SUMMARY
Chief Trends:
Mesenchyme, reticulo-endothelial system. Blood vessels, mucous membrane, skin, sexual glands, sense organs, central nervous system, and mind.
Clinical:
Cardiac and vascular diseases, vasomotor to sclerotic disturbances (coronary and cerebral sclerosis, red high blood pressure but also nephrosclerosis), lues, particularly tertiary, after the misuse of mercury (arterial disease, bone symptoms, ozaena, glandular indurations). Internal eye diseases (chorio-retinitis, detachment of the retina). Uterine and ovarian tumors, orchitis, melancholia.
Guiding: Depression with tendency to suicide; loss of courage but very irritable, hypersensitive toward noise; music quiets.
Apoplectiform-plethoric type; nocturnal aggravation, better from movement in the open air (worse from cold, from mental effort).
GOLD PREPARATIONS
Essential differences have not become distinct up to the present between the various preparations of gold. In the recently proven aurum colloidale up to the present no mental symptoms were observed. With the gold salts of which aurum muriaticum (AuCl3. HCI + 4 H2O), its sodium salt, AuCl3. NaCl + 2 H2O) and aurum sulfurat. + gold sulphide (Au2S3) are proven, one has attempted to accelerate the slow metal actions and to link them to definite organs. Aurum muriaticum and aurum muriaticum natron are often preferred especially in arteriosclerotic and leutic affections.
DOSE
The salts and aurum colloidale are usually given in the lower potencies up to the D 6, aurum met. especially with the presence of the mental symptoms also in D 30.
ZINC
In the periodic system of elements zinc stands in a series related to cadmium and mercury. However the relationship to mercury is not very outspoken either chemically or pharmacologically. Even if one thinks that the working range of zinc is of a much slighter extent than that of mercury, nevertheless considerable similarity in the toxic manifestations is evident and should not be dismissed, particulary the part which we know as mercurial erethism and tremor mercury we find again in zinc, but still most of the organ symptoms which we know and especially use of mercury are either entirely misused or insignificant in zinc. On the other side zinc shows a close horizontal relationship with copper.
APPEARANCE
Zinc (as well as copper) is found in considerable amounts in molluscs 654 as a normal organically bound constituent. According to Javillier 655 it is also a regular constituent of plant protoplasm. In very slight concentrations in the soil it is said to promote the growth of oats and cereals. 656 Our common foods and the intestinal contents and excreta of man regularly contain zinc (as well as copper). The excretion of zinc takes place in the urine, faeces, milk, the gastro-intestinal mucosa and perhaps also through the sweat.
LOCAL ACTIONS
The soluble zinc salts, as all metal salts, precipitate protein. The zinc albuminates which form are soluble in dilute acids, alkalies and an excess of the precipitating agent. We need not say much about the external influences of zinc salts. They act astringent or corrosive, indeed according to the acid with which the metal is bound and according to the concentration of the solution. Chloride of zinc acts most strongly corrosive. The astringent action is used externally, particularly in the mildest zinc compound, zinc oxide, in the form of a white powder or zinc ointment. Zinc sulphate was used more as an emetic formerly than today. The treatment of conjunctivitis and gonorrhoea with zinc sulphate is well known.
