NATRUM MURIATICUM Medicine


NATRUM MURIATICUM symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Plain Talks on Materia Medica with Comparisons by W.I. Pierce. What NATRUM MURIATICUM can be used for? Indications and personality of NATRUM MURIATICUM…


      SODIUM CHLORIDE-TABLE SALT-NaCl.

Introduction

      This is the remedy that causes the risus sardonicus in our opponents of the old school, and the ask why we should got to all the trouble to potentize this remedy when we can get seas water that is already shaken up. the story would have to worry along with plain Natrum mur., and be perfectly satisfied with it as a remedy, and with the result that t produces.

Hahnemann, who first proved Natrum mur., says that ‘there is hardly any pure experience of the real medicinal effects of common salt in diseases” (Chr. Dis.).

While he had but little information as top its curative action, and not much more as to its bad effects when taken in excess, still he proved it, notwithstanding that he had before him this proposition, which his present-day opponents may not know was considered by Hahnemann before they were even thought of’ this takes us back to about a year before their birth. Hahnemann says; “If, as experience teaches, all substances that should hand the power of healing diseases must, on he other had, be able to affect injuriously the state of healthy men, it would be hard to see how all nations on earth, even those only half civilized, should have daily used salt in not inconsiderable quantities, for so many thousands of years, without experiencing an deleterious effects on the human health (as indications if its healing powers0, if it is really able to ultimate such effects openly and plainly. If we then assume that common salt in its natural conditions shows no injurious effects on the human health, when used daily in moderated quantity, we ought not to expect from it any curative effects in disease. Nevertheless, the greatest medicinal virtues lie hidden within it” (chr. dis.).

We now know that salt in excess does cause trouble, and we have in general a scorbutic cachexia, with marked tendency to an unhealthy skin and catarrh of the mucous membranes. it produces constipation, but increases the secretion of urine. It causes delayed and scanty menstruation and the most cases produces a decided depression or spirits. It causes pronounced thirst.

Symptoms

      Some of the prominent features of Natrum mur., which will be given in detail under the various head in, are; 10-11 A.M. aggravation; depression of spirits, with hopelessness of the future;l malnutrition, especially with emaciation of the neck; unquenchable thirst;constipation; scanty menstruation; greasy skin (169).

Natrum mur, is a remedy to be thought of for the bad effects of the local application of silver nitrate, or lunar caustic, for purposes of cauterization.

it is a remedy useful in marasmus (129)_ of infants and children, with great thirst and ravenous appetite (119), but owing to improper food, or to defective assimilation, there is general emaciation, noticed especially about the neck, which is very thin and drunken. Associated with marasmus we have diarrhoea and greasy skin, or constipation, with bleeding after the hard stool (34).

Mentally we find in natrum mur. a condition of much interest, in which there is general sadness, with either a desire to dwell upon past and unpleasant events, or with a hopelessness for the future (132). While we may have hysterical alternations of laughing and weeping, crying occupies the prominent position, and while they will cry if looked at, as they do in Pulsatilla, the more they are consoled the wore they get (132), Talcott saying, that the sadness of Natrum mur. is “aggravated by sympathy” and that there is an “aversion to men (a very abnormal feminine symptom)”

it is of value in melancholia of anemic women, who may have good appetite yet emaciate rapidly, who are constipated, have headache, palpitation and sadness about the heart; in the melancholia of puberty, she wakes in the morning with headache and apprehension as if something wrong was going to happen; in melancholia during pregnancy (131), where she imagines that all sorts of unfortunate things are bound to happen, a favorite topic being that the child will be marked, she knows it will.

Talcott speaks of Natrum mur., as useful in “mental diseases of an intermittent type.”

It is of value in brain-fag (93), with inability to fix the attention and irritability, and for vertigo, with tendency to fall forward, or to the left 9207), and relieved by lying down.

the headache are severe, usually frontal, when there is a sensation of bursting (104), or in the temples, with throning (102) or hammering as from many little hammers., “as from a thousand little hammers ‘as the way the patient is apt to describe it. We also have pain in the vertex as from a weight there (103) and better from pressure (103).

