Homeopathic Materia Medica

Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, James Tyler Kent

Generalities and modalities: Belladonna is a remedy that takes hold of the system with great violence. It is especially suitable to plethoric, vigorous individual, and intellectual people brainy people have complaints coming on suddenly, providing they are in a substantial state of health, and are reasonably plethoric and vascular.

The complaints of Belladonna come on suddenly, run a regular course, and subside suddenly. The pains and suffering come on suddenly and with great violence, and subside suddenly.

Colds ultimate rapidly, run a sharp course, a course of great violence, and subside sudden. Belladonna especially affects the whole vascular system, the heart, lungs, brain and nervous system.

Among the earliest conditions to examine is the heat. It has inflammations of all the organs, especially the brain, lungs, and liver.

The intestines are also involved as well as the other organs. These inflammations are always attended by violent heat; the heat is some thing unusual.

It is more marked in Belladonna than in almost any other remedy. When you put your hand upon a Belladonna subject you will suddenly withdraw it, the heat is so intense.

The memory of the heat is carried in the hand and fingers for some time.

Pains, inflammations, and sufferings, nightly attacks of delirium, violent attacks inflammatory in character are attended with that kind of heat.

No matter where the inflammation is, there is that same intense heat, There are times, though, when that kind of heat is present, and it is not Bell., and that is when the fever is of the continued type.

Fever: Bell. has no continued fever in it. It is true the older books tell you about Bell. for this violent heat in typhoid and some other continued fevers, but if you examine Bell. from beginning to end you will find nothing continued in its fever.

Its fever is remittent. It never comes on in its complaints gradually like typhoid. It has not the gradual rise and the gradual fall like a continued fever.

I only mention that so that you will not be lost.

Our lamented Hering, one of the ablest teachers the world ever had, classes Bell. for typhoid fever when the delirium and the heat are somewhat like Bell., but let me tell you just what will take place.

When you give Bell. for the delirium in typhoid fever - for such a delirium as looks like Bell. - you may subdue the delirium, but other manifestations will rise in that fever.

You will not subdue the fever, but you will subdue the patient. The patient will be sick longer, will go into a greater state of prostration than if you had let that delirium alone.

But Stramonium fits perfectly Hering's description of a case in which he says Bell. should be given.

The idea of that heat must be well fixed in the mind.

Heat, intense heat, violent heat.

There is another phase of Bell. that runs all through these inflammatory complaints and its fevers.

The inflamed parts, and very commonly the skin, are very red, and, as the inflammation advances, grow dusky; as the fever advances the face becomes mottled; but the first representation of Bell. is bright red, and the skin is shiny.

An inflamed part than can be seen will be red. In inflammation of glands the skin over the glands will be bright red in spots.

Hence red spots in the neck over inflamed glands. Inflammation of the parotid glands, inflammation of the sub-maxillary glands, inflammation of the glands of the neck, there will be a spot as red as fire over each.

The throat is as red as scarlet. The mucus membrane is inflamed, and red as scarlet. After a little it grows dusky, finally mottled; showing the character and direction of the Bell. constitution.

It travels gradually towards a zymotic state, such as we see in scarlet fever, in low inflammatory conditions; at first intense congestion, but vaso-motor paralysis follows.

Intense congestion and blueness, or purple and mottled.

Burning: Another grand feature of Bell. is present in its inflamed parts, and in its painful parts, whenever Bell. brings out anything like a decided action, it has burning; intense burning.

The burning in the throat with a Bell. sore throat is like a coal of fire. Inflammation of the tonsils, burning like fire.

The skin burns, and it is burning hot to the sensation of the patient, and intensely hot to the doctor. The skin burns in scarlet fever. He says,

"It burns so, doctor, it burns so;"

in bilious or remittent fever. In inflammation of an organ, the skin burns, there is a burning fever, and the part itself burns.

Inflammation of the bladder, with burning. Congestion of the brain, and the head burns. Congestion of the throat, and the throat burns.

It is hot locally, and it also burns subjectively. In gastritis there is burning.

In inflammation of the liver, the liver burns. Congestion of the liver with jaundice, and the liver burns. Now, we have three leading features; do not call them "key notes.," for that is not what I mean; heat, redness and burning.

