Especially mouth and large intestine, then urinary passages.
Increase and alteration of all secretions.
Lymphatic system (glands); impending suppuration. Joint surfaces and periosteum.
Nervous system (erethism, chronic action).
Clinical:
Scrofula, eczema, acne.
Syphilis II, ulcus molle.
Gonorrhoea.
Mouth and nasal inflammation with involvement of periosteum (periodontitis).
Angina, diphtheria.
Large intestine inflammations (dysentery).
Infections jaundice (especially mercurius dulcis).
Nephrosis (esp. mercurius corrosivus).
Metastatic joint inflammations: polyarthritis.
Adnexal diseases (esp. mercurius iodatus).
Constitutional:
Lymphatism (light haired?).
Modalities and Leading Symptoms:
The nocturnal aggravation in the warmth of bed is the most general.
Neither cold nor heat is well tolerated, cold and damp weather and drafts often make the complaints acute.
The offensive, clammy sweat characteristically brings no relief.
The aggravation from fire and light refers to the eyes.
The aggravation from lying on the right side refers to the biliary passages (and perhaps to the dry cough with stitches in the chest).
Thirst with moist mouth and swollen thickly coated but moist tongue.
MOST COMMON PREPARATIONS ———————— Mercur. vivus = Hg.
Mercur. praec. ruber = HgO.
Mercurius dulcis = HgCl – calomel.
Mercur. corrosivus = HgCl2.
Mercur. iodat. flav = HgI.
Mercur. biiodat rub. = HgI2.
Mercur. cyant = Hg (CN)2.
Mercur. solub. Hahn = NH2 Hg2 NO3 + Hg + Hg2O (mercuroamidonitrate + Hg = mercurooxide).
Cinnabaris = HgS.
Mercurius corrosivus was preferred even by Hahnemann in severe dysentery (Spring dysentery). this preparation as well as the iodide (more frequently) is employed. Also in colitis and the participation of the peritoneum from the appendix or adnexa. Moreover mercurius corrosivus is the most marked renal preparation. The calcium infarct in sublimate poisoning is an anatomical end-product. Mercurius corrosivus is a most active preparation in which the inflammatory processes and ulceration extend rapidly and take on a phagedenic character.
Mercurius cyanatus is preferred particularly in diphtheria, in severe forms with great prostration and cyanosis. H. Schulz has dedicated a special monograph to this disease. But mercurius biiodatus also performs good service.
Mercurius iodatus and biiodatus increase the affinity of the mercury for the throat. Mercurius biiodatus is the more acute of the two; diphtheria, glandular swellings in sore throat with high fever are special clinical signs. Mercurius iodatus has subacute glandular swellings also post nasal catarrh; thick, dirty yellow coated base of the tongue. It has also proven useful in pelvic peritonitis.
Mercurius dulcis, the mildest preparation, is preferred for children. Duodenal and biliary affections are the chief trends.
Cinnabaris will be found useful in painful affections of the eye and in this region (orbit, sinusitis); pressure on the root of the nose; easily bleeding warts, condyloma about the genitalia and fiery red ulcers.
DOSE
Mercurius solublis D 6 has proven valuable with me but in very acute inflammations the D 3 is better. The action of D 30 in the nervous affections remains uncertain. The other mercury salts in general are used in the lower and middle potencies, for example mercurius corrosivus in lues in D 3 -D 4.
THALLIUM
Thallium discovered in 1861 spectroanalytically by Crookes has great kinship, chemically and pharmacologically, with lead, which immediately follows it in the periodic system. In its salts (the chloride, sulphate, nitrate, carbonate, and acetate) it appears chiefly univalent, although one should except from its relationship to the additional series IIIa, a preponderant trivalence. But the valences in the additional series are usually diverse and varying. Especially interesting would be a proving of the water soluble carbonate, Tl2 CO3, which has been little studied up to the present.
