The characteristic weakness is often due to loss of body fluids (blood. pus, perspiration, mucus, semen, milk, diarrhoea) and often during convalescence. All hemorrhages are dark, lumpy and accompanied by air hunger.
Taste bitter; tongue coated white. Patient often bulimia, but is full after a few bites. Intermittent fever-like spells with disturbed digestion, nausea and vomiting of undigested foods, which a had lain in stomach too long. Painless diarrhoea after eating and night, stinking and weakening.
Characteristic is the periodic occurrence of all complaints, the intense weakness and evening and nocturnal aggravations, and from Amelioration from warmth. FERRUM
Lean, delicate, weakly, irritable patients, especially, women with pale, sallow complexion, which suddenly becomes red upon the slightest excitement. Mucous membranes pale; body cold, especially feet and legs, which swell easily; chilliness even with red face and external warmth; much thirst; transparent skin shows dilated veins; pulse fast and hard with constant, slightly elevated temperature. All complaints are due to disturbed circulation: anemia, chlorosis, ischemia, hyperemia; often they are connected with fast growth.
Inclination to congestion to head, vertigo (especially when walking downward, or looking at water); pain in forehead and temples : congestive, pressing, hammering, throbbing, pulsating (as if bursting); worse from noise, not better from cool applications. Palpitation of heat, congestion, epistaxis and hemoptysis. Respiration is superficial; sleep disturbed, frequently much night sweats. Extreme weakness to exhaustion demanding lying down often and long. Patient very sensitive to noise. All complaints are periodic.
Appetite changeable; aversion to meat, which causes stomach pains. Food remains long in stomach and is often vomited undigested, usually during, or soon after eating, as also nights. Characteristic for this remedy is the exhaustion as well as as the : periodicity of all complaints. Aggravation from noise, excitement, warmth, nights, while sitting or lying down, during or after meals. Amelioration from walking slowly in open air.
NATRUM MURIATICUM.
Patients (especially women) of sunken eyes surrounded by dark rings, of pale, gray or yellow complexion and dry wrinkly, unelastic, unhealthy skin. In spite of being chilly, inclined to perspirations, tolerate heat poorly, especially of the sun. Dryness of mucus membranes with sore lips. Characteristic is the mapped tongue and the sensation of a hair on it. Disturbed nutrition is the basis of all troubles: emaciation in spite of good appetite, scrophulosis, malaria, herpes, falling of hair, constipation.
These patients are sensitive to cold drafts, exceptionally weak, easily exhausted both physically and mentally; power of concentration is diminished, as well as memory; melancholy, hypochondriacal moods, or irritable depression; they do not want to be sympathized with, that angers them; easily offended; disappointment and grief act deeply and lastingly; often they dislike company.
Upon exertion of eyes and mind anemic “school headache” appears. The throbbing migraine in forehead and temples, especially mornings, accompanying constipation, is due to eye strain, and better from rest. There also is palpitation of the heart, or heat flutter (Basedow) causing syncope when lying on left side; backache better from lying on hard surface, and pain in the small of the back better from pressure.
Aversion to rye bread (the customary bread of the working class in Germany. SWS.) and fat great desire for salt; very thirsty; pyrosis with empty feeling in stomach. Constipation with dry, crumbly, hard stool. passed with difficulty; eruptions especially on edge of hairy scalp; watery coryza with loss of taste and smell. All complaints appear periodically, even at certain hours. Aggravation from moist, cold weather; at the seaside, music in room, in spring, from 10 to 11 A.M. Better in open air and from cold baths.
Oxygenoid, hyperthyroid types with pale face and dry, dirty, scaly, burning, waxy skin; mouth and throat dry, burning; tongue dry and shows imprint of teeth; constant thirst, takes frequent the patients look emaciated, are weakly, exhausted from least exertion; hypersensitive to pain; much physical and mental restlessness with fear; pedantic, irritable, melancholy and despondency; fear of health, yet sometimes contemplate suicide.
