Kreosotum

Miserable and weak. Profuse, FOUL, HOT, ACRID discharges; sputum, eructations, etc.; redden the part. Rawness. Burning like fire. Pulsation; general. Hæmorrhage; passive; brown, dark. Lumpy discharges, menses, etc. Ulceration. Heaviness. Fulness. Tumefaction. Scurvy. Marasmus. Black, teeth, leucorrhœa, lochia, etc. .................... Dissatisfied with every thing; wants things, then throws them away and wants something else. Screams at night. Cross, wilful and obstinate. Longs for death. Stupid. Buzzing in head. Yellow pallor, with red blotches (Iod.); during chill or heat. TEETH SOON DECAY; black spots on; intolerable ache, < pregnancy; painful dentition. Puffy, bluish, bleeding, painful gums. Aphthæ or salivation, of pregnancy. Taste bitter, low down in throat. Icy cold epigastrium. Frothy eructations. Nausea. Vomiting; long after meals (Æth. Fer. Plat.); undigested food; sweetish; of pregnancy; of uterine ulcer. As of a lump pressing down on bladder. Brown, watery, lienteric stools. Urination hurried; involuntary when lying. Diuresis. Profuse, lumpy, intermittent menses, < lying. Leucorrhœa; gushing; like bloody water; with itching. Tormenting cough, with little expectoration; with sore larynx and chest. Senile bronchitis. Neglected phthisis. Hectic. Chest; deep pains, take her breath; anxious heaviness. Dragging from back to genitals; as if to come out. Violently itching, moist or scurfy eczema on eyelids, face, joints, back of hands. Ulcers break out and heal repeatedly; bleed after coitus. Cold sweat.

DENTITION. Pregnancy. Rest. Cold. Eating. Lying. Summer. During menses. 6 P.M. to 6 A.M.

Warmth. Hot food. Motion.

MUCOUS MEMBRANES: DIGESTIVE TRACT. Gums. Stomach. Abdomen. Female genitals. Uterus. BLOOD. Teeth.

Complementary: Sul. Related: Aru-t. Ars. Carb-ac. Grap. Nit-ac. Psor.

Kreosotum

Kreosote. A Distillation of Wood Tar.

Dark complexion, slight, lean, ill-developed, poorly nourished, overgrown; very tall for her age (Phos.).

Children: old looking, wrinkled (^Ahroi.) ; scrofulous or psoric affections; rapid emaciation (Iod.) ; post climacteric diseases of women (Lach.).

Hsemorrhagic diathesis; small wounds bleed freely (Grot., Lach., Phos. ) ; flow passive, in epistaxis, haemoptysis, haematuria ; in typhoid, followed by great prostration; dark, oozing, after the extraction of a tooth (Ham.).

Roaring and humming in ears, with deafness, before and during menses.

Corrosive, fetid, ichorous discharges from mucous membranes ; vitality greatly depressed.

Itching, so violent toward evening as to drive one almost wild (itching, without eruption, Dolichos).

Painful dentition; teeth begin to decay as soon as they appear; gums bluish-red, soft, spongy, bleeding, inflamed, scorbutic, ulcerated.

Vomiting: of pregnancy, sweetish water, with ptyalism; of cholera, during painful dentition; incessant with cadaverous stool; in malignant affections of stomach.

Severe headache before and during menses (Sep.).

Menses: too early, profuse, protracted; pain during, but < after it ; flow on lying down, cease on sitting or walking about ; cold drinks relieve menstrual pains ; flow intermits, at times almost ceasing, then commencing again (Sulph.).

Incontinence of urine; can only urinate when lying; copious, pale; urging, cannot get out of bed quick enough (Apis, Petros.); during first sleep (Sep.), from which child is roused with difficulty.

Smarting and burning during and after micturition ( Sulph. ) .

Leucorrhoea : acrid, corrosive, offensive ; worse betzvcen periods (Bov., Bor.) ; has the odor of green corn ; stiffens like starch, stains the linen yellow.

Lochia : dark, brown, lumpy, offensive, acrid ; almost ceases, then freshens up again (Con., Sulph.).

Violent corrosive itching of pudenda and vagina.

Relations. — Kreosote is followed well by Ars., Phos., Sulph., in cancer and diseases of a malignant tendency.

