Baryta carbonica



When the Baryta carb. babies appear in the clinic they will keep the hand up over the face and peek out through the fingers.

Bashful. Timid. Easily frightened. Afraid of strangers. Other remedies have similar features, but it is a strong feature of this medicine. Withered face. Sickly countenance. It is the idea of hiding, the idea of timidity.

The child does not want to play, and it sits in the corner. Does not pay any attention to its hammer, if it is a boy; or its doll, if it is a girl. Sits and sits. Does not seem to be thinking; a lack of ability to think.

Children grow up without any distinctiveness, without any ability to perceive, and therefore fail to develop. Always. borrowing trouble.

Like Caust., fear of something going to happen. Full of imaginations; imaginary cares and worries. Hatching up all sorts of complaints and grievances that may happen. A good deal like Ars. Children in a constant whining mood; always whining. Running through the complaints will be the sufferings of the parts, or the men symptoms.

“The more he thinks about the complaint the worse it gets.”

If he thinks about his troubles, his sufferings, they at once grow worse. Premature old age and brain fag from prolonged mental work.

Head: Troublesome headaches.

“Pressure in the brain.”

A feeling of looseness in the brain, as if the brain fell from side to side or was rising and falling. A sensation of motion in the brain when moving the head or from sudden jar.

Seems as if the brain moves to and fro to correspond to the motions of the head when the head is turned from, side to side.

“Pressing headaches.”

Headaches ameliorated in fresh air, in the open air, and aggravated from heat. That is the opposite of its general state. The Baryta carb. general state is aggravated from cold; he is sensitive to cold, and his complaints come on from becoming cold; but his headaches are ameliorated in cool air.

The Baryta carb. patient is often sensitive to the extremes of heat and cold. Hot weather will bring on complaints. Hot weather will cause the blood to mount to the head, and favors apoplectic conditions.

It has many complaints of the head like unto the stupor of apoplexy. It has some of the paralytic conditions analogous to the complaints in old apoplectics, and it has been very useful in re-establishing the supply and flow of nerve force along the nerves.

It parallels Phos., and is an excellent remedy for old paralytic conditions that have come from a rupture of a blood vessel, and therefore pressure upon the nerve supply.

The headaches are congestive, pressive headaches; a feeling of pressure in the brain.

These puny infants, such as we have described, have eruptions upon the head; eczema upon the head; and those who are born for better things have the eruption driven back by ointments and applications.

“Moist crusts upon the scalp.”

“Dry eruptions upon the scalp. Falling off of the hair. Baldness.”

Head complaints and a dwarfish state of mind, an intellectual defect, as results of suppressed eruptions.

Eyes: It is full of eye symptoms.

“Granular lids. Thickening of the eyelids, thickening of all of the membranes and tissues about the eyes. Opacity of the cornea.”

Infiltration of the various coverings. It has cured cataract it has cured various kinds of dim sightedness, but especially in those that things look hazy,

“looking as through a fog or through smoke.”

Ulceration of the cornea. Little white spots, causing defective vision .

“Lids agglutinated in the morning.” Styes.

“A sensation of weight in the upper lids.”

A sensation of weight in the brow with headaches as if the forehead was pressing down over the eyes.

Like Carbo veg., Carbo an. and Natr. mur. The patient will often grasp the whole forehead with the hands, and say,

“I feel as if the forehead was pressing down over the eyes.”

Ears: he has many noises in the ears, but especially cracking and flapping when breathing, swallowing and chewing; better while lying. It affects the right ear most. Rushing sounds in the ears when breathing.

“Eruptions about the ears. Glandular swellings and eruptions about the ears.”

Inflammation of the parotid glands, with hardness.

First, it may be called swelling, but it is finally permanent enlargement and induration, and it means a great growth sometimes.

Other glands about the neck are affected in association with the ear troubles. Knots of lymphatic glands down the neck under the ear (Bar. m., Tub.).

