Graphites
as H.C. Allen recorded it in Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons of Some of the Leading Remedies of the Materia Medica, 1899
This is one author on one remedy. The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours. Read Graphites in every book at once →
Keynotes
Graphites
Black Lead. Amorphous Carbon.
Suited to women, inclined to obesity, who suffer from habitual constipation; with a history of delayed menstruation.
^‘What Pulsatilla is at puberty. Graphites is at the climacteric.”
Excessive cautiousness; timid, hesitates; unable to decide about anything (Puls.).
Fidgety while sitting at work (Zinc.).
Sad, despondent; music makes her weep; thinks of nothing but death (music is intolerable, Nat. c., Sab.).
Eczema of lids; eruption moist and fissured; lids red and margins covered with scales or crusts.
Sexual debility from sexual abuse.
Menses : too scanty, pale, late with violent colic ; irregular; delayed from getting feet wet (Puls.).
Morning sickness during menstruation; very weak and prostrated (Alum., Carbo an., Coc.).
Leucorrhoea : acrid, excoriating ; occurs in gushes day and night ; before and after menses (before, Sep. ; after, Kreos.).
Hard cicatrices remaining after mammary abscess, retarding the flow of milk ; cancer of breast, from old scars and repeated abscesses.
Unhealthy skin ; every injury suppurates (Hep.) ; old cicatrices break open again; eruptions upon the ears, between fingers and toes and on various parts of body, from which oozes a watery, transparent, sticky fluid.
The nails brittle, crumbling, deformed (Ant. c.) ; painful, sore, as if ulcerated; thick and crippled.
Cracks or fissures in ends of fingers, nipples, labia! commissures; of anus; between the toes.
spot., Sep., Ven).
Cataleptic condition; conscious, but without power to move or speak.
Takes cold easily; sensitive to draught of air (Bor., Cal., Hep., Nux). Suffering parts emaciate.
Hears better when in a noise; when riding in a carriage or car, when there is a rumbling sound (Nit. ac.).
Diarrhoea: stools brown, fluid, mixed with undigested substances, and of an intolerable odor; often caused by suppressed eruptions (Psor.).
Chronic constipation ; stool difficult, large, hard, knotty, with lumps united by mucous threads; too large ( Sulph. ) ; smarting sore pain in anus after stool.
Children; imprudent, teasing, laugh at reprimands.
Sensation of cobweb on forehead, tries hard to brush it off (Bar., Bor., Brom., Ran. s.).
Phlegmonous erysipelas : of face, with burning, stinging pain ; commencing on right side, going to left ; after application of iodine.
Decided aversion to coition (both sexes).
Graphites follows well: after, Lyc., Puls.; after Cal. in obesity of young women with large amount of unhealthy adipose tissue; follows Sulph. well in skin affections ; after Sepia in gushing leucorrhoea.
Similar : to, Lyc., Puls, in menstrual troubles.
Aggravation. — At night, during and after menstruation.
What the other books say about Graphites
The same remedy read by a different author. They disagree, and the disagreements are where the remedy becomes recognisable.
- Graphites in Boericke — The concise clinical Materia Medica that most Indian colleges teach from, in full.
- Graphites in Farrington — Lectures that teach remedies in families, by comparing them with each other.
- Graphites in Kent — Kent teaching a class, one remedy at a time — fewer remedies, far more on each.
- Graphites in Boger — A compressed key — the generals and the characteristic modalities, with very little narrative.
Search every book at once, take rubrics from Kent and Bönninghausen, and practise on a patient who answers back — free account.
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Cite this page. H.C. Allen. Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons of Some of the Leading Remedies of the Materia Medica. 3rd edition (1910). Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel. Graphites — Keynotes, pp. 130–132. HomeopathyWorld, https://homeopathyworld.in/materia-medica/books/allen/graphites. Published 1910: public domain in the US (before 1931) and in India (author died 1909). Replaces B. Jain's 2005 "rearranged and classified" edition (© the publisher), per the owner's decision of 13 Sep 2026. Reproduced as the author wrote it; a historical reference for students and practitioners, not medical advice.