Kent's - Classical Homeopathy Online

ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM [ant-c] [Kent’s]You will be surprised, when studying full provings of this substance, to notice that all thesymptoms seem to center about the stomach; it does not matter much what kind of complaints hesuffers from, the stomach takes part in it. The pains disturb his stomach and bring on nausea; with hisheadache he is sick at the stomach; with all complaints his stomach is out of order, and, on the otherhand, whenever he disorders his stomach he is sick all over. Complaints that manifest themselvesthrough the stomach very frequently need this medicine.First in importance are the mental symptoms showing the type of constitution likely to need thisremedy. It produces a very serious state in the mind, an absence of the desire to live. It is well known tophysicians that the case is a serious one if the patient has no desire to live; life is a burden When I heara patient say: "Oh, doctor, if I could only die". I do not like such a case; there is some deep-seatedtrouble in the economy that is hard to remove. Something is threatening, and when it comes it is acommon thing to see the patient actually die."Loathing of life". You will find this especially in a low, lingering, continued fever, such astyphoid. This remedy has all the prostration of typhoid, and it has the continued type of fever as well asthe intermittent and remittent. The prostration is similar to Arsenicum, but Ars. has overwhelming fearof death, while this medicine has loathing of life; and so they both part company. Ars. hasoverwhelming restlessness, this remedy is seldom restless. Ars. has an intense thirst, this medicine isthirstless. So even though both these remedies have excessive exhaustion with continued fever, we seethey have features dissimilar enough to make them wholly distinct. Such a typhoid will sometimes beseen in young girls about puberty who are threatening to go into chlorosis. They have loathing of life,but it is a hysterical loathing of life. Moments, of great exhaustion, sudden attacks of weakness andfainting. You will commonly find another feature with this, not coming at the same moment, butalternating with it, or only present at times, namely, these over excitable, intense, nervous, hysterical,ecstatic young girls and women are overcome by mellow lights such as flow through stained glasswindows or the mellow light from the moon in the evening. That is what is meant when it says in thetext: "Sentimental mood in the moonlight". It is a hysterical state, a disorderly outburst of theaffections, such affections as can be aroused only in one who is sick, or one who is balanced in thegeneral nervous system. This kind of patient gives us the mental state and constitution of Ant. crud.,and along with such mental states the physical conditions seem to strike to the stomach, as it were.We have running through this remedy a general state that you should keep in mind, that is, agouty or rheumatic state, in which the symptoms change with the changes of the weather; worse incold, damp weather, worse from cold bathing, better from the heat of a hot bath, worse from takingsour wine, and worse from stimulants of any kind. When you use the expression "worse from wine", itis not only important to know that the +patient is worse from wine, but also the character of complaintsthat are worse from wine. This patient becomes easily intoxicated, but the physical symptoms are moredisturbed than the mental; his gouty symptoms are worse from sour wine; all the pains and aches of thebody are worse from sour wine; headaches come from this cause and the gastric disturbances aregreatly aggravated from sour wine.This patient is worse at night, worse in damp weather, worse from damp cold, better from lyingdown quietly, better from applied heat, but much worse from over-heating and from radiated heat, andin a warm room. Many of the symptoms come on in the sun's rays and from the heat of an open grate.The open fire is wholly against the Ant-crud. patient. A child with whooping cough will cough moreafter looking into the fire. Such things are queer; they are so strange that there is no philosophicalhypothesis to explain them, no theory that looks toward an explanation, but they are facts which wemust accept.The whole gouty nature of the case seems to change so suddenly that you wonder where themore exterior symptoms have gone to, for all at once in a night or a day the patient commences tovomit and you have persistent vomiting lasting days and weeks, until the gouty symptoms come backinto the extremities. It is wonderful how quickly this old- fashioned metastasis will come on, thischanging from one place to another. The gout suddenly ceases in the extremities and stomachsymptoms come on, and you may call it gout in the stomach if you will.There are catarrhal symptoms in this remedy; catarrh of the nose, stomach, rectum, etc., and anincreased flow of mucus from any of these localities from drinking sour wine and from taking cold. Adistressing feature of the catarrh is the stuffing up of the nose at night. As soon as he gets into anoverheated room, his nose gets stuffed up. The coryza has a tendency to become chronic, because ofthe low and feeble circulation and the poor constitution. When it becomes chronic it is worse at nightand is associated with headaches. As the catarrh slackens up and becomes dry the headache becomes