Kent's - Classical Homeopathy Online

Only occasionally does a man realize its great benefit in headaches and in remittent fevers. Ingouty and rheumatic affections it may be suited to the symptoms and is more useful than is generallyknown. It is not the purpose of our talks to point out ultimates of disease. I do not look upon gout as adisease, but as a great class of symptoms of a rheumatic character that occur in the human family; agreat mass of symptoms that may be called gouty, a tendency to enlargement of the joints and goutydeposits in the urine. The ordinary so- called lithaemia is a gouty constitution. The gouty state of theeconomy is the superficial or apparent cause; the real cause rests in the miasm. So when I speak of goutI do not mean the name of a disease, but a class of manifestations that are met in large cities especially,less frequently in the country where the people live on farms and take plenty of exercise and havewholesome food and are not housed up. It is supposed to be due to wine drinking. Often when I say topatients that the symptoms are somewhat gouty, they reply, "I am not in the habit of drinking wine. Ihave not been a high liver". Such conditions of course bring on a tendency to gout.Painful soreness in the eyeballs like < Bryonia> and < Gelsemium>. The eyeballs are verysensitive to touch and sore to pressure; feel as if he had been struck a blow in the eye; sore, bruised,pain in the eye. Coryza with aching in every bone.With the bilious attacks there often may be an ending in a diarrhea; copious green discharges,green fluid or semi-fluid stools, but after the attack has lingered until there is one grand emptying outof the bowels, this symptom will disappear and the secondary state comes on in which there isconstipation and a light-colored stool, or bileless stool.Boneset has a dry, hacking, teasing cough, that seems to rack the whole frame, as if it wouldbreak him up, it is so sore, and he is so much disturbed by motion. A great amount of tribulation isfound in the respiratory tract, in the bronchial tubes. We find a cough in capillary bronchitis that shakesthe whole frame, analogous to < Bryonia> and < Phosphorus>. The subject is extremely sensitive to thecold air, as much so as in < Nux vomica>. < Nux vomica> has aching in the bones as if they wouldbreak; he wants the room hot, and wants to be covered with clothing which relieves; often the slightestlifting of the covers increases the chilliness, which is true also of Eupatorium, so they run closetogether. In < Nux vomica> we have the dreadful irritability of temper; in Eupatorium we haveoverwhelming sadness. The < Nux vomica> patient is not likely to say much about dying, he is tooirritable to go into the next world; not so with Eupatorium, he is full of sadness.There are other states that come on secondarily in this medicine. After malarial attacks and ingouty affections, etc., there is bloating of the lower limbs, oedematous swelling. It is not an uncommonthing for a malarial fever that lingered a long time to be attended with swelling of the lower limbs.Eupatorium very strongly competes with < Natrum muriaticum>, < China> and < Arsenicum> in suchlingering malaria. When the symptoms have largely subsided and left only this state of anemia anddropsy of the lower extremities, in the badly treated cases, it is very difficult to find what medicine toadminister, and the course that the homeopath must pursue is to go back and examine the patient to findthe symptoms he had at the time of the intermittent fever, before he was meddled with. IF now there isswelling of the extremities, and you get symptoms to show you that he needed Eupatorium in thebeginning, Eupatorium will still cure the dropsy of the extremities. It may bring back the chill, turn itright end to and cure his symptoms. The trouble is that the symptoms were only suppressed, had notbeen cured. So the medicine he needed, but has never had for the chill, may be the medicine that heneeds now. Then think of Eupatorium in dropsical swellings of the feet and ankles, and in goutyswellings also. The gouty swellings are all of an inflammatory character. Very commonly these areclosely related to hydrarthrosis, and here Eupatorium is to be compared with < Arsenicum>. Goutyinflammation of the knee. All the way through this remedy you read about bone-aches and bone-pains.It is peculiar that medicines come around on time with an exactitude. Diseases do the samething, and we must see that it is also peculiar that they come with a regular cycle, a regular periodicity.We meet with headaches that come every seven days, headaches also that come once in two weeks, andthere are remedies that have seven-day aggravations and fourteen-day aggravations and three-dayaggravations, remedies that bring out their symptoms just in this form. Do not be surprised when yourpatient is perfectly under the influence of < Aurum> if he has a characteristic aggravation everytwenty-one days. There are quite a number of remedies having fourteen-day aggravations, < e.g.>, and < Arsenicum>. Again, there are autumnal aggravations, spring aggravations, winteraggravations, aggravations from cold weather and aggravations in the summer from heat. Someremedies have both the latter.EUPHRASIA OFFICINALIS [euphr] [Kent’s]Euphrasia is a short acting remedy of great usefulness in acute catarrhal affections with orwithout fever. Headaches that occur with coryza and eye symptoms, head aches in the evening as if