DIGESTIVE ORGANS
The phenomena from the digestive canal are known in broad trends from acute and chronic poisoning. Inflammation of varying grade causes the following trend: gums swell, bleed easily, ulcerate.
These symptoms as well as the simultaneous tearing pains in the jaw accompany phosphorus necrosis. The tongue and likewise the oral mucosa are markedly coated, now clayey white, now yellow, or dry, wrinkled and bleeding in fever.
The pains in the stomach are of diverse types, and perhaps the burning which extends to the throat and into the intestines is the most frequent. Educations and vomiting of sour fluid, mucus or bile occur. These general gastric symptoms state nothing in themselves. But the desire for ice cold water and the transient improvement from it, further the vomiting of water as soon as it has become warm in the stomach, the aggravation from warm food, indeed in a warm room, are the characteristic trends.
The vomitus may also be bloody, an indication for ulcer particularly in combination with spasmodic contractions and attacks of cutting pains which are transiently relieved by eating. In the coffee-ground vomiting of carcinoma and burning, phosphorus stands beside arsenic as a choice.
The symptoms of an ulcer or a severe gastritis naturally need not be present but there may be more nervous dyspeptic complaints as burning pain after eating, sour and frequent empty eructations, belching and regurgitation of the food soon after eating, distinction of the stomach and abdomen; a weakness or sensation of relaxation in the stomach may suggest phosphorus if the modalities concur, particularly the peculiar behavior of hunger and thirst. A clinical indication is the postoperative vomiting after chloroform narcosis.
On the intestine the symptoms entirely correspond to complaints of mild dyspepsia up to the most severe ulcerative processes; empty and relaxed feeling in the abdomen, or retraction as if from a heavy weight, abdomen painful on contact, rumbling and colic in the abdomen, flatulence, colic, drawing, cutting, sticking; severe manifestations are tympany, a gurgling from gas goes from the stomach through the intestine and is accompanied by involuntary stool; this may be observed in intestinal tuberculosis and typhoid. Diarrheal stools of the most diverse types have been described, but particularly those which accompany the most severe intestinal processes; painless, copious, very exhausting diarrheas, markedly offensive, gushing, yellow, watery, or white or green, slimy stools with fat or sago-like inclusions, bloody stools as broth, involuntary on each movement. With the failure of control of the intestinal activity appears a sensation as if the anus remained open, a symptom which because of its rarity and peculiarity is useful. A paretic state of the intestine can make the evacuation of the intestine difficult. More rare with phosphorus is a constipation with long, hard, small stools which are difficult to evacuate, “like a dog’s stool, thin as a pencil. This stool should be white and this permits one to deduce a relationship to disturbance of the liver.
The peculiar, sago-like or tallow-like inclusions in the stool are perhaps traceable to pancreatic disturbances. Even if the pancreas is not particularly involved in the picture of poisoning, still here too a fatty degeneration may be present.
In phosphorus poisoning sugar is often observed in the urine. The marked thirst likewise suggests diabetes, and phosphorus stands beside arsenic in this connection. But phosphoric acid will be used more in diabetes than phosphorus itself.
The liver cells are involved in all their functions by phosphorus. Icterus in febrile diseases, in particular pneumonia, is a further indication for phosphorus. Of the subjective symptoms in the region of the liver are mentioned feeling of fullness, sensitivity contact and sticking pains. Acute yellow atrophy and liver cirrhosis are such profound destructive processes that in spite of the most extensive similarity to phosphorus not much can be expected. If catarrhal icterus, in which a hepatitis may be presumed, is present and threatens persistent parenchymatous damage, one may be sufficiently early with phosphorus. The fatty and amyloid degenerations of all parenchymatous organs are to be valued to a certain extent only as end-symptoms showing that an organotropic connection of phosphorus exists for these cells in general and that the effect of phosphorus approaches the grade of such deep and profound diseases.
URINARY AND SEXUAL ORGANS
Likewise acute and chronic nephritis and hematuria are indications with the differentiating symptoms. The urine shows nothing characteristic, only at times is turbid, white and milky.
