Kent's - Classical Homeopathy Online

impossible for her to read a line without going to sleep; that she can sleep all the time; she suffers nightand day from a dry mouth and the tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth. Now let her describe thisstate of straining and struggling to expel a soft stool, and you hardly need to go any further before youknow the remedy. If that patient in addition to what she has said tells you that she is in the habit offainting when standing any length of time, that she is disturbed in a close room and has all sorts ofcomplaints in the cold air, it is Nux moschata. Now you see how easy it is for remedies to talk; they telltheir own story. Suppose a woman should come to you who has been suffering from hemorrhage, fromprolonged oozing, who is pallid and weak and is distended with flatulence, with much belching andpassing of gas, and the more she passes the worse she feels, and she has these same symptoms ofstraining a long time to pass a soft stool, tremendous effort with inactivity of the rectum. You could donothing but give her China. By allowing remedies to talk and tell their own story individualization isaccomplished. I have said all that to show that it is not upon the inactivity of the rectum that you are todecide upon the remedy. Individualization must be made through the patient. That is a principle thatshould never be violated. You may have twenty remedies all possessing a certain symptom but if youhave a few real decided things that you can +say about the patient, the manner in which he doesbusiness, the manner in which the disease affects the entire man, then you have something toindividualize by. You have seen the Alumina patient, the China patient and the Nux moschata patient.The sole duty of the physician is to treat the sick, which means to study the patient himself untilan idea of the sickness is obtained.This medicine is full of vertigo; he quivers, reels and "objects go round" almost constantly. Itcorresponds to the vertigo of tired-out people, old broken down patients, men worn out from old age.Vertigo also that comes on when closing the eyes, as is found in spinal affections, in sclerosis ofposterior lateral columns. Alumina has produced affections analogous to locomotor ataxia. It producesnumbness of the soles of the feet, the fulgurating pains, the vertigo when closing the eyes, and producesstaggering and disturbances of co-ordination. It is true that in an early stage of locomotor ataxiaAlumina will check the disease process by bringing it into order the internal state of the economy. WithAluminum metallicum I have stopped fulgurating pains in old incurable cases, and improved thereflexes wonderfully, thus showing the general improvement of the patient.Most of the symptoms are < on rising in the morning. In the morning, as I have mentioned it,the urine is slower to pass than after he has moved about and warmed up a little. His limbs are stiffer inthe morning and in the morning he has to whip up his mental state. He wakes up confused and wonderswhere he is. You will see that in children especially--they wake up in the morning in a bewildered state,such as you will find in Alumina, < Aesculus, Lycopod. He has to put his mind on things to ascertainwhether they be so or not, as to how things should look and wonders whether he is at home or in someother place.There are many headaches with nausea and vomiting. The headaches come whenever he takescold. This probably is due to the catarrhal state. The Alumina patient suffers almost constantly fromdryness of mucous membranes, the nose is dry, stuffed up, especially on one side, commonly the left.Nose feels full of sticks, dry membrane or crusts, old atrophic catarrh, crusts in the posterior nares andin the fossa of Rosenmuller.Large green, offensive crusts all through the nose. Now comes the relation to the headache.Every time he catches cold the thick yellow discharge slacks up and gives way to a watery dischargeand he has pain in the forehead over the eyes, going through the head, with nausea and vomiting. Sowhen it says headache from chronic catarrh that is what it means. The headache > lying down. He hassick headaches and periodical headaches. You will see that Alumina corresponds to a constitution thatmay be called psoric---old, broken-down, feeble constitutions, scrofulous constitutions, such as arcinclined to tubercles and catarrhal affections.The catarrhal tendency of this remedy is marked. Catarrhs are found wherever mucousmembranes exist. Alumina affects the skin and mucous membrane extensively, i.e., the external andinternal skin, the surfaces of the body. The patient is always expectorating, he blows the nose much andhas discharges from the eyes. There is much disturbance of vision belonging to this catarrhal state thatmay be spoken of now. Dimness of vision, as if looking through a fog, sometimes described as througha veil.A misty dimness of vision. There is also disturbance of the muscles of the eye, of the muscles ofthe ball and of the ciliary muscle. Weak and changeable vision. The paralytic weakness, such asbelongs to the whole remedy, will be found in certain muscles, or sets of muscles, so that it is withgreat difficulty that glasses can be adjusted. The activity of the eye muscles is disturbed.The catarrhal state extends over into the back of the nose and the posterior nares are filled upwith tough mucus and crusts, and on looking into the throat you will see that the soft palate and the