We will see how they modify the whole feature of the sickness, how they permeate and ramify, and how they take meaning.

Swelling: But, that is not all. We have much swelling in Bell. The inflamed parts swell rapidly; are extremely sensitive to touch; are very painful, with the sensation as if they would burst, with pressive pains, stinging and burning.

There is heat, redness and burning in these inflamed parts, as well as swelling. Swelling, stinging, burning, throbbing. All over he throbs with all congestions and inflammations he throbs.

The part itself throbs, and his carotids throb. When children are sick in bed with congestion of the brain, they have an intensely hot head. If old enough to talk about it, they will say "it burns."

But then we will notice the throbbing. The temporal arteries and the carotids pulsate, with great violence. A turmoil is going on. An earthquake is taking place. Everything is being shaken when the patient needs Bell.

It is one of the most painful of remedies. It is so sensitive to pain. So sensitive that be suffers more than ordinary people do from the pain.

And, remember, the pains comes suddenly, they remain longer or shorter, and they go suddenly. They do this in neuralgia; they do this in inflammatory conditions, they do it in inflamed organs; they do it wherever they come.

Pains, tear, shoot, burn, and sting, and press, and smart, all at once. All of these characteristics are bundled up into one bundle, so that he suffers.

All of his pains are worse from motion, worse from light, worse from a jar, worse from cold. He wants to be wrapped up warmly, and is worse from any exposure or a draft.

The headaches are like many of die other pains; it feels as if the brain was going up and down, tearing and burning at every step he takes, and from every motion of the eyes, or turning the eyeballs, or going up stairs, rising from, his seat, or sitting down; all motion creates violent pains; feels as if the head would burst, as if the eyes would be pressed out. If he moves he starts the heart to pulsate on his sore parts and he calls them "hammering pains."

Wherever that pain is he cannot have it touched. If it is touched it will throb. If uncovered it will become worse. If someone walks across the floor, the jar makes him worse.

The jar of the bed, if he is in bed, is a common aggravation of Bell. If he is so sick that he is in bed, the jar of the bed makes all of his complaints worse.

You go to the bedside of a patient suffering from, an inflamed liver, and he will not let you put your hand on the bed, for the jar makes him worse. If the pain is in the abdomen; if it is an inflamed uterus; if it is in confinement, it is the same.

This aggravation from the jar is such a marked feature that it is not always confined to inflammations. It is often a modified in a state of nervous hyperesthesia.

A woman in confinement, when there is no inflammation, and none threatening, is in such a state of hyperesthesia that she wants the windows closed to keep the air out; she does not want to be touched; she does not want the bed moved, any little jar aggravates; she is so sensitive to a jar, even when there is no sensitive part.

You go to such a case, and you will realize in time that you are going to have a difficult and painful labor, without Bell.

But with a dose of Bell. all of these complaints pass away quickly, so quick is the action of this medicine. The jar of the bed will often reveal to you the nature of the remedy. If you walk to the bedside of a patient suffering from gallstone colic, with violent pains, he cannot have the bed touched.

His face is red, his skin burns, he cannot be touched, he is in excruciating, agony, and he tells that before you have crossed the room, You see it all. He says,

"Don't touch the bed, doctor."

That is a special feature; the aggravation from a jar is marked.

Spasms: general spasms and local spasms. Spasms of little canals, of the circular fibers, of tubular organs, like that I have spoken of in the gallstone colic.

In the ductus communis choledochus there is a clutching - or it may be in the cystic duct that the circular fibers, clutch that little bit of stone and will not let it through.

The passage is large enough to admit it and it has started to go through - but the irritation of the part causes a spasm and it clutches, that little stone; you put a dose of Bell. on his tongue, the spasm lets up, stone passes on, and there is no more trouble; in fifteen minutes the gallstone colic is gone.

There is never a failure in homoeopathic prescribing in gallstone- colic. The symptoms are not always Bell., but in this instance, where that horrible sensitiveness is present, it is Bell.

"Convulsions in infants."

They are violent and are usually associated with cerebral congestion. The skin is always in a state of fever. They are brought on from light, from a draft of cold air, from the infant becoming cold.

