It will not be difficult to understand pleurisy when it wants Bryonia and if it cannot speak it will make signs.
There will be the fever, with the moist kin and the pronounced thirst; the breathing will be shallow on account of the sharp, knife-like pains that cut short any attempt to take a deep inspiration and the patient will not only press with the hands on the affected side, but will also lie on that side, so as to prevent, as much as possible, any motion between the two pleural surfaces. The patient will also find that heat will give great relief. Bryonia may prove useful later in the disease, with pleuritic exudations (150), provided the sharp pains continue.
In pericarditis and endocarditis it is frequently called for, with the same train of symptoms as found in other inflammatory conditions.
Bryonia is useful in lumbago, but it is especially in articular rheumatism that you will find it indicated. The larger joints (161) are particularly apt to be affected and while the pains may shift, or jump from one place to another, leaving the first free from pain, they are more likely to travel, or to involve additional joints, with more or less pain remaining in the part first affected. We have swelling, heat, and shining redness of the joint, with relief from heat or hot applications and great aggravation of the pains from even the slightest motion.
Once more let me impress upon you, that in all forms of rheumatism, acute, chronic, muscular or articular, profuse perspiration would be an additional indication for Bryonia.
It is a remedy very useful in fevers and febrile conditions which are the accompaniment of inflammatory processes in various tissues and organs.
It will be found of value in scarlet fever (130) and especially so in measles (130), when the eruption either does not develop or shows a tendency to recede, as well as in meningitis from suppressed eruptions.
In typhoid fever you will find frequent use for it, especially in the beginning and early stages of the disease, with the severe headache and vertigo, more or less delirium usually mild in character, thirst and abdominal tenderness. The non- restless type of typhoid (193).
In intermittent fever, while there is no particular time that is characteristic for the onset of the paroxysm, we would have great thirst during the chill (121) and additional thirst during the fever and a general apathetic condition throughout the entire paroxysm. We may have painful cough during the chill and fever (H. C. Allen) and during the fever we would be apt to have more or less delirium, with talking of his daily work, or of her household affairs.
The sweating stage would be pronounced and probably of sour perspiration.
The following remedies are, to a degree, antidotal to Bryonia: Camph., Chamomilla, Coffea, Rhus tox.
I use Bryonia 1x.
