Not merely for aneurysm of the cerebral arteries, but also for aortic aneurysm is baryta, and particularly the chloride, prescribed. In general it is said to be the best remedy in the senile heart, where other remedies seem to act too little. The feeling of emptiness and faintness in the precordia which is reported in the various cardiac drugs (digitalis, veratrin, convallaria, cactus, ignatia) is not found in in the proving picture of baryta but nevertheless should be especially characteristic for baryta when it occurs in old people (and especially for baryta muriaticum). The bradycardia which is resent in heart block can furnish a valuable objective indication for barium preparations. Other cardiac symptoms are: palpitation on lying on the left side and palpitation which recurs on thinking about it.
In connection with the senile manifestations on the heart also stands the cough of old people, dry, suffocating (cardiac asthma), worse on lying down and at night, also a syndrome which digitalis seems to promote. Moreover it is united with a sensation in the larynx as though smoke had been inhaled, and loss of voice is mentioned. It is not clear whether this is concerned with a chronic catarrhal process of the aged or involves a nervous influence of the larynx.
OTHER ORGAN ACTIONS
The gastro-intestinal manifestations which are observed in th usual stormy defense processes in the acute intoxication with barium, do not stand out in the chronic picture of barium, in any case, less than with calcarea. Fulness, pressure and heaviness in the stomach after eating are too general to draw our attention to barium in this respect. Single symptoms are cited which can only refer to esophageal ulcer or stricture; sensation of a sore spot in th esophagus after swallowing or the feeling as if food stuck or passed over a sore area. I do not know from what these symptoms are derived not how far barium has proven itself clinically in esophageal and cardial stricture with hardening and narrowing of the cardia with pain immediately after eating. When Cartier reports a favorable result of the treatment of esophageal stricture from the Turin Homeopathic Clinic with baryta and strontium, one dose not know to which of the two agents the chef success is to be ascribed.
Then some peculiar symptoms before and during the menses are reported for baryta, just as with the other earthy alkalies: toothache before the period (a symptom which the already mentioned magnesia has), moreover, a thick white leucorrhoea before the period, and sore throat during the menses.
Finally some clinical indications are given for baryta in the direction of the glandular organs and new formations. In hard, persistent goiter of torpid persons, baryta iodatum is preferred. The prostatic hypertrophy, as a similar degenerative glandular process with a slowly increasing hardness, adapts itself to the old age manifestations of baryta. Warts and lipoma are given as indications for baryta and are just as dark as their causal conditions. Though doubted, the report appears that baryta action should also underlie malignant tumors of the breast and pancreas.
The clinical use of baryta in multiple sclerosis which was also well known to the old physicians of the school and indeed has been taken over, should be mentioned without comment.
SUMMARY
The two standard direction lines for baryta are also: (1) The infantile type in the sense of a torpid scrofula with the special indications and (2) the old age alterations in the vascular system.
Characteristic guiding symptoms which occur as general relationships in two systems can hardly be given. One must, the, take as guiding the chilliness and the sensitivity of cold which are found in both; yet many drugs have these. The mentioned modalities: aggravation from thinking on the symptoms and from lying on the painful side have no general significance; more over the baryta picture is not particularly characterized by pains.
DOSE :
The dose is usually from the 3rd-30th potency. However with baryta mur. and baryta iodatum, the lower potencies are preferred.
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,