The diarrhea comes on especially in the morning and it is commonly limited to the forenoon. It drives him out of bed in the morning; as soon as he wakes up and moves in bed, he feels the urging to stool and must make great haste, or he will lose it; it is with difficulty that he can hold it until he reaches the commode.
The morning is the typical time, but a diarrhea that comes on any time after midnight, from midnight till noon, may be a Sulphur diarrhea. Very seldom would you -expect to cure with Sulphur a diarrhea that is in the habit of coming on during the afternoon. Sulphur has some evening aggravations in diarrhea, but these are exceptions; it is the morning diarrhoea that we look to Sulphur to cure.
Sulphur is a wonderful remedy in cholera and in those cases of diarrhea that occur in cholera times, when the diarrhoea begins in the morning. It is also of great value in dysentery, when the stool is bloody mucus with constant straining. As in Mercurius he must sit long at stool because of a feeling as if he could not finish. Such is the typical Mercurius state: a slimy stool with the sensation as if he could not finish.
Sulphur often cures this state after Mercurius fails. It is the natural follower of Mercurius when the latter has been misunderstood and given. In dysentery, when this tenesmus is of the most violent character, when the stool is pure blood, when it is attended also with much urging to urinate.
Mercurius corrosivus gives the quickest relief. If the tenesmus is less violent, and there is not much straining to urinate, or it is altogether absent, Mercurius solubilis is the more natural remedy. These medicines run very close to Sulphur in dysentery, but are more commonly indicated than Sulphur. In Sulphur patients of course Sulphur will be the suitable remedy in dysentery.
He is subject to hemorrhoids, external and internal; great bunches that are sore and raw, burning and tender, and that bleed and smart with the liquid stool.
The urinary symptoms: and those of the bladder and male sexual organs, combine to give a very important group in Sulphur.
There is a catarrhal state of the bladder, constant urging to urinate and burning and smarting while urinating. The urine scalds the urethra while passing and the smarting is so great that it lasts a long time after urination. It is indicated in broken-down constitutions, in old inventors, in old philosophers who have been leading sedentary lives, who suffer from enlarged prostate. burning in the urethra during and after the flow of urine, and a urethral discharge not unlike gonorrhoea, but really a chronic catarrhal state.
Mucus in the urine, sometimes a pus. In old cases of gleet, in old broken-down patients, when the ordinary gonorrhoea remedies, and the remedies especially fitted to the discharge itself, only palliate; when the patient himself is a Sulphur patient.
Such a patient has had a gonorrhoea and has been treated by remedies adapted to the new appearance, to the discharge itself, but a catarrhal state of the urethra follows, with burning in the urethra, swelling of the meatus, a red, swollen, pouty condition of the meatus, and only a drop collects, just enough to soil the linen, and this keeps up week after week, and sometimes for years; he will be cured of this discharge by allowing potentized Sulphur to act long enough.
Sulphur has cured patients with sugar in the urine, in the early stage of diabetes. Sulphur cures involuntary urination during sleep. It cures troubles brought on by taking “cold.” Every “cold” in some patients settles in the bladder. This is like Dulcamara, and when Dulcamara will no longer hold, or when it has been suitable in earlier stages, Sulphur follows it well. Continuous smarting of urine and frequent urging; burning, stinging, smarting in the urethra for a long time after micturition.
Genitals: On the genitals there are many eruptions.
Itching of the genitals, worse from warmth of the bed; much sweat about the genitals; coldness of the genitals. In the male, impotency; the sexual desire is fairly strong, but he is unable to secure suitable erections; or there is discharge of semen before intromission, or too soon after intromission. There is an inflammatory condition around the glans and foreskin. Herpetic eruptions under the foreskin, itching and burning. This patient has much annoyance from itching eruptions on the genitals.