The similarity with lead shows itself first in the fact that thallium also causes a glandular degeneration of the red blood cells. 685 An eosinophilia and lymphocytosis has also been demonstrated in man. In dogs the manifestations of poisoning are: disturbances of coordination, trembling of the head, paralysis, disturbances of respiration, coma; furthermore especially rapid falling of hair, diarrhoea, lachrymation and albuminuria. 686 Curzi 687 reported increase of blood pressure in animals. The particularly noteworthy falling of hair was also observed in men, first as an unpleasant untoward action when thallium salts were employed in tuberculosis as an antihidrotic. Buschke has experimentally induced falling of hair in various animals with minimal scarcely demonstrable doses of thallium and also employed thallium salts for epilation in man by internal medication.
Since thallium-containing depilatories have been employed in large numbers, the reports of the untoward actions of thallium have increased. They agree with the actions which have been cited in the homoeopathic materia medica texts 688 of thallium and its salts. The older reports arise from Lamy: Gaz des Hop., 1863, p. 104 and Journ. de Chimie, 1863, vol. IX, p. 721, and Marme (according to Raue’s Ann. Records of Hom. Lit. 1870, p. 21).
One can present the gastro-intestinal syndrome first: nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, abdominal pains with retraction of the abdomen, colic and diarrhoea, which soon passes into persistent constipation. Later disturbances appear in the nervous system: numb sensation in the feet, acroparaesthesia, reduced tactile sense but extraordinarily increased sensitivity to touch, especially of the lower extremities, painfulness of the muscles and joints, lancinating pains and weakness in the legs (depending upon multiple neuritis) trembling, incoordinated movement of a choreiform nature, visual disturbances from a retro-bulbar neuritis up to amaurosis, decrease in the psychic function up to dementia. To this may be added the vegetative-trophic disturbances complete falling of hair at the vertex; moreover conjunctivitis with marked secretion of mucus, blepharitis, acute suppurative dermatitis of the face and salivation. The night sweats of the tuberculous are said to be relieved.
Thallium poisoning leads to marked emaciation and general weakness finally also to cardiac, hepatic and renal degenerations.
The therapeutic use of thallium according to the simile rule is still unusual. It is said to have relieved the severe lancinating pains of tabes. A further testing of the action which resembles lead would be of great interest in view of the characteristic symptoms.
LEAD
From the middle age analogy of lead to Saturn the designation of lead poisoning as saturnism still persists. Today the nature of lead and its position in the history of the material world has become significant in another respect. Lead is the inactive end- product of radio-active disintegration of uranium and thorium. The transformation of the elements by destruction of their nuclear structure filds a halting point in the ancient common heavy metal, lead.
In the course of regressive transformation of element with the highest ordinal numbers and atomic weights in lead for the first time one encounters the new problem of the riddle of “material element” which is only partly solved. It is shown that the chemi- cal identity of a substance as lead, which shows an identity in all respects to other substances, does not depend upon physical uniformity. Moreover that which always seems to appear as the same lead is a combination of various types of lead (up to the present 14 are known) which have their developmental histories according to structural and physical properties. Although possessing the same ordinal number, also determined in material relations by the same nuclear charge, they have various atomic weights. They are called isotopes, that is, belonging to the same place in the periodic system in spite of different atomic weights. The atomic weight of naturally appearing lead is the arithmetical mean of the atomic weight of these lead isotopes. All chemically pure lead still carries traces of its cosmic history in the composition of its isotopes.
Lead still possesses to some extent the physical forces out of which it arose or from whose point of departure it was; on the other side it also retains the inertia of a residue after the transformation of highest energies. When old physicians, particularly iatrochemists, employed lead preparations against cancer, perhaps there may have been some admixture of radioactive substances in the preparation of such lead. The insidious way in which lead leads to cachexia makes a comparison to cancer cachexia seem likely.
Later, perhaps a century ago, out of the obvious lead actions its drying, solidifying, contracting capacity were separated purely by assumption and it was recommended for states which seemed opposed to the normal by virtue of excessive secretion and dilatation The still current external use of lead water fomentations, ointments and plasters on discharging wounds and mucous membranes depends on the formation of a fine protein precipitate. For ages the internal use of lead preparations has been maintained, as a hemostatic, especially in pulmonary bleeding, but today as in general the internal use of lead has become completely abandoned.
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,