Read by title before I.H.A., Bureau of Materia Medica, June 26, 1936.
Many of the best known remedies are still not known sufficiently. Symptoms have shades and tints which, if known, make the prescribing easier and surer. Proving of drugs should be continued, but we seem to lack the courage and self- sacrificing spirit of the fathers of homoeopathy who have built the firm foundation of our science. Its edifice, however, is low as yet and building should be continued. Where are the men who will carry additional stones on their strong shoulders up the ladder and lay them on the structure, fixing them there firmly so that they will never slip off and fall down?.
In the meanwhile clinical experience can serve us as a substitute for provings or rather as a complement to the provings of those remedies that have been already proved to a certain extent, proved at least to such an extent as to allow their clinical application once in a while.
Using Silicea I often had the feeling that clinical experiences with it could furnish us with many symptoms which have not been brought out in the provings as yet. A clinical symptom repeatedly cured with a remedy, though never produced in any proving, may assume the value of a proved symptom and can be incorporated into our materia medica as a lasting acquisition.
Silicea has such a wide scope and depth, that an enormous number of far pushed provings would be necessary in order to obtain all the symptoms that may appear in Silicea patients. In recent years I have observed a few symptoms that Silicea cured permanently and that I have not found recorded in Herings Guiding Symptoms nor listed in Kents Repertory. Though this study is only in its beginning, I wish to submit it to your criticism and, if your observation should confirm its correctness, it may become helpful to every prescriber.
MIND.
Weeps when telling symptoms (5 cases). The Guiding Symptoms have only: “Sensitive, weeping mind; weeps every evening.” EXcept some Sepia cases who wept in my office, I never had other than Silicea cases weeping when telling symptoms.
In general alone <. yet wants to be alone when sick or tired.
Fears dogs, cats and other animals.
Talkative, hasty talking, yet often says wrong things.
EYES.
Astigmatism, hollow, sunken.
NOSE.
Tip of nose hot, burning, mostly when eating warm foods.
FACE.
Cold lips; hard, not suppurating pimples.
TEETH.
Covered with a black film which cannot be brushed off with toothbrush (4 cases). It looks as if a sootlike powder had been precipitated from saliva and settled fast on the teeth. Teeth decay at the edge of gums.
STOMACH.
Burning in the stomach, extending upward along the oesophagus into the throat and mouth and lips, sometimes making also chest, shoulders, neck, face and head burn. Always hungry. All-gone feeling an hour before eating which feeling causes headache.
RECTUM.
Constipation < when travelling.
BLADDER.
Frequent urination when nervous.
FEMALE GENITALIA.
Retroversion and retroflexion uteri, uterus adherent to the rectum. Prolapsus uteri lying >, lifting <. Uterus pressing against rectum. Enlarged uterus, subinvolution of uterus. Soreness of the right ovary. Menses first dark, then bright red.
CHEST.
A few minutes after going to sleep, that is, after she has fallen into a state of full relaxation, a sensation comes on as if heart had stopped beating and lungs stopped breathing with a feeling that she was going to die and a feeling of sinking or falling through space, lying on left side <.
Heart pounds after that. Lachesis relieved for one month only and a repetition of it was decidedly injurious, while Sil. had permanent effect not only with respect to these symptoms, but to the general condition also.
Little warts around nipples developing after nursing babies.
BACK.
The 7th cervical vertebra sore. This vertebra and the neighboring area are the seat of all kinds of pains.
Tightness from occiput to 7th cervical vertebra, night <. Fatigue in lumbar section of the spinal column, morning <.
EXTREMITIES.
Trochanter magnus hurts, if lain upon too long.
Tubera ischiadica hurt, if sat upon too long.
Thin bones.
Hips cold.
Varicose veins sensitive. White spots, the size of a dime, on legs.
Calluses on soles, tender.
Warts on fingers, especially on their lateral surfaces.
Ankles and backs of feet itch.
Feet cold and burning or hot and burning, uncovers them at night, walks barefooted, likes coolness of the floor. Left foot colder than the right.
SLEEP.
Sleepy in warm room, goes to sleep when reading.
Sleepless when overtired.
