Fever
Characteristic – Adapted to diseases with rapid sinking of the vial forces, complete prostration, collapse.
Cold perspiration on the forehead (over the entire body, Tabacum), with nearly all complaints.
Cannot bear to be left alone, yet persistently refuses to talk.
Thinks she is pregnant or will soon be delivered.
Mania with desire to cut and tear everything, especially clothes (Tar.), with lewd, lascivious talk, amorous or religious (Hyoscyamus, Melilotus, Stramonium).
Attacks of fainting from least exertion (Carbo vegetabilis, Sulphur), excessive weakness.
Sinking feeling during hemorrhage (fainting, Trill.).
Sensation of a lump of ice on vertex, with chilliness (Sepia, Val.), as of heat and cold at same time on scalp, as if brain were torn to pieces.
Face: pale, blue collapsed, features sunken, hippocratic, red while lying, becomes pale on rising (Aconite).
Thirst: intense, unquenchable, for large quantities of very cold water and acid drinks, wants everything cold.
Craving for acid or refreshing things (Phosphorusac.).
Icy coldness: of face, tip of nose, feet, legs, hands, arms, and many other parts.
Cold feeling in abdomen (Colchicum, Tabacum).
VIolent vomiting with profuse diarrhea.
Vomiting: excessive with nausea and great prostration, aggravation by drinking (Arsenicum), aggravation by least motion (Tabacum), great weakness after.
Cutting pain in abdomen as from knives.
Cholera: vomiting and purging, stool, profuse, watery, gushing, prostrating, after fright (Aconite, Opium).
Constipation: no desire, stool large, hard (Bryonia, Sulphur), in round, black balls (Chelidonium, Opium, Plb.): from inactive rectum, frequent desire felt in epigastrium (Ignatia – in rectum, Nux), painful, or infants and children, after Lycopodium and Nux.
Dysmenorrhea, with vomiting and purging, or exhausting diarrhea with cold sweat (Amm-c., Bovista), is so weak can scarcely stand for two days at each menstrual nisus (Alumina, Carbo animalis, Cocculus indicus).
Bad effects of opium eating, tobacco chewing.
Pains in the limbs during wet weather, getting worse from warmth of bed, better from continued walking.
Aggravation: From least motion, after drinking, before and during menses, during stool, when perspiring, after fright.
Type: Quotidian, tertian, quartan. Congestive, pernicious, sinking. Yellow fever. Periodicity strongly marked.
Time: 6 A.M. Characteristic – certain. Fevers of nursing children, coldness predominates.
Prodrome: Sweat often marks the commencement of paroxysm (Nux.). Cause: Choleraic. Intermittents occurring during cholera epidemics. Often the genus epidemicus.
Chill: With thirst. Daily chill, with violent shaking, vertigo, delirium, nausea, paleness of the face, and spasms. Severe, long – lasting, congestive chill, not relieved by external warmth ( Aranea, Camph.). Chill, with coldness and thirst for half an hour, without subsequent heat, with great weakness of thighs and limbs (every other day). Internal chilliness running from the head to the toes of both feet, with thirst. Shaking chill, with sweat, at first warm, but soon passes off into general coldness. Coldness of the whole body, increased by drinking ( Arsenicum, Caps., Eup., Nux, lessened by getting out of bed (increased by even putting hands from under bedclothes, Baryta, Cantharis ). Coldness at times, heat, with profuse sweat at others. Chill and heat alternating on single parts, now here, then there ( Pulsatilla ). Great coldness over the back and through shoulders into arms. Face cold, collapsed. Extremities cold. Coldness in limbs, shoulders and arms, as if cold air were streaming through the bones. Skin cold and clammy. Vomiting and diarrhea (nausea, vomiting and purging, Elat.). Prominent external coldness. Coldness of the feet, as if cold water were running into them.
