ORGAN ACTION
The organ relations of kali carb. can be graded in the following series: heart, respiration, digestive organs.
While formerly pharmacology perceived the alkali cations in drugs as completely interchangeable, in the last ten years many warnings have again appeared on potassium as a cardiac poison.
The field of medicinal actions on the heart is utilized only by homoeopathy. The proving symptoms which refer to the heart are as numerous as characteristic in Hahnemann’s writings: cardiac palpitation when hungry; frequent severe palpitation with anxiety; frequent intermission of the heart beat; pain in or around the heart as if a band encircled the heart and were drawn together, most noticeable with marked inspiration or coughing but not on bodily movement; climbing a few stairs is very difficult, walking on the level does not cause symptoms. To this are added symptoms in the direction of cardiac asthma as: early (morning) dyspnoea; interruption of breathing awakens him in the night out of sleep; rales in the chest at night on lying down on the back; respiratory oppression; oppression of the chest with noisy deep respiration; early pain in the chest, especially around the precordium; sticking pain in the left chest on deep breathing. And further; spasmodic and choking cough at five in the morning as from dryness in the larynx with severe oppression of chest making speech difficult, redness of the face and sweating over th entire body. Another picture: Severe sticking in the left chest after midnight, in the cardiac region, at times in the back, bearable only on lying on the right side; every attempt to lie on the left side is unbearable; the second night he awakened very early with the most severe sticking in the chest, with dyspnoea, on lying on left side unbearable even with absolute quiet, and passing only when he turned to the right side; on the third night again when he lay upon his back. It states further that breathing is rapid and superficial and that the patient can hardly stop breathing long enough in order to eat, drink or swallow.
Clinically we have before us the manifestations of cardiac insufficiency with conduction disturbances and especially dyspnoea which appears in the early morning hours, also during rest in bed and not especially aggravated by exertion or movement. In this syndrome kali carb. has repeatedly proven of value to me.
On the respiratory organ it expresses itself by the easy chilling which is favored through the reduction of vascular tonus. Pharyngitis, laryngitis, tracheitis must have the special modalities when kali carb. is to be employed with some prospect of result. Perhaps kali carb. is also to be considered of use in beginning tuberculosis. Apart from the easy colds with the tendency to catarrhs descending to the chest, neither the other symptoms not the experience reported up to the present make this indication appear particularly valuable.
Another syndrome signifies a vagus influence, tendency to spasmodic manifestations in the smooth musculature of the respiratory passages. The cough is severe, dry, hard, exhausting, with sticking pains and dryness in the upper respiratory passages. The face is puffy, the eyes swollen. Boenninghausen observed a whooping-cough epidemic in which the edematous sacs appeared over the eyes and kali carb. was the suitable remedy. Especially the persistent cough of a dry spasmodic nature after pneumonia or measles with fleeting neuralgias and the characteristic time of aggravation from 3 to 5 o’ clock, often require kali carb. Also in pneumonia itself in the stage of hepatization, kali carb. can at times be useful. One thinks here primarily of stasis through weak cardiac activity. The lower third of the right lung seems to be the elective site of attack: sharp, cutting, sticking pains in the breast, worse on lying on the right, the involved side (opposite to bry.) indicate it. The dry shattering cough, which may lead to nausea and vomiting, has little expectoration, which is tenacious and difficult to remove. The mucus collects in the region of the larynx toward morning: even after release it is not expectorated but swallowed; at times droplets fly from the mouth on coughing.
Another type of Kali carb. Cough is associated with a weakened heart,. Here there are coarse rales in the chest and the cough is loose but the sputum still tenacious, smells and tastes (like old cheese) offensively; the patient can only sit bent over with the elbows on a stool-this is the clinical picture of the above- mentioned cardiac asthma in a late stage and for which kali carb. at times is in order.
In all types of coughing the chief aggravation toward 3 to 5 in the morning is prominent. This is the time of preponderant vagal innervation, the high point of intracellular assimilative work.