Carbo veg. and Kreosote are inimical.

Aggravation. — In the open air; cold weather; when growing cold; from washing or bathing with cold water ; rest, especially when lying.

Amelioration.' — Generally better from warmth.

Beechwood Kreosote Kreosotum is a mixture of phenols obtained from this distillation. Pulsations all over the body, and profuse bleeding from small wounds. Very severe, old neuralgic affections; pains rather aggravated by rest. Excoriating, burning, and offensive discharges. Hæmorrhages, ulcerations, cancerous affections. Rapid decomposition of fluids and secretions, and burning pains. Overgrown, poorly developed children. Post-climacteric diseases. Tumefaction, puffiness, gangrene. Ailings of teething children. Mental.––Music causes weeping and palpitation. Vanishing of thought; stupid, forgetful, peevish, irritable. Child wants everything but throws it away when given.

Worse, in open air, cold rest, when lying; after menstruation. Better, from warmth, motion, warm diet.

Dull pain, as from a board pressing against forehead. Menstrual headache. Occipital pain (Gels; Zinc pic).

Sick, suffering expression; hot, cheeks red.

Salty lachrymation. Lids red and swollen.

Eruption around and pimples within. Difficult hearing and buzzing.

Offensive smell and discharge. Chronic catarrh of old people. Acrid rawness. Lupus (Ars).

Lips red, bleeding. Very painful dentition; child will not sleep. Very rapid decay of teeth, with spongy, bleeding gums; teeth dark and crumbly (Staph; Ant c). Putrid odor and bitter taste.

Burning, choking sensation. Putrid odor.

Nausea; vomiting of food several hours after eating; of sweetish water in the morning. Feeling of coldness, as of ice water in stomach. Soreness; better eating. Painful hard spot. Hæmatemesis. Bitter taste after a swallow of water.

Distended. Burning hæmorrhoids. Diarrhœa; very offensive; dark brown. Bloody, fetid stools. Cholera infantum in connection with painful dentition, green stools, nausea, dry skin, exhaustion, etc.

Offensive. Violent itching of vulva and vagina, worse when urinating. Can urinate only when lying; cannot get out of bed quick enough during first sleep. Dreams of urinating. Enuresis in the first part of night. Must hurry when desire comes to urinate.

Corrosive itching within vulva, burning and swelling of labia; violent itching between labia and thighs. During menses, difficult hearing; buzzing and roaring; eruption after. Burning and soreness in external and internal parts. Leucorrhœa, yellow, acrid; odor of green corn; worse between periods. Hæmorrhage after coition. Menses too early, prolonged. Vomiting of pregnancy, with ptyalism. Menstrual flow intermits (Puls); ceases on sitting or walking; reappears on lying down. Pain worse after menses. Lochia offensive; intermits.

Hoarse, with pain in larynx. Cough; worse evening, with efforts to vomit, with pain in chest. Raw burning in chest; pains and oppression. Cough after influenza (Eriodyction). Winter coughs of old people, with heavy pressure on sternum. Gangrene of lungs. After every cough, copious, purulent expectoration. Hæmoptysis; periodic attacks. Sternum feels pressed in.

Dragging backache, extending to genitals and down thighs. Great debility.

Pain in joints, hip and knee. Boring pain in hip-joints. Scapulæ sore.

Itching, worse towards evening. Burning in soles. Senile gangrene. Small wounds bleed freely (Crot; Lach; Phos). Pustules and herpes. Ecchymosis; dorsal surface of fingers and hands eczematous.

Disturbed with tossing. Paralytic sensation in limbs on waking. Anxious dreams of pursuit, fire, erections, etc.

Antidote: Nux. Inimical: Carbo. Complementary in malignant diseases: Ars; Phos; Sulph. Guaiacol (is the principal constituent of Kreosote, and similar in action. Used in pulmonary tuberculosis. Dose 1 to 5 m). Matico-Artanthe or Piper augustifolia, (Gonorrhœa, hæmorrhage from lungs; catarrhal conditions of genito-urinary organs and gastro-intestinal tract. Topically a hæmostatic. Difficult, dry, deep, winter cough. Use tincture). Compare also: Fuligo ligni; Carbol ac; Iod; Laches.

Third to thirtieth potency. The 200th in sensitive patients.

