Picric Acid


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


Mind: The weakness of
body and mind is the first impression wrought upon the mind of the reader who goes carefully
over this proving.

It is progressive, passing from weariness to paralysis. The evidences of
softening of brain and cord are strong. He, soon becomes sensitive to heat and desires the
cool air which ameliorates his head and bodily condition.

Cold air and cold bathing are grateful to him. He is sensitive to wet
weather. Numbness of many parts, trembling, lassitude, heaviness, must lie down, worse from
least exertion are marked features. Loss of sleep, mental, worry, mental labor, are the
exciting causes of symptoms. Extreme indifference.

It is a typical brain-fag remedy with indifference and lack of will
power, aversion to talk, think, or perform any mental exertion. He is quickly prostrated
from the least mental work, and it brings on many complaints, such as soreness and lameness,
diarrhea, burning along the spine, general weakness and heaviness of limbs and back. He
loses all interest in things; becomes irritable from any mental exertion.

Head: In young school
children we have a common use for this very valuable but neglected remedy. When the child
begins to learn the alphabet, headaches come, and return with every repeated effort, often
with dilated pupils. After every examination at school come these violent headaches. A young
man at school with the following symptoms was cured promptly.

Student’s headache, vertigo when remaining standing, heaviness in the
head, epistaxis, dilated pupils, congestion of conjunctiva, inability to bear artificial
light, loss of appetite, bitter taste in mouth, vomiting, jaundice. Vertigo from mental
exertion, lameness from stooping, walking, ascending, from raising the head from the pillow,
can not sit up, soon nausea comes from it.

It is often associated with the head pains, For headaches of students,
teachers, professional men, and overworked business men, it is a most useful remedy. For
headaches with great nervous weakness from grief and de pressing emotions, it has been often
overlooked.

It has violent pain in vertex, forehead and occiput, extending down the
spine with much heat. Congestive headaches. The head must be cool, it is worse from warm
room, and wrapping up the head or body, and better from rest of mind and body.

The headaches often begin and increase with the day, and are better by
sleep at night. The patient is wholly incapacitated in the daytime, but comfortable from
rest and sleep during the night. Extreme prostration often comes with these headaches.
Extreme sexual excitement often comes with the headache as with many of its “complaints,” but it is not an essential concomitant.

Eyes: The eye symptoms
are due to loss of tone in the eye muscles of such as are suffering from brain fag. Looking,
reading We print and exertion of vision will bring on the headache and eye symptoms (Onosmodium).

Sensation of sand in the eye, smarting, acrid tears, sparks, fag before
the eyes, near sighted, dim vision, objects confused, pupils dilated, severe pain over eyes.
Thick mucus in eyes.

The symptoms from the eye arc worse from artificial light.

Small boils and pustules in external auditory canal.

Digestion:
Eructations, abortive, sour.

Nausea in the morning worse on rising and moving about.

There is evidence of liver trouble, and the patient is jaundiced.

Rumbling in the abdomen, diarrhea from mental exertion.

Yellow, watery or thin faecal, oily stool; smarting after stool; stool
like yellow cornmeal gruel. Great weakness after stool, in debilitated persons.

Urine contains sugar
and albumen, Urine of high specific gravity. Urine heavy with urates, uric acid, phosphates,
and poor in sulphates. Dribbling after urination. Weakness of the bladder. Great waste of
phosphates.

In the proving it turns the normal sexual sphere into lust, and salacity
with violent erections, especially during the night. It has many times cured these symptoms
even when of long standing.

Pain in occiput and spine, heaviness of limbs and sexual excitement.
Where great restlessness of feet is present the Zincum Picricum acts
better. It cures impotency and spermatorrhea when the mind is unable to control the lustful
state.

Burning heat in the spine from mental or physical exertion. Weakness of
the spine and heaviness of the limbs, especially the lower limbs. The back is so tired that
he cannot sit up erect, he must slide down in the chair or lie down. He is relieved while
lying. It has been very useful in myelitis, with the weak limbs and a sensation as if body
and limbs were bandaged or constricted; also with anesthesia of legs and as if he had on
elastic stockings.

In locomotor ataxia where there are tormenting erections and emissions as
soon as he falls asleep, Many cases of spinal weakness have been cured by this remedy.

Weakness of the lower limbs with trembling, numbness and constriction.
Formication and prickling as from needles. Marked coldness of the feet. Physical exertion
greatly intensifies all these symptoms after long rest he is ameliorated.

Tired after least exertion in limbs and whole body; excessive lassitude. Great muscular
weakness. Sleepiness in day-time and sleepless at night, especially after mental labor.

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.