Nux vomica [Nux-v]
Constant urging for a stool which never comes; or a small stool is passed with urging, leaving sensation of more remaining behind.
Always as if evacuation were incomplete.
Ineffectual desire for stool.
Tearing and sticking and contracting pain, as from piles in rectum and anus after a meal; and especially on exerting the mind, and studying. (Comp. Causticum)
Bright blood with faeces, with constriction and contraction during stool.
Nux is the medicine of the sedentary, the studious, the hypersensitive and the irritable.
The key to the Nux constipation (and colic) is irregular peristalsis. Spasmodic constrictions (Strych.) which drive the intestinal contents at once backwards and forwards.
Strychnine [Stry]
Obstinate constipation, with griping pains (Nux).
Bryonia [Bry]
Chronic constipation, with severe headache.
No desire, or urging with several attempts before result.
Stool unsatisfactory, after much straining with rush of blood to head.(Nose bleed. Coffea)
Stools hard, dark, dry, as if burnt (Sulphur).
Stools too thick: too large (Sulphur).
Obstruction from induration of faeces.
Distended abdomen; rumbling and cutting, yet obstinate constipation. After stool long continued burning in rectum (Thuja).
Bryonia is irritable (Nux): everywhere Dry: (<) motion; white tongue; great thirst.
Natrum mur [Nat-m]
Constipation: obstinate retention of stool.
Irregular; hard, dry; on alternate days.
During M.P. Anus contracted or torn.
Knows not whether flatus or stool escapes; dryness of mucous linings, with watery secretion in other parts.
Nat.mur. is irritable; weepy; hates fuss.
Craves salt. Aversion to fats; to bread.
Sulphur [Sulph]
Stool with “something left behind” (Nux).
Hard, as if burnt (Bry). Extreme constipation.
Stool every 2,3 or 4 days, hard and difficult.
Stools large, painful: held back from pain.
Sulphur is a warm patient; hungry about Ii a.m.; kicks off clothes at night; puts feet out; hungry for fat, for everything.
Red orifices; acrid excoriating discharges.
Lac deflor [Lac-d]
Large painful stool (Sulphur). Dry (Bry).
Invincible constipation with chronic headache.
Constipation with coldness; cannot get warm.
Lac deflor. is supersensitive to cold: to least draught.
Complaints from putting hands into cold water.
Worse milk: aversion to milk.
Graphites [Graph]
Stool large, hard, knotty, in agglomerated masses, mixed with tough slimy mucus.
“Sometimes great quantities of mucus with hard stool, as much as a cupful of thick, tough, stinking mucus.”
Haemorrhoids with burning rhagades.
Itching; smarting, sore pain at anus.
(Characteristics of Graphites) Obesity; relief from eating; from hot foods and drinks.
Skin troubles, with sticky oozing.
Collinsonia [Coll]
Obstinate constipation with haemorrhoids.
Piles with constipation (even diarrhoea) bleeding, or blind and protruding; feeling of sticks (Aesculus), gravel, or sand in rectum.
Chronic, bleeding, painful haemorrhoids.
Very constipated, with colic.
Aesculus [Aesc]
Hard, dry, difficult stools.
Rectum dry, hot : “full of small sticks.”
Knife-like pains shoot up.
Severe lumbo-sacral backache.
Stools followed by fullness in rectum, and intense pain for hours (Nit.ac., Aloe, Ignatia, Sul., etc.).
Painful, purple external piles, with burning (Collinsonia’s bleed more).
(A queer sensation, a bug crawling from anus.).
Nitric acid [Nit-ac]
Pain with stool as if something would be torn.
Sticking pain (rectum) and spasmodic constriction (anus), during stool, and lasting many hours after (Aesculus).
Fissures and haemorrhoids. Great pain after stool (even soft stool) lasts for hours.
Burning in anus. Itching in rectum.
Nitric acid affects especially parts where skin and mucous membrane join.
Its pains are splinter pains, worse for contact.
Nitric acid patient is very like the Sepia patient, but loves fat and salt (unlike Sepia).
Arsenicum [Ars]
Constipation with tenesmus: with pain in bowels. (More characteristic, diarrhoea and purging.)
Haemorrhoids: with stitching pain walking and sitting, but not at stool: pain like slow pricks of a hot needle: protrude like coals of fire.
Burning pains anus, relieved by heat.
Diarrhoea alternating with constipation-in an Arsenicum patient, with restlessness, anxiety and prostration.
Opium [Op]
Almost unconquerable chronic constipation.
Constipation from inaction, or paresis-for 6 or 8 weeks, with loss of appetite.
Peristaltic action entirely suspended: even reversed peristalsis with faecal vomiting.
