They oscillate and become excessive just as the general symptoms; here are some examples: hair is dry or watery, sunken or protruding, hot or cold; ear canals puffy and narrow or atrophic and wide; ear lobes large and turgescent or thin and waxy; face to red or too pale; cheeks puffy or sunken; tip of nose red and bloated or shiny and atrophic; lips swollen or dehydrated; mouth cold or hot; tongue large and indented or small and smooth; saliva excessive or deficient; pharynx small or patulous; secretion of sebaceous and sweat glands copious or scanty; pigmentation excessive or leukoplakia; neck emaciated and withered or strong and fat with double chin and buffalo hump; shoulder girdle bony and weak or over-developed; breasts undeveloped or hypertrophic and pendulous; abdomen sunken or too prominent; buttocks small and dehydrated or too large and fat; legs heavy and unwieldy or emaciated and under-nourished with bones and tendons shining through the atrophic skin; nails short, thin, crippled, ridgy, splitting or long, thick, strong and growing fast; hands and feet large and puffy like those of Calcarea or thin and emaciated; cold or hot spots in different regions of skin; heart beats weak and soft or loud and sharp, especially the second aortic and pulmonary; etc. There are very few particulars that have no opposites; they can be found in the Guiding Symptoms.
Diminished salt metabolism with its dehydration or overhydration prepares the soil for many a chronic disease. Improve the soil and you will withdraw the very subsistence of disease. There are other contributing causes, of course, but their removal will not yield any therapeutic results as long as the soil remains the same. Remedies given for contributing causes are useless and sooner or later bring disappointment. Permanent results come only from treating the soil. Deficient salt metabolism needs potentized Natrum mur. more often than any other remedy.
To learn to recognize its symptoms quickly, we must first go back to our original provings which represent an admirable start for its study. However, as these provings were necessarily affected by limitation of time, they describe only functional changes grown in healthy individuals under the influence of the drug for a period of six to twelve months at most. They dont give us any information on the degenerative changes which require decades and generations to develop.
These degenerative changes affect the whole system more or less uniformly and pass from one generation to then other. They are the soil on which local diseases, sometimes malignant, sprout and thrive. if we first become familiar with the provings of our predecessors and use them as a starting point for further clinical studies, we gradually become sufficiently acquainted with the nature of the Natrum mur. soil to become able to prescribe afterwards for degenerative diseases even when there is a paralyzing paucity or a confusing superabundance of symptoms.
May I now mention a few degenerative conditions, which have heretofore not been treated with this remedy as far as I know, and whose similimum is most frequently our Natrum mur:.
1. Salt and water retention obesity. These patients are usually light eaters. They are justified in feeling insulted if told that they eat too much. They are harmed, if they follow the advice to eat less. It is easy to recognize this type of obesity. The panniculus adiposus, muscles and all the organs, as well as blood, contain too much water. The skin is fine in texture, thin and sensitive. Complexion is at times very red, at times pale, but never chalky white as that of calcarea; it may also be dark red and cyanotic, all signs of deficient salt metabolism. Here the highest potencies of Natrum mur. are the best. They improve the metabolism and kidney function, the diuresis increases and as soon as a good flow of urine is permanently established, reduction of weight follows. Results, however, must not be expected in weeks but in months.
2. Allergies of many kinds, such as to eggs, starches, milk, honey, ragweed pollens, onions, wheat, animal odors, etc. If Ferrum fails to cure in allergy to eggs, dont forget Natrum mur. It may cure not only the allergy but the whole case.
3. Sclerotic changes wherever they may occur such as scleroderma, scirrhus, epithelioma, sclerotic degeneration in thyroid and other glands, fibroma, Dupuytrens contracture, arteriosclerosis, thrombo-angiitis obliterans with intermittent claudication, Buergers and Raynauds diseases and acrosclerosis, angina pectoris, endocardial and myocardial conditions, etc. A desperate case of acrosclerosis with trophic ulcers at the ends of the fingers and sclerotic changes in the face had her fingers cured with one dose of Natrum mur, CM within a month. A filbert- sized fibroma in each breast with watery obesity and neurasthenia in a 48-year-old lady was cured with one dose of the CM and one of the MM of all the symptoms in four months.
A mammary scirrhus of 15 years standing in an 80-year-old lady, completely destroying her left breast and both the large and small pectoral muscles, sclerosing the tendons of these two muscles into one contracted string, and covered by a plate consisting of some 60 closely adjacent little boils, red and smooth or crusty, and occupying the whole left side of the breast, is improving beautifully against all expectation. The symptoms of sclerosis, the characteristic soil and the waxy surface of the scirrhus were the only symptoms on which the prescription could be based. There were no functional nor mental symptoms. The first two months she had all kinds of reactions in her joints, spine and nerves, but almost no reaction in the tumor.
4. Atrophy wherever it may occur. If you see a young individual with a fine thin, translucent skin on his temples and the veins shining through, consider Natrum mur. high. If you see a lady with scrawny wrinkled atrophic neck covered with small brown or black warts, dont ask questions, give Natrum mur. high; hardly any other remedy will make any impression. Dont expect a cure before a year and repeat very seldom raising the potency each time. Crusts and black spots on the atrophic skin of the scalp, face or legs respond to this remedy. In cryptorchismus and dystrophia adiposo-genitalis you will be surprised how quickly you will cure your patient.
The gonads will descend and develop and sterility will be forestalled. In these cases there is also a vascular hypotrophy with smallness of heart which stays with the individual for life unless this remedy is applied. If you cant get enough symptoms in a case, look for atrophic spots on nose, face, ears and orbits and study this remedy. Tuberculosis, and virus colds as we see them in the winter season at present, belong here. The similimum for the virus “flu” is Natrum mur. Very tiny blisters all over the throat, erratic temperatures, hot or cold skin, perspiration or lack of it, chilliness or too much heat, most of the symptoms swinging too far in one or the other direction, much like those in malaria, are the indications.
A man of 66, suffering from an intolerable senile pruritus, was treated by others with lotions and ultra violet lights for two years in vain. One dose of the CM cured him completely in two months in spite of the lotions which he continued using along with the homoeopathic remedy against my advice. In the first month there was a reaction in the form of a herpetic eruption but all of it faded away in the second month. Sleepiness on sitting down and dilated veins shining through the atrophic skin of his face were guides in prescribing.
A hopeless case of pemphigus malignus with large pustules attacking nose, mouth, throat, larynx, genitalia, anus and eyes, causing complete blindness, was treated in vain by orthodox authorities for 2 1/2 years. He is improving now on Natrum mur. There were almost no symptoms to prescribe upon except the atrophy which seemed to have affected every part of his body.
If you give a dose of CM and a violent reaction develops in the form of a runny nose or diarrhea or headache, dont get frightened and dont antidote it. It may be the similimum, Wait, because now, if ever in your life, you will see the law of Hering in operation to your hearts delight. Some cases react quickly, in others it may take a whole month before the first reaction develops and reactions may then come and go as long as three months, Dont repeat as long as there is general improvement accompanying the different local reactions. If the symptoms start to return, not the particular but the general, such as weakness, irritability and other mental symptoms, then it is time to repeat.
To repeat because a month or two have elapsed after the first prescription, and not studying the patient further, does not work. I also find that with every succeeding prescription I must raise the potency. To go higher with every prescription gives better results. To use intercurrent remedies, we are advised by some writers, may be good and I am not dogmatic enough to oppose it. There are others who say that the remedy should not be repeated. How could then a case three and more generations old be cured? What we should remember is that it is always better to repeat too late than too soon.