Heat: With thirst, mostly internal, with no desire to drinks, the beverages are never cold enough. Heat ascends from extremities to head (chill descends). Heat streaming up the back into the occiput (chill running in successive waves from sacrum to occiput, Gelsemium). Head hot, dull, confused, first warm, then persistent cold sweat on the forehead. Redness and heat of the face, burning and redness in the cheeks, with contracted pupils and cold feet ( Opium – with dilated pupils, Belladonna ). Blood runs cold through the veins ( Rhus – runs hot, Arsenicum ).
Sweat: Without thirst, which is profuse, cold and clammy (profuse sweat, with thirst, Arsenicum, Cinchona). Sweat always with deathly pale face, offensive, bitter smelling, staining yellow. Easily perspires on every motion. ( Bryonia, Hepar) Cold sweat on forehead, after every stool, after vomiting of mucus. Sweat often begins before the chill and continues through paroxysm until next chill.
Tongue: Coated white or yellowish – brown, cold, red tip and edges, swollen. Voracious appetite. Craves cold fruits, ice water, juicy food, wants everything cold. Aversion to warm things. Hunger and appetite between paroxysms of vomiting.
Pulse: Small, weak, slow, and growing continually weaker, often imperceptible. Blood runs like cold water through the vessels.
Apyrexia: There is great general exhaustion and rapid sinking of strength, oppression of the chest, deep sighing, face pale and cold, with cold sweat on forehead. The heart’s impulse very weak in the intermission, as well as during the paroxysm, fainting, there are cramps in the stomach, abdomen and limbs, great thirst if much vomiting and diarrhea, and vice versa, extremities persistently cold. Skin bluish, cold, inelastic, with deficient reaction.
We may require to compare Elaterium with Veratrum which it resembles in the suddenness of its onset, the profuseness of its evacuations, and its great prostration. But the characteristic predominance of the cold stage will serve to distinguish between them.
Like Camphor, the cold stage is so well marked that it overshadows all the others, the hot stage is light or often wanting altogether. When the hot stage is present the temperature is rarely elevated, and is often diminished during heat. There is such a general lack of vital heat, and slow, defective reaction, that the patient scarcely recovers from one paroxysm ere another begins. The temperature is generally subnormal.
The above makes one of our best pictures of the “sinking,” “congestive,” or “pernicious” forms of intermittent fever. The patient thinks he will die, and the physician shares his fears. The allopath now resorts to stimulants for the present, and Quinine to prevent the return of future paroxysm. Shall we, on that threadbare plea of pseudo – homoeopaths, that ” there is no time for homoeopathic remedies to act,” follow his example? Those are not lacking ” in faith,” but knowledge, who ” desert their colors under fire.” The homoeopath who knows his Materia Medica will cure such cases without resorting to ” rational” (?) uncertainty. If he does not know his Materia Medica, he is justified in resorting to anything to try to save his patient, but the treatment should go by its right name, and the failure to cure should be properly credited. Every homoeopath is responsible for not knowing what he professes to practice.
” Among the great number of intermittent fevers there is a formidable pyrexia called pernicious, because it may carry off the patient in the second or third paroxysm, he dies probably from the excess of poisoning. This extremely violent pyrexia forms no exception to the rule, and, like all other pyrexia, finds its most prompt and certain remedy in the drug which is most homoeopathic to it. But here a delicate question arises which should be solved at once: What shall we do in the presence of a pernicious fever in which we have reason to fear sudden death, in the second or third paroxysm? Find the homoeopathic remedy. Without doubt, principles are inflexible, and I know no means more powerful to combat the radicalism of the false than to oppose to it the radicalism of the true.
“We have a law of cure which has always shown itself triumphant when rigorously applied. Why should we be unfaithful to it? I see no reason. The violence of the disease? But the more urgent the haste, the more highly ought we to value the shortest road. Now the most prompt and certain means of curing any disease whatever, however pernicious we may suppose it, consists in opposing to it the homoeopathic remedy. Then, instead of renouncing in this emergency the application of our law, it is best to conform to its requirements. The greater the danger, the greater this obligation.” Charge.
” When we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves thoroughly masters of its becomes a crime.” Hahnemann.
