(Animal charcoal.)
(In order to prepare animal charcoal, thick piece of ox-leather is placed among red-hot coals, and allowed to burn until the last flame has completely expired, and then the red-hot piece of leather is quickly placed betwixt two stone plates, so as to extinguish it immediately, otherwise it could continue to smolderin the air, and thus dissipate the greater portion of its charcoal. A grain of this is triturated with 100 grains of milk-sugar in a pocelain mortar for an hour (every ten minutes being divided between six minutes of trituration and four minutes of scraping); of this product one grain is again triturated in a similar manner with 100 grains of milk-sugar, and of the powder thus made one grain is again triturated for an hour in the same manner with 100 grains of fresh milk-sugar, in order to produce the million-fold potentized attenuation of carbo-animalis.)
Although the animal charcoal presents so much similarity in its effects on the human health to the vegetable charcoal, yet there are so many differences from the latter in it, and so many peculiar symptoms, that I consider it useful to record here what I have observed from it.
Some symptoms were observed by a Russian physician, Dr. Adam; these I have indicated by the letters Ad.
A very small portion of a grain of the million-fold (1/1) pulverulent attenuation is usually quite sufficient for a dose and acts for at least three weeks in chronic diseases. Camphor proved itself an antidote and alleviating remedy for its too energetic action in highly sensitive persons.
[ Beside ADAM, above mentioned, HAHNEMANN got a few symptoms from WEISE in Rust’s Magazin f. d gesammte Heilk., vol. xxii. This medicine makes its first appearance in the 2nd Edit., where its symtpoms are 191; in the Chr. Kr. there are 728, 214 of these being selected from the 254 symptoms in HARTLAUB and TRINKS”S R.A.M.L., and 23 contributed by WAHLE.]
CARBO ANIMALIS
Vertigo: it becomes black before her eyes.
Vertigo with nausea, on rising up after stooping.
Vertigo: towards evening (7 o’clock) when she raised up her head all went round in a circle with her; she must always sit in a stooping posture, and when she rose up she staggered to and fro; she felt dull in the head and as if all objects moved; while lying all night long she felt nothing of it – but did so in the morning again on getting up.
Sensation in the head, as on coming out of great cold into a room and going up close to a hot stove – a sensation as if there was something heavy in the forehead, or as if a board was before the head.
5. In the morning, on awaking, headache, as after drinking much wine.
Heaviness of the head. [Ad.]
The head, especially the occiput (and the left temple) is heavy and confused. [Ad.]
Rush of blood to the head with confusion of the head.
Aching pain in the occiput. [Ad.]
10. Aching pain on a small spot in the occiput.
Headache: aching in both temples.
On the lower part of the temple a pinching pain. [Ad.]
Boring pain in the temporal bone extending into the zygomatic process. [Ad.]
Boring drawing pains in the head accompanied by tearings; when the head becomes cold it is worse, especially towards the ear (aft. 7 d.)
15. Shooting in the head, especially in the temple.
Severe tearing in the external parts of the head.
Tearing on the right side of the head.
The left side of the head is painful as if festering.
Anything upon the head pressed him; his neck-cloth also oppressed him(aft. 18 d.).
20. At night, pain on the head and neck as both were gone to sleep and dislocated.
Falling out of the hair (aft. 12 d.).
Feeling as if something lay in the forehead above the eyes, so that he cannot look upwards (aft. 6 h.).
Pressive shooting pain from above the left eye, the eye-lid, and upper part of the eye-ball.[Ad.]
(Shooting in the eyes.)
25. Aching in the eyes in the evening by artificial light.
Aching in the inner canthus(aft. 72 h.).
In the evening the eyes are hurt by the light.
Weakness in the eyes.
In the outer canthus sore burning pain.
30. Disagreeable sensation in the left eye as if something had flown into it, which interferes with vision; he must always be wiping it; at the same time the pupil is extremely dilated with great long-sightedness – he could not distinctly recognise any object held near him.
Coppery eruption on the face. (The author prepared his animal charcoal in rather a differet manner.He took any kind of flesh freed from fat, added one third by weight of bone to it, and roasted the mixture in an ordinary coffee roaster.) [Rust’s Magaz., f. d. gesammte Heilk., Statement from observation (by Weise) vol. xxii, pt, i, p. 198.]