Kreosotum

Characteristics: There are three things that stand out most prominently in Kreosotum, and when they appear together the symptoms in minor degree will be likely to be associated. These three characteristics are:

1. Excoriating discharges; 2. Pulsations all over the body, and 3. Profuse bleeding from small wounds. When these three things arc associated in a high degree Kreosote should be examined. A prick of a pin will cause the oozing of bright red- blood, and mucous membranes bleed easily. Any pressure upon the mucous membranes will cause oozing.

Bleeding here and there about the body. The lachrymation is excoriating. It excoriates the margins of the lids and checks, and they become red and raw, and smart. If there is a purulent discharge it is acrid. The corners of the lips and mouth are red and raw, and' the saliva burns and smarts. The moisture about the mouth, whatever it may be, excoriates and the mouth is raw. The eyes smart and burn as if raw.

The leucorrhoea causes smarting and burning about the vulva, so that the mucous surfaces of the labia are red and raw, sometimes inflamed, but always burning. The vagina burns during coition, and there is bleeding after coition; granulations of the vagina and os uteri, so that the pressure of the act of coition brings on bleeding and burning, smarting and excoriation. And the male organ will smart and burn after coming in contact with the secretion of the vagina during coition.

The urine burns and smarts. This tendency to excoriation from the excretions and secretions applies to all the tissues of the body. Every emotion and exciting circumstance is attended with throbbing all over the body, pulsations to the ends of the fingers. Every emotion is attended with tearfulness, Music that will in the slightest way excite the emotion, minor strains and music that strikes home to the heart, pathetic music, will bring out tears that are acrid, and palpitation and pulsations that are felt to the extremities.

When the Kreosote sore throat is present the least pressure of the tongue depressor will establish oozing, little drops of blood will appear. During the coryza there is nosebleed. When the eyes are red and raw and inflamed, they will bleed easily. If an individual pricks the finger the blood will not merely be a single drop, but a good many will flow. Prolonged haemorrhage from the passages; hemorrhage from the kidneys, from the eyes, the nose, the uterus. Haemorrhage after coition. Tumors bleed easily. These are the most marked features of Kreosote. If these are fixed in your mind, we have what may be known, as a Kreosote constitution out of which may come all the rest of the symptoms in all their minutiae, and little symptoms and fragments in every organ. You have in this one group the strong features of Kreosote. No matter how many particulars you may have in a case, if you do not have something of these general features you need not expect to find your patient constitutionally cured or relieved by Kreosote. These may be considered essentials.

Mentally the patient is so irritable that there is nothing that will suit him. The wants are so numerous that nothing satisfies. The patient wants everything and is satisfied with nothing, that is, he wants something and when he has it he does not want it. That is the state of irritability and lack of satisfaction in a chronic condition.

You see the child in the mother's arms. It wants a toy, and when given it throws it in the face of somebody; it wants this and that and is never satisfied, always wanting something new, a new toy which it throws away the moment it gets it and then calls for something else.

The lips are red and bleeding, the corners of the month are raw, the eyelids red and the skin excoriated. If it has, in connection with all this, loose passages from the bowels and you examine the fissure between the nates, you will find it is red and raw. If the child be old enough to make such motions he will put the hands upon the sore genitals and fissures and cry out in a most irritable way, because of the smarting. Such is the Kreosote baby. It may be suffering from cholera infantum; it may be subject to wetting the bed; it may have spells of vomiting, in which it vomits all its food; it is a Kreosote baby.

Kreosote has attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting; all sorts of disturbances of the urine; great distension and trouble with the bowels; abdomen distended from flatus. You look over the whole case at once as a Kreosote case, because of these general features that can be summed up in the aspect of the child.

The Kreosote face has a yellowish pallor; it is a sickly countenance, semi-cachectic, intermingled with blotches that are reddish looking, as if erysipelas were going to set in. In olden times this countenance was called a scorbutic countenance.

Take a woman with this kind of countenance; at every menstrual flow she complains of much swelling and rawness of the genitals; the flow is copious, clotted, stops and then starts again, comes too soon and lasts too long; at times it is black, very foetid, produces rawness upon the thighs and the genitals, with much swelling; at every menstrual period there is rawness of the lips and fissures in the corners of the mouth; the tears become acrid; at the menstrual period all the fluids of the body seem to be acid and they burn wherever they touch.

