Nitricum acidum
as William Boericke recorded it in Homoeopathic Materia Medica, 1927
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Mind
Irritable, hateful, vindictive, headstrong. Hopeless despair. Sensitive to noise, pain, touch, jar. Fear of death.
General
Nitric Acid Selects for its special seat of action the outlets of the body where the mucous membrane and skin meet; these pain as from splinters. Sticking pains. Marked improvement of all symptoms while riding in a carriage. Acts best on the dark complexioned and past middle life. Syphilis, after abuse of Mercury. Pains appear and disappear quickly (Bell). Hydrogenoid constitution. Sycotic remedy. Blisters and ulcers in mouth, tongue, genitals; bleed easily. Fissures, with pain during stool, as if rectum were torn. All discharges very offensive, especially urine, feces, and perspiration. Persons who have chronic diseases, and take cold easily and disposed to diarrhœa. Excessive physical irritability. Cachexia, due to syphilis, scrofula, intermittent fever with liver involvement and anæmia, etc. Gravel; arthritis. Capillary bleeding after curettage.
Modalities
Worse, evening and night, cold climate, and also hot weather. Better, while riding in carriage (Reverse: Cocculus).
Head
Sensation of a band around head. Headache from pressure of hat; full feeling; worse from street noises. Hair falls out. Scalp sensitive.
Eyes
Double vision; sharp, sticking pains. Ulceration of cornea. Gonorrhœal ophthalmia, photophobia, constant lachrymation. Syphilitic iritis.
Ears
Difficult hearing; better by riding in carriage or train. Very sensitive to noise, as the rattle of wagons over pavements (Coff; Nux). Cracking in ears when chewing.
Nose
Ozæna. Green casts from nose every morning. Coryza, with sore and bleeding nostrils. Tip red. Stitches, as of a splinter in nose. Caries of mastoid.
Nosebleed, with chest affections. Chronic nasal catarrh, with yellow, offensive, corrosive discharge. Nasal diphtheria, with watery and exceedingly excoriating discharge.
Mouth
Putrid breath. Salivation. Bleeding of gums. Painful pimples on the sides of the tongue. Tongue clean, red and wet with center furrow. Teeth become loose; gums soft and spongy. Ulcers in soft palate, with sharp, splinter-like pains. Salivation and fetor oris. Bloody saliva.
Throat
Dry. Pain into ears. Hawks mucus constantly. White patches and sharp points, as from splinters, on swallowing.
Stomach
Great hunger, with sweetish taste. Longing for indigestible things- chalk, earth, etc. Pain in cardiac orifice. Dyspepsia with excess of oxalic acid, uric acid and phosphates in urine and great mental depression. Loves fat and salt (Sulph).
Abdomen
Great straining, but little passes, Rectum feels torn. Bowels constipated, with fissures in rectum. Tearing pains during stools. Violent cutting pains after stools, lasting for hours (Ratanh). Hæmorrhages from bowels, profuse, bright. Prolapsus ani. Hæmorrhoids bleed easily. Diarrhœa, slimy and offensive. After stools, irritable and exhausted. Colic relieved from tightening clothes. Jaundice, aching in liver.
Urinary
Scanty, dark, offensive. Smells like horse's urine. Cold on passing. Burning and stinging. Urine bloody and albuminous. Alternation of cloudy, phosphatic urine with profuse urinary secretion in old prostatic cases.
Male
Soreness and burning in glans and beneath prepuce. Ulcers; burn and sting; exude, offensive matter.
Female
External parts sore, with ulcers (Hep.: Merc; Thuja). Leucorrhœa brown, flesh-colored, watery, or stringy, offensive. Hair on genitals falls out (Natr m, Zinc). Uterine hæmorrhages. Menses early, profuse, like muddy water, with pain in back, hips and thighs. Stitches through vagina. Metrorrhagia after parturition.
Respiratory
Hoarseness. Aphonia, with dry hacking cough, from tickling in larynx and pit of stomach. Soreness at lower end of sternum. Short breath on going upstairs (Ars; Calc). Cough during sleep (Cham).
Extremities
Fetid foot-sweat, causing soreness of toes, with sticking pain; chilblains on toes. Sweating of palms, hands; cold, blue nails. Offensive sweat in axillæ at night.
Skin
Warts, large jagged; bleed on washing. Ulcers bleed easily, sensitive; splinter-like pains; zigzag, irregular edges; base looks like raw flesh. Exuberant granulations. Black pores on face, papules worse on forehead.
Relationships
Complementary: Ars; Calad; Lac can; Sepia. Inimical: Lach. Compare: Merc; Kali; Thuja; Hepar; Calc.
Dose
Sixth potency. As the nitric acid patient begins to improve skin symptoms may appear for a time, a favorable indication.
What the other books say about Nitricum acidum
The same remedy read by a different author. They disagree, and the disagreements are where the remedy becomes recognisable.
- Nitricum acidum in Allen's Keynotes — The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours.
- Nitricum acidum in Farrington — Lectures that teach remedies in families, by comparing them with each other.
- Nitricum acidum in Kent — Kent teaching a class, one remedy at a time — fewer remedies, far more on each.
- Nitricum acidum 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.
Create a free accountCite this page. William Boericke. Homoeopathic Materia Medica. 9th edition (preface dated San Francisco, June 1927). Nitricum acidum — Mind. HomeopathyWorld, https://homeopathyworld.in/materia-medica/books/boericke/nitricum-acidum. Published 1927: public domain in the US (since 2023) and in India (author died 1929). Reproduced as the author wrote it; a historical reference for students and practitioners, not medical advice.