Kent's - Classical Homeopathy Online

govern the action of the physician. Air is an irritant to a raw part will keep up an unnecessary dischargeof pus, even from a perfectly healthy sore. will keep it protected. The sides of a cut must be drawn together, and if it isperfectly tight it will heal itself by first intention. If it does not, then you may know there is aconstitutional condition that you must ferret out and find remedy for. Local treatment must then besuspended. These remedies that I have mentioned, to a great extent, cover the management of wounds,and it is simple. Anyone has sense enough to draw together and close up a yawning wound, and toproperly dress it.The muscles that naturally draw a wound open have to be overcome by stitches or bystrappings. They do not belong to prescribing, they belong to the surgeon.The Ledum patient is very often subject to what may be called constitutional coldness, coldnessto touch, coldness in the body and coldness in the extremities with hot head, and again we see the otherextreme, where the whole body is overheated, and the head also is in a state of great heat. There isthrobbing and pulsating all over the body; the skin is purple or is too highly colored; he wants thecovers all off at night. It is not uncommon to hear a patient, who has a Ledum headache, say that shewants the head out in the cold air, wants to put it out of the window, does not want any covering uponthe head; delights to bathe it with very cold water.Ledum has a bloated condition of the hands, face, and feet; bloated and purple from the kneesdown in certain dropsical conditions. With this purple, mottled, bloated condition from the knees to thefeet the swelling as big as the skin will allow, and the pain excruciating. The only relief that patientgets is by sitting, with the feet in a tub of ice cold water. I remember the first time I ever saw this in apatient. He was an old syphilitic, whose nasal bones had been eaten out by syphilis, and his nose was aflabby piece of skin; it had no stiffening in it.He was a drunkard, and was extremely abusive to his family when drunk. He had been forseveral years unwilling to work, having lost his ambition, and he would sit in the house and allow hiswife to wait upon him. He had practically become a tramp, only he could not tramp, for this dropsicalcondition had come on and his feet were so badly swollen and sensitive that he sat in the house dayafter day. When I first saw him he had before him a good- sized old fashioned wash-tub, and there hesat with the ice water two-thirds up to his knees and pieces of ice floating around on the top of thewater, which he liked to have coming in contact with the skin. When that ice was out he would put inmore. The wife described his sufferings by saying lie "suffered agonies something dreadful". Ledumtook his feet out of the ice water so that he never used it afterwards. It caused the purpleness todisappear, the bloating went out of his feet, and he quit drinking. Ledum cured him of his syphilitictrouble, and he never had a return of that original state. and Ledum are principal remediesthat want the feet in very cold water. But Ledum suited that man.Where there are inflamed surfaces the tendency in Ledum is to bleed, and the blood is black.Ledum patients are full-blooded and plethoric, of a robust character. Such plethoric patients bleedeasily, have red faces; they are fleshy, strong and of robust constitution. Hemorrhages sometimes occurin the chamber of the eye, hemorrhage of the nose, hemorrhage in cavities, bloody urine.Old painful ulcers that spread, that are mottled round about, in a constitution that always wantsto be cold. The ulcers are relieved by cold.This remedy is of a rheumatic nature, rheumatic and gouty. It is a gouty medicine, havingcomplaints in persons who suffer from gout, and have chalk stones in their joints, deposits in the wrists,fingers and toes. The deposits go from below upwards. The gouty joints become suddenly inflamed andare relieved by cold.Ledum especially singles out the knee; it is suitable in old prolonged cases of inflammation ofthe knee-joint, of rheumatic knee-joint. You will find such patients sitting with the joint exposed to thecold, fanning the joint, or putting evaporating lotions upon the joint, such as chloroform, or ether,which give relief to the joints while evaporating to dryness. Rheumatic and gouty extremities with painand swelling; pain worse from motion, worse at night and from warmth of bed; better from coldapplications with copious pale urine. The pains and swelling go upwards and the heart becomesaffected.The face I have already described as puffy or bloated like the face. It is a besottedface and looks very much like the face of an old drunkard. Ledum counteracts the effect of whiskey,and takes away the appetite for whiskey. Ledum is to whiskey what is to the smokinghabit. You can break patients from the habit of smoking so that they go to the other extreme, and havean aversion to it.