The constipation calling for Sulphur is usually a chronic condition, with frequent and ineffectual desire for stool (34). This desire is felt low down and is as though the rectum were full of faeces (35) and the attempt to have a movement is usually with out result, or scanty and unsatisfactory; not “because of inaction to the rectum, but because we have congestion, irritation of the muscular fibre and irregular inharmonious action” (Dunham). Along with the constipation we have the sluggish liver, hemorrhoids, soreness and burning at anus, and often headache, with a feeling of weight (103) and heat on the vertex.
You will often find the constipation calling for Sulphur, with the attendant dryness and Hyperaesthesia of the rectum, has been caused by the constant use of water enemas (34), and that after Sulphur has corrected this condition you will need to select some other remedy to cure the original constipation for which the patient first took the enemas.
Sulphur well illustrates the two-fold action of all of our remedies, for it is also of value for diarrhoea of various kinds. The stool is usually thin, watery and windy; it may be green (59) or bloody, sometimes of undigested food (60) but always offensive or fetid (59). Hering says: “The smell of the stool follows him around as if he had soiled himself.” There may be pain or not, but a characteristic is that it is worse in the early morning and drives one out of bed. Allen says, “the necessity is urgent” and we can add, hurry is imperative; it is get there or take the consequences. Associated with the diarrhoea we often have that feeling of goneness in the stomach at 10 or 11 A.M., with necessity to sit down and relief from eating.
It is useful for the diarrhoea of scrofulous children (129), with open fontanelles (91), tendency to stupor, cold sweat, general disagreeable odor of the body and aversion to meat and to washing. The diarrhoea may be caused by drinking milk, “during dentition” (Bell) (58) and from suppressed eruptions. In subacute dysentery, we would have persistent but not violent tenesmus (61).
On the bladder we want to think of Sulphur in catarrhal conditions and in neuralgia with burning micturition (194) and tenesmus, or with painful ineffectual efforts to urinate. In nocturnal enuresis (198) many practitioners begin the treatment with Sulphur and claim to obtain better results by so doing, as it seems to pave the way for the indicated remedy and enables it to work with greater energy. It is of value in chronic interstitial nephritis (124), especially as an intercurrent, and in chronic gonorrhoea or gleet (83), with bright redness of the meatus.
It is a very useful remedy for pruritus of the vulva (156), with burning, stinging and intense itching, worse when the patient is in a perspiration of from the heat of the bed.
As a rule, under Sulphur the menses are too late (136) and of too short duration, with tendency towards suppression (134) and the menstrual flow is apt to be corrosive, as is also the leucorrhoea (126). It is useful in dysmenorrhoea, with pains running from the groins to the back and in scanty or suppressed menstruation (134), with cold feet (71), or more characteristic of the remedy, with burning heat in palms and soles at night, and congestive headache, with sensation of great weight on the vertex (103).
It is to be thought of in prolapsus of the uterus 9203), with constipation, and in anteversion (202), the uterus pressing on the bladder, with aggravation on standing or walking, and frequent desire to urinate (202).
Sulphur is a remedy of great value in chest conditions. There is usually more or less dyspnoea, the cough is short and dry and worse at night after lying down than at any other time. In a late stage of pneumonia you will often find it of great service. It is when resolution does not take place as it should, the lung continues dull and the cough dry; the patient begins to have fever at night, with hot hands and feet and hot head. A few doses of Sulphur given at this time will generally cause the cough to loosen and the hepatization to resolve and the danger of the patient developing phthisis to be averted. It is valuable in the earliest stage of tuberculosis (149), with need of fresh air (9), burning of the hands and feet at night, palpitation and the
peculiar atonic dyspepsia (178), with need to eat at 11 A.M.; and it is especially to be thought of if the patient has a history of any psoric taint. I doubt if there is another remedy in our Materia Medica that has had as many reports made of cures of threatening phthisis as you will find under this one, and in the majority of cases there has been a history of a previous skin eruption that was treated by some local application.
Sulphur is to be thought of for chronic asthma (19), with suffocative fits in the forepart of the night, and with necessity to have the windows and doors open in order to breathe.
In the heart we find a similar desire for fresh air, as there is a sensation of a rush of blood to the heart (1130, which seems to suddenly grow too large and causes a gasping for air and desire to have the windows open.
In the extremities Sulphur is of value in synovitis, especially of the knee (125), with considerable exudation. In rheumatism or rheumatic gout, the pains begin in the feet and travel upward (163), with burning in the feet all night and aggravation of the pains from the heat of the bed (160).
Burning of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, especially at night, is a very prominent symptom under this remedy; children will kick the covers off and grown folks will put their feet against the wall in order to cool them off. Prof. Shelton once said, when he wanted to fix this symptom in the minds of his students, that there was an intimate association between Sulphur and burning souls (soles).
In reference to sleep, the Sulphur patient is apt to be drowsy during the day and sleepless at night. One symptom in this connection you can usually disregard, as far as curative action is concerned, and that is: “In the morning it is hard for him to get up” (Chr. Dis.).
In eruptive fevers it is to be thought of when the eruption is but partial and scanty.
In malarial conditions the principal indications would be the aggravation at night, the headache and the hot palms and soles. One word in reference to a chronic malarial condition where the case has been all mixed up by quinine that the patient has taken and you are unable to get a clear and well-defined picture of any remedy (121). In such chronic cases a few doses of Sulphur will often bring out the suppressed symptoms so that the indications for the curative remedy may be seen.
Hahnemann says: “Sulphur seems to act in the smallest doses for from 16 to 20 days” (Mat. Medorrhinum Pura).
I use Sulphur 30th.