POISONING
After absorption, zinc compounds provoke initially central excitation and later reduction of the reflex excitability and muscle paralysis. The red blood cells are said to be destroyed rapidly and hemoglobin, albumin, and sugar should appear in the urine. The pathologico-anatomic findings correspond to the toxic actions since after the chronic poisoning (10-15 days) with zinc oxide in dogs can be demonstrated: anemia and fatty degeneration in the liver, kidney and pancreas, swelling and disorganization of the epithelia of the biliary passages, anemia in the brain and spinal cord as well as atrophy and cloudy swelling of the ganglia of the anterior horn cells. Here we can go from the acute symptoms of intoxication to the acute corrosive actions on the gastrointestinal mucosa. However among the symptoms of a more chronic poisoning remain: cramps in the extremities after several days and finally after four weeks general convulsions. 657 Kissel 658 reports that, according to Blandlet, workers who inhale zinc vapors have spasms, apprehension, headache and vomiting. In a case of poisoning by zinc vapors on the first day a sensation of constriction of the chest, headache and vertigo was noted, on the second day severe cough, vomiting, stiffness of the extremities, on the third day a coppery taste in the mouth, some flow of saliva, abdominal pains and an increase of vertigo so that the patient could not stand upright. 659 Whether the so-called casting fever of smelters and workers in zinc 660 is a special result of zinc has not been determined with certainty. It begins with pains especially in the back, then chills, followed by chilliness for several hours, an increase of pulse rate with a tormenting cough, a feeling of soreness in the chest, later expectoration and frontal headache, more rarely muscle twitching, salivation and vertigo. After this sweat and sleep follows. In a remarkable way the diarrhoea which is said to appear with severity soon after the smelting (gushing diarrhoea) is missing in this enumeration.
EARLIER EMPLOYMENT AS A NERVE REMEDY
Even from the crude manifestations of poisoning one can deduce that the chief trend of zinc absorbed in the organism is on the nervous system. Formerly zinc compounds were often employed purely empirically in nervous diseases, but today one considers the treatment of chorea, epilepsy, or other nerve diseases with zinc as obsolete and abandoned. However zinc oxide is still mentioned in single textbooks as a remedy for epilepsy. But in the older textbooks the nerve actions of zinc were extolled in all types of spasms, general twitching, epilepsy, chorea, spasmodic nervous affections of the chest (spasmodic asthma, spasmodic hiccough, spasmodic laughing and the like) and here the poorly soluble zinc oxide was preferred. Vogt 661 stresses that the general twitchings from mental affections, acid stomach, the eruption of teeth, the development of puberty, suppressed skin eruptions or those disturbed in the course of evolution in the outer skin, acute as well as chronic, from worms, etc., gave the indication for zinc oxide. The cause of the convulsions for which zinc was employed should not depend upon a weakness of the nervous system but a disorder and excitation in it, especially in delicate, sensitive, youthful, full blooded and irritable individuals, particularly children and women.
Zinc found extensive use with Rademacher and his school. Rademacher 662 called zinc mineral opium, since it had great similarity to opium in its sedative power, even if it shared the vascular exciting property only to a slight extent.
For him it was an organ remedy of the brain, particularly for the sphere of thinking, but he also gave it in melancholia with a desire to sleep much, and when depression began with the symptoms of fear and evil. In diarrhoeas and “in severe brain symptoms which may accompany infectious diseases in the form of delirium or impending somnolence,” particulary in erysipelas, the Rademacherian school held zinc as the healing remedy. Kissel 663 states: “Zinc is a direct curative remedy of a special type in brain affections which can be expressed in many ways, especially by delusions, desire for sleep, headache, neuralgias, spasms, diarrhoea, inflammations of the skin and mucous membranes.” Moreover Rademacher gave zinc in the affections of the organs supplied by the cranial nerves thus in nervous tooth-ache and pains in the internal ear. H.Schulz mentions that the clinician Bartels gave zinc acetate in cases of the nervous insomnia which did not react to morphine. Rademacher gave zinc acetate solution, five drops, three times daily, three times daily, to people who were compelled to work after insufficient sleep. Is he following homoeopathic thoughts here? In any case he introduced personal experiences to support this by virtue of which Kissel 664 and H. Schulz 665 report: “In the morning Rademacher took a large dose of zinc oxide of 15 grains (0.9 g.) fasting. The striking symptoms resulting were the bluish redness of the face and a great desire to sleep overcame him so that he could no longer collect his thoughts. On the other side the nausea which developed prevented sleep. This state was similar to that in which one finds himself when he has become highly fatigued from exertion and is stimulated at the same time. After some time he had two liquid stools and the apparent action of zinc gradually ceased.” Rademacher held it as plausible that zinc also acted curatively on the spinal cord which he concluded from the cures
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,