Thirst was insatiable, dizziness as if intoxicated, copious sweat, pain confines him to lying on the back, hardly tolerated lying on sides for examination. Temperature 103.8, pulse 112. This man had been exhausted several months with hard work, domestic and economic stress. Emaciation was marked. I expected a large accumulation of fluid.
The majority of the symptoms are found under the parent alkaloid Strychninum. It is with interest then that we look to the Phosphorus element, which also acts in force upon the central nervous system where it produces lack of stamina, fears, and sensitiveness to external stimuli. The cardio-vascular system is also acted upon and we get flushings, rapid heart, and irregular pulse.
Sleepiness during day and sleeplessness at night from heat, he feels as if hot water were pored over him. Feeling of a heavy weight on back part of head, shooting forward to temples, and vertex with sensation as if the top of head were opening and shutting, laterally, begins on waking, lasts all day; worse from noise, flatulency. Great pain in small of back worse during scanty menses. Sensation as if a drop of cold water falls on this or that spot of the skull; sleeplessness from general heat. Headache as if there were a stone pressing upon it. Sensation as if a heavy weight upon vertex.
The most important symptoms are the mentals, which show more clearly than any other kind the patients individuality, upon which we seek to prescribe. The patients loves and hates, strange ideas, attitude towards life or towards other persons, etc, etc– if any of these have recently changed, they form the most useful basis for prescription.
Arsenic is not as often indicated in ulcerations of the throat as many other drugs, rarely in the early stages of diphtheria; it is valuable in the later stages with profound prostration, especially if the membrane of the throat becomes dry with burning thirst, irritable stomach, profound prostration, or with albuminuria and dropsy. Inflammation of the esophagus, with spasmodic stricture on swallowing food, burning.
These are situations when either the patient is raving and and tossing with terrible pains or the disease is fast developing endangering the life or may be a situation when the vitality itself is ebbing down. The situation demands a hurried prescription. But truly speaking this is not what is actually meant by the term ” hurried prescription”; it is in fact, a well considered one as will be evident from its instantaneous result.
Indeed I think that the test of a genuine homoeopath might not unfairly be said to lie in his capacity to read through a schema with both profit and enjoyment — because of the possibilities it reveals of dealing with cases occurring every day in practice. Again and again in the course of my work I have come across symptoms in the schemas of remedies reminding me of cases in the past which I might have cured had I but known the remedies then.
Painful swelling and sensitiveness of the pit of the stomach to tight clothing and to contact. Tension in the hypochondria as from a hoop. Accumulation of flatulence, incarcerated flatulence, the flatulence cannot pass and cases much pain. Gnawing, griping sensation in the region of the stomach. Continuous rumbling in the abdomen. Palpitation of the heart during digestion.