CHILL.
Emotions make chill.
PERSPIRATION.
Perspires on the side not lain on. Kents Repertory has this symptom, but only for face. I only had one patient who had slight fever – probably tuberculous and always perspired in sleep, yet so that whenever he lay on the right side, he perspired on the left side of his body; whenever he lay on the left side he perspired on the right side, and the line of demarcation between the dry and perspiring skin was exactly in the middle of the anterior surface of the body in front and exactly along the spine in the back.
His perspiration smells as if a thousand mice were in the room.
SKIN.
Cheloid itches when warm.
GENERALITIES.
Heat of summer makes her languid, but she likes warm.
Heat makes him sick, yet he wants it.
Wet heat <, hot room <, too close to a radiator <, yet warm room>.
Cold wet penetrates his body.
Kent, in his lecture on materia medica, gives an admirable description of Silicea, showing that he knew more about it than he could have learned from the Guiding Symptoms. What he says when he speaks of teeth and throat should be added to the Guiding Symptoms, Should this work ever be published again. He emphasizes the difference between the acute and chronic Silicea patient.
In an old chronic case, broken down with suffering, the symptoms are worse after a bath, he wants warmth, dreads the cold and is always shivering. But, when there is an acute inflammation in the neck, the very opposite is present: he suffers from flushes of heat, an irregular flushing fever, cold extremities, while the upper part of the body is hot, sweat about the head and neck, sensation of heat and suffocation in a warm room. This will be present in quinsy and abscesses of the glands of the neck if acute.
Suffocation in a warm room should be especially noted as it is not listed in Kents Repertory in that rubric. I have found that not only in acute, but also in chronic fevers the Silicea patient may feel suffocated in a warm room and crave fresh air, if not too cold, and is worse in a warm room and worse by heat. I have missed many cures, because in Kents Repertory Sil. is not among the remedies that desire air and feel better from open air. With any fever Sil. patients may exhibit this symptom.
In chronic suppurative processes of the mediastinal or lung hilus glands, perimetritic, perityphlitic, cholecystic, pyelitic, pleuritic, etc., inflammations and tuberculous troubles of all the possible organs with subfebrile temperatures Sil. may cure the fever in a very short time, and produces cures of such beauty and importance that it is a pity that for the most part surgeons are consulted first by such cases and that the public is completely ignorant as to where real salvation can be found.
I cannot agree with Kent in maintaining that Sil. has a slow action. Our remedies cannot be divided into slow and quick, long and short acting, chronic and acute. It is not the remedy that acts, it is the body that acts, the remedy only pulls the trigger, and it is up to the organism to fight the disease. In acute diseases this action will be always quick, no matter which remedy, providing it is indicated; in chronic always slow, no matter which remedy. A stone hard tumor can only be formed by slow apposition of the morbid material and Sil. can cure only by slow absorption. A felon may develop over night and Sil. may cure it over night. Kent contradicts himself on this point by citing the case of a physician – probably himself – who contracted asthma by over-heating and sudden cooling off and Sil. cured him as quickly as he was taken ill. Many beautiful cures of acute diseases could be made, if this distinction between acute and chronic remedies would be forgotten and Sil. given when indicated without regard to the acuteness or chronicity of the patient.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH.
By Characteristic Symptoms I understand such symptoms as have been repeatedly produced upon the healthy, and cured in the sick, by each respective drug; and such symptoms especially as assist to distinguish it from all, or most other, drugs, endeavoring by stating the drugs analogous to a given symptom, to compare the one with all other drugs, as regards their similarities and their differences.
The more frequently a symptom has been produced and cured, the more it increases its relative value to the student of materia medica; and while these symptoms may often determine the choice of a remedy in a given case, pathology must determine the relative value of the various symptoms presenting to us the disease to be treated. While, for instance, grinding of the teeth in encephalitis is a very important symptom, it is much less so in disturbances of the abdominal organs, and would not occupy the same rank when selecting a remedy. – A. LIPPE, M.D., Preface to Key of the Materia Medica.
SILICEA
Read by title before I.H.A., Bureau of Materia Medica, June 26, 1936.
