(3) Rechnitz: Medorrhinum Jahrb.d.K.K. Oesterr., St. 31, 224.
(4) Wibmer: Wirkungen der Arzneien und Gifte., Bd.1.
(5) Blocker: Beit.zur Heilkunde, Bd. II, 150.
SUMMARY
Ammonium action more prolonged in ammon. mur.; more vessel erethism; periodic febrile states.
Type : Lax fibre, loss of power.
Chief Trends:
Catarrhs of the respiratory passages(secretory action); neuralgias; constipation with crumbling stools; peculiar symptom: feeling of coldness between shoulder blades.
DOSE
As ammonium compounds in general the lower up to the sixth decimal are employed.
CAUSTICUM
For 100 years the fight has proceeded about this drug which Hahnemann prepared with the aim of obtaining the caustic principle as pure as possible, or as we would say, to bring the OH action out clearly. His original tinctura acris sine kali 24 was later given up in favor of this preparation.
PREPARATION
He described the preparation of causticum as follows: 25 Calcareous earth, in the state of marble, owes its insolubility in water and its mild disposition to the combination of an acid of the lowest order, which the marble yields as a gas in a glowing fire, and it may be assumed to contain in its composition another substance than fused lime, which, unknown to chemistry, shares with it its corrosive property just as it shares the property of solubility in water with lime water. This substance, although not an acid itself, loses its caustic power to it, and allows, through the addition of a fluid (heat stabile) acid with which it is combined in the earth with close affinity, separation by distillation as watery causticum.
IF one takes a piece of freshly fused lime of about two pounds, immerses this fragment in a vessel full of distilled water, for one minute, and then places it on a dry cloth, when there it soon, with the development of much heat and peculiar odor, called lime vapor, falls in to a powder. One takes of this powder about two ounces and mixes with it in a (warmed) porcelain mortar, a solution of two ounces of potassium bisulphate (bisulphas kalicus) which has been heated to glowing, melted, and then again cooled and pulverized, in two ounces of boiling hot water, and transfers this thick magna in a small glass cylinder, into a wet alembic with the tube of the latter whose nozzle lies half under water and distills with gradual approach of a coal fire from below, that is, with sufficient heat to distill to dryness. This distillate, amounting to about one and one-half ounces, of water clearness, contains in concentrated form the already mentioned substance, causticum, which smells like caustic potassium alkali, tastes astringent on the tongue and markedly burning in the throat freezes at a lower point than water and markedly promotes decomposition of animal substances lying in it; by addition of barium chloride it yields no trace of sulphuric acid and on the addition of ammonium oxalate shows no trace of lime.
MEDICINAL CONTENT
For 100 years, exactly as today, one has never again asserted from chemical facts that this distillate lacked any content of effective substance and stated that nothing but distilled water could arise from it. And indeed not only the opponents of homoeopathy, who would then as now ridicule the phantasy of homoeopathy, but likewise then as now the so-called critical homeopaths have done so.
Recently Joachimoglu would reduce homoeopathy to an absurdity with this example of meaningless assertion. But nevertheless practically all homoeopathic physicians have not ceased to use this preparation and have had more trust in their own observations than in chemical deliberations.
Even the trustworthy chemist, Buchner, author of a homoeopathic pharmacopeia, showed in 1836 that causticum contained free ammonia. Later, in 1860, Gruner confirmed this, when writing the homoeopathic pharmacopeia which is still official in Wurtemburg. The apothecary Wangner, in Basel has again found ammonia in the distillate. A completely insufficient opposition satisfies many who consider this new finding an error.
For this reason at my request the Johannes-Apotheke of Stuttgart have repeatedly prepared causticum and controlled it exactly. The method of Hahnemann was followed as closely as possible in respect to his apparatus. Even a retort of the old form was used.
That there is something in the distillate, which is different from distilled water, one is convinced best through the soda-like odor and the mildly astringent taste. Furthermore, with Merck’s universal indicator, it shows that the distillate actually has an alkaline reaction. The fresh preparation has a pH of 8.0- 8.5 which decreases gradually after twenty-four hours to a pH of about 7.5. Likewise the fresh preparation reacts weakly alkaline to litmus. With Nessler’s reagent it gives a light yellow color, which colorimetrically determined corresponds to about the fifth decimal potency of ammonia. Even earlier it was suggested that the ammonia arises from the lime and indeed from the inclusions of animal tissues. In the burning, ammonia would become free, be taken into solution by the water, and be distilled over.