Nervous, brainy children, those with a good sized head, and plump, large-headed boys; boys especially, but also girls that have boys' heads, when exposed to the cold have convulsions. Light, motion and cold will bring on these convulsion.

The Bell. subject as an individual, like Bry., is worse in all his complaints from motion.

Motion brings on convulsions, motion brings on pain; motion increases the action of the heart and brings on throbbing; motion brings on many complaints and increases the sufferings.

Now think of these generals whenever you come to Bell. This idea of Bell. must prevail. No matter how many little symptoms you accumulate, get at these first.

Mind: The mental symptoms of Bell. are delightful to study, but dreadful to look upon. The mental symptoms are such as come on in intense fevers, such as are observed in maniacal excitement, in delirium.

Excitement runs all through. Violence runs all through the mental symptoms. The mental symptoms are all active, never passive. There is no passive delirium in Bell. It is a wild state.

He is wild; striking, biting, tearing things; doing unusual things; doing strange things; doing unexpected things. He is in a state of excitability. These mental symptoms that come on during fevers, the delirium and excitement, are very commonly ameliorated by eating a little light food.

That is not generally known in Bell., but it is quite a strong feature. But remember the violence, and with it, if you go to the bedside where there is this violent delirium, keep in mind the heat, redness and burning.

Full of imaginations. Sees ghosts, and spirits, and officers, and wild things. In the early part of the fever the delirium is very violent and excitable; but as it passes on he goes into a sleep, a sort of half-slumber a semi-comatose state.

Apparently in a dream, and he screams out. Dreams horrible things. Sees in his dreams the things that he talks about. When he has real sleep, or resting, as near as it is for him to rest, he has violent dreams; night-mare.

Sees things on fire. He is in a delirium, and in torment. He becomes stupid at times, appears to lose consciousness. Loses the memory of all things and then becomes wild. His delirium goes ort when he appears to be sleeping.

These symptoms often occur with cerebral congestion, the violent cerebral congestion of the infant. If they are old enough to talk they will talk about the hammering in the head.

In Bell. the infant also commonly remains in a profound stupor, the profound stupor that goes with congestion of the brain pupils dilated; skin hot and dry; face red, throbbing carotids.

Finally the child becomes pale as the stupor increases and the neck is drawn back, because as it progresses the base of the brain and spine become involved, and the muscles of the neck contract; drawing the head -backwards; and he rolls the head; eyes staring, pupils dilated.

This mental state is associated with scarlet fever and with cerebro-spinal meningitis.

Again, these mental states take the form of acute mania, when the patient will bite the spoon; will bark like a dog; will do all sorts of violent things; even jump out of the window. He has to be restrained, put in a strait-jacket.

The face is red, and the skin is hot, and the patient at times says that he burns all over, or that the head burns, and the head is very hot.

During all this time the feet are cold. Head hot, feet cold, or feet and hands cold as ice. It seems all the blood is being hurried to the head. All sorts of delusions and hallucinations are mingled with the acute mania; ghosts; horrid monsters; strange things, and deformed subjects.

Fear of imaginary things, and wants to run away. In the delirium of Bell. he wants to jump out of the window, wants to run, wants to get away from his attendants. He thinks they are doing him injury.

Throughout the acute mania, and throughout the delirious state, all the manifestations partake of violence. Destructiveness.

The Bell. patient in the most acute state must be watched, controlled, handled, and sometimes tied. In the text it describes these states as "rage, fury."

He wants to do violence.

"Moaning. Instead of eating, bit wooden spoon in two, gnawed plate, and growled and barked like a dog. A boy violently sick ran around the room laughing immoderately."

It has an insane laughter. A loud, boisterous laughter.

"A piece of bread, which he took to be a stone, he threw far from him. He turns and rolls in bed in a perfect rage. Aversion to noise and company."

Aversion to light; is better in the dark. At times a more passive state intervenes between these attacks of violence.

The active time is always that of violence; but there is sometimes a more passive state when the patient will sit or lie in bed and tear the bed clothing, or break anything that she can get her hands on. If it is a stick, she will break it up.

Running all through the complaints, whether delirium, fever, or pains, there is starting.

Starting in sleep like an electric shock. just as soon as he falls asleep a sensation like an electric shock throughout the body.