Sometimes the sub-maxillary gland is affected, being enlarged and indurated. Sometimes the tonsils enlarge and indurate. All these glands inflame and become sensitive, and get a little larger, after any exposure to cold, and from sudden changes of the weather, It is a wonderful medicine for the cure of enlarged glands.

Tonsils: Clinically it is laid down in the books for suppuration of these glands, but all my life I have failed to find it a good remedy for suppuration. The inflammation is more likely to turn into an increased infiltration.

It is laid down in the books here for suppuration of the tonsils, but from long experience it is one of the last remedies I would think of for suppuration of the tonsils. It may have done so, but it has not been my observation that it runs that way, and I am very much in doubt about the great value and high marking of that observation. But it certainly has infiltration gradually increasing from becoming cold.

The enlarged tonsils will redden up and inflame and become painful, and the acute inflammation and pain will subside, but the tonsils are a little larger than with the last cold. In that way the tonsils keep growing. In children these are often cut out.

There are instances in which I might admit it was necessary to cut them off, when there is a wonderful superabundance, creating much disturbance in swallowing and in speaking.

Two or three times I have absolutely failed to cure with remedies selected to the best of my ability, and they have gone to the surgeon and he has cut them off; but I believe these tonsils ought to be all cured.

One thing in Homoeopathy taught in Hahnemann’s Organon is that unless there are symptoms to indicate the remedy, no great things should be expected from the administration of the remedy.

The enlargement of the tonsils alone is not a symptom upon which a remedy can be selected, and it necessitates guessing a dozen times, and perhaps not hitting at all.

That is the worst sort of practice, guessing at a remedy; yet there are children having enlarged tonsils that appear to us without any symptom whatever to select a remedy by.

The symptoms to prescribe on are such as represent the patient, not the glands; not the changed tissue. We must always regret that the surgeon must come in, for in cutting off anything it may be done to the constitutional detriment of the patient.

Yet there are things that have to be done that we know are to the constitutional detriment of the patient. We have to keep servants on their feet to earn their living, and operations have to be performed upon them, because they cannot lie up a year or two to be cured.

The surgeon will always have a place with us, but let us do our part as physicians first.

Eruptions upon the face. The face is sickly, often purple, red and bloated, or lean and emaciated, looking old and withered. The infant looks like a little old person, like the state we find in Nat. mur. and Calc. With face troubles, with teeth troubles, and especially with throat troubles, enlarged glands under the jaw and down the neck.

Ear diseases following scarlet fever. Enlargement and induration of the parotids and of the submaxillary glands after scarlet fever. Scarlet fever often stirs up much trouble in the economy, especially when it has not been properly treated, when it has been treated by the allopath, or by a nervous homoeopath.

A nervous homoeopath is one who does not wait for his own convictions to be ultimated, does not wait for his remedy to work, and he gives another and another, and by the time the scarlet fever runs its course the patient becomes dreadfully sick, ends up with ear troubles, enlarged glands and sometimes kidney affections.

When it runs into car troubles and enlarged glands of the neck this is one of the several remedies to be studied.

“Paralysis of the tongue in old people. Weakness of the tongue in old people. Hardness of the tongue in old people.”

Premature old age and giving out of muscles. There is a catarrhal state in this remedy, an accumulation of mucus, in the nose, throat, larynx and trachea. It is very suitable for old, people who have rattling in the trachea.

On every cold change of the weather, and on every exposure to the cold, he gets an additional aggravation of the rattling. Rattling respiration. There are a few remedies that have, in such high degree, this coarse rattling in the chest of old people, that it is well to emphasize it.

Baryta carb. is one of them. Senega, Ammoniacum and Baryta muriatica should be compared. When there is coarse rattling in the chest all the time in an old person, an octogenarian, who is pretty comfortable in summer, but miserable all winter from the coarse rattling in the chest, and there are no other symptoms, Ammoniacum will keep him comfortable.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.