The stools contain undigested food (60), are sometimes involuntary when passing gas (59) and often of a cadaverous odor (59). There is aggravation directly after eating (57) and an aggravation at night, and frequently the movements are only at night, and after meals.
It is of value for diarrhoea from fruit (57), with fermentation and emissions of much fetid flatus, in the diarrhoea of phthisis (60) and in that occurring during or after debilitating diseases or from prolonged nursing. It is often advantageous in beginning the treatment for the cure of chronic diarrhoea, to give China for a day or two so as to relieve the condition of prostration. Remember that the diarrhoea of China is not only exhausting but is usually painless.
In the male sexual sphere it is of value for weakness following nocturnal emissions (167) or other sexual excesses (167), amounting even to impotency (168).
In the female the menses are too early and too profuse (135), usually dark and clotted (136), and followed by great exhaustion (138). We may find leucorrhoea that comes on instead of the menses (126), the leucorrhoea being bloody, fetid (126) and purulent and associated with great weakness. It is of great value for post-partum haemorrhage (152), due to atony of the uterus, with fainting, cold skin and other evidence of collapse (34) from the loss of blood.
We find ovaritis resulting from sexual excesses or following haemorrhages with, extreme sensitiveness of the parts to touch (148). We also have a condition of general anaemia (15) due to prolonged nursing, in which this remedy is frequently indicated, as well as in haemorrhage from the lungs (27) while nursing, or when nursing causes great weakness or prostration.
China is of value for bronchorrhoea (26), with great prostration, simulating the last stage of phthisis, with loud rales throughout the chest (45), with extreme sensitiveness of the chest (30) and intolerance of any pressure over it (29). It must be thought of when you fear that phthisis will develop after exhausted vitality or loss of fluids, and associated with profuse night-sweats (185).
We may have cough after eating (41), and cough caused by laughing is mentioned prominently (41); in both conditions with more or less suffocation as, if the larynx were full of mucus. There is also a dry, hacking, nervous cough (46), worse, perhaps, in the morning, caused by irritation as from sulphur fumes (43), with dyspepsia, pain in the spleen, palpitation and intolerance of tight clothing over the chest (29).
Full dose of China, used in the proving, produced pain and tenderness in the vertebrae, especially in the dorsal region, and it is useful in spinal irritability (171), with extreme sensitiveness, the pain shooting up to the head when the spine is touched.
It has been used in locomotor ataxia (127), with numbness (146), but especially with a sensation as if cords were tied about the leg (165), or as if the garters were too tight and the legs were going to sleep (71).
It is useful in hip-joint disease (117) where there is great prostration, due to prolonged suppuration, with diarrhoea and night-sweats, and for dropsy of the lower extremities, in anaemic conditions, with general sensitiveness of the surface of the body to the slightest touch (166).
China presents an additional interest to us, quite apart from its remedial action in disease, for it was the first drug proved by Hahnemann.
“In 1790, while engaged upon a translation of Cullen’s Materia Medica, Hahnemann was struck by the contradictory properties ascribed to Peruvian bark and the various explanations that were given of its operation in intermittent fever. Dissatisfied with the latter, he resolved to try upon himself the effects of the medicine, and after several powerful doses, discovered symptoms analogous to those of intermittent fever.
“The fact that a drug had produced upon a man in health the very symptoms which it was required to cure in a stick man immediately suggested to him the great law Similia Similibus Curantur’ (T. F. Allen in Appleton’s Cyclop.).
It is well for us to remember that the detractors of Hahnemann who asserts that he was not the discover of this law can find in the Organon this sentence: “Indeed there have been physicians from time to time who had presentiments that medicines, by their power of producing analogous morbid symptoms, would cure analogous morbid conditions” (Wesselhoeft Translation, p. 45).
Hahnemann cites seven authors, from Hippocrates, or from one of the books attributed to him, to Stahl, a Danish physician, all of whom theorized more or less on the law.
Hippocrates, after having explained the rules of healing by contraries, says: “Another proceeding; the disease is produced by similars, and by similars which the patient is made to take, he is restored from the disease to health (Teste’s Mat. Medorrhinum).
Stahl says: “The rule, which is admitted in medicine, of treating diseases by contraries or by remedies which are opposed to the effects of these maladies, is composed false and absurd. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that diseases yield to agents which determine a similar affection (similia similibus)” (Teste’s Mat. Medorrhinum).
Hahnemann in a foot-note, says: “In citing the following passages of writers who have had some presentiment of homoeopathy, I do not mean to prove the excellence of the method (which establishes itself without further proof), but I wish to free myself from a reproach of having passed them over in silence to arrogate to myself the merit of the discovery.” (Organon, translated by C. H. Devrient, Esq., 1833).
No, Hahnemann did not discover the law of cure and never claimed that he did, but by his proving of drugs on the healthy he succeeded in organizing a materia medica and made fruitful a law, “which had remained until then, an empty and unmeaning formula” (Teste).
Quinine, the chief reliance of the old school for all malarial conditions, will cure intermittent fever, and when it does, I believe it is because the case was one similar to that which quinine produces. In the great majority of cases, however, where it is given it simply suppresses the paroxysms for the time being.
The intermittent fever for which we give China is one in which the paroxysm is fully developed, the three stages, chill, fever and sweat, being pronounced and there is an interval of time between the chill and fever, and between the fever and sweat. There is no special time that is characteristic for the paroxysm, as it may begin at any hour of the day.
There are frequently severe headache (104) and pronounced thirst (121) preceding the chill; no thirst during the fever or chill but thirst during the sweat. The chill and fever are strongly marked and the sweats is profuse and debilitating.
During the apyrexia there is great debility, soreness over the liver and spleen and ringing in the ears.
Arsenicum, Carbo vegetabilis, Ipecac., Pulsatilla, Veratruma. are a few of the remedies that act as antidotes to China.
I use China 1st.
