OTHER ORGAN ACTIONS
In the second line the mucous membranes of the respiratory passages and the genitalia are influenced. This agrees with the reports on the action of strong alkaline springs containing sodium (Ems, Salzbrunn, etc.) The great mucus-releasing action of soda seems to reflect itself more biologically in a stimulation of the mucous glands through natr. carb.
Nash mentions particularly postnasal catarrh as an indication. The symptom of foul odor of (thick and yellow-green) nasal secretion refers to involvement of the posterior nasal divisions. Expectoration of much mucus from the throat, worse from the least draft, reveals the pharyngeal catarrh. Dry cough on entrance to a warm room from outside (frequently an indication for bryonia) may suggest it in a chronic catarrh: The symptoms: cough with labored breathing, better on sitting up, and cough with coldness in the left side of the chest, concur strikingly with the reports on kali carb. Still, the entire symptomatology of natr. carb. in the upper respiratory passages has no great significance; the direction is apparently the same as with kali carb., but significantly more weakly expressed.
Of the female sexual organs, an acrid, yellow, copious leucorrhoea should be mentioned. A remarkable symptom in women cited as a cause of sterility is: discharge of the semen immediately after entry. At the same time the chilly, relaxed, sensitive-to-sun, nervous and dyspeptic state should be present. Natr. carb. does not have a definite type of menstruation, though it is scanty, late, but even too early menses have been reported. The downward pressure in the abdomen is more characteristic for other drugs (sepia, lilium tigr., murex) than for natr. carb. For differentiation is the heaviness in the lower abdomen, worse on sitting, in the natr. carb symptoms.
A rarely employed trend of natr. carb. is designated by the skin symptoms: vesicular eruptions on the knuckles, tips of the fingers, toes, flexor surfaces of joints, also on the body patchy or circinate. The skin should also be dry, wrinkled and rough, especially on the backs of the hands and feet. An inflammation of the exterior of the nose as well as heel ulcer are mentioned as indications. The external action of soda on the skin seems to have influenced the symptomatology here.
According to the depiction of Kent in respect to natr. carb. there would be a remarkable similarity with kali carb. because he describes most of the symptomatology of the two drugs with almost exactly the same words. The general picture : Old dyspeptics with constant eructations, sour stomach and rheumatism: the bent back is weak, sensitive to cold, their digestive and rheumatic- gouty complaints become worse from change of weather, can be found repeated in kali carb. It is the picture of cachexia alkaline as occurs perhaps through the prolonged misuse of Bullrich salts. The loss of resistance against all types of influences, especially against sudden noise, which causes the patient to tremble, nervous excitation and palpitation with great exhaustion, tremulous weakness from slight bodily or mental exertion; the seating on the involved parts, the puffiness, tendency to edema; also paretic states (lids, swallowing) the numerous identical symptoms in the respiratory, digestive and genital apparatus and mucous membranes; palpitation on lying on the left side, rheumatic pains in the extremities; an early morning aggravation; all such details, for which one naturally seeks many in vain in other writers, approximate each other in the Kentian symptomatology of kali carb. and natr. carb. more than the above-cited most important trends of action give semblance. If we permit each drug to stand beside the other in a flood of complete symptomatology without clinical evaluation, then, the unimportant symptomatology in the one picture cannot be differentiated from the important of the other because of the similar text. It is therefore necessary not to confuse the pictures.
DOSE
Natr. carb. in general is not given below the sixth decimal (trit).
SUMMARY Type :
Chilly, bodily relaxed, mentally exhausted. Sensitivity of the senses, depressive hypochondriacal.
Chief Directions: Digestive weakness; catarrh of mucous membranes.
Modalities:
Worse from drafts, from cold, also heat of sun; worse before and during storms; worse from mental exertion; music brings on weeping; improvement of general complaints (chilliness, headache, cardiac palpitation) from eating; gastric symptoms and depression at first aggravated by eating and improved after completion of digestion; sensation of hunger at unusual hours (5 A. M. and 11 P.M.).
LITHIUM
The pharmacology of lithium sands always under the influence of false hypothesis. Lithium carb. has been stamped a gout remedy because it is supposed to dissolve uric acid. But this again involves an erroneous deduction from the test tube to the living organism. Actually, lithium urate is only slightly more soluble in water than the other alkali urates. One can neither dissolve urate stones in the bladder by great concentrations of lithium carbonate nor bring the uric acid held in the blood and the body tissues, especially in the joints, to increased excretion. The so-called lithium springs in general cannot come in to consideration for this crude chemical effect because they cannot attain the concentration in the body which would be necessary; and in urecidin where one gives several sodium salts at the same time with a lithium salt, one can say nothing of a lithium action through substitution of sodium by lithium. If lithium has an influence on the uric-acid diathesis, then it does not obtain this in any case through quantitative chemical changes in the precipitation and solubility relations in the organism. From experimental investigations a peculiar manner of action of lithium in contradistinction to sodium is not known up to the present. Clinical facts from which one might proceed are, in any case, not available.
LITHIUM CARBONICUM
C. Hering made the first provings. Confirmed best are the symptoms from the urinary passages: very frequent micturition that disturbs the sleep and burning in the urethra; painful and difficult urination (tenesmus); pain in the neck of the bladder and pain which goes into the spermatic cord after urination. Furthermore, in the provings are observed a turbid urine with much mucous deposit and a reddish-brown sediment in the urine; also scanty, dark and very acrid urine, voided with difficulty and pain. In connection with this there stands still another provings symptom: pressure in the cardiac region before urination, which ceases after voiding. For this reflex relief after micturition there is also clinical support.
It is probable that the rheumatic-gouty component which lithium carbonate seems to share in common with the other alkalies stands too much in the fore-ground in the drug picture due to the influence of earlier and no longer maintainable hypotheses. First a gradual stiffness over the entire body is reported. The knees and lower back should be particularly weak; then itching around the joints, rheumatic pains in the shoulders, arms, and fingers, in the arch of the foot and extending up to the knee, selling and sensitiveness of the finger and toe joints (only during rest, better from movement; still this modality is by no means positive.). These rheumatic symptoms have been made the basis of treatment of chronic arthritis when the cardiac complaints are also present. About the heart are reported pains of various types (beating, sticking, pressure, dull stitches) and trembling and palpitation which may extend to painful palpitation up in to the head and between the shoulders. Simultaneously, the inspired air causes a feeling of coldness in the chest. Characteristic for the cardiac complaints should be that they are worse before urination and cease after it. They should also be worse before and at the beginning of the menses.
The above-mentioned symptoms in the urinary passage have been brought into connection with an action upon the uric acid diathesis and especially concretions in these organs. A certain diuretic action is common to all alkalies in consequence to their rapid excretion in the urine. Whether a direct stimulus action on the urinary passage by lithium can occur is not known at present.
Another trend, that of the dyspeptic symptoms, places lithium carb. in line with the other alkalies and especially close to natr. carb. They are gnawing and uneasiness in the stomach, feeling of fulness in the temples, and headache. Of the headache it states, exactly as with natr. carb. that it improves or ceases from eating. Likewise the nagging sensation is improved by eating. Moreover, sensitivity of the stomach against the least pressure and also sour stomach is reported.
A striking symptom is repeated in all materia medicas: hemianopia, invisibility in the right visual field. This symptom was observed on the second day of the menstrual period and associated with poor vision for reading. Whether it deserves to be repeated in the materia medica is very doubtful and in any case a clinical confirmation from its use is not known. The same holds for the asthenopia taken as an indication from the same event.
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,