On the digestive organs a complete series of dyspeptic symptoms have been described and indeed in the dyspepsias of old people kali carb. has been recommended but is much more rarely employed than sodium carbonicum in which the digestive disturbance is described in almost the same words. Furthermore, it is striking how similar the symptoms of kali carb. in the digestive canal are with those of carbo vegetabilis. This is no accident because plant charcoal contains the admixture of potassium carbonate. The details are: distensive feeling of the stomach and abdomen with feeling of coldness, fullness and sensation of heaviness, worse after eating and after cold drinks; feeling of weakness in the stomach not relived by eating; nausea better on lying down; aversion to bread and flesh and in general against food; desire for sour things; the tongue is coated white, the taste is bad; the gums are loose, there are aphthous ulcers in the mouth, salivary flow is increased. The flatulence gives occasion for colic-eructations momentarily relieve, likewise the application of heat and bending forward. The eructations may be sour. The total picture is more that of an atony of the gastro-intestinal canal with abdominal plethora. For this also speak the large stools, difficult to evacuate, the swollen hemorrhoids, extremely sensitive to contact, and burning rectal pain which call for kali carb.
But in general the gastro-intestinal canal offers slight occasion for the prescription of kali carb.; carbo vegetabilis will be preferred in the same syndrome. It lies near to consider the symptom complex as gastro-cardiac, and the first manifestations of cardiac insufficiency express themselves not rarely in a similar gastro-intestinal atony. In the difficulty of evacuation of feces and the easy prolapse of the rectum, the weakness of voluntary muscle, of the abdominal muscles and the sphincter, plays a role.
Stitches in the right hypochondrium have led to the recommendation of kali carb. in old liver maladies with ascites. But this report deserves little confidence and the basic symptoms are entirely insufficient and are better associated with flatulence than ascites.
Complaints of the urinary organs in and of themselves offer hardly any occasion for the use of kali carb. In the already mentioned relaxation of the sphincter vesicae we have in causticum a much more suitable remedy. To be mentioned is frequent, sudden, urinary urgency with the passage of mucus or gravel. Pollakiuria and much sediment are vagotonic signs.
Various forms of disturbances of the menses have been described for kali carb., but none are characteristic. In long-lasting copious bleeding with ever-recurring oozing of blood at relatively short intervals, the weakness, the waxlike pallor and the server backache suggest kali carb. Hahnemann considered kali carb. as suitable for the delayed menses in young girls. Too late, pale, scanty menses were also cited. But better than the rhythm is the back and sacral pain with radiation to the thighs and particularly the general constitutional type.
DOSE
In general not below the sixth decimal (trituration)
SUMMARY
Type:
Chilly, puffy, pale, weak muscle, exhausted, irritable, anxious; sensitive to cold; circulatory weakness; tendency to edema; vagotonic.
Chief Directions:
Muscles: back and sacral weakness.
Heart muscle: insufficiency, conduction disturbances.
Respiratory organs: spasmodic disturbances, cardiac stasis.
Characteristic and Leading Symptoms:
Sticking; wandering pains, worse from cold, going to another places from the application of heat; sweating on the involved parts; sacs under the eyebrows; anxiety and fear felt in the gastric region.
Modalities:
Aggravation from 3 to 5 in the morning; worse from cold; worse from coitus; worse during and after the menses; worse lying on affected side; better in general form movement.
SODIUM
The cation sodium has sits physiologic task in water movement and in acid-base equilibrium to such extent, and its quantity in the easily available fluids of the body is so great that any other consideration of its action than according to quantitative chemical viewpoints at first seems remote. Its marked swelling action on colloids, its property of binding water, and the great capacity of dissociation of its salts make it chiefly as the chloride compound the chemical regulator of water balance. In acid-base equilibrium it acts in the first place in the form of the carbonate and to a far less extent in the form of the phosphate. Exactly as with potassium we may expect to discover extent and direction of pure sodium effects best in the carbonate (Na2CO3) or in the bicarbonate (NaHCO3). But though we are certain of the necessity of sodium ions in the nutrient fluid of the cells for their function, we are still very insufficiently informed on the exact effect of sodium on the cells. As long as we move in the range of crude chemical actions, the alkaline character of the carbonate, the OH influence, will be decisive, and weather sodium, potassium or ammonium is its carrier, this remains of subordinate significance. Neither the severe corrosive action of the hydroxide not the weak macerative action of the carbonate on the skin and mucous membranes has a medical significance. The neutralization of gastric acid through weakly alkaline NaCHO3 is nothing else than a chemical mass action, of which the damages naturally require our attention. Experimentally, large doses of sodium bicarbonate before meals lead to a hypotonia of the stomach and shallow peristalsis.
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,