As its name indicates, it is the chemical combination of Natrum and Sulphur, Glauber’s salts, Sulphate of soda. It partakes of the wonderful properties of both Sodium and Sulphur, and some day will become a very frequently indicated remedy. It is a remedy which typically corresponds to many of the complaints of a bilious climate. Natrum sulphuricum combines, in a measure, the wonderful effects of Natrum muriaticum and of Sulphur in the Western climate, as an active malarial agent. Malarial climates are all more or less bilious. Of course, I do not mean every man or every woman that comes to you and says: “Doctor, I am bilious.” We never know what that means. It means more or less liver; it means more or less stomach; a general derangement of the system. Any kind of sickness may be called biliousness, but where the liver and stomach combine to effect disorders, we have true biliousness.
It is a most wonderful combination in its symptoms, because it not only pertains to muscular debility and disturbances of the general structures of the body, but also combines that which gives it consideration mentally. Its complaints are those that are brought on from living in damp houses, living in basements, and in cellars. They are generally worse in rainy, wet weather; hence it was called, primarily, by Grauvogl, one of his hydrogenoid remedies. It produces a profound impression upon the system in a general way like sycosis and a deep- seated or suppressed sycotic disease. Therefore, it is one of the grandest remedies underlying asthma, asthmatic and inherited complaints. In fact, Natrum Sulphuricum is one of the best, one of the clear-cut indicated remedies for those constitutional conditions in children that result in chest catarrhs and asthmatic complaints. This shows you only one of its hereditary features. Now, if we take into consideration the sycotic nature, the hydrogenoid condition of the constitution-always worse in wet weather and this heredity, we have one of the grand features of this medicine.
Its next grand sphere is its action upon the liver and stomach, producing a bilious disturbance. We have, corresponding with this liver excitement a long list of mental symptoms marked with irritability, anxiety, desire to die, aversion to life and to things in life that would generally make people pleasant and comfortable. Now, if I begin on this mental state and go down through it, we will see more of it.
A good wife goes to her husband and says: “If you only knew what restraint I have to use to keep from shooting myself you would appreciate my condition!” It is attended with wildness and irritability. No remedy has that symptom like Natrum sulphuricum.. You may examine the various remedies in our drug pathogenesy and you will find almost every kind of mental symptom, but here is one, that stands by itself-this wonderful restraint to prevent doing herself bodily harm, is characteristic of Natrum sulphuricum. The satiety of life, aversion to life; the great sadness, the great despondency, coupled with the irritability and dread of music-music makes her weep, makes her sad, makes her melancholy-this symptom runs through the Natrums which it receives from the Natrum side of its family; Natrum carbonate, Natrum muriaticum, Natrum sulphuricum, all have it. Anything like melancholic strains aggravate her complaints; mild music, gentle light, mellow light that pours through church windows, these little glimmers of light that come through the coloured glass, all these make her sad. Now, such are the mental characteristics of Natrum sulphuricum.
With the constitutional troubles there are important head symptoms-mental symptoms from injuries of the head. A young man in St. Louis was hurled from a truck in the fire department. He struck on his head. Following this for five or six months he had fits; I do not know what kind of fits he had; some said epilepsy. Some said one thing and some another, and some said he would have to be trephined. He was an Allopathist, of course, as these firemen all are, for it is hardly ever that you can get one to go outside of Allopathy and try something else. He was a good, well-bred Irishman; so he had to have some good stout physique. Some of his friends prevailed upon him to stay in the country for a while. He did so, bit he did not get better; he was irritable; he wanted to die. His wife said she could hardly stand it with him; always wanted to die; did not want to live. His fits drove him to distraction. He did not know when he was going to have one, they were epileptiform in character. Well, in the country he ran across a homoeopathic doctor, because he had one of these attacks and the handiest doctor at that time was a Homoeopath. That Homoeopath told him that he had better come back to St. Louis and place himself under my care. He did so. At that time it had been about six months that he had began having these fits. When he walked into my office he staggered; his eyes were nearly bloodshot; he could hardly see, and he wore a shade over his eyes-so much was he distressed about the light -such a photophobia. He had constant pain in his head. He had injured himself by falling upon the back of his head, and he had with this all the irritability that I have described. There was nothing in his fits that was distinctive of a remedy, and the first thing that came into my head was Arnica; that is what everybody would have thought. Arnica, however, would not have been the best remedy for him. Had I known no other or better remedy, Arnica would have perhaps been the best. As soon as he had finished his description, and I had given the case more thought, I found that Natrum sulphuricum was the best indicated remedy for injuries about the head, and I have been in the habit of giving it. So I gave it in this ease. The first dose of Natrum sulphuricum cured this young man. He has never had any pain about the head since. He has never had any mental trouble since, never another fit. That one prescription cleared up the entire case. If you will just remember the chronic effects from injuries upon the skull-not fractures, but simple concussions that have resulted from a considerable shock and injuries without organic affections-then Natrum sulphuricum should be your first remedy. Now, that may not be worth remembering, but when you have relieved as many heads as I have with Natrum sulphuricum you will be glad to have been informed of this circumstance. Ordinarily, Arnica for injuries and the results of injuries, especially the neuralgic pains and the troubles from old scars; but in mental troubles coming on from a jar or a knock on the head or a fall or injury about the head, do not forget this medicine, because if you do many patients may suffer where they might have been cured had you made use of this remedy.
It has violent head pains, and especially so in the base of the brain; violent pains in the back of the ‘neck; violent crushing pains as if the base of the brain were crushed in a vice, or as if a dog ware gnawing at the base of the brain. These symptoms have led me to prescribe this medicine. In the spinal meningitis of today, if all the remedies in the Materia Medica were taken away from me and I were to have but one with which to treat that disease, I would take Natrum sulphuricum, because it will modify and save life in the majority of cases. It cuts short the disease surprisingly when it is the truly indicated remedy. In relation to the symptoms that you are likely to find in spinal meningitis, there is a drawing back of the neck and spasms of the back, together with all the mental irritability and delirium already described. The violent determination of blood to the head we find in this disease, clinically, is readily relieved.
The next most important feature is in relation to the eyes. That is characteristic, and is equalled only by one other remedy in chronic diseases where there is an aversion to life with photophobia, and that is Graphites. You take these cases of chronic conjunctivitis, with granular lids, green pus, terrible photophobia, so much so that he can hardly open his eyes; the light of the room brings on headache, distress and many pains. Here Natrum sulphuricum should be compared with Graphites, because Graphites has also an extreme aggravation from light in eye effections. Of course, this classes it entirely away from Belladonna and the other remedies that have acute photophobia, of acute determination of blood to the brain, because it gives you a chronic state and condition that you must study.
Natrum sulphuricum produces a stuffing up of the nose, red tongue, irritable mucous membrane of the eyes, nose, and ears, with great dryness and burning in the nose. Pus becomes green upon exposure to the light.
The mouth always tastes bad. The patient says: “Doctor, my mouth is always full of slime.” That is a common expression of the patient when he comes to you. And the provers, all of them, said that they were troubled with a slimy mouth. Thick, tenacious, white mucus in the mouth. Always hawking up mucus; it wells up from the stomach; mucus from the esophagus; mucus by belching; mucus coughed up from the trachea, and it is always foul and slimy.
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.