(9) After generalizing we proceed to as brief a description of the symptoms as possible. These necessarily include the expression and color of the face, condition of the mouth, pharynx, etc. They belong together, even though we may need but one or more in a given case.
(10) It is not excess alone which calls for Nux. It is also the irritability of the patient which suggests the remedy. High- living increases his over-susceptibility; and finally, the organs exhausted, he presents a picture of complete “irritable weakness”. The stomach is too weak to digest the food, yet is still irritable.
(11) Symptoms marked “11” have been many times confirmed and cannot be omitted.
(12) Symptoms marked “12” are indispensable, since they show the neurotic effects of Nux.
(13) These pains characterize the gastralgia and the colics.
(14) This distended feeling means more than flatulence. It is indicative of portal stasis, abdominal plethora, etc. and so as central in importance, cannot be omitted.
(15) Large liver, when not cirrhotic, has often yielded to Nux.
(16) In an abridged Materia Medica, “Relationships” should be confined to drugs intimately related, and not to mere symptom resemblances.
Under this heading should be mentioned homoeopathic antidotes, and also antidotes in case of poisoning. The allopathic law of “antagonism”, which is half true, because half a law, cannot apply in homoeopathic prescribing; but it can in choosing antidotes to poisons.
(17) Symptoms thus marked are selected not as an exceptional illustration; but as a good example of that harmony of action, which is to be continually kept uppermost in arranging a medicine. All marked “17” have “smarting”, or its equivalent, as characteristic; hence, they are particulars of one general effect. Speaking figuratively, they show the warp and woof of the cloth and so reveal its quality.
If the reader takes the pains, he can follow any other thread of the remedy in the same manner. Take, for instance, symptoms marked “18”. This number repeats itself nineteen or twenty times; and as this was not premeditated it becomes a sort of test. See also “19” repeated eleven times, and so on.
