Argentum Nitricum


James Tyler Kent describes the symptoms of the homeopathic medicine Argentum Nitricum in great detail and compares it with other homeopathy remedies. …


Mind: We shall find by examining the symptoms of this remedy that the intellectual feature predominates, as in the metal; that the affections are disturbed only in a limited way. There is a predominance of mental symptoms.

First of all, disturbance in the memory, disturbance of reason, he becomes most irrational in his explanations of his actions.

He is irrational and does strange things and comes to strange conclusions; foolish things.

He has all sorts of imaginations, illusions, hallucinations. He is tormented in his mind by the inflowing of troublesome thoughts, and especially at night his thoughts torment him. to the extent that he is extremely anxious and this puts him in a hurry and in a fidget and he goes out and walks and walks, and the faster he walks the faster he thinks he must walk, and he walks till fatigued.

Strange notions and ideas and fears come into his mind. He has an impulse that lie is going to have a fit or that he is going to have a sickness.

A strange thought comes into his mind that if be goes past a certain corner of the street he will create a sensation, will fall down and have a fit, and to avoid that he will go around the block.

He avoids going past that corner for fear he will do something strange, He is so reduced in his mental state that he admits into the mind all sorts of impulses.

There is inflowing of strange thoughts into his mind, and when crossing a bridge or high place the thought that he might kill himself, or perhaps he might jump off, or what if he should jump off, and sometimes the actual impulse comes to jump off the bridge into the water.

When looking out of a window the thought comes to his mind what an awful thing it would be to jump out of the window, and sometimes the impulse comes to actually jump out of the window.

There is fear of death, the over-anxious state, that death is near, and often at times like Aconite he predicts the moment he is going to die.

Looking forward to times he is anxious. When looking forward to some thing that he is about to do, or in the expectation of things, he is anxious.

When about to meet an engagement he is anxious until the time comes.

If he is about to take a railroad journey he is anxious, full of fear and anxiety and tremulous nervousness until he is on the car going and then it passes away. If he is about to meet a certain person on the street corner he is anxious and breaks out often in a sweat from anxiety until it is over with.

Not only is this particular symptom present, but the symptoms come on as a result of his anxiety.

He is excitable, angers easily, and as a result of this pain comes. When he becomes angry he becomes vehement and pain in the head comes on; cough, pain in the chest and weakness follow this anger

The anxiety he has from these circumstances will bring on complaints.

When he is going anywhere, going to a wedding or to the opera, or any unusual event it is attended with anxiety, fear and diarrhea.

So it is we have in this a wonderful medicine. It says in the text that he gave all sorts of queer reasons for his strange conduct, endeavoring to cover up, as it were, his foolishness which he himself realizes.

Sadness, melancholy and confusion. Defective memory. The sight of high houses makes him dizzy, and his vertigo is increased or comes on from closing the eyes; with the vertigo there is buzzing in the ears, great weakness and trembling.

Constitutional headaches from brain fag, from exertion of the mind. In such mental exhaustion, headaches, nervous excitement and trembling, and organic troubles of the heart and liver in business men, in students, in brain workers, in those subject to long excitement; – in actors who have kept up a long time the excitement of appearing well in public.

This state of mind progress until there is a general state of weakness; with trembling, paralysis, numbness, disturbed functions, palpitation, throbbing all over the body, with the mental state.

The nervous state continues until there is disorder of all the organs of the body. The stomach refuses to digest, everything taken, seems to go into gas, and he becomes distended and suffers with pain.

The circulation seems to be greatly disturbed in addition to the palpitation. Fullness of the blood vessels and throbbing all over the body. The blood vessels become diseased.

Atheromatous degeneration and dilatation of the veins, varicose veins.

Upon the mucous membranes and skin ulceration, and this progresses and the heart becomes increasingly feeble, and the extremities become cold and blue and the lips are cold and blue, with aggravation of all these complaints from mental excitement, from going to the opera, from meeting a friend, from keeping an engagement.

The medicine is preeminently a nervous one, full of spinal symptoms, rending, tearing pains down the extremities; such pains are found in locomotor ataxia fulgurating shooting pains.

There is one grand feature running through this patient modifying most of his symptoms, with few exceptions, and that is that he is like a Pulsatilla patient; he wants cold air, cold drinks, cold things; wants ice, ice cream; wants the head in the cold air; suffocates in a warm room.

He suffocates from warm clothing, wants the door and windows open; cannot breathe in a stuffy room, suffocates if other people are in the room; cannot go to church or to the opera, cannot go to places of amusement or gatherings, must stay at home.

He dreads a crowd, dreads certain places.

Ulcerations: Everywhere we find ulceration, but particularly upon the mucous membrane. The throat has ulcers in it, the eyelids, and of the cornea; ulceration of the bladder.

Ulcers of the uterus, of the vagina and of the external soft parts. This tendency of ulcerate seems rather strange, peculiar that it should have in its pathogenesis such a tendency, when the old school has been using it to cauterize ulcers, and yet it heals them up.

We know that Phosphorus will burn and it intensifies the tendency to ulcerate, makes the ulcer go deeper, while Argentum nitricum sets it healing.

Upon mucous membranes we find red elevations, granulations, enlargement of vessels, purplish aspect. Sensitive ulcers.

Female: The complaints in women come on before and during the menstrual period. It is a favorable time for all her complaints to be aggravated; if she have Argentum nitricum symptoms they are likely to be at their worst at this time.

She suffers from most violent dysmenorrhoea, from nervous excitement, from hysterical manifestations, and an unusually increased flow.

A tendency to hemorrhages it belongs to this remedy.

The ulcers bleed; there is bleeding from the nose, bleeding from the chest, the urine is bloody; leucorrhoea copious, menstrual flow copious; menorrhagia; bleeding from the mucous membranes generally, from the uterus. Vomiting of blood. It has cured prolonged and most inveterate ulceration of the stomach, when there has been vomiting of blood.

The aggravation at the menstrual period is a strong feature and she is free from symptoms during the interim.

The palpitation, the trembling, the coldness of the surface, though desiring cold open air, blueness of the lips, coldness of the extremities, blueness and coldness of the lower extremities to the knees and of the hands and arms to the elbows, and yet the patient wants cool things, wants something cold.

This may not be seen at any other time. Here is striking feature:

“Patient cannot lie on the right -side because it brings on so much palpitations.”

We have plenty of remedies with palpitation worse lying on the right side are rare (Alumen, Badiaga, Kalmia, Kali n., Lilium t., Platina, Spongia).

It is uncommon, strange, rare and peculiar.

It is such a strong feature in this remedy that to a great extent it becomes quite general, because it is a heart symptom and is intermingled with the general symptoms.

With this sensitiveness he is compelled to get into some other position; must get up and walk, because of lying on the right side.

The patient will say he throbs from head to foot while lying on the right side. Do not forget in this medicine all these general things when we come to apply them in their particulars and the particulars in the generals.

Do not forget that this medicine is one of the most flatulent medicines in the books. He is distended to bursting; gets scarcely any relief from passing flatus or eructations.

He is possessed with the distressing idea that all his undertakings must fail. When walking he becomes faint with anxiety which makes him walk faster. Everywhere you will find the intellectual symptoms predominant.

Headache: The headaches are of a congestive character; considerable throbbing, ameliorated by cold, and tight bandaging. Headache from mental exertion from excitement, with vertigo, nausea and vomiting.

Pains in the right side of the head, jagging, cutting, stitching pulsating. Head feels much enlarged.

Eyes: The eye symptoms are too numerous to mention. They are of a general character such as we find in catarrhal conditions with ulceration, relieved by cold.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.