Before passing to one of the other remedies, I want to place before you some of the analogues of Phosphoric Acid. Sweet Spirits of Nitre runs close to the Acid in this sensorial apathy of Typhoid Fever. Hahnemann was accustomed to give it when the patient lay like a log in this complete state of apathy. He has no wants and no complaints. He is simply dull and sleepy; arouse him and he looks like a man awaking from a drunken sleep. There are no marked organic changes going on in the abdomen. The whole burden of the poison seems to have been thrown upon the sensorium. Hahnemann used a few drops of the Nitre in water, given every few hours until relieved. His instruction was to give it when the drug was old enough not to redden the cork in the bottle.
The next remedy in this group is Sulphuric Acid. The hour is so nearly spent, I can but allude to it at present. This Acid is much more irritating than the Phosphoric. It is a more violent corrosive poison.
First as to the mind. The Sulphuric Acid patient is usually rather hasty, nervous and restless in his disposition. He can not do things fast enough to suit him. He lacks the stupidity of Phosphoric Acid. He suffers from neuralgic pains, which come gradually and leave suddenly. They are not like the Belladonna pains, which came suddenly, last awhile, and then leave as suddenly as they came. The face is apt to be pale. Sometimes the patient has a sensation, as if, the white of an egg was dried on the face.
This Acid is a valuable remedy in Diphtheria, especially in the naso-pharyngeal form. of course, you will expect to find the Acid debility and also fetid breath but the symptom which will lead you unerringly to this remedy is that there hang from the posterior nares strings of a sort of lemon-colored mucus. It is not the stringy, tough, fibrinous membrane of Kali bichromicum, but is a thinner, yellow mucus.
The “lemon color is borrowed from the color of the diarrhoea of this remedy, a diarrhoea in which the movements have a lemon-yellow chopped-up appearance; or there is fecal matter mixed with shreds of lemon-yellow mucus. I remember once making a rapid cure of milk-crust guided by this sort of stool. An elder brother of my patient, similarly affected, gave its parents incessant worry for eight months before a cure was effected.
The second child, which I was called to treat, started in with the same trouble, to the dismay of both father and mother. With the milk-crust on the face was a frequent, lemon- yellow, mucous diarrhoea. The child was cured by Sulphuric Acid 30 in three weeks, and remained well. Some physicians, remembering this symptom, transferred its ailments to the nasal mucous membrane, with the result of curing many cases of catarrh and Diphtheria.
You will find Sulphuric Acid useful in certain cases of dyspepsia. The patients vomit everything they eat or drink. They have a carving for brandy or some other alcoholic stimulant after taking which they can retain food. This fact has led to the use of the Acid for inebriates who cannot retain food and who are weak and trembling. Dr. Hering used to give Sulphuric Acid in the crude from, one drop in a tumblerful of water, a teaspoonful to be taken every few hours until symptoms were produced, such as diarrhoea. Aversion to liquor soon followed. If the diarrhoea becomes annoying. Pulsatilla modifies at once.
Sulphuric Acid cures a peculiar cough. We may say it involves the stomach. It ends in the belching of wind. Ambra has a similar cough.
The essential debility of Sulphuric Acid is of a peculiar kind. It is accompanied by characteristic sore-mouth with aphthae in yellowish-white dots over the buccal mucous lining. You will be astonished to see how readily that condition is cured by Sulphuric Acid, especially if there is present a subjective trembling sensation of the body.
