If you can hunt out some of these old Sulphur takers, you will have a very good picture of Sulphur, interesting for the homeopathic physician to look upon. He is also subject to nose-bleed, dry ulcers and scabs in the nose.
Face: I have quite sufficiently described the general aspect of the face in Sulphur, but we must especially remember the venous stasis, the dirty appearance, the red spots, the sickly look, the appearance of false plethora. It is a face that changes from pale to red, a pallid face that becomes easily disturbed, flushed from excitement, flushed in a warm room, flushed from slight stimulation, especially flushed in the morning. Eruptions upon the face.
Periodical neuralgias of the most violent character, especially on the right side of the face. Long and tedious right-sided neuralgias. Persistent neuralgias in those that live in a malarial climate, when the short-acting remedies given for the neuralgia, such as Belladonna and Nux vomica, have only for a short time mitigated the suffering. If upon studying the whole case you find he turns out to be a Sulphur patient, Sulphur will permanently cure the neuralgia.
Sulphur cures erysipelatous inflammation of the face. In Sulphur the erysipelas commences on the right side of the face and about the right ear, and there is considerable swelling of the right car, and it spreads slowly, moves with sluggishness and is unusually purple. The whole patient is an offensive, filthy patient; in spite of washing, his skin looks wrinkled, shriveled and like dried beef.
Sulphur is not so suitable in the cases that come on with rapidity and great violence, with vesicles and enormous blebs, but it suits those cases in which at first there is the appearance of a mottled dusky red spot on the face, and a little distance from it another spot and the another, and these, as it were, all run together, and after a week or so it develops into a sluggish erysipelatous state, and the veins seem to be distended, and he is passing into a state toward unconsciousness.
You will be astonished to see what Sulphur will do in such a case, which comes slowly as if there were a lack of vitality to develop it, a slow, sluggish, erysipelatous inflammation. Whereas, if it be Arsenicum, Apis or Rhus tox, it spreads with rapidity. Arsenicum and Apis burn like, fire and Rhus has blisters upon the erysipelatous patches.
The whole face in Sulphur is covered at times with patches of moist, scaly, itching, eczematous eruptions. Crusta lactea that involves the scalp and the cars, with moisture, thick yellow crusts, piling up, with much itching, which is worse when warm in bed. The child sleeps without covers. If there is itching in parts that are covered, when the parts become warm the itching increases. These eruptions are associated with eye diseases, catarrhal affections of the eyes and nose.
The Sulphur patient has thick incrustations upon the lips, scabby lips, chapped lips, cracks about the lips and corners of the mouth. The saliva oozes out of the mouth making red streaks. Eruptions with itching and burning about the lower part of the face. Herpetic eruptions about the mouth. All of these burn and become excoriated from the fluids of the mouth. Round about the under jaw there is swelling of the glands. Swelling and suppuration of the sub-maxillary glands swelling of the parotids. The glands of the neck are enlarged.
Teeth and Mouth: In the Sulphur constitution the teeth become loose; the gums settle away from the teeth and bleed and burn.
The teeth decay. There is a general unhealthy condition of the mouth and tongue. Foul taste and foul tongue. Ulceration of the mouth and burning in the ulcers. In the aphthae there is burning, stinging. White patches in the mouth.
Sulphur is a very useful remedy in sore mouth of nursing infants, and such as occurs in the mother during lactation. It has also deep-seated phagedenic ulcers that eat around the inner surface of the check. Peculiar little nodules form upon the tongue. and upon the sides of the mouth where the unhealthy teeth press.
When these nodules come along the edge of the tongue they are so painful that he cannot talk and cannot swallow. He must live on substances that he can take without having to move the tongue. Sometimes they involve the whole tongue, and have been called cancerous affections even when benign.
Throat: Sulphur is a wonderful medicine for chronic sore throat when the symptoms agree.
The old Sulphur patient suffers from a general catarrhal state, as has been said, and the throat symptoms are of that sort. There is a catarrhal state which goes on even to ulceration. The tonsil is enlarged, and of a purplish aspect lasting for weeks and months, a general sore and painfully sensitive condition of the throat; but it has also an acute sore throat. It is especially useful in inflammation of the tonsil with suppuration, when the aspect is purplish, venous, and not a bright red inflammation.
The purplish, dusky color is especially a Sulphur color. There is often burning in the throat, stitching, rawness, smarting, inflammation and difficult swallowing. It has cured diphtheria.
I have sufficiently covered appetite, desires and aversions under the generals. The Sulphur patients are commonly dyspeptics, patients who can digest almost nothing. They must live on the simplest forms of food in order to have any comfort at all; cannot digest anything like ordinary diet.
The stomach: is sensitive to touch with the all-gone hungry feeling before mealtimes.
The Sulphur patient cannot go long without eating; he becomes. faint and weak. Great heaviness in the stomach after eating but little, after eating meat, or after eating foods that require a healthy stomach to digest.
Then he becomes the victim of pain. He will describe the pains in his stomach as burning pains and great soreness; he has a morbid feeling in the stomach; smarting, and rawness in the stomach. He will describe this sensation as
“Pain in the stomach after eating.
Sensation of weight in the stomach after eating,” etc.
The Sulphur stomach is a weak stomach, is slow in digesting. There is acid and bilious vomiting, as a result of the disordered stomach. Sour taste in the mouth from the welling up of acids from the stomach.
The liver: is a very troublesome organ.
There is enlargement and induration, with much painfulness, pressure and distress. With congestion of the liver, the stomach also takes on its usual symptoms, or, if present already, they are aggravated. The patient becomes jaundiced, with sensation of engorgement or fullness of the liver, dull aching in the liver.
He is subject to gall stones; tearing pains in the region of the gall duct, coming periodically, attended with much increase of his sallowness.
The Sulphur liver patient is the victim. of chronic sallowness, which increases and decreases. When this patient takes “cold” it settles in the liver; every “cold,” every bath he takes, every change of weather, aggravates his liver symptoms, and when these are worse he has less of other troubles. It localizes itself in attacks of bilious vomiting, in attacks of “bilious headaches,” as he calls them.
At times the stool is black as tar, at others it is green and thick, and there are times when the stool is white. These stools alternate and change about with the engorgement of his liver, and then he is subject to gall stones.
Abdomen: The Sulphur patient suffers from great distension of the abdomen; rolling in the abdomen; soreness in the abdomen.
He cannot stand because the abdominal viscera hang down so; they seem to be falling. There is rawness, soreness, distension and burning, with diarrhoea with chronic diarrhoea, and then this goes on to more serious trouble, towards tubercle in the abdomen. The mesenteric glands become in filtrated with tubercle. There is nightly itching with the eruptions upon the abdomen, the itching being worse when warm in bed. Shingles come out about the sides and seem inclined to encircle the body.
He is also a flatulent patient. There is much belching, much distension, much rumbling and passing of flatus. He has spells of colic without being flatulent; the wind is confined. Dreadful spells of colic, cutting, tearing pains relieved in no position; burning and smarting in the whole abdomen and soreness of the intestines.
Catarrh of the whole intestinal tract. That which he vomits is acid and smarts the mouth, and that which he passes by the anus is acrid and makes the parts raw. The liquid stool burns while it is passing, and there is much burning when passing moist flatus. He is often called to stool, but while sitting at stool he passes only a little fluid or a little moisture with flatus, and that fluid burns like coals of fire, and the anus becomes raw.
The stool may be thin faeces, yellow, watery, mucous, green, bloody, excoriating. The stool is offensive, often sickening, of a penetrating odor which permeates the room, and “the smell of the stool follows, him around, as if he had soiled himself.”
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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