“The second or bronchial stage of the true influenza having been successfully managed by Phosphorus or Bryonia with the aid of Aconite or Hyoscyamus, I complete the cure by a return to the Antimony; that is so say, when the air-passages are loaded with mucus, the cough being frequent and the expectoration copious.
“4. I have preferred this preparation to the crude Antimony in the treatment of acute inflammatory rheumatisms, in cases embarrassed by gastric symptoms, which according to our authorities, call for that preparation. My reason for this choice is that the Tartar-emetic has produced the desired result more promptly in my hands than the crude Antimony.
“5. In the treatment of gastric and bilious fever, I have, for the same reason, done the same thing; and that far many years past, and with equally satisfactory results.
“6. Respecting the malarious fevers, I suggest, with unfeigned diffidence, the application of the tartarized Antimony, in doses of the one-sixtieth of a grain, repeated every two to four hours throughout the whole period or stage of incubation, and further still (unless very strong indications for other drugs are developed), even till the fever assumes a distinctly intermittent character, admitting of its then denoted specific, as for example. China, Arsenic, or Ipecacuanha.
“If, however the doses above indicated produce any sensible effects, especially if it provoke nausea, or clearly aggravate it when previously present, I would immediately stop its use for twelve hours, giving in the interval a dose or two of Pulsatilla, and then resume it, in a smaller quantity, say the first or second trituration. The success of our school in the treatment of severe forms of malarious fevers has not been such as, in my judgments to render this suggestion respecting the Antimony wholly superfluous. It is my conviction that this drug covers more of the symptoms of the bilious fevers of our climate, in the first seven to fourteen days of their existence, than any other as yet known, and I am accordingly persuaded that the riper experience of later times will give it, in our school, the rank which George Fordyce in vain sought to give it a hundred years ago in the ordinary practice. (See his “Essay on Fevers.”) Dr. Fordyce says that, given below the nauseating point, throughout the continued fevers (of England), it produced better results, especially when solely relied on, than any other treatment then known.
“7. In croup, the Tartar-emetic, in watery solution, applied in all states prior to the deposition of plastic lymph (diphtherite), is in my opinion, a safer practice than the Aconite, p73 Spongia, and Hepar., hitherto so much, and as, I think, unjustly lauded in our books.
“8. The Tartar-emetic is certainly a simillimum to variola and varioloid. In the incubation of these disease I give it in doses of the 1/000 of a grain; later in the second and third trituration.
Since treating them in this way (now fifteen years), I have not had an instance of retrocession of the eruption 1. [1. I have been informed by a physician of this city, that he has produced the Tartar-emetic pustules on the skin, by its internal administration, in two instances of phthisis-pulmonalis]. Should I be called to such a case, I should rely on the same remedy, but in a high attenuation.
“9. I desire again to call the attention of the heroic men of our school, who are really engaged in testing the physiological powers of the drug on their own persons, to the facts that Antimony, Arsenic and Phosphorus produce very analogous results in the healthy, and that these great drugs have isomorphous relations with each other.
“It is certainly worthy inquiry whether isomorphous drugs can be used as substitutes for each other in any or all cases; for, if the curative power be that unknown force which determines their atomic relations and their crystalline form, then not only will a test be presented whereby the errors and falsities of pathogenetics (a canker-worm in homoeopathy) may be corrected promptly and soundly; but by the simple consideration of these known elements, the atomic relations any crystalline dimensions, we may be enable to determine the therapeutic value of very many, as yet untried agents of the future art of healing.”.
GENERAL SYMPTOMS
Weariness in every part of the body. Drawing-lacerating, aching tensive, also beating and stinging pains. Pains as if sprained and bruised feeling in the limbs. Cracking of the joints. Great sensitiveness of the whole body, even when touching it. Disposition to morbid sensitiveness. Tremor during every motion of the body, particularly of the head and hands. Peculiar internal trembling. Spasmodic movements and convulsive twitching about the arms and hands. Violent clonic spasms, with loss of consciousness, lock-jaw. Death-like rigidity and convulsive distortion of the body. Paralysis. Fainting fits. Great laziness and weariness in the limbs, relaxation of the whole body, great prostration and languor, exhaustion collapse of pulse, loss if speech, marble coldness of the body. Caries of the skull-bones. Gastric dyscrasia and gastric affections, with general sinking of the irritability. Difficult digestion. Cholera morbus. Emaciation.