The prepuce becomes narrow and cannot be drawn back inflammatory phimosis; thickening or restriction of the prepuce. Inflammatory phimosis can be cured by remedies, if the phimosis depends upon some, trouble that is in itself curable. Congenital phimosis cannot be cured by remedies. The genitals are extremely offensive both to the patient and to the examining physician. The patient is likely to be very uncleanly; he does not bathe himself, and the genitals accumulate their natural filth. Discharge of prostatic fluid when at stool.
Under female sexual, organs we have sterility. We have irregularity in the menstrual flow, menstrual flow suppressed from the slightest disturbance. Haemorrhage in connection with the menstrual flow; uterine haemorrhage; prolonged uterine haemorrhage.
In an abortion you may have selected Belladonna, which war, suitable while the woman was aborting, and it may have overcome the present state; or you may have selected Apis or Sabina, which was suitable for the early state, and it either postpones or checks the haemorrhage for the time or hurries the expulsion of the foetus; but the haemorrhage starts in again and with its return we have prolonged tribulation. In many of these cases we can do nothing until we put the patient on Sulphur.
If the symptoms are masked, Sulphur stands very high. When Belladonna has been given you will often have to follow it with Sulphur. Sabina, which has the most violent gushing haemorrhage in abortions, very commonly needs to be followed by Sulphur. In such hemorrhagic affections, however i.e, in a prolonged recurring haemorrhage, a chronic condition, not in the first or most exciting time, not in the time of the earliest gushing, there are two very frequently indicated remedies, M.: Sulphur and Psorinum.
The flow keeps coming back in spite of ordinary remedies, and in spite of remedies selected upon the group of symptoms related to the pelvis. In many instances we go to a haemorrhage and the pelvic symptoms are prominent and all other symptoms clouded; there is a gushing flow, the blood is hot, etc., and there are only a few symptoms; but the next time you see the woman she is quiet enough to give other symptoms, and in the course of a few days more symptoms come out, as the hemorrhagic state is an outcome of the chronic condition.
This is unlike measles. You do not have to look into the chronic state until the measles or scarlet fever or small-pox is finished; these are acute miasms. But the haemorrhage is a part of her constitutional state; it is not a miasm; and hence when it is violent, calling for a remedy, probably the best adapted will he the short acting remedies, such as Belladonna or even Aconite; but then look into the constitutional state for it is likely some remedy will have to follow the Aconite or the Belladonna, and commonly it is Sulphur; the acute remedy being suitable to the violent action and then followed by its complementary medicine.
Women needing Sulphur are full of hot flashes, such as they are likely to have at the climateric period, and here it competes with Lachesis and Sepia. Sulphur and Sepia are suitable in the most violent cases of dysmenorrhoea in girls and even in those of advanced age.
Most violent cases that have existed a long time, since the beginning of menstruation, in women who always needed Sulphur. If you select a remedy merely on the kind of pain, on the sensitiveness of the uterus, on the appearance of the flow, i.e., on the pelvic symptoms, you will make a failure. You must treat the patient, even if the pelvic symptoms do not fall under the generals; when the generals agree Sulphur will cure dysmenorrhoea even though you cannot fit it to the pelvic symptoms. The generals always precede and rule in every case.
Sulphur has violent burning in the vagina. Troublesome itching of the vulva. Great offensiveness from the genitals. Perspiration copious and foetid coming from about the genitals, down the inside of the thighs and up over the abdomen.
She is so offensive that the odors nauseate her, and this general state is true, it is not the imagination. Remember the over-sensitiveness to odors. Leucorrhoea copious, offensive, burning, sticky; it may be whitish or yellow; it is offensive, acrid, and causes itching about the part and excoriation.
There is much nausea during gestation, or only during the early period of gestation. In those women needing Sulphur, it will stop the nausea, and they will go into labor easily, with few protracted pains; they will go through their labor with only the contractions, and these comparatively painless. The only pains in such cases will be those from the pressure of the child’s head. Labor is painful we know, but it is comparatively easy when the woman is upon a suitable remedy. Sulphur is indicated then in women who have suffered from the most dreadful agony in confinement; prolonged labor. Troublesome after-pains. Suitable also in swelling of the mammary glands.
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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