Fever
Characteristic – Headache and confusion of the head, aggravated by smoking, and ceases entirely in the open air (Tabacum).
Sudden violent pains in the teeth of the whole upper and lower jaws, at night, immediately after lying down.
Toothache every day at same hour.
Aggravation: In cold rainy weather, damp dwellings, cold bathing, sleeping in damp wet rooms, lying down.
Amelioration: From tobacco smoke, in the open air.
Type: Quotidian, tertian. Remarkable periodicity in every type. Paludal origin, pernicious, dengue.
Time: At precisely same hour, every day, or every other day (Ced., Sabad.). Great regularity of paroxysm.
Cause: Rheumatic exposure: getting wet, working in the rain, working while standing in water (Ant.t., Calcarea, Ledum, Rhus), from living or working in basements, working in cellars or underground places (Arsenicum).
Chill: Long – lasting, often 24 hours, chill predominates. Constant chilly feeling, worse on rainy, cold days, from bathing with cold water, from damp dwellings. Chill as soon as he touches the cold sheets of the bed, followed by heat but no sweat. Chill violent, shaking, severe internal coldness as if frozen (Helod.). Chilly all the time, day and night, in midsummer. Bone pains for four weeks, fever attacks, consisting almost wholly of coldness. Chill without heat, sweat or thirst. Headache, which ceases entirely in the open air. Great exhaustion, lassitude. Painful feeling of coldness in lower incisors every day at same hour.
Heat: Slight, preceded by chill. Evening heat, with fullness and heaviness in epigastrium as from a stone, qualmishness in pit of stomach, and heaviness of the thighs so that she is scarcely able to drag her limbs along. Forearms and hands so heavy that he imagines he cannot lift them. This stage often wanting.
Sweat: Wanting.
Tongue: Slightly coated, taste, nauseous, bitter, ameliorated by smoking.
Apyrexia: Clear. Spleen enlarged. Menses eight days too early, too strong and too copious.
The paroxysm of Aranea is often unattended by either heat or sweat consisting only of coldness, which is persistent and severe, and not ameliorated by anything. It is usually without thirst in any stage, if any thirst, usually during the heat.
A Case.- A teamster 43 years old, 6 feet 2 inches in height, and well developed, never been sick before, slept on some straw on the bar – room floor in Frankfurt, on a winter night. In the morning felt stiff in his limbs, tired and sick. Chill began at 7 p.m., and lasted till precisely 8 in the morning, every day at same hour, without heat or sweat, with cough, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and great exhaustion, which distressed him most because it interfered with his occupation. Being yet unskilled in homoeopathy, and not having the least confidence in it in fever and ague, I gave him two – grain doses of Quinine every two hours at first, then every hour during the day, until he had taken forty powders without the least improvement, on the contrary, his general weakness had increased. I now consulted the original provings, and found that according to the law of similarity Aranea diadema must be the remedy. He received five drops of second dec. attenuation every hour. Next day the patient exclaimed: Now you have hit the right medicine, after the second hour I felt warmth again in my whole body, and the first time for three weeks I slept some hours at night again, without any chill. The cure was complete in six days, and for seventeen years he had no relapse. – Grauvogl, p. 204.
Like many of our colleagues of the present day, Grauvogl’s lack of confidence in homoeopathic treatment of fever and ague (in his early investigations) was only equaled by his imperfect knowledge (at that time) of the true curative sphere of Quinine in the same disease. Here was a fever with chill prolonged and predominant, heat and sweat absent. It could never be cured by Quinine, which has all three stages, but particularly heat and sweat, prominently developed. Possibly, owing to its rheumatic character, Quinine would not seem even to suppress it, and there certainly was enough given (80 grs.) to fairly test its suppressing power.
Case No. II. – A tall, robust, heavily bearded man who, from the nature of his business, was exposed to all sorts of weather. For weeks past, though feeling tolerably well throughout the day, attending regularly to his daily round of duties, every night, as soon as he stepped into bed, he was seized with a severe chill which lasted perhaps for two hours, followed by heat but no sweat. Thinking the cold sheets upon which he lay had something to do with it he substituted blankets, but without improvement. Aranea with its remarkable symptoms, toothache every day at same hour loomed up before me, and here was a similar one, Chill as soon as he touches the bed, and Aranea 30, a dose night and morning for four days. Chills ceased after the fourth dose, and no relapse. – c.c. Smith, M.D., Hom. Phys., vol. 5 p. 236.
Analysis: – Rheumatic exposure.
Regularity of paroxysm.
Severe, long – lasting, bone searching chill, internal coldness as if frozen (Heloderma).
Heat and sweat slight or wanting.