These patients are very chilly and desire warmth, except during headache; tendency to fever, weak heart; nerve irritation followed by paralytic weakness; hemorrhages; anemia, chlorosis, leukemia, sepsis, ulcerations, edema and dropsical condition. Moist eczema. Periodical headache, usually left sided (migraine). Bone disease. Dry cough worse nights and in cold air. Loss of appetite with pyrosis, vomiting; stinking diarrhoea with colicky pain.
Characteristics are burning pains of mucous membranes and skin. All diseased conditions usually appear periodically and change quickly to severer forms. All secretions are thin, watery, acrid, of foul door, even cadaverous.
The patients desire to lie with head high. The symptoms are aggravation from cold, rest, especially around midnight (till about 2 A.M.); with the exception of the headache warmth relieves.
SILICEA.
The lymphatic-psoric-scrofulous type of this remedy corresponds essentially to the carbonitrogenous hypersensitive constitution; pale, full of fear, nervous, easily discouraged, frightened, melancholy, ennui, sad; children who have large heads and open fontanelles, of large abdomen; remain small and thin; delayed walking and talking; lack of life force keep them cold; pale, yellow, cold skin; glands enlarged and hard; tendency to bone curvatures.
Generally : brittle nails and hair falling out; skin poorly nourished (atrophic) and hypersensitive, hence dry, easily wounded, healing slowly; itching and formication not relieved by scratching; sensitive to touch; tendency to stays, suppuration and fistulae; perspiration of unpleasant odor, especially of head, axillae and feet (with rawness between toes); emaciation in spite of good eating; trembly; very weak physically and mentally. Can not concentrate, every little noise disturbs; restless sleep; nervous excitement with vertigo, congestions to hemorrhages.
SCROFULOSIS (glands are itching more than paining) is the chief sickness of the patients; many of them have skin troubles and tuberculosis of bones. Always disturbed nutrition of connective tissue bones and mucous membranes, leading to atrophy and necrosis. The periodic Silicea headaches are from cervical spine to head, over right eye, with heat and congestion; at the height of attack nausea and vomiting, followed by copious urination and disturbed vision; better from warmth; worse from mental work. light, noise and motion.
Characteristic is the sensation of a hair on the tongue and in throat. In constipation it is typical that stool slips back again. All excretions, also of ulcers and perspiration, are thin, acrid and of foul odor.
While rest and warmth relieve wind, cold, wet, change of weather, motion, exertion and even light touch aggravate. The patients feel worse at night.
SULPHUR.
Main remedy for the carbo-nitrogen constitutions and treating lax functions (“physical, physical stagnation,” lacking reaction). Peculiarities are: care-worn, old looks; eyes have black rings; lips and eyelids are red; mouth dry, tongue coated; swollen nose; skin taut, wrinkly (as in old people), dry, dirty looking, full of pimples. Hair coarse, dull, falling, usually blond; stooped posture due to weak back (asthenic habitus); general weakness and emaciation; sleep light with exciting dreams; awakens often (cat naps) and finds it difficult to doze off again.
Head heavy with heat in vertex; burning of palms and soles of feet. Much thirst, little appetite. Here is the type of the neurasthenic “stay indoors”; easily tired, of slow comprehension and poor memory; but again easily excited by noise, often irritable and grouchy; sleep during the day, but unrefreshing night-rest. Careless and slouchy about his appearance, is of little use in practical life, timid, brooding, often melancholic, introspect, selfish.
Chronic circulatory disturbances are basic factors in the sickness of such patients: arterial hyperemia of certain organs with redness and heat, burning; venous stasis in the abdominal organs: portal stasis, liver engorgement, hemorrhoids. During the day the feet are cold, but nights they burn; feet sore from sweats. Patients take cold easily, convalesce slowly and are prone to relapses. Renewing of tissues and body fluids is defective. There is inclination to scrofulosis and tuberculosis, rachitis, rheumatism and especially diseases of the skin. Eruptions and ulcers itch and burn, especially nights in warmth of bed; aggravation from scratching and cold water.
The sulphur headache is congestive: in forehead, with cold feet, vertigo, ear noises, heat, better in warm room, worse from stooping motion, cough in open air.
