If in chronic cases it is frequently found to be of advantage to begin the treatment with Sulphur, in any disease, acute or chronic, it is a remedy of great value when improvement seems to have reached a standstill, or when relapses threaten.
It may be that notwithstanding our confidence that the indicated remedy is being given, the patient fails to respond to it; here a few doses of Sulphur will either modify some constitutional taint or it will cause the indicated remedy to act with increased vigor so that improvement will soon follow (121). In the same way a patient has been taking a certain remedy for some time when we notice that a halt seems to have been called and that the disease is not making the same rate towards recovery that it made in the beginning, and it looks as though the remedy was losing its effect on the system. We may, if we have been using a low potency, jump to a high one of the same remedy; or, if we have been using a high potency, drop suddenly to a very low one for a few doses and then back to the original potency and find that improvement will result from the change; or we may give two or three doses of Sulphur as short intervals, and at the end of twenty-four hours return to the regular remedy in the original potency and find that the progress now made is as satisfactory as it was before the system grew tolerant of the remedy. As Lilienthal truly says, “There is no remedy like Sulphur in the whole Materia Medica, to make other drugs work.”
Sulphur is a very useful remedy in the treatment of the negro, probably from the prevalence of scrofula in that race, as is also Pulsatilla, which covers the emotional sphere.
Other than the time of aggravation, which we will consider under each separate heading as it differs with the condition or part affected, the Sulphur patient is generally worse from heat (8) and from water applied externally (8), with relief of the skin symptoms from scratching.
The disposition of the patient is one of irritability (184), with no desire to talk, except to find fault with those about him, including his medical adviser. He is out of sorts with everything, takes pleasure in nothing; a chronic grumbler, a man with a liver. At times, and especially, perhaps, in the evening, there is a lachrymose mood, with loss of courage, but he will resent any pleasantry on your part or any attempt to cheer him up (132).
It is a remedy useful in melancholia, with sadness and a sense of disgrace; in melancholia after labor (131) and in religious melancholia (131), especially when associated with abdominal plethora.
Talcott says: “Sulphur is frequently useful in the treatment of patients with chronic mania, who attach great value to trifling objects, who dress themselves up in rags, wear paper crowns, and imagine that they are kings and queens,” or as Dr. H. N. Guernsey puts it, “illusions of the intellect where one turns everything into beauty and an old rag or a stick looks to be of beautiful workmanship.”
As to its value as an intercurrent, Talcott says: “When mental symptoms are not well-pronounced in a case of insanity, a few doses of Sulphur will often lead the patient to disclose characteristic conditions of the mind, and insane delusions which have heretofore been concealed.”
There is vertigo in Sulphur, with rush of blood to the head; the vertigo is worse on walking in the open air (207), so that the patient dares not stoop not stoop not look down. With the rush of blood to the head there is often noticed, heat on the crown of the head and cold feet.
The headaches calling for this remedy may be neuralgic but are seldom of an acute character. They are especially congestive (103), with a sensation as if compressed by a band around the forehead (105); sometimes with a feeling of heaviness, and with pressure and weight on the vertex (103) and sensitiveness of the vertex to touch (91). The headaches, which are usually associated with abdominal symptoms (95), are worse from moving (96), stooping and from warmth (95).
We find in the Sulphur child a tendency to hydrocephalus (119), even tubercular (119), with stupor, diarrhoea and suppressed urine (119), and it is especially to be thought of when caused by the retrocession of eruptions (130). It is useful, especially as an intercurrent, in sickly, scrofulous infants when the fontanelles are late in closing (91).
On the scalp we have eruption, with dryness and falling out of the hair on combing. As these eruptions partake of the general character of the Sulphur skin lesions, we will consider them all here under one heading. The skin is harsh and dry and the eruption consists of pustules, vesicles, scales and crusts, and whatever name we may give to the lesion, there is always more or less burning and a great deal of itching. This itching is best described by the word “voluptuous,” and it is temporarily relieved by scratching. “It feels so good to scratch,” the patients say, and once started, they cannot take their hands off until they draw blood (122); it may burn afterwards (122) but the burning is easier to stand than the itching. The itching is worse from warmth (122), especially when they become over-heated from exercise and from the warmth of the bed, and from the warmth of the bed, and the latter may account for its being considered for its being considered as worse at night.
Bathing the affected part causes increased itching (122), and the Sulphur child has an aversion to bathing, and the adult dreads it, as it causes such intense itching that continues so long after a bath.
It is a remedy that is frequently indicated for diseases which alternate with some form of skin trouble, for skin lesions that are chronic and show a tendency to recur. Dearborn tells us that while the “location of disturbance is not important,… the most troublesome forms are found on the warmer regions of the skin, such as beneath the hair at the occiput, the folds, flexures of joints, arms and genitals.” He also says: “No other drug is so commonly employed in dermatological practice, and none will repay more a careful analysis of its characteristics.”
In the eyes, like on the skin, all sorts of troubles, having various long and unpronounceable names, call for this remedy, with the general conditions of photophobia, nightly aggravations, sharp stinging pains, as if from splinters of glass of grains of sand (77), and great dread of having any water touch the eye or face. There it itching and dryness of the balls and lids (74), with smarting and burning in them (73). There is vision of black specks floating before the eyes (77) and an easy fatigue when reading (72). It is of value in iritis, both rheumatic (74) and syphilitic (74), and in conjunctivitis from foreign bodies, Sulphur follows well after Aconite if the latter fails to cure.
Sulphur is useful for deafness, with noises of various kinds, such as roaring (65), and due to inflammations of the middle and external ears, and it is frequently indicated in eczema of the ears, with deafness and great itching. Whenever there is a discharge from the ear calling for this remedy, the odor from it is offensive (63).
In the nose there is redness, itching and dryness and whatever mucus there is would be offensive (143); smelling as of old catarrh (143) is the mildest term used in the pathogenesis. The taste in Sulphur (186) is bitter or sour, or preferably vinegary; also vinegary after drinking milk, and it is one of the remedies having dyspepsia from drinking milk (6) as well as from carbonaceous foods in general (6). A condition often met with in practice, is indigestion from starchy foods. A treatment often resorted to in such cases, is to hunt among the samples left by the obliging manufacturing chemist to see if we cannot find some bottle having an especially seductive label, instead of looking up Sulphur, which would frequently help us because often indicated.
We may have in Sulphur a feeling of fullness and and aversion to food as soon as he begins to eat (177), and sour eructations (178); but more characteristic of the remedy is a feeling of weakness, faintness or goneness in the stomach (179) at 11 A.M. (179), with necessity to eat, cannot wait for lunch, and with relief from this sensations of goneness by eating (175).
In the abdomen we have distention from wind (13) sensitiveness to touch externally (12), with rumbling and gurgling internally (11) and eructation and flatulence smelling like sulphuretted hydrogen (82).
The liver is engorged and there is frequently ascites (11) and we have constipation and haemorrhoids (86), the latter with itching (159), stinging and burning pains (61). There is a sensation of incarcerated flatulence in the left side, or a feeling of dragging or a heavy weight in the hypogastric region and the patient has to stoop over when walking. In many complaints requiring this remedy we find that standing erect is troublesome to the patient, and that he stands and walks bent over like an old man. In abdominal troubles Sulphur follows well after Nux vomica to complete the cure begun by the latter.