Very often there is a loose stool, which is also acrid and smarts the anus at the menstrual period. All the symptoms are worse at the menstrual period, sometimes in the early part, sometimes at the middle, sometimes all through, and sometimes at the close. Something more about the scorbutic constitution is brought out in relation to the gums; the gums become puffed and red and tumid and settle away from the teeth.

They become spongy and bleed easily. In the mouth there is much ulceration and little ulcers spread from aphthous patches, smarting and burning; the tongue has ulcers upon it, which bleed easily upon touch.

At the close of a typhoid fever haemorrhage from the bowels, bleeding from the mucous membranes. The mouth becomes raw, and wherever there is a mucous membrane there is a rawness, and the fluids that ooze continue to, eat and cause ulceration. If at the close of a typhoid fever, when the time comes for convalescence, vomiting comes.

Vomiting, bleedings, diarrheas. The fluids vomited from, the stomach are so acrid that they seem to take the skin off from the mouth, set the teeth on edge, make the lips raw. So excoriation from acrid fluids, as well as throbbing all over the body, are features that you must bear in mind with Kreosote.

The discharges from the body are offensive; offensive, bloody, acrid discharges from the nose; offensive, watery discharges from any part of the body; sometimes even putrid; the leucorrhea is very offensive. Rapid emaciation, with spongy, burning ulceration, pus acrid, ichorous, foetid and yellow. Sometimes the inflammatory condition will run so high in an ulcer, only a small ulceration, that gangrene will set in, and hence we have a gangrenous ulceration; gangrene of parts that are inflamed. Very low formations occur upon the margins of mucous membranes; crusts form. Indurations under the crusts and the crusts continue to form. The circulation is so poor, so feeble in the parts all about the margin of the lips and the corners of the mouth, and corners of the eyes, and eyelids, and upon the genitals, and there is so much venous engorgement that crusts form and ulcerate and bleed and pile up, and this continues until a phagedenic spot comes. This condition is so much like epithelioma that Kreosote has cured epithelioma.

Stomach: The next striking thing in Kreosote is its stomach symptoms, Soon after eating there comes a burning pain in the stomach, and then a sense of fullness and an increasing nausea, ending in vomiting of the food, which looks as it did when taken; it looks undigested, but it is sour and acrid, coming up an hour or two after eating. Vomiting, the stomach seems unable to digest, and after the patient empties it there is constant nausea. After a swallow of water a prolonged bitter taste remains in the mouth. There is aggravation from eating cold things and relief from warm diet. In malignant diseases of the stomach when this symptom is present, Kreosote becomes a great palliative; it relieves the burning and improves the digestion for a while, but the trouble comes again. Many times our remedies furnish us the greatest known palliation in cancerous affections. Homoeopathy should at all times furnish a degree of palliation in cancerous and other incurable malignant diseases of the stomach.

This palliation will bring more comfort to the stomach than can possibly be brought about by Morphine. I have watched patients under Morphine and under homeopathic medicine, and as a mere matter of comfort I will take the homoeopathic medicines.

This has been the experience of many. When you hear a homoeopath say that he prefers anodynes in cancerous affections of the stomach and in other painful affections, it is pretty sure evidence that he is not able to find the medicines that are suitable for the patient. These cases test the ability of the physician.

Diarrhea: Kreosote is a great remedy for diarrheas in the summer, especially for infants. The infant that I described as to his temper may be the infant suffering from the worst form of summer complaint, or having a light attack of cholera infantum. Or he may be "teething," and suffering from the troubles that are sometimes associated with teething. Infants have troubles at the time of teething only because they are sick, and if the child were not in disorder he would not have trouble when teething. Teething is a crisis, and the things that are within will come out at the time, just as there are troubles that are likely to come out at the time of puberty and at the climacteric period.

A marked feature of the Kreosote constitution is that when the desire to urinate comes, he must hurry or the urine will escape. The urine is passed during sleep. Bloody urine; clots in the urine; acrid and excoriating urine; weakness of the bladder; inability to hold the urine. Smarting and burning in the pudenda, during and after micturition.

"Sugar in the urine."

It has cured diabetes. Generalize the symptoms given and you will see what kind of a diabetic patient will need Kreosote.