Psorinum
as William Boericke recorded it in Homoeopathic Materia Medica, 1927
This is one author on one remedy. The concise clinical Materia Medica that most Indian colleges teach from, in full. Read Psorinum in every book at once →
Mind
Hopeless; despairs of recovery. Melancholy, deep and persistent; religious. Suicidal tendency.
General
Scabies Vesicle The therapeutic field of this remedy is found in so-called psoric manifestations. Psorinum is a cold medicine; wants the head kept warm, wants warm clothing even in summer. Extreme sensitiveness to cold. Debility, independent of any organic disease, especially the weakness remaining after acute disease. Lack of reaction, i.e, phagocytes defective; when well-chosen remedies fail to act. Scrofulous patients. Secretions have a filthy smell. Profuse sweating. Cardiac weakness. Skin symptoms very prominent. Often gives immunity from cold- catching. Easy perspiration when walking. Syphilis, inherited and tertiary. Offensive discharges.
Modalities
Worse, coffee; Psorinum patient does not improve while using coffee. Worse, changes of weather, in hot sunshine, from cold. Dread of least cold air or draft. Better, heat, warm clothing, even in summer.
Head
Awakens at night with pain as from blow on head. Chronic headaches; hungry during attacks; with vertigo. Hammering pain; brain feels too large; worse, change of weather. Dull, pressive pain in occiput. Humid eruption on scalp; hair matted. Hair dry.
Face
Swelling of upper lip. Pale, delicate. Humid eruption on face. Sickly.
Eyes
Agglutinated. Blepharitis. Chronic ophthalmia, that constantly recurs. Edges of lids red. Secretion acrid.
Ears
Raw, red, oozing scabs around ears. Sore pain behind ears. Herpes from temples over ears to cheeks. Offensive discharge from eczema around ears. Intolerable itching. Chronic otorrhœa. Most fetid pus from ears, brownish, offensive.
Nose
Dry, coryza, with stoppage of nose. Chronic catarrh; dropping from posterior nares. Acne rosacea.
Mouth
Obstinate rhagades at corners. Tongue, gums ulcerated; tough mucus of foul taste adheres to soft palate.
Throat
Tonsils greatly swollen; painful swallowing, with pain in ears. Profuse, offensive saliva; tough mucus in throat. Recurring quinsy. Eradicates tendency to quinsy. Hawking up of cheesy, pea-like balls of disgusting smell and taste (Agar).
Stomach
Eructations like bad eggs. Very hungry always; must have something to eat in the middle of the night. Nausea; vomiting of pregnancy. Pain in abdomen after eating.
Stool
Mucous, bloody, excessively fetid, dark fluid. Hard, difficult stool, with blood from rectum and burning piles. Constipation of infants, in pale, sickly scrofulous children.
Female
Leucorrhœa fetid, lumpy, with much backache and debility. Mammæ swollen and painful. Pimples oozing an acrid fluid that burns and excoriates the glands.
Respiratory
Asthma, with dyspnœa; worse, sitting up; better, lying down and keeping arms spread wide apart. Dry, hard cough, with great weakness in chest. Feeling of ulceration under sternum. Pain in chest; better, lying down. Cough returns every winter, from suppressed eruption. Hay-fever returning irregularly every year.
Extremities
Weakness of joints, as if they would not hold together. Eruption around finger-nails. Fetid foot-sweats.
Skin
Dirty, dingy look. Dry, lusterless, rough hair. Intolerable itching. Herpetic eruptions, especially on scalp and bends of joints with itching; worse, from warmth of bed. Enlarged glands. Sebaceous glands secrete excessively; oily skin. Indolent ulcers, slow to heal. Eczema behind ears. Crusty eruptions all over. Urticaria after every exertion. Pustules near finger-nails.
Sleep
Sleepless from intolerable itching. Easily startled.
Fever
Profuse, offensive perspiration; night-sweats.
Relationships
Complementary: Sulphur. Compare: Pediculus-Head-louse––(psoric manifestations in children. Eruption on dorsum of hands, feet neck. Prurigo; pellagra. Unusual aptitude for study and work). Pediculus (Cooties) transmit typhus and trench fever). In lack of reaction compare Calcarea and Natrum ars. Gaertner (Pessimistic, lack of confidence, subjective troublesome eye symptoms, fear of heights. Urticaria. Use 30th and 200th (Wheeler).
Dose
Two hundredth and higher potencies. Should not be repeated too often. Psorinum requires something like 9 days before it manifests its action, and even a single dose may elicit other symptoms lasting for weeks (Aegedi).
What the other books say about Psorinum
The same remedy read by a different author. They disagree, and the disagreements are where the remedy becomes recognisable.
- Psorinum in Allen's Keynotes — The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours.
- Psorinum in Farrington — Lectures that teach remedies in families, by comparing them with each other.
- Psorinum in Kent — Kent teaching a class, one remedy at a time — fewer remedies, far more on each.
- Psorinum 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). Psorinum — Mind. HomeopathyWorld, https://homeopathyworld.in/materia-medica/books/boericke/psorinum. 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.