Opium causes retention of urine, “perhaps, chiefly,” says Dunham, “by blunting the sensibility of the lining membrane of the neck of the bladder, so that the fulness of the bladder is not recognized by the patient” (200). It is of value in retention or urine which “may occur in fever, in acute illness” (Dunham) or following fright or parturition (200).
It is also to be thought of in amenorrhoea and suppression of the menses from fright (81), when associated with great drowsiness. It has proved useful in threatened abortion (13), in “the latter part of pregnancy, from fright” (Hering), as well as in aphonia from the same cause (81).
It is one of the remedies useful in threatening paralysis of the remedies useful in threatening paralysis of the lungs (30), with short superficial respiration, and occasional deep breaths or sighs (25). It is to be thought of in bronchial catarrh, with dyspnoea and blueness of the face, suffocative attacks which waken from sleep (24), deep snoring respiration and great difficulty in lying down.
As regards the sleeplessness (169) calling for Opium, it is especially indicated for so-called light sleepers, who remain wide awake for a long time after going to bed, with acuteness of all sensations, hearing especially; the least unusual noise will awaken her and it is a long time before she can go to sleep again.
In the fevers calling for Opium, stupefaction is a pronounced feature. In congestive chills (31) we have stupor throughout the paroxysm, the heat followed by profuse hot sweat, which does not relieve the stupor (185).
In intermittent fever the cold stage predominates (121); the chill is violent and may be followed by diarrhoea; as a rule, the patient sleeps through the fever and the sweat; the sweat is hot and profuse but does not relieve the stupor.
You all know of the physiological use of Opium or of its alkaloids to deaden pain; you also know that its administration is not supposed to be curative as it simply “destroys”, as Allen succinctly puts it, “the consciousness of suffering pain.” You may not have thought that it is apt, not only to destroy the action of our remedies, as any powerful agent is liable to do, but while deadening pain it destroys some symptoms and adds others, so that we, as Homoeopaths, are unable to determine what remedy is best suited to the patient.
I have the greatest of sympathy for the sick, and it distresses me to see a person in pain, but for all that I will not use an opiate of any kind if I can possibly avoid it for I not only feel that I am doing a wrong towards the patient (If I consider the case a curable one), but also from the fact that the minute I give an anodyne I begin to lose all interest in the case, and from then on my actions are purely mechanical.
As to our position in withholding or giving an opiate, let me quote form Dunham, who says: “Do we never use Opium as a palliative in acute and very painful affections for which we have not found a specific remedy? I have twice thought it necessary to do so. On each occasion I regretted it. it did mischief. The patients after a temporary relief, got worse, and then, after all, I found by hard study the proper remedy (as I ought to have done at first), and cured the cases, as I might and ought to have done in the beginning, without Opium, had I known enough.
“In evidently incurable diseases, when the patient is moribund, as in cancer, etc., Opium may perhaps be given, but even in such cases though there be no hope of recovery, it should be sparingly used.”
I use Opium 3rd or 30th.
