In the spreading chancroid that smarts and burns, Nitric acid will be indicated; but in that kind of ulceration, it will be a dangerous remedy to use, because it will heal up the chancre and eruptions will come out, and falling of the hair follows. You must let the chancre alone and prescribe for the patient. Under the present kind of teaching, the individual thinks the chancre ought to be healed up. If the remedy is acting well, the chancre begins to discharge and discharges copiously; then I know I have saved him from falling of the hair, sore throat and nightly distress. Nitric acid has the ulcers in the throat, ears, and genitals.
I forgot to mention its peculiar actin upon tubular organs, as the oesophagus, vagina and rectum, but especially on some of the sphincters.
There is a tendency to produce thickening of the cellular tissue of the mucous membrane and the tissue immediately beneath them. Stricture of the oesophagus, with difficult swallowing and finally, death from inanition.
Wherever it has produced inflammation, its characteristic ulcerations are present.
Infiltration and constriction of the vagina, also of the rectum, with copiously bleeding haemorrhoids and thickening of the mucous membrane, constriction and finally stricture and ulceration, with the sensation of a stick, attended with profuse, frequent bleeding. Such things are in keeping with Nitric acid.
For acute inflammation of the oesophagus, attended with so much swelling that the throat seems to close up, a great deal of pain, soreness, smarting and sticking from the pharynx to the oesophagus. Rhus tox. also produces it and is one of the common remedies. Quite a number of remedies have produced that state.
We notice in some constitutions a chlorotic condition, called “green sickness,” which comes on at puberty, with a scanty menstruation and a flow that is thin, pale and watery; if this is attended with a bloody-watery leucorrhoea, it is all the more like Nitric acid. These girls have a craving for chalk, dirt, lime, and starchy things, substances that grit in the mouth, like slate pencils. Such cravings belong to a very depraved state, Nitric acid produces such a state as that, and it is one of the medicines for such conditions.
Longing for fat, chalk, lime, earth. Longing for herring, which is in keeping with its longing for pungent things, like Hepar.
It is a very peculiar kind of appetite that belongs to the chlorotic state. Like Natrum mur. and Lycopodium and Pulsatilla, it has aversion to bread. Lycopodium has aversion to rye bread.
Nitric acid longs for meat and strong things, also starchy food. It is a peculiar thing that, in the crude state, Nitric acid produces ulceration with the same depraved state which, in the sick, is cured by high potencies of it. It does not lose its identity. What it does instantaneously, chemically, it does after a long time dynamically.
What is true of the external, is also true of the internal. You notice that when acid in the stomach becomes mixed with milk, it is likely to end in sour vomiting. We get this depraved condition even in the provings of the one-thousandth potency, where the patient cannot digest milk.
You mix milk with any of the acids and get a chemical change which sours the milk, and you are most surprised; but in the proving of a high potency the milk also sours in the stomach!.
There are some peculiar things that run through remedies as to their colors. Kali bichromicum has a yellow color, and when applied in a strong solution; it will cause the mucous membrane to be covered with yellowish, ropy mucus, and the membrane itself to ulcerate; but you also get this state of yellowish green in high potencies, the same kind of color!.
Hydrastis will produce a yellow-green tint, and when I used it in olden times, I have seen this produced on mucous surfaces. Hydrastis also produces this in high potencies; that is, the individual gets into such a state of the system that this same color of the discharge is produced, as if the crude drug had been mixed with it.
Is there any way to explain that? It is only a fact that can be observed.
There are a great many things that you have observed in chemistry which this will help you to fix in your mind. It need not always be so, but I have been struck with the frequency of the occurrence of such things.
Nitric acid produces some marked conditions of indigestion, sour stomach, sour eructations, always a sense of weakness in the stomach; everything he puts into the stomach stays there a long time. Nitric acid slows down, protracts the process of digestion. A large number of medicines have the same condition.
In the hypochondria we will see a group of symptoms. Inflammation of the liver with enormous enlargement; chronic inflammation of the liver; clay colored stools; pains in the region of the liver; stitches in the region of the liver; urine scanty and strong smelling. These are symptoms of congestion, and here it vies with Bryonia, Sepia, Nux, Lach., and others.
You will think of it in jaundice when the pains of Nitric acid are present. There may be depressed appetite, or ulcers of the mucous membrane which state finally brings on congestion of the liver. The hepatic symptoms alone would not make you think of Nitric acid. You might give Lach. or Bryonia, but the general symptoms of Nitric acid must be present in order to make you think of this drug.
These are only general symptoms, and of the lower grade of such.
If a patient comes into your office and tells you these general symptoms, you would think of Nitric acid, but would write them down, and several remedies would occur to you. If he declared that he had no other symptoms, you would be troubled, because there is nothing to individualize by. If you commence at the head and give him an examination, asking questions that he
cannot answer by “yes” or “no,” you will be able to see something. Say something like this: “You have said nothing about your nose or head.” When you come to the bladder, he will say, “Well, Doctor, the urine smells very strong.” Now you have your key to the whole case: “his urine smells like that of a horse.” The routine prescriber would have given Bryonia for the liver symptoms if he did not have the urinary troubles.
Bryonia might be a very good generic remedy. Natrum sulph. has these symptoms in a high degree. I bring this up, only to show that remedies might be indicated.
This grand image that I have given you must lead you up to that kind of a patient. Nitric acid would be your remedy in such a case.
There is another tendency of Nitric acid, and that is, to produce croupous exudations from mucous surfaces,as in the throat. A false membrane forms which is thick and leathery. False membrane is thrown off from the rectum in dysentery, and in connection with piles. It is stringy, leathery, ashy, like fibrous tissue, or looks like gristle. This is blown out from the nose, and sometimes forms upon ulcers, as in diphtheria and diphtheritic inflammation. It is not always due to the zymotic condition of diphtheria, but an analogous state. It is more like the croupous membrane that is thrown off in pseudo-membranous croup. It is a cartilaginous substance, hard and tough. This is a peculiar effect of Nitric acid. Sero-croupous discharges, as are found in dysentery, with much straining, burning in the rectum and anus, with the bloody-watery flow. This is the Nitric acid appearance of the stools.
The rectum feels full in the constipation, it has the sensation of sticks. If, in a haemorrhoidal condition the anus feels as if filled up with sticks, AEsculus is more likely to be the remedy. The prover said that which was expressive: “He felt as if there was a crows nest in the anus.” Piles are as large as a fist in AEsc. and sticking and jagging, as if the anus were full of sticks, analogous to Nitric acid.
Weight and distention, sensation of fullness and dragging down, “feels as if some feces remained in the rectum.” A great amount of oozing from the rectum of a bloody- watery nature. I always think of Nitric acid where there is a good deal of haemorrhoidal oozing from the rectum.
Very often Calcarea has been given in the haemorrhoidal condition, and it cures when the oozing has the smell of fish- brine. Calcarea has that as a strong characteristic. It may have done away with that oozing, and then Nitric acid will develop.
There is another feature of Nitric acid, and that is, dropsy of the prepuce in connection with gonorrhoea. The prepuce is distended like a water bag, sometimes causing paraphimosis.
These symptoms are troublesome, the swelling becomes enormous in proportion, and Nitric acid is commonly the remedy. Cannabis sativa has the condition, and if Cannabis sativa is repeated, as some of the books tell you to do, it will nearly always produce that peculiar formation upon the foreskin. That generally subsides on stooping the remedy; but a single dose, high, will give much more satisfaction. I sometimes have to resort to Fluoric acid for relief of the inflammation of the foreskin. It also has dropsy of the prepuce.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.