The headaches are frequently causes from straining the eyes, hence it is to be thought of when occurring in school children (95), or from having read the night before, and one wakes in the morning with headache (95), or from having read the night before, and one wakes in the morning with headache (95) and soreness of the eyes.

It is useful for migration (99), sick headache, with vomiting, for for so-called blind headaches 998), with blindness, everything turns black, and headache from nervous shock (97); also for periodical headache, that comes on with menstruation, or it begins before the menses and continues throughout the period (95) and associated with vomiting, with desire to be long and to be let alone.

An important thing to remember in reference to Natrum mur. is that if there is fever with the headache there is great relief from the pains when the patient beaks out into a perspiration.

The headaches may come on in the morning on waking (95), may begin at 10 A.M., and Harrying speaks of the remedy having a “sun headache (95), lasting from sunrise to sunset, better at midday.”

There is supraorbital neuralgia of the r. side (76) as well as a periodical neuralgia of the r. side of the head, recurring regularly at 10.A.M. every day and associated with vertigo, flickering before the eyes, faintness and goneness in the stomach; the pain is relieved on perspiration.

Natrum mur is useful in premature ‘falling if the hair from general lack of nutrition and local seborrhoeic disorders” (Dearborn)., also for “loss of hair following pregnancy” (Hering) (88) and for eruptions and eczema behind the ears (65) and on the scalp that extend to the border of the hair at the nape of the neck (65), with itching and smarting, worse from washing the parts with water (65). the discharge from these eruptions is glutinous and mats the hair (88), and the skin is red and sore.,

In the eye some of the symptoms read: Sensation as if sand were in them (77) in the morning; eyes give out on reading or writing; letters and stitches run together-and Natrum mur is useful in many cases of muscular asthenopia (72) and is curative especially when there is burning or starting, a from salt, when the vision becomes blurred after reading a little or as previously mentioned, where on wakes in the morning with headaches, due to having used the eyes the night before.

It is one of the remedies to be thought of for tumors on the margins of the lids and for ulcer s(77O) and pustules (76) on the cornea, and it is indicted in my cases that have been abused by the local application of silver nitrate.

In the ear we have a catarrhal condition, with deafness and various noise, especially cracking in the ears (64) when chewing.

Many authors lay especial stress on the susceptibility of the natrum mur. patient to catching cold from slight exposure (5). In the Handbook no symptoms of a higher class than pathogenetic ones in italics speak of this; but one of them it will be well to bear in mind, it reads: He easily takes cold in the head, must wrap it up, if it is uncovered during the day, he has stoppage of the nose at night.

Natrum mur, is useful in coryza, either fluent (37) or changing to stopped (37) with feeling of dryness or with occasional sudden discharge of clear water, constant lachrymation and obstruction of the nozzle duct, and loss of both smell and taste. In coryza and in hay-fever (88) we are apt to have dry, cracked lip;s and eruptions around the mouth of vesicles or of hydroa.,

It is of vale in chronic nasal and naso-pharyngeal catarrh (143),(143), with profuse, thick, yellow, mucous discharge, worse in the morning, general weakness, elongated uvula and especially loss of taste 9170).

As it is on the nose and pharynx that the use of silver nitrate is so prevalent, we want to remember Natrum mur, in many conditions found there, due to the abuse of the caustic.,

The gums are scorbutic and bleed easily (84) and there is general dryness and burning in the mouth and tongue (140) with vesicles and aphthae (140) which appear on the tongue and cheek; the tongue is mapped (192) and the uvula is relaxed.

Thirst is a general accompaniment of Natrum mur. symptoms. it is usually spoken of as unquenchable and the patients are almost as thirsty after drinking as they were before, very like the state of people who have eaten salt or salty food.

Willard Ide Pierce
Willard Ide Pierce, author of Plain Talks on Materia Medica (1911) and Repertory of Cough, Better and Worse (1907). Dr. Willard Ide Pierce was a Director and Professor of Clinical Medicine at Kent's post-graduate school in Philadelphia.