"Starts in fright at approach of others. Fear of imaginary things, wants to run away from them."

"Great anxiety"

runs through the remedy. As a patient comes out of these attacks of delirium, as he comes out of convulsions, fear is depicted upon the face.

The patient is in great excitement; the circulation is in a state of great excitement; the heart is in great excitement; motion and emotion increase the beating of the heart.

It may have been gleaned that Bell. is a remedy that is over sensitive; a state of hyperesthesia extreme irritability of tissues. This is said to be an increased irritability of the nerve centres.

This develops a state of increased ability to taste, and to smell and to feel; excibility of the sensorium.

Sensorium: Sensitive to impressions. Sensitive to light, to noise, to touch, to jar. The sensorium is violently excited.

Excessive nervous irritability stands out, perhaps, as one of the most prominent features of Bell. in contrast with medicines like Opium that deprive the patient of all sensitivity.

The more congestion there is in Bell. the more excitability. The more congestion there is in Opium the less excitability.

And yet they are very similar in many respects; very similar in aspect; in the appearance of the eyes and face; similar in pathological states. If I were to prescribe on the pathological state, the congestion of the brain, the appearance, without taking in the intensity of the one or other, I would not be able to distinguish between Opium and Bell.

They often antidote each other. But we do not prescribe on pathology, but upon symptoms, after careful individualization.

"Vertigo.," with this intense excitability. Turning in bed, or moving the head makes him dizzy.

"Things go round."

"Vertigo with pulsations."

Moving the head increases the pulsation, and the vertigo. The patient lies in bed; cannot hold the head up.

This increase sensitiveness especially applies to the scalp. We notice it particularly in the woman. She cannot have the hair bound up. It is often the case that Bell. patients will not have the hair combed or brushed.

"Lets the hair hang down the back;" so sensitive is the scalp.

"Hair feels as if pulled. Does not want the hair touched."

There are some remedies that correspond to extreme irritation in very sensitive natures; like Hepar, where she faints with the pain; like Nitric acid, when cannot bear the noise of vehicles going along the street, because it creates such violent sufferings; like Coffea, where footsteps aggravate all the complaints; he was so sensitive to pain that the noise of one entering the door when he was on the third floor aggravated his sufferings intensely, though no one else could hear it.

In Nux vomica, even the sound of footsteps increases the pain all over the body. Bell. has in its nature all this sensitiveness to pain. It is a part of the general sensorium; the who bodily state is intensified.

The Chamomilla patient is oversensitive to pain, but we do not need to sympathize with the Chamomilla patient, he will fight it out himself. But you will pity the Belladonna patient, you will pity the Pulsatilla patient, and the Nitric acid patient.

A strange part of it also is the reactive excitability. The reaction to medicine is so quick and so sudden that I have many times heard a patient say, before I had turned my back away from the bed,

"That medicine has relieved me," so quick is the reaction.

In many medicines reaction is slowed down, but in Bell. it is intensified. So it is in Nux vomica and in Zincum. When the case is very acute, but sometimes also when the case is somewhat chronic, this sensibility is marked.

Cuprum is so sensitive all over. It has sensitive warts; it has sensitive skin, sensitive polypi, everything sensitive; and it is so sensitive in its reaction that, when it is needed, partially indicated remedies will not work, because the patient is so oversensitive to everything that everything overacts.

The smallest dose, the mildest dose, the simplest dose overacts and everything aggravates. Odors aggravate; well selected remedies disturb instead of cure.

Cuprum tones down, relieves that sensitivity, and well-selected remedies will then act curatively and long. Cuprum lacks it in that high state of congestion - it is not like Bell. in that; Cuprum does not have that sensibility along with the active fever and congestion, the throbbing and disturbance of the circulation; but it has it in a chronic state.

Women and children are so sensitive that they get no sympathy and it is not suitable for hysterical ones either, but those that are not able to control themselves perfectly. Such is Cuprum.

We have medicines that are suitable to sensitive people, and especially sensitive women. Sensitive to odors, sensitive to every conceivable influence.

The doctor who will go out and take care of these poor sick little mortals, who understands their nature, perceives their quality, and relieves them of their suffering will command the whole community, in spite of the reputation of all the doctors that are there before him.