Also if chemically pure, apparently nitrogen-free, original materials is employed (calcarea ustae marmore pro analysi and potassium bisulfuricum crystallisatum [KHSO4], pro analysi, [Merck] ), the result remains the same. Up to now it has not occurred that a causticum is distilled which does not give an ammonia reaction. That the control distillates from the same water do not furnish an alkaline reaction nor ammonia need not be stressed.
In what form the ammonia exists in the distillate is still unknown. At any rate the preparation must be added to the ammonium compounds. Its persistent action which characterizes it beyond simple ammonium hydroxide and other ammonium compounds must be ascribed to still unknown properties which indeed it owes to its method of preparation.
PROVING
The proving symptoms from the first edition of Chronic Diseases (see above) have been added by Hahnemann in the second edition of 1837, to the symptom of the impure preparation tinctura acris sine kali.
GENERAL ACTIONS
One can consider causticum as a chronic acting ammonium preparation. But it also stands close to the potassium picture although this element has not been proven in it.
LOCOMOTOR APPARATUS
The trend toward the locomotor apparatus appears the predominant in causticum. In the second place stands the influence on the respiratory passages. The type deviates from ammon. carb. and kali carb. in so far that the chronic, insidious maladies, in causticum, condition a yellowish, wan facies, and furthermore through the improvement in unsettled, damp weather, aggravation in clear weather and also from dry cold. Etiologically, indolent affections are reported Causticum has a depressed melancholic frame of mind but also much terror and irritability: children will not go to sleep alone, cry out on the least occasion. For the locomotor apparatus, the drawing, tearing, as well as burning pains are characteristic; and for the mucous membranes, burning pains. The time of aggravation, like ammonium and potassium, is toward 3-4 A.M.
Chief indications are: subacute and chronic muscle tendon-joint- and peripheral-nerve affections of a rheumatic type, aggravated by dry cold and cold winds, through drafts, through movement, better from the warmth of the bed. There exist great nocturnal restlessness, twitching in the extremities. The rheumatic inflammations easily pass over into secondary alterations; there are an arthritis deformans, tendon shortening, muscle contractions (Dupuytren), peripheral paralysis with increasing weakness and uncertainty in the muscles.
In its great neuromuscular weakness with trembling and twitching, causticum stands close to kali carb., moreover, the paralytic weakness of causticum goes over much sooner to actual paralysis.
A chief field of application is the weakness of the sphincter vesicae: involuntary discharge of urine on coughing, sneezing, walking, often unnoted, or enuresis in the first sleep. But urinary retention also occurs and the postoperative type forms a suitable field of employment. Facial, ocular paralysis, ptosis, paralysis of the tongue with indistinct speech, vocal-cord paralysis (recurrent nerve paralysis after diphtheria, from hard goiter, etc.) Failure of the lower rectum and of the sphincter ani, the stool can be passed only when standing, but also partial paralysis anywhere else in the locomotor apparatus, either of rheumatic cause, from cold wind, or after infectious diseases, will be favorably influenced by causticum. Furthermore, sciatica with numbness comes under causticum. Other neuralgias have burning pains, for example, after herpes zoster.
RESPIRATORY ORGANS
On the respiratory organs the huskiness and aphonia stand in the middle point. Here the mucous membrane and the peripheral nerve actions come together so that chilling as well as overexertion from singing and talking are reported as causes. Characteristic is the morning aggravation.
Leeser, a Consultant Physician at the Stuttgart Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the German Central Society of Homeopathic Physicians, fled Germany in 1933 after being expelled by the German Medical Association. In England Otto Leeser joined the staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He returned to Germany in the 1950s to run the Robert Bosch Homeopathic Hospital in Stuttgart, but died shortly after.
Otto Leeser wrote Textbook of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, Actionsand Medicinal use of Snake Venoms, Solanaceae, The Contribution of Homeopathy to the Development of Medicine, Homeopathy and chemotherapy, and many articles submitted to The British Homeopathic Journal,