January 19, 1929. Mrs. S., age 72, came in yesterday complaining of a terrible “cold” contracted last September, another in October, and another in November. She had allopathic treatment with no relief.
The face was pale and thin.
Cough ever since the “cold” in September, worse coming in from outdoors, (Bry.) worse rising in bed (motion), (Bry.) hurts the chest.
The expectoration is frothy.
The arms feel heavy and it hurts to raise them (motion) (Bry.).
There is thirst for large quantities (Bry.).
The chest is sore and lame (Bry.).
The bowels are constipated.
There is a tired feeling.
She is chilly all over.
Bryonia 50M.
February 2, 1929. The cold grew gradually better for two weeks and then disappeared after a terrible coughing spell. After this the chronic symptoms began to appear.
Pain in the right hypochondrium, worse on motion, better by heat.
Thirsty.
Sleep fairly good when not in pain.
Bowels, a stool every day, hard balls at times.
Appetite usually good.
Face, tip of nose red, red spot on forehead between the eyes.
Sulphur 6M.
March 12, 1929. The liver pain was quite severe for 3 days. Bile came up into the throat when the pain was most severe but it went back again. When first given Sulphur the tongue had a brown coating.
Today there is a headache in the forehead from indigestion. She used to have terrible bilious headaches.
In 1890 she had “flu”, at which time tumors came under the left jaw. The doctor removed one tumor and while so doing cut the facial nerve, causing paralysis of the left side of the face. The left eye turned in. He wanted to remove the eye but she would not allow it. Dr. Lee sutured the nerve and after a while the face straightened out and the eye regained its normal position. The drum of the left ear is partially destroyed and she is somewhat deaf in the right ear.
March 24, 1929. She says she has some pain in the liver, off and on all the time, worse the past few days.
The tongue is brown again.
The hands and feet are always cold.
Chills.
Headache through eyes, off and on.
Bowels, a stool nearly every day, and sometimes twice a day.
Nose not so red.
The face is filling out. She has put on some flesh, has more color, and is healthier looking.
Sleeps well when she first goes to bed, then wakens and cant sleep until it is time to get up. Then she wants to sleep.
While she was in the hospital for the nerve suture, her feet used to burn so that she struck them out of the bed (Sulph.).
Sulphur 55M.
April 1, 1929. She has been gradually growing better, with only an occasional shooting pain in the liver.
Face: The red spot is gone from between the eyes.
The nose is nearly normal.
The pain over the liver lasted a few days and then appeared in the upper part of the left hypochondrium. This lasted a few days and then went to her back. I examined her back and found a displaced vertebra which she had since a fall at the age of 12. I replaced the none but she complained of the pain for three weeks although not quite so bad. She still had a little pain in the back when she left me. After she left I discovered she had been taking aspirin. I had been wondering why the backache lasted so long. This explained it.
She was not an intelligent woman, and I couldnt do much with her. She thought she knew more than I did. She lacked ambition. Her brother wrote her that she needed some “ambition powders”. She wanted to sit up till 12 or 1 oclock and then lie in bed in the morning. I tried once to see how long she would sleep. It was 12 oclock before she woke up. She didnt sleep much the fore part of the night but sat up and read or sewed. She was lazy. In Herings Guiding Symptoms under Sulphur one finds: “He is too lazy to arouse himself up and too unhappy to live”. She said she didnt want to live. She had high ideas about living but couldnt live up to them because of lack of money of which she has little. She was somewhat stoop-shouldered, which is Sulphur. It was a typical Sulphur case and it is too bad she was not intelligent enough to follow through to a cure.
The character of this interloping influence, which we call morbid, is various -it may be spiritual, material or vital. If spiritual, it has entered into the sphere of the personality through the psychical side, through the passions and emotions, or the intellectual labors; if material, through the material or molecular element, such as the chemisms, and mechanical injuries; and if vital, it has entered through the Life, as we see in the specific actions of drugs, aside from their chemical properties, the influence of other personalities, and the specific actions of miasms, as fevers, exanthemata, etc.
Now in whatever way, through whatever channel, the morbid element may effect an entrance into the personality of the man, the manifestations of that taint are always such as involve the Life principle of the Ego. The symptoms of a disease, in other words, are always dependent on the vitality, with the single exception of mechanical solution of continuity, and even in this, there is something secondary to the injury, which something cannot occur except under the involvement of the Life. Here then we perceive three methods in which a morbid element may come within the sphere of the personality, and as a matter of course, the morbid element must have contracted affinities for some one of the three entities which make up the individual.-American Homoeopathic Review,1858.
