Aurum metallicum

Right hypochondrium hot and painful. Incarcerated flatus. Swelling and suppuration of inguinal glands.

{Hahnemann, Allen and some from Hering) Disgust of life, suicidal tendency. Despondent melancholy. Hopelessness. Great anguish increasing into self-destruction. n o Anxious palpitation and desire to commit suicide. Peevish and vehement : least contradiction excites wrath. Moroseness ; indisposed to talk. All day long good humour ; talkative and contented with him­ self (alternating action). Heat and anger, quite forgets himself with quarrelling. Sulky. Rush of blood to Head. Tearing pressure—rieft forehead, left crown, right side of crown. Pressure from within outwards in Eyes : worse when touched. Tension in eyes interferes with vision. Can distinguish nothing distinctly, because he sees everything double and one object seems to run into another : tensive pain worse when he fixes his eyes on something, less severe when he closes them. Halffsight ; as if the upper half of the vision were covered with a dark body : upper objects remain invisible. He cannot get air through the Nose, for ulcerated, agglutinated, painful nostrils. Soreness both nostrils. Right nasal bone and adjoining part of upper jaw painful to touch. Tickling internally in aloe nasi. Syphilitic ulcers palate and throat. Tensive pain in hypogastrium just below navel and on both sides lumbar regions, with feeling of fullness, and with call to stool. Pinching pain in hypogastrium, now here, now there. Grumbling and rumbling in Abdomen. Discharge of much foetid flatus. Discomfort in hypogastrium, as if wanted to go to stool, esp. after a meal. (.Affections of genitalia) : Uterus prolapsed and indurated. Extreme tightness (chest) : difficulty of breathing at night. Tightness of Chest, also when sitting and not moving : always takes a deep breath and cannot get enough air. Great'weight on chest : esp. heavy weight on sternum. ' Violent beating of the heart. Awakened by Bone pains : suffering so great he despairs : does not want to live. (Many pains in bones and limbs are detailed.) Pain in knees as if they were tightly bound. Remarkable ebullition in the Blood (as if it boiled in the blood vessels). Frightful dreams at night. BAPTISM T1NCTORIA h i This invaluable remedy is one of the comparatively newer ones. One looks in vain for its most characteristic symptoms in Allen’s Encyclopedia : but one finds them in Hering’s Guiding Symptoms, in Hale’s New Remedies, and its uses are developed and especially described by Ken*, Nash, etc. I t seems natural to follow Gelsemium with Baptisia. They are so alike, and yet so utterly dissimilar that no one could mistake the one for the other, and both are so very useful in influenza— that trying complaint that we have “ always with us ! ” Of course one associates Baptisia especially with Typhoid— typhoid fever—typhoid conditions in any fever—the cases of influenza that exhibit typhoid conditions. Remedies have their paces. Kent tells us that Gelsemium is slow-paced as regards its onset, but that Baptisia is of rapid onset ; the patient sinks rapidly into a stupid typhoid state— dull—drugged—besotted. He considers Baptisia more useful in typhoids of unusually rapid onset. But Dr. C. E. Wheeler, in his Case for Homoeopathy, tells us something immensely interesting and suggestive in regard to the more recent provings of Baptisia. He says, " Thère is no scepticism in regard to the next experiment. In typhoid fever the blood develops a substance which is not normally present in it, called an agglutinin ; which causes the typhoid bacilli to clump together, and forms a stage in the defence mechanisms against the disease. If healthy people take the drug Baptisia persistently, they develop (more or less according to individual susceptibility) this agglutinin in their blood.” And Baptisia has certainly earned its laurels in the treatment of typhoid ; and it will always act rapidly and surély where its characteristic symptoms are present : drowsiness, dull red face and besotted condition, not only in typhoid but in any fever. One has seen startling examples of the prompt curative action of Baptisia in influenzas ; in slight cases, and in serious. In that year of very fatal " typhoid 'flus ” following the 1914-18 War, one remembers being sent for urgently by a local doctor to see a case— his worst—of influenza, in a Jewess. He thought she would die. She was dark, almost purple in the face, with the Baptisia drowsi­ ness. ...” Baptisia ! ” ” But I only have it in the mother tincture.” ” Why not ?—give it ! ” And in a few hours she was out of the wood, and made a rapid recovery—so one was told. B APT I SI A TINCTORIA Another case, less severe. He was red-faced, dull and drowsy (suddenly, one morning) unable to rouse himself or take any interest, his words died away in drowsiness ; high temperature ; just a sudden attack of ’flu, of the Baptisia type. Happily getting his remedy, he was found practically well by the afternoon. Again, in “ gastric 'flus ” it has seemed to me to be practically specific. As here. . . . Sudden attack of violent diarrhoea and vomiting—frightfully and suddenly ill—and a journey to go ! Baptisia :—and in the aftemoo", the journey successfully accom­ plished, and an abrupt end to the trouble. . . . This is the clinical picture :—Sudden onset, sudden great prostration and distress, apparently almost desperate conditions— with the Baptisia symptoms—Baptisia, and sudden recovery. Every medicine has its own job, and can do that job, and no other. As a friend in need, Baptisia is worth knowing ! Kent stresses the suddenness of Baptisia. He says : “ Baptisia is suitable for acute diseases. It is a short-acting remedy. . . . It produces a violent change in the economy like a zymotic state. All its acute diseases and com­ plaints have the appearance of zymosis, like scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and typhoid, and gangrenous complaints. There is one thing that is unusual about it, it brings on this septic state more rapidly than most other remedies—that is, its pace is more rapid than that found in most other remedies. . . . Baptisia is suitable for those blood poisons that are highly septic, such as the puerperal state. . . . " Every medicine has a pace, a velocity. It is an important feature of it. Every medicine must be observed as to its velocity, as to its pace, as to its periodicity, as to its motion, as to its wave. We get that by looking at the symptoms. “ You take an individual who has been down in a mine, in a swamp, down in the mud, in the sewers, who has inhaled foul gases, who goes into bed with a sort of stupor, from the beginning he feels stupid. It is not gradual, but he goes down very suddenly, and he is stupid. He is prostrated. " His face is mottled. Sordes begin to appear on the teeth much earlier than you would expect them in the regular typhoid. . . . Abdomen distended much earlier than we expect in a regular typhoid. . . . mouth bleeding, and is putrid. His odours are horrible, and he is in a marked state of delirium. . . . Velocity. He is going down towards death rapidly. “ Now it does not matter much whether it is a scarlet fever, or typhoid fever, or a septic surgical fever, or a puerperal fever