He must not be one who measures everybody by his own sensorium he may be a pachyderm, but he will find patients that are sensitive.

Head:This sensitivity is present in most of the Bell. headaches. There are stabbing pains, throbbing pains, shooting pains, all in connection with congestion.

They are all sensitive to motion, to every jar, to light, even to the winking of the eyes; sensitive to draft. Bell. will be indicated when the head is rolling - the patient rolling the head because the pain is so severe he cannot keep still, although the motion increases the headache.

A child lies and turns and tosses its head with congestion of the brain, screaming out with the brain cry, a sudden shriek. After awhile it wakes up and commences to toss the head, and every few minutes it shrieks with that brain cry; it is going into a stupor, the neck is drawn back, the face is flushed, it is now becoming pale.

There are times of stupor, and in that stupor the child cries out. In all brain troubles we must be careful about feeding much, or overloading the stomach, because the stomach is very feeble. It will not digest much, but the food should be well selected and light.

Great heaviness of the head. The head feels like a weight, and is drawn back. Sometimes we see the head drawn back from contraction of the muscles of the neck when the membranes of the upper portion of the spine are involved.

Again, we see the Bell. patient drawing the head back himself, because drawing the head back often ameliorates the violent headaches.

This amelioration is kept up so long as he holds the head back. Aggravated from bending the head forward when sitting, from bending the head forward when standing, or stooping. It feels as if the brain would fall out or push forward.

This in creases the headache so much that it sometimes turns into knife-like, or hammering pains. These are the expressions used.

Sensation of nails and hammers, jagging and tearing; but with all, pressure and throbbing. When rising from a seat these sensations are all intensified. Throbbing pulsation, like hammers hitting the inside of the sore skull, described by patients as if the inside of the skull was one continuous sore and was being pecked by hammers with every pulsation.

Some times it will settle down while sitting still, or while lying; but rising up from a chair will set that hammer going.

"Expansive" is an expression that is often used by the patient, and it was used by the provers. Expansive sensation, as if the head was enlarged; pressure from within out.

All these headaches are relieved by pressure upon the outside. Sudden touch or pressure will aggravate; but pressure that is gradually increased and brought to bear carefully upon the head will ameliorate, like the pressure of a bandage, or a tight-fitting cap.

Again, all of these headaches are brought on by exposure to the cold air; from standing in the cold air with the head uncovered. Sometimes a severe headache will come on from merely having the hair cut. Congestion of the head lasts for days, with throbbing and pulsating; from having the hair cut.

Ear troubles, chest complaints, rheumatic complaints come on from having the hair cut, or from standing in the cool air with the hat off; so sensitive is the head to cold.

It may be said of this remedy that complaints of various parts of the body come through the head and go downwards, Complaints in the lower extremities, rheumatic complaints of the joints, with great redness and swelling, come on from uncovering the head, from exposure of the head, or from getting the head wet, or from being caught in a shower.

There is one complaint which will puzzle you if you ever meet it and you do not know just what I am going to tell you.

The complaints of Bell. in a general way are ameliorated from rest, and aggravated from motion; but there is a kind of restlessness with tearing pain from the hips down, most troublesome to observe, that keeps the patient walking all of the time.

The instant there is rest the pains come on. They sometimes shoot downwards, they sometimes tear up and down the nerves; and this comes on from exposure of the head, and not from getting the feet wet.

Complaints of Aconit and Pulsatilla come on from getting the feet wet, and these complaints rise upwards, come on through the feet and go upwards and affect the head.

Bell. complaints come on from exposure of the head and go downwards; sometimes affect the head sometimes the chest sometimes the stomach, sometimes centre in the abdomen, sometimes centre in the uterus and ovaries.

Rhus has complaints from getting wet, but the complaints are in the parts that are wet. If he gets the legs wet he will have rheumatism in the legs.

There is a vast distinction, and this distinction has to be made in almost every prescription you will make. Homoeopathy is a matter of individualization as to how complaints spread. Some complaints begin on the right side of the body and spread to the left.

Some complaints begin in the top of the body and go downwards. That is the way this remedy acts. In some remedies the exposure of the feet to an ice cold draft mill bring on headache (Silic.); but in Bell, the exposure will bring on a headache, or neuralgia of the lower extremities.

