Aconite: Suddenness of onset, great anxiety and fear with acute shooting pains, violent inflammation, numbness and tingling, red, shiny swelling and symptoms of acute febrile disturbance, often coming on at night, generally marks this patient. Exposure to dry, cold weather, draught of cold air or checked perspiration from such, form the most likely etiological consideration.
Actaea spicata: Small joints, fingers, wrists, ankles, and toes are swollen and red, worse from motion, touch and slight fatigue. Paralytic weakness and lameness of arms and hands with tearing, tingling pains and pulsations over the whole body. (Compare Caul. and Cimicifuga).
Antimonium crud: Twitching, jerking and pain in muscles. Brittleness of nails with a tendency to grow out of shape and an inclination to develop warts, corns and callosities on hands and soles, are conditions most often found with this patient. “Some of the worst cases of chronic rheumatism have been cured by this remedy, guided by the excessive tenderness of the soles of the feet.” (Nash).
Apis mel: Blanched puffiness with peculiar stinging pains, sensitiveness, soreness, bruised feeling and stiffness and awkwardness of the hands, dropping things, are very characteristic symptoms of this remedy.
Arnica: Soreness, lameness and bruised feeling as from injury, as if beaten, with fear of being touched, are characteristic symptoms. Whenever this remedy is required the cause of the disease is likely due to over-exertion or trauma, whether immediate, systematic or remote.
Belladonna: Joints swollen, shiny, uniformly red. Shifting pains, often coming suddenly and going as suddenly. The skin feels dry and there is pungent heat over the affected joints. These patients are worse from touch and the least jar of the part is almost unbearable. Acuteness and violence are predominant in this patients symptom picture and mentally he is perverse, ugly, abusive and often violent.
Berberis vulgaris: “It is especially to be thought of in arthritic and rheumatic affections, when these back symptoms, (i.e. persistent pains in back with turbid, flocculent, copious, mucous or reddish, mealy, or blood-red urinary sediment) connected with urinary alterations are present”. (Nash). The shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, and heels are affected, with swelling, stitching and pain in the balls of the feet when walking. Weariness and lameness of the legs with characteristic urinary symptoms.
Bryonia alba: Joints swollen, red and hot with stitching and tearing pains,worse on least movement and ameliorated by lying absolutely still. Exposure to cold after heat or to draughts, cold winds or suppressed discharges or the eruption of the acute exanthemata may be etiological.
Calc. carb.: Rheumatoid pains, arthritic nodosities, tearing pains, rawness and soreness of feet with coldness and sour sweat. Palms of hands sweaty. Sensation as if the patient had cold, damp stockings on, especially in fair, fat, flabby individuals, hypersensitive to cold. When Calcarea is indicated there is likely to be a history of working in cold water, wet clay, or standing a lot on damp, cold ground.
Calc. phos.: Pain and stiffness, coldness and numbness, as if asleep, characterize these rheumatoid symptoms, usually worse in fall and spring with the melting snow. It may have a definite retarding and reparative effect on cartilaginous degeneration and osteoporosis. (N.B.: Calc. fluor. is often useful as an intercurrent with this remedy).
Caulophyllum: Rheumatic affection of the smaller joints, fingers, toes, etc. (Actaea spic.). The pains are spasmodic, severe, erratic, with drawing, stiffness, and changing place every few minutes. (Puls.). These symptoms are most often found in women during gestation or women suffering with menstrual complaints.
Causticum: “Rheumatic and arthritic inflammations with contractions of the flexors and stiffness of the joints.” (Nash). Tearing pains in hands, arms, and dullness, weakness and numbness or burning in joints, or cracking and tension. Exposure to raw, cold air, cold draughts of air, or from getting wet with chilling, are most likely etiological factors. These symptoms are often relieved in damp, wet weather and warmth.
Chamomilla: “Violent rheumatic pains drive him out of bed at night; compelled to walk about.” (William Boericke). There is burning of the soles of the feet; he sticks them out of bed. (Puls., Med., Sulph.). Numbness with pain and paralytic loss of power in the legs. Dietetic abuses, especially stimulants, and emotional disturbance may be causative.
Cimicifuga: Rheumatic pains in muscles of neck and back; feeling lame, contracted; spine sensitive; rheumatism affecting the belly of muscles by preference. Stiffness in tendo achilles, restlessness, uneasiness and tensive aching and jerking of lower limbs. These symptoms are apt to be associated with menstrual difficulties and overstrain in nervous women. (Compare Caulophyllum).
Cinchona: Pains in joints, limbs and bones; drawing, tearing, as if strained, sore all over, obliging the patient to move, which gives relief (Rhus tox.). Weariness of joints, great debility, trembling, with numb sensations, worse from touch, draught of air, every other day, emotions and loss of vital fluids. These symptoms are often associated with those suffering from the malarial cachexia.
Colchicum: Arthritic pains in the joints, very sensitive to touch or movement. Limbs lame, weak and tingling pins-and-needles sensation in extremities. Oedematous swelling and coldness of legs and feet.” Affects markedly the muscular tissues, periosteum and synovial membranes of joints.” (W. Boericke). N.B.: A strong guiding symptom to the choice of this remedy is often an intense nausea from the smell of food. (Ars., Sepia).
Colchicine: The alkaloid from Colchicum is employed in 2x or 3x triturations by some practitioners for somewhat similar rheumatoid and gouty arthritis with intense pain and deformity of joints.
Dulcamara: “Stitching, tearing, rheumatic pains in limbs after exposure to cold, better by motion, worse at night, or in the evening, with some fever, sore, bruised feeling all over the body.” (Kent). Rheumatic symptoms apt to alternate with diarrhoea. A history of exposure to cold, wet weather, living in damp houses or working in cold, damp places or sudden changes of weather from warm and dry to cold and wet is strongly suggestive of this medicine.
Ferrum phos: The classical Biochemic remedy for the first stages of fever and inflammation. Joints painful and actively inflamed, from catching cold; palms hot and hands swollen and painful. The typical Ferrum phos. patient is an anaemic individual, but usually presents a false plethora and flushes easily. (Ferr. m.).
Formica rufa: Rheumatic pains; stiff and contracted joints; pains worse from motion and better from pressure. Weakness of lower extremities; suddenness of onset with restlessness and no relief from sweating; better from warmth, pressure and rubbing.
Gaultheria: Recommended for articular, inflammatory and muscular rheumatism. There is cystic and prostatic irritation with undue sexual excitement. (Note: The author once treated a very bad case of rheumatoid arthritis on whom wintergreen had been very much abused over many years and thus probably caused a thorough proving. His wife asked me to speak to him,about frequently sexual relationships, because notwithstanding his condition and over 60 years of age he expected this to happen nightly).
Ginseng: Rheumatism with bruised feeling in lower back and thighs, and burning, stiffness and cracking in joints, and with contraction, numbness and heaviness in the lower limbs, and a swollen, tight feeling in the hands.
Guaiacum: Rheumatic pains in shoulders, arms and hands. Rigid painfully swollen joints, intolerant of pressure and heat. Stinging and lancinating pains with contraction of limbs and a feeling of heat in parts. So-called growing pains in young people.
Iodine: Joints inflamed and painful, white swelling, gonorrhoeal rheumatism; upper extremities and nape of neck painful; cold hands and feet; acrid sweat of feet; pulsations in large arterial trunks. Nightly pains in joints and constrictive sensations. Withered and emaciated notwithstanding eating well, feels over hot and seeks a cool place.
Jacaranda caroba: Gonorrhoeal and syphilitic arthritis with morning soreness and stiffness of muscles, and rheumatic pains in right knee. (Used in tincture and lowest potencies).
Kali bich.: The rheumatic symptoms of this remedy are characterized by rapid shifting from place to place (Puls.). They are also inclined to alternate with dysentery (Abrot.) or gastric symptoms, which are very marked when present. Stiffness of limbs in morning; cracking in joints, soreness of bones to touch and deep pressure. Pains in shoulders, lameness, burning in forearms; pains in elbows; weakness and bruised feeling in hands and fingers with great tenderness to hard pressure. Marked rheumatic pains in hips and knees worse from walking.
