The spider poison, Tarantula cubensis, has all of the restlessness and hysterical tendency of the Tarantula hispanica, but with it is has the added symptomatology of malignant suppuration and unhealthy abscesses, especially carbuncles, with burning, stinging pains, great weakness and diarrhoea. The pains are intense and most troublesome, and their effect on the nervous system is to produce hysterical manifestations. The parts affected are usually of a purplish hue, with a tendency to slough-again venous stasis. This remedy is to be compared with Lachesis and Vipera.
Rhus tax. can be of immeasurable service to the physician in these desperately sick patients from septic conditions. Probably the most outstanding indication for Rhus is its lameness, stiffness and soreness. This is particularly so when the patient is first moved. It ranks with Arnica in the bed being hard and the parts lain on being sore and lame. It is aggravated very much from touch. In Rhus conditions, there is a tendency for the inflammation to follow up the tendons, causing them to become inflamed and sore, along with the constitutional symptoms.
The parts become very red, shining and there is swelling, often covered with small white vesicles. In erysipelatous swellings with this eruption it is one of the first remedies for us to consider, as in cellular inflammations. The glands become swollen, hot and painful. With all complaints there is restlessness, aching and soreness; better from motion, but aggravated from beginning to move. Rhus tox. will abort many of these septic states almost of their beginning, and it will be curative even after the condition has been thoroughly established, when these characteristic indications are present.
One of the great nosodes that has been used extensively in septic conditions is Pyrogen. Many times it has been used our of its sphere of action. Pyrogen is the Aconite of the pyrexia state. In other words, it corresponds to a profound poisoning, but with many of the acute and active manifestations that we find in fevers in general at the beginning of Aconite poisoning. H.C. Allen claimed for it great results in septic states when the best selected remedies fail to relieve or permanently improve, analogous to the action of Sulphur or Psorinum. It has a violent chill, heat and sweat. Dry heat violent aching of the limbs; restlessness, ameliorated by heat and motion; wants to be covered. It vies with Sulphur in aversion to being washed; however, hot bathing is grateful. Oftentimes the patient will not sleep in bed, but will sleep when slightly rocked in a chair.
Pains are worse sitting and resting. The ameliorated when first beginning to move. Wherever pus is present and pent up, with hectic fever and the above symptoms, it will do excellent work. It is said that it will abort puerperal fever. In the profound states, with intense heat, the bed feels very hard, like Arnica and Rhus: It has the confusion of the mentality, simulating Baptisia; the inability to co-ordinate the parts. The Pyrogen fever often reaches 106, but with this exceedingly high temperature there is one marked peculiarity, that the ratio between the fever and the pulse becomes disorganized, and we have the high temperature with a low pulse, always a sign of great danger.
In other words, the pulse and temperature are out of rhythm. Indications of poisoning where Pyrogen will do good work are conditions where there is great pain where the natural exudations from an open wound are scanty. There is violent burning in abscesses, like Arsenicum and Tarantula. Marked offensiveness; putrid discharges. This is one of the great finds and help-meets in septic, surgical and puerperal fevers.
We have spoken of a few of the wonderful possibilities that are in the homoeopathic materia medica for these dread septic conditions. It is only possible in a paper like this to speak of a few, but we leave it to each one to become familiar with the tools of our profession, and bear in mind this; that our instrument case is filled with tools whose edges are sharp; whose penetration is great; and when properly used will relieve desperate conditions that are beyond the reach of the humanly wielded scalped; and above all, these tools will take precedence over empiricism at all times.
DERBY, CONN.