On the female sexual organs there appears in the symptoms primarily a tendency to bleeding. The menses are too copious, bright red, too early and last too long. Accompanying symptoms are: a sensation in the back as though it would break, ice cold hands and feet, dark circles under the eyes, nausea and apprehensiveness. In the progressive consumptive processes, in which naturally caution must be used in giving phosphorus, the periods may also be absent and bleeding from the nose or hemoptysis appear in place of them.
As an inflammatory manifestation is to be mentioned the occasional appearance of an oophoritis with severe pains during the period and in the region of the ovary. The pains radiate down the inner side of the thigh. Further there may be copious leucorrhoea of different types, yellow, white, watery, excoriating or milky.
The extremely increased sexual irritability and tendency to masturbation in both sexes has been mentioned above among the nervous symptoms. There may be aversion to coitus and anesthesia in the vagina, and in the male, at times the increased libido, with impotence, ejaculatio paraecox and frequent spermatorrhea.
SKIN The manifestations in the skin in phosphorus are strikingly few in contrast to arsenic. Petechia and ecchymoses have been mentioned. The homoeopathic symptom register mentions yellow- brown patches at various sites of the body. Possibly by this, pityriasis versicolor is meant, the appearance of which in tuberculous patients, particularly in the pulmonary form, is quite common. The indications would then be selected from the clinical picture. On the other hand damage to the adrenals by phosphorus could explain such pigmentation.
Finally one finds mentioned patchy, falling out of hair with desquamation on the bald spots. Alopecia areata is frequently taken as an addition for phosphoric acid.
The general impression of a phosphorus patient is, apart from the previously indicated constitutional signs, naturally dependent upon the existing consequences of the disease present. So a hectic spot or an earthy color of the face of the severe tuberculous patient or the edematous swelling of the renal or cardiac patient can give expression to the external picture.
SUMMARY
Type : Asthenic, rapidly, growing; delicate, sensitive, hyperesthetic; in need of support, mentally animated but rapidly exhausted up to apathy.
Rapid change, “wavering”; fear of being alone, anxious in the evening and before and during storm; markedly increased libido but sexual weakness.
Consumption and hyperesthesia characterize phosphorus as an oxygenoid remedy.
Basedow trend; increased tissue destruction with insufficient tissue building; ravenous hunger; congestions, hectic types of reaction.
Guiding Symptoms:
Ravenous hunger, at night or soon after eating; thirst spasmodic.
Chief Trends: Tendency to bleeding of all types (capillary endothelial damage; reduction of coagulability).
A dynamic fever (delirium sopor).
Consumptive processes.
Protoplasmic poison effect.
Special : Functional and organic spinal cord processes; disturbances of sexual function.
Eyes: retinitis, hemorrhages, glaucoma.
Respiratory passages: pharyngitis; tenacious mucus. Laryngitis: larynx sensitive to contact and cold air; huskiness, worse evenings, sensation of cotton in the throat; cough worse from cold air and in going from warm to cold rooms, from speaking, laughing.
Pulmonary congestion, sensation of oppression from the right heart; aggravation from lying on the left side; pneumonia especially adynamic forms.
Pulmonary tuberculosis; constitution, hemorrhages (caution!), euphoria.
Heart: particularly right heart, with disturbances in pulmonary circulation, myocarditis.
Congestions: Worse on left side, worse evening.
Accidental murmurs in rapid growth.
Digestive tract: inflammatory, easily bleeding up to ulcerous processes; gingivitis to necrosis of jaw leading.
Gastric symptoms, worse from warmth; thirst for ice cold water, finally, vomiting from it; ravenous hunger with transient improvement from eating; gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer.
Dyspeptic, inflammatory or ulcerous gastro-intestinal processes. [Much gurgling and colic, involuntary stools, hemorrhages (typhoid, tuberculosis, etc.); sensation of anus remaining open; copious painless, very exhausting diarrhea.]
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,