Other symptoms are indigestion from drinking beer; weight in the pit of the stomach immediately after eating food for which there is no appetite. The hair sensation on the back of the tongue and in the left nostril is pronounced.
Kali bromatum has not been extensively proven. It has a decided effect upon the sensorium, producing a besotted state or stupor resembling acute alcoholism from which the patient can be aroused. There is a great loss of memory and a peculiar hesitancy in remembering words that he knows perfectly well. The nervous system is affected, being agitated with fearful delusions, great mental depression accompanied by weeping and wringing of the hands. The mental state corresponds to the night terrors of children who start, awake and then cannot be comforted.
The hallucination of the child is that he is being hunted and chased by some horrible person or thing. The mental agitation is reflected in the hands which are continually being wrung or are working at something. The mental state, plus the overwhelming as croup, make this remedy particularly useful for children. Kali brom. produces many different skin eruptions almost everywhere on the bodys surface. There are rose colored, acneic, and are aggravated during the hot summer and relieved as cooler weather come on.
Kali carb. characteristics are stitching, lancinating, and jerking pains wherever complaints are. These come on whether the patient moves or not. In a Kali carb. pneumonia, which generally locates in the lower right lobe, stitching pains come on without relation to the respiratory excursion and are not relieved by strapping or lying on the affected side as are those of Bryonia. There is also a puffiness above the eyes between the brow and the upper lid. When these bag-like swelling occur in families, they are not to be trusted as substantial symptoms for 2 to 5 a.m. gives the entire group of remedies this characteristic.
Farringtons or Nashs triumvirate of sweat, backache, and weakness often are the symptom upon which this remedy is used. Backache dates from childbirth where the complaint is, “Oh, my back this”, and, “Oh, my back that.” There is oversensitiveness to touch, especially to unexpected touch when starting is out of proportion to the touch. There is also extreme sensitiveness of the soles of the feet. Kali carb is one of the very flatulent remedies. Hahnemann said that persons suffering from ulceration in the lungs could hardly get will without this antipsoric. kali carb. is a typical tubercular subject in its over-sensitiveness to everything-weather and cold drafts in particular.
Now we come to perhaps the most often misused of all the Kalis, the iodide. Homoeopathically, it is indicated in pale, delicate people who flush easily. The main pathologic diagnosis calling for it is scrofula rather than syphilis; however, Hahnemann lists it as in antisyphilitic also. There is wasting and exhaustion, anguish, and the diffused sensitiveness especially of the glands. Kali hydriodicum is aggravated at the seashore. It is a powerful solvent of tumors and of the effete products left in the tissues after acute inflammatory infections.
Whiteness of secretions, exudations, and eruptions of tissues suggest Kali muriaticum. There is a toughness of fibrinous exudations and discharges. The blood clots too readily causing embolism, indurations and hard swelling. Kali mur. deserves a more extensive proving.
Kali nitricum used to be an old stand-by as sweet spirits of nitre for children who refused to urinate with fever. The scope of Kali nit. in our branch of the healing art is much broader. Peevish fretfulness and ennui, with acute external sensitiveness, describe the remedy mentally. The pains are stitching, cutting, stabbing, especially in the chest, where they occur frequently in the course of chronic phthisis. There is an asthmatic picture with loose rattling cough at 3 a.m. There is a sour taste in the throat.
The point of attack centers mainly on abdominal and pelvic organs, causing colic, diarrhoea and dysentery. There is an inky-black colic, diarrhoea and dysentery. There is an inky- black menorrhagia that is a differentiating features, as no other remedy can equal it for blackness.
The nervous remedy of the group is Kali phosphoricum. Besides the vein of Kali symptoms that run through the remedy, namely, early morning waking, the peculiar mouth, the severe action on the skin, the aggravation after coitus, and the sensitiveness to touch, there is a definite mental picture. Mechanical injuries, blows, sexual excitement, indulged or suppressed, cause a morose, irritable, profoundly depressed, lethargic, and unsociable person. Everything is just too much.
In spite of the sluggishness, there is an easily aroused temper, causing the patient to fly into such a passion that articulation is practically lost. Kali phos. corresponds to those numerous cases in which there is increased sensitiveness to all impressions from a weakness of the vital organismic resistance or control, that is, weakened states from shock, mental or physical, from overstrain or overdrain of the system. It is indicated in menstrual headaches and neurasthenia. The color of the excretions is golden or orange yellow.
The next remedy in the group is Schusslers Pulsatilla-Kali sulphuricum. The leading indications for this remedy are still those given by Schussler-the YELLOW color of the discharges, the denunded and scaling of epidermal and mucous surfaces with yellow catarrh, the aggravation from warmth and amelioration in open air as Pulsatilla. all of the symptoms are worse in the evening. Kali sulf. is like Pulsatilla, but it is not as mild and yielding and is chronically cold and acutely warm in contrast to the latter.
Causticum frequently rivals Kali carb. as the typical remedy of the group. Its exact chemical composition is not accurately known. With Causticum, there is great weakness, such as characterize the potash salts generally. It is a faint-like weakness, or sinking of strength with trembling from care, grief, or sorrow of long standing or from disease. The weakness progressing until we have gradually appearing paralysis is common with Causticum and attacks, in general way, the right side, involving both voluntary and involuntary muscles.
There is also a local paralysis of the vocal chords, muscles of deglutition, of the tongue, eyelids, face, bladder, and extremities. As with Gelsemium and Sepia, there is drooping of the eyelids. neuralgic affections are also common with this remedy and are generally of an obstinate character. Mentally, the Causticum mood is melancholy, sad and hopeless, apt to look on the dark side of everything. There is also timidity and nervous anxiety. With this, there is restlessness at night when the legs are always on the go.
The most frequent sensation is one of soreness and rawness. Causticum, passes stool best standing, and dribbles urine on exertion, coughing or sneezing, even involuntarily during sleep. There are the raw haemorrhoids worse when walking or straining even to the voice. The cough doesnt seem deep enough to afford relief. Causticum is also used for the after effects of burns.
The thumbnail sketches are the characteristics of the more common Kalis. As you can readily see, they cover all three miasmatic states and practically every pathologic state known in their pathogenesis. These sketches by no means give a complete picture of any remedy, so it my hope to have afforded a brief review stimulus for the further study of this useful family of remedies.