Now that pain that comes on from rest is an exception in Bell. That illustrates again the importance of distinguishing very decidedly between generals and particulars.

Without knowing "Generals" and "Particulars" you will never do accurate prescribing. The lower extremities here are the particulars. The patient and the general condition of the patient are ameliorated by rest; the symptoms of the patient are ameliorated by rest.

All of those symptoms that can be predicted of the patient himself are ameliorated by rest, but the pains of the lower limbs, as described, those neuralgic pains are ameliorated by motion, and come on in rest.

That does not mean that all the pains in the lower extremities are ameliorated by motion, because the pains in rheumatism are invariably ameliorated by rest, and aggravated by motion.

Those tearing pains, from the hips downwards, with no swelling, come on during rest. All remedies are full of freaks, and it is the figuring out of these peculiarities that enables us to do good prescribing.

With all the complaints of Bell. do not lose sight of the congestion upwards.

"Rush of blood to the head. Cold extremities."

Cold feet, cold hands; hot head.

Eyes: Inflammatory conditions of the eyes.

"Glistening eyes. Dilated pupils. Flushed face. Intense redness of the inflamed part."

Inflammation of all the tissues of the eyes, the lids, and all the parts of the eyeball, with most violent pain. Heat, redness, and burning.

These three strong features that run through the remedy will be found in the eye sufferings. Pulsation, tumefaction, lachrymation; intense pains; sufferings all worse from motion, and worse from light.

Most intense photophobia.

"Flashes of light and flickerings before the eyes,"

When reading, lines appear crooked.

"Dimness of vision, or actual blindness."

Intense congestion and fullness of all the parts.

"Apoplexy of the retina. Half-opened, protruding, staring eyes."

You will see that in the infant when the child lies in a stupor; eyes half open; congestion of the brain; face flushed and intensely hot; rolling the head from side to side; if it has been going on for several days the face will - later become pallid, and the neck drawn back.

In these congestive troubles, lying with the eyes half open; almost no winking.

"Orbital neuralgias. Protruding eyes, with dilated pupils. Inflammation of the optic nerve and retina. Eyes congested and red."

Another feature belonging to the eye is strabismus. Not those cases coming on gradually, such as will, need the surgeon, but those that come on with congestion of the brain, with this state of congestion and dilated pupils and rolling the head from side to side, flushed face, throbbing carotids and intense heat.

After a day or two the eye begins to turn in, and the little one is cross-eyed. That is an additional indication for Bell. Sometimes, coming out of a severe congestion, the strabismus remains and Bell. is sometimes the suitable remedy.

All of these cases coming on from the circulatory, conditions should be cured with remedies. They should never be sent to the surgeon. Though they remain some time, even months, they will be cured by well-selected remedies, while those that come on gradually, and those that are born so, will not be relieved by remedies.

Only those spasmodic ones mat are associated with, and come on from, congestion of the brain. In connection with congestion of the liver and duodenal catarrh there is yellowisness in the eyes.

Ears: In inflammations of the ear which go on to suppuration Bell. is rarely useful. We have to look to deep acting remedies.

We may have the pain, tenderness, over sensitiveness, all inflammatory conditions; but cases requiring Bell. rarely go on to suppuration.

Mucous: Now we come to the mucous membranes, the nose, mouth, throat, larynx, chest, the mucous membrane extending into the car through the Eustachian tube, and we have another strong feature of Bell. which characterizes most of its conditions.

Great dryness; a sensation of dryness.

Dryness in the nose; mouth; of the tongue; in the throat; in the chest, and such evidences as dry cough and spasmodic conditions.

These are so general. that with the nose symptoms, the coryza, the throat symptoms, the cough, this is intensified; dryness of mucous membranes will generally be found. It is that way with Phos.

When Phos. has a sore throat it will have dryness of the mouth, tongue and air passages.

This is general as to the respiratory tract. Then there is coryza with much sneezing,

"Pricking, burning in the nose."

Hot sensation in the nose. The general states present Much redness of the face, much heat with the coryza; hot head, cold extremities; marked headache, because there is dryness.

The very dryness itself is sometimes causative of pain, because the natural flow from the mucous membranes is dried up.