Faeces protrude and recede (sanic., Silicea, Thuja.).
Or, stool invol. after a fright-from paresis.
Stools hard, round, black balls; obstruction from indurated faeces.
Opium has the most startling opposite conditions. Inveterate constipation-persistent diarrhoea. Coma, to complete insensibility -exalted sensibility, “Can hear the flies walk on the walls, and distant clocks chiming”; sleepy but cannot sleep; hears noises not generally noticed.
Stramonium [Stram]
Stool and urine suppressed.
Obstinate constipation.
Cannot bear solitude, or darkness.
Face red and bloated.
Painlessness with most complaints.
Plumbum [Plb]
Obstinate habitual constipation.
Paresis of intestines. Cannot strain at stool: cannot expel the faeces.
Obstruction from induration, from impaction.
Urging and terrible pain from constriction and spasm of anus (“Where Platina fails”).
Violent colic. Abdominal wall “drawn to spine by a string” (Platina).
As if abdomen retracted and drawn towards spine: retraction both objective and subjective.
Boat-shaped abdomen.
Stools like sheep’s dung: balls in conglomerate masses.
Typical Plumbum has slowness; torpor; emaciation: must stretch for hours.
A keynote, “Paralysis with hyperaesthesia.”.
Alumen [Alumn]
Ineffectual urging: or several days without desire for stool.
No ability to pass stool.
Long useless straining, then after many days stool is passed-an agglomeration of little hard balls.
After stool, sensation as if rectum still full (Nux.)
Cramps and colic: sensation of abdomen drawn to navel (Plumb., Platina).
Haemorrhoids ulcerate: prolonged suffering after stool (Nit.ac., Aesculus, etc.).
Antidote to lead poisoning: and for lead constipation.
Symptoms very similar to lead.
Platina [Plat]
Difficult stool: sticks to anus and rectum like putty.
Frequent urging with inability to strain at stool (Alumina).
Inveterate constipation and unsuccessful urging (Nux.).
Stool, hard, scanty, or sticky. Undigested.
Peculiar symptom of Platina. Feels tall: everything looks small to her.
Mentally also, pride and looks down on others.
Another curious symptoms, navel feels retracted by a string (Plumb.).
Alumina [Alum]
Inactivity rectum and bladder.
Great straining to pass even a soft stool.
Must strain at stool to urinate.
No desires for and no ability to pass stool with large accumulation.
Great straining.
Rectum seems paralysed: has not strength to press the contents out.
Stool hard, knotty, covered with mucous, or soft clayey, adhering to parts (Platina).
Patients are asking for help in regard to a curious and very obstinate form of constipation, evidently from the use of aluminium cooking pots, because it promptly disappears when these are discarded the bowels resuming their normal functioning. This is how these aluminium sensitives describe their constipation:
No desire whatever for stool.
No physical inconvenience from “No stool for days, even to a fortnight”
“Nothing seems to go down lower than the upper left abdomen” (the splenic flexure).
“Rectum seems not only inactive, but empty.”.
Veratrum alb [Verat]
Digestion good; but defaecation almost impossible from inertia of rectum.
No desire for stool: which is large, hard, in round black balls. No expulsive action.
Veratrum is cold: sweats much. Cold sweat on forehead.
Causticum [Caust]
Frequent ineffectual efforts to stool, with pain, anxiety and redness of face (with nose bleed, Coffea).
Rectum inactive: fills with hard faeces, which pass involuntarily and unnoticed (Aloe).
Passes little balls unnoticed.
Stool tough and shiny: shines like grease.
Passes better standing.
Haemorrhoids: impeding stools: swell; itch; stitch; worse walking; thinking of them; preaching or straining voice. (Comp. Nux.)
Causticum is intensely sympathetic with suffering.
A remedial of local paralysis. Urine involuntary when sneezing or coughing. Enuresis in children.
Phosphorus [Phos]
Inveterate constipation.
Faeces slender, long, dry, tough and hard, voided with difficulty. “May be compared to a dog’s stool in appearance and manner of evacuation.”
Paralysis of bowel, so that it is impossible to strain at stool (Alumina).
(Phosphorus has also a paralytic condition in which anus stands open (Apis) and stool oozes out.)
Haemorrhage from bowel.
Typical Phosphorus is the slender, artistic type: fears dark-alone- thunder; craves salt, ices, cold drinks: Chilly (Apis, warm).
Apis [Apis]
Constipation: sensation (abdomen), “something tight, will break if efforts used.” (See Plumb., Platina)
Bowels seem to be paralysed.
No stool for days-for a week.
Or stools occurs with every motion of the body as if anus were constantly open (Phosphorus).
Anus swelled : oozing blood.
