Kent's - Classical Homeopathy Online

that of a little old person, but the glands under the arms, in the groin and in the belly are enlarged andhard. The mesenteric glands can be felt as knot. We see the same tendency in old cases of malariacoming from the allopaths in which Quinine and Arsenic have been extensively used and the chillshave kept on; the face and the upper part of the body arc withered, the skin looks shriveled and yellow;a diarrhea has come on, the liver and spleen are enlarged and the lymphatic glands of the belly can befelt. Even in the earlier stages, when these states are only threatening, we may look forward and seethat the case is progressing toward an Iodine state.Now take a patient that is suffering from intermittent fever brought on from malaria, or dampcellars. The patient grows increasingly hot; it is not always a febrile heat, but a sensation of heat; hewants to be bathed in cold water, wants the face and body cooled by cold sponging; he suffocates andcoughs in a warm room, dreads heat, sweats easily and easily becomes exhausted. It is in this kind of aconstitution that acute complaints will come on, such as acute inflammatory conditions of the mucousmembranes and gastritis, inflammation of the liver, inflammation of the spleen, diarrhea, croup,inflammation of the throat. The throat even becomes covered with white spots and is tumid and red,and this extends down into the larynx; it may even have a deposit upon it like diphtheria. Iodine hascured diphtheria, when the exudation resembling the diphtheria exudations was present in the stool. Aconstitution tending this way may bring on croup with an exudate, and we can see that it is goingtowards Iodine. In every region of the body peculiar little things come out. If we do not see to the fullextent the constitution of the remedy, we will not recognize the tendency of the patient whenprogressing unfavorably.The mental state of this patient is that of excitement, anxiety, impulses, melancholy; he wants todo something, wants to hurry; he has impulses to kill. In this it is very closely related to Arsenicum andHepar. The Arsenicum and Hepar patients also have impulses to commit murder without beingoffended and without cause. The sensitiveness to heat will at once decide, for while Iodine is warmbloodedthe Arsenicum and Hepar patients are always chilly. The impulse to do violence is sudden.There arc remedies that have peculiar impulses, impulses without any cause.These impulses are seen in cases of impulsive insanity; an insanity in which there is an impulseto do violence and strange things, and when the patient is asked why he does these things he says hedoes not know. The patient may not be known to be insane in anything else; he may be a good businessman. Remedies also have this. These things are forerunners. It is recorded under Hepar that a barberhad an impulse to cut the throat of his patron with the razor while shaving him. The Nux vomica patienthas an impulse to throw her child into the fire, or to kill her husband whom she dearly loves. Thethought comes into her mind and increases until she becomes actually insane and beyond control andthe impulse is carried into action. A Natrum-sulf.patient will say, "Doctor, you do not know how I have to resist killing myself. An impulse to doit comes into my mind". Iodine has the impulse to kill, not from anger, not from any sense of justice,but without any cause. An overwhelming anger is often a cause for violence but the impulses are not ofthat sort in Iodine. While reading or thinking placidly at times a patient may have an impulse to dohimself violence, and this finally grows until the end is a form of impulsive insanity.The Iodine patient becomes weak in mind as well as in body; he is forgetful, cannot rememberthe little things, they pass out of the mind. He forgets what he was about to say or do; goes off andleaves packages he has purchased. The forgetfulness is extensive.But with all these states, do not forget one thing, that the patient is compelled to keep doingsomething in order to drive away his impulses and anxiety. The anxiety is wearing and distressingunless he keeps busy. Though mentally prostrated, he is compelled to keep busy to continue the work,which increases the prostration of mind. You tell a man who is threatened with softening of the brain,from overwork, from anxiety and labor in literary work, "You must stop working, you must rest"."Why", he will say, "if I do I would die or go mad". Such a state comes under Iodine and Arsenicum,but there is one grand distinction by which the two remedies are seen to part company at once. TheIodine patient is warm-blooded, wants a cool place to move in, and to think in, and to work in, whereasthe Arsenicum patient wants heat, wants a warm room, wants to be warmly clothed, and suffers fromthe cold. Iodine suffers from the heat. So that while the restlessness and anxiety, which are both ofbody and mind in each remedy loom up before the mind as one, if the patient is a hot-blooded patientwe would never think of Arsenicum; if a cold-blooded and shivering patient we would never think ofIodine.Among the generals we first mentioned was the tendency to enlarged glands. Iodine has oftencured a group of symptoms coming in the constitution that I have named, viz.; enlargement of the heart,enlargement of the thyroid and protruding eyeballs.