole body that is to be treated. There is no such trouble as an ear trouble considered apart from the constitutional state of the patient himself. Sulphur has “frequent stoppages of the ears, especially when eating or blowing one’s nose.”
“Sounds in ears.”
Inflarnmation of various kinds. Discharges from the ears in a Sulphur patient.
You see I have avoided saying that Sulphur is a remedy for the ears. Many times you will cure patients of these “local diseases” if you select remedies for the patients, when the local symptoms would never have led you to the remedy.
You would never have thought of Sulphur for the ear alone, or for the prolapsus of the uterus, yet the patient needs Sulphur, and, having given it, you are astonished to see how the organs are turned into order after the constitution of the patient has been made orderly.
Now and then pains that are located here and there in the body are prescribed at by the physician, and failure follows. He hunts a remedy through and through to find some particular kind of pain that resembles the pain which the patient has. You should treat the patient and not bother about trifling pains.
Leave it out if you want to, but get a remedy for the patient. If that pain is in the remedy well and good, but if not do not bother about it. Do not bother about the little symptoms. You may even leave out a most prominent keynote in treating the patient.
Sometimes that particular pain is the only symptom the patient wants cured, but if it is an old symptom, it will be the last thing to go away. Under such circumstances the patient will bother your life out wanting to know when that pain is going to be cured, but if you have knowledge of the matter you will not expect to relieve that pain the first time; if you do relieve it you know that you have made a mistake, for the later symptoms should all go away first.
It is sometimes necessary, in order to hold a patient, to say,
“That symptom must not be cured first, but these little symptoms that you do not care much about will go away first.”
You will hold that patient for life simply because you have told the truth, simply because you have exhibited to her that you know. Such business is honestly acquired business.
Nose: The catarrhal affections of the nose are extremely troublesome in Sulphur.
“Smell before the nose as of an old catarrh,” and so troublesome is the Sulphur nose, so troublesome is this catarrhal state that with odors he is made sick. He thinks he smells his own catarrh, and thinks others also smell it. The smell of this old catarrh, or of filthy things, keeps him nauseated. He is subject to coryzas; constant sneezing, stoppage of the nose. Under coryza we read “fluent like water trickling from the nose.”
All the nasal discharges are acrid and burning.
This is a state in Sulphur. Every time he takes “cold,” it brings on a coryza. He cannot take a bath, he cannot become overheated, he cannot get into a cold place and cannot overexert himself without getting this “cold in the nose.”
Changes of the weather establish a new attack, I have observed in numbers of those old people who are in the habit of taking large quantities of Sulphur in the spring for boils, and as a spring cleanser, that for the rest of the year they suffer from coryza and the various complaints of Sulphur.
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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