CHARACTERISTIC PECULIARITIES
The symptoms come on or are aggravated by sitting, frequently last only a short time, and recur in paroxysms.
SKIN
Pale skin. Insensibility of the skin. Disposition to p73 swellings, erysipelas, and ulcers. Small red spots on the hands, resembling flea-bites. Violent itching, suppurating rash, particularly on the wrist-joints and upper arm. Pustulous eruption on the whole body, particularly on the genital organs. Round, large. full. burning, painful pustules, with red areolae. Furunculous pustulous eruption, occasioning a violent painful itching. Pustulous eruption, the pustules filling with pus, drying up in a few days, and sometimes leaving deeply-penetrating, malignant ulcers. Pale, livid, blackish, depressed pustules, containing a bloody or blackish fluid. Pustules filled with blood or bloody serum, collapsing when bursting, turning blackish, and frequently changing to malignant, broad deep ulcers. Gangrenous ulcers with violent wound-fever.
SLEEP
Constant yawning and stretching. Laziness and great drowsiness, with vertigo. Deep sleep. Lethargy. Sleeplessness. Restless, sleep frequent waking after anxious dreams.
FEVER
Anxiety and restlessness. Great malaise all over arising from the abdomen. General uneasiness, alternating with nausea. Yawning and stretching. Chilliness about the whole body, with tremor. Chilliness during motion, alternating with heat. Chilliness with flushes of the heat. Great heat and thirst. Restlessness, violent febrile motions, great heat, thirst, headache, General profuse sweat. Profuse night-sweat. Throbbing in every artery of the body, perceptible even externally. Quick, feeble, tremulous pulse. Irritated pulse. Slow pulse. Small, contracted, accelerated pulse. Suppressed irregular, imperceptible pulse. Collapse of pulse,. Gastric fever.
MORAL SYMPTOMS
Loss of sense. Dullness and dizziness. Stupefaction and suppression of all the sensual functions, Delirium; muttering. Tendency of start.
HEAD
Vertigo, with scintillations. Heat in the head, increased by motion. Violent headache, with vertigo and palpitation of the heart. Dullness if the head, with pressure in the temporal region. Dullness and stupefaction of the head, with tensive sensation and drowsy and weary feeling. Intoxication, with difficulty of moving the tongue. Pain in the anterior portion of the head. Headache, with pressure from without inwards. Tensive, stupefying headache, with pressure from without inwards, in the forehead and over the root of the nose, particularly proceeding from the temple, with drawing and digging to the root of the nose. Painful drawing from the temporal region to the malar bone and upper jaw. Intermittent tearing in one side of the head. Heaviness of the head. Trembling of the head during every motion of the body.
EYES
The eyes feel so weary that they close. The eye-ball feels p73 bruised, particularly on touching it. Tearing in the eyes. Burning in the eyes in the evening. The eyes are turgid with blood. Passing and frequently-recurring scintillations, mistiness, and vertigo.
EARS
Humming.
NOSE
Ulcerated nostrils. Bleeding. Sneezing and fluent coryza with chilliness, deficient smell and taste.
FACE
Blue margins around the eyes, blue lips, pointed nose, wretched look, and great paleness. Great heat in the face. In tensely- painful drawing and lastly dull pressure in the malar bone. Spasmodic closing of the jaws. The lips are parched, scaly, cracked, excoriated, red.
TEETH
Violent toothache, early in the morning. Red gums.
MOUTH
Dryness of the mouth, Burning in the mouth. Inflammation of the mouth and mucous membrane of the tongue, with small pustules, covered with raised papillae.
THROAT
Sudden swelling of the cervical glands and tonsils. Spasms of the cervical muscles. Burning heat in the throat. Violent sore throat. Painful dry heat and redness in the throat. Inflammation of the pharynx, with small pustules. Difficulty of swallowing. Dysphagia, with difficult breathing.
