remedy is full of burning, and so the eyeballs burn, better in the open air. Iritis, but the inflammation sometimes involves the choroid, the retina, and mucous membrane, making a general inflammatory condition of syphilitic character. There are tearing pains in various places around the eyes; sticking, stitching pains, worse at night. Ulcers, with stitching pains, worse at night. Burning, stitching in the eyes with dryness, so that the lids stick to the balls of the eyes, pain worse at night. There is a misty appearance before the eyes, dullness as if looking through a fog. It also seems as if the atmosphere were filled with little floating black flies. "Muscae voliantes." You have looked into the air and seen little gnats and mosquitoes; well it appears to these patients as if these were there when they are not there. The discharge from the eyes is ichorous, bloody and often offensive.
This same syphilitic miasm may attack the ear and the bones of the ear. These bones may decay and the hearing be lost. "Burning in the ear with discharge of foetid pus." Stitching pains in the ears front within out.
A horribly offensive discharge comes from the nose; ulcers high up in the nose; caries of the bones of the nose; syphilitic ozaena. Putrid old catarrhs. "Feeling as if the nose stopped high up, as if he could not breathe through it, with fullness of the head, when riding in a carriage." (Aurum, Aurum mur.)
Numbness is a great feature of this remedy, numbness of the scalp, or deep in the head; numbness here and there; numb, dead feeling associated with the pain; numbness after pain; often numbness after sleep. Other nervous manifestations occur besides those that are hysterical. It has choreic motions. You would expect such a peculiar nervous constitution to have almost everything among its nervous symptoms. "Constantly chewing and working frothy slime out of mouth, with swollen tongue." "Speech unintelligible." "Grinding of teeth; starting at night." Swelling of the lips, and of the whole buccal mucous membrane, especially the lower lip, with burning in the mouth.
There are syphilitic symptoms in the throat, attended with the usual burning, darting, stitching in ulcers pain when swallowing; a sensation of a ball rising in the throat, such as occurs in globus hystericus; choking, must constantly swallow. Hysterical and choreic affections of the Esophagus and trachea. Spasms of the Esophagus. This lump in the throat, or suffocation, is a sort of hysterical spasm of the Esophagus. "Dryness and burning in the Esophagus."
In the stomach troubles, if you have ever seen a typical case of Asafoetida, you will wonder where all the air comes from; it comes up in volumes. "Hiccough-like contractions of the diaphragm." Choreic jerkings of the diaphragm, with expulsion of wind like the sound of a pop-gun going off almost every second. It is a condition that the patient has no control over. It is like the shooting off of little guns forcing loud belching, loud eructations of wind from the stomach. There are a few symptoms mentioned in the text just here that are worthy of note. "Pulsation in pit of stomach; perceptible to sight and touch." "Pressing, cutting, stitching pains." A queer observation has been made that flatus was not passed downward, but all upwards. "Eructations; smelling like garlic; tasting rancid, sharp or putrid." Always horribly offensive. Offensiveness is a characteristic of the remedy. And then there is a "gone empty feeling in the pit of the stomach," not a pain. "Pulsations after eating." "Meteorism of the stomach." The remedy has many gastric and abdominal complaints; full of bellyache; stitching pains, colic. The diarrhoea is more or less troublesome. These patients are afflicted with diarrhoea from the slighest indigestion, after any indiscretion in diet, a painful, watery diarrhoea. "Liquid stools of most disgusting smell." "Blackish-brown papescent offensive stools, which relieve."
"Bearing down in genitals, worse when riding in a carriage." "Uterine ulcer sensitive and painful." This medicine has been very useful in palliating uterine cancer in such constitutions as described; those with purple faces, never the very pallid ones. Women of feeble, flabby, venous constitutions are subject to haemorrhages and miscarriages. Women who are not pregnant sometimes have the breasts fill up with milk, a wonderfully annoying thing, and 'but few remedies have it; this is one of the few. It has also deficiency of milk. "Ten days after delivery milk diminished."
These patients sometimes get hysterical asthma; all sorts of disturbance in breathing, dyspnoea. "Asthmatic feeling in trachea." "Asthmatic attacks at least once a day all her life, brought on by every bodily exertion, coition, especially by every satisfying meal." Attacks of dyspnoea after coition, like Ambra. "Obstinate titillating cough at night." Many of these complaints are worse at night; nightly aggravations. Syphilitic complaints are commonly worse at night and such antisyphilitic remedies as Mercurius, Staphisagria, Hepar, Nitric acid, etc., are all worse at night. Among the other chest complaints, I will read a few of those that are marked here prominently and are striking ones. "Pressure and burning under the sternum." "Compression of chest as from a heavy weight." "Stitches in chest." "Single, violent stitches from within outward, at short intervals."
This remedy is full of rheumatism and gouty symptoms; gouty affections in general, in nervous constitutions. When such a nervous constitution finally produces gouty formations, the nervousness often disappears, for it has been relieved by the deposit in the joints; a transformation scene has taken place.
-by James Tyler Kent