Whenever we have checked secretions we have fever, and in Bell. this is marked. Checking of the discharge with fever, with heat, redness and burning; red face, burning face; heat in the face and head, and cold extremities. It says in the text,

"maddening headache, with suppressed catarrh."

Now, in such a climate as this most people during winter and cold weather and the changes have more or less mucous flow from the nose, and eyes, and air passages.

They are better when this takes place. All at once it stops, and all the parts become dry; then look out.

An awful, maddening, throbbing headache comes on. It is not so suitable for those old catarrhs where there is a copious flow of thick, yellow mucus.

The catarrhal state wherein Bell. is useful is simply the exaggeration of the whitish mucous flow. Where it has been thick and yellow, and then stops suddenly from a cold, and a coryza comes on, Bell. is worthless.

Always bear in mind that you select for suppressed catarrh a medicine that is within the sphere of the symptoms that have been suppressed. Hence, the medicine for thick, yellowish-green discharges might be Merc., Sulphur, or Pulsatilla; then you are within the range of medicines capable of re-establishing the flow, and at the same time beginning a curative effect on the state of the tissue, leaving the patient in a much better state.

Face: Violent faceaches. Rending, tearing pains in the face; throbbing pains in the face. Pains in the face worse on the right side; worse from a jar; with much heat; throbbing carotids; hot head; brought on from exposure to cold wind, and riding in the cold wind.

Bell. has cured paralytic conditions, but Causticum is generally the remedy for paralysis of the face from riding in a cold wind. Spasms of the muscles of the face.

Extraordinary twitchings of the face. Erysipelas in the face; a bright red gradually becoming purple if there is a fever accompanying it. In the neuralgic pains there is always more or less congestion of the face with violent pains, and the face will be bright red.

With the zymotic state, as the febrile condition becomes more profound, and as the blood becomes more zymotic, the face grows from duskiness into a mottled state, as you will see in Baptisia, more marked in Baptisia than in Bell.

"Red face, with burning heat."

The teeth are full of pains, congestions, and aches of a similar character. Very sensitive teeth.

The tongue should be a dry tongue, as that is general with its mucous membranes. Dry mouth; dry tongue; swollen tongue; protruding tongue, dry and hard, feels like leather.

Loss of sensation, loss of taste, loss of power of the tongue and loss of speech are all Bell. features.

"Paralytic weakness of the tongue; trembling of the tongue when it is protruded."

It comes out weak, In a very few days the Bell. fever patient is greatly reduced, is greatly exhausted, has almost a paralytic weakness.

When he raises the hand and holds it a moment it trembles in the same way.

That which is found in the tongue is only a part of the general state. Trembling from congestion of the nerve centers. The papillae of the tongue are erect, and the tongue is bright red. Bright red tongue in scarlet fever. Bright red tongue in congestion of the brain, with the erect papillae.

When going over Arum triphyllum I told you it had been pronounced "strawberry tongue."

It is the same with Bell. The tongue looks as red as a strawberry, and the papillae stick up like seeds.

"Red streak in the middle of the tongue, wide and broader towards the point. Tongue, white centre with red edges."

White tongue with brain affections is not uncommon. It has thick, milk-white, delicate fur all over the tongue in brain troubles.

"Dryness of the mouth, with thirst."

"Dryness of the mouth, with no thirst."

Bell. is full of thirst, we will find when we come to study the stomach symptoms.

Stomach: Sometimes Bell. wants large quantities, sometimes water constantly to wet the mouth, like Ars.

It is a common feature in Bell., like Ars., to want water little and often, just enough to wet his parched tongue, mouth and throat.

Dryness in posterior nares, and the mucus that he drags down from the posterior nares is tough and stringy, and very scanty, and it is white, or, if changed at all from white, it is bloody.

Yet I have not said anything about this remedy for bloody discharges and for bleeding. We will find before we finish that it is a haemorrhagic remedy, that parts bleed easily.

There is bleeding from the eyes, bleeding from the nose, bleeding from the throat, bleeding from the larynx, bleeding from the chest, bleeding from the bladder, bleeding from the uterus.

Ulcers bleed. Little fine ulcers in the throat no bigger than a pinhead. Little aphthous patches bleed. An aphthous inflammation of the throat; but the most of the complaints