When lately visiting an old school physician where the conversation always turns to the importance of constitutional therapy, he demands that in disposition to sickness heredity must be especially considered. It is clear to him that the name of the disease is absolutely not important for the treatment.
To the homoeopathic physician the physical and psychical character of the patient with all inherited and acquired peculiarities of the sickness, and their similarity to the symptoms of a certain remedy or poison are very important. to such a physician enumerated; yes, to him every well-proved remedy presents a separate types.
Thus gold and its salts influence above all the heart and arterial system in the form of high arterial pressure, which is associated with a thick-set body and apoplectic habitus, as well as skin affections with many fold exanthema forms.
As early as Avicenna (Arabian physician 980 to 1037) it was held that gold strengthened the heart more than any other medicine, cured melancholia, bad dreams and fantasy, and created a happy disposition. In wounds it prevented “proud flesh” and caused a sweet breath. Here (about 1000 years ago) we already find a knowledge which in many ways is superior to the modern method of killing bacilli. the consideration of the patients melancholic mental conditions already excluded the general use of gold salts where we meet parasitic diseases which are cured by increasing the patients resistance to the diseased organism, as we see in syphilis, tuberculosis recurrence and streptococcic invasion.
The old school does not yet know why some patients with such infection react favorably to gold salts, why many others are not influenced in the least. It is generally accepted that metallic catalysers are here active, but only homoeopathy accepts the specific constitutions ability to activate resistance, and thus makes it possible to shunt of “refractory” cases.
Which gold salt is best used therapeutically is often unimportant, only in iodine compounds special indications are considered. The simpler gold salts Aurum chloratum, Aurum muriaticum natronatum, Aurum sulphuratum and Aurum colloidal are preferable, if indicated, and less expensive than most organic compounds of gold, which the old school used for parenteral treatment.
Paracelsus (1493 to 1541) recommended gold for leprosy and syphilis; but that was again forgotten, because exact indications were not known, and therefore no certain results could be accomplished. Hahnemann in his valuable apothecary Lexicon (1795) opposed it and said: “This metal seems to be the mainspring of the entire healing art rather than the remedy”.
Really, I have often experienced that even our high potency adherents of the strictest inclination in their medical practice knew hot to evaluate Aurum even in the unpotentized form (when we still had such). Hahnemann later changed his views after he had made provings on himself and his students with soluble fold preparations. At that time French investigators used Aurum frequently in many diverse disease, but again without exact indications.
It is imperative briefly and sharply to described the Aurum type: We must have before us, if the remedy is to unfold its action, a usually older person of plethoric, pyknic (thickest), solid structure-habitus apoplecticus-with fullblooded, red face, high blood pressure, slow and heavy motions and of deep melancholia inclined to suicide, and yet very irritable upon slightest contradiction.
Only in such patients the clinical use of Aurum salts can be of results if the further indications are present: Skin and mucous membrane symptoms of different kinds up to ozaena and perforating nasal ulceration, chronic bone and glandular diseases with nocturnal pains, tubercular diseases of many organs, arteriosclerotic changes with higher blood pressure, chronic congestion with hypertrophy of organs (testicles, uterus, ovaries), essential hypertonia, coronal-sclerotic cardiac diseases, aortic lues-in which Iodum salts are to be preferred- cardiac asthma, tertiary lues of diverse organs, especially the eyes (chorioretinitis and detachment of retina) and of the cerebrum.
For differential diagnoses we must especially consider (regarding skin and mucosa): Mercurius preparations-fetor oris, salivation, etc.+.
Kali bichromicum-yellow tough mucus.
Ozaena and perforating ulcers of palate and nose: Kali bichromicum and Mercurius; pains in bones the same and also asafoetida-fetid odor of discharges, flatulence.
Glandular diseases: Arsenicum album-with anemia and exhaustion.
Thus Aurum belongs to the exactly characterized remedies, and it has proved most valuable in suitable cases.
A case in my practice was very impressive-when in my early experience (about 50 years ago) the characteristic Aurum symptoms were not so well known: A young merchant of the above mentioned type suffered from tertiary syphilis with the special nose-bone and brain symptoms; the customary anti-luetic treatment was minus sufficient results; rather I was called one morning because the patient had used a razor, severed his throat and was dead. Discite monite. Even today I am sure that treatment with Aurum salts could have saved him, while Arsenicum preparations (which were at that time well-known to homoeopathic physicians as antisyphilitics) did not correspond to the tertiary stage.
Barium and its salt. It also is very significant in its symptoms and often indicated, especially in diseases of children and in the aged when sickness has become chronic. In my soluble I have especially used Baryta iodata because it is quite soluble, and the Iodum content well supports the action of the metal. Unfortunately, it is not very stable and should therefore be renewed very often.
Characteristic is its action in children who develop slowly mentally and physically, and are disposed to chronic glandular swellings, less to mucous membrane inflammation. The abdomen is “big”, while the rest of the body is emaciated in spite of eating well; at times there is bulimia; this is especially characteristic of Baryta iodata. The head is disproportionately larger, but the mentality is dull. The head is very sensitive to cold and wetness (as in Silicea) without much perspiration. the child is “full of fear,” dull of mind, slow in learning to speak, and does not care to play. In school it is always, behind.
The face may be bloated, but also often cold and emaciated. This remedy acts promptly on tonsils which may be chronically enlarged and easily affected by cold with inclination to suppuration and descending inflammation of chronic bronchitis. Since there also is inclination to malodorous foot sweats, the throat troubles are aggravated when feet get cold. Plainly, all this is the picture of torpid scrofulosis, similar but more pronounced and more severe than under Calcarea carbonica or iodata.
Exhaustion and sensation of heaviness one finds not only in children but also in the age,d especially in the “pyknic (thickset) constitution with sullen, depressed disposition, very misanthropic with dislike for work, yawning and sleepiness, weak sight, poor hearing, nocturnal salivation, fetor oris from tough mucus secretion which patient does not notice, but awful to others when patient gets close to them on account of his defective hearing. Chronic coryza with coughing. Crusty eczema on upper lip, nose, ears or eyelids makes him very unsympathetic.
Prominent is the action on heart and blood vessels, especially on the brain with arteriosclerotic symptoms, but also directly on the central nervous system. Large doses produce in animals peculiar tonic muscle jerks and cramps, followed by paralysis.
The special toxic action of Baryta on heart and blood vessels in the aged where these organs have become weakened indicates it often in weakened functional energy, hence frequently in vertigo with stupefaction, neuralgia, lessened intellect and memory; patients who become taciturn and dull, to idiocy and senile dementia. Characteristic is at times a sensation of spiderwebs on face, or tightness of scalp, which may precede an apoplectic attack. Improvement in open air is very pronounced. With increased blood pressure, cardiac action is weak, easily more rapid with perceptible palpitation and sensation of weakness in cardiac region.
In severe acute poisonings, which occur rarely because Barium is used very little by industry, we find intensive vomiting and diarrhoea, which have hardly any characteristics, hence do not interest us.
Differential diagnostically are to be mentioned among the gland remedies the chemically related chalk salts. These have, contrary to the Barium combinations, aggravation in open air. They are not so deep-acting, their mentality is livelier, especially in the Calcarea phosphorica, which also had a more slender physique; its glandular swellings are more painful than under Baryta, as are also bone and joint troubles.
Phosphorus has less tonsillar swelling than swelling of the salivary and palatine glands with much mucus and aggravation from swallowing; it has more changeable moods, irritability and mental alertness; slender physique, inclination to haemorrhages, fast pulse, aggravation in open air. It is more suitable to middle age; its cardiac weakness is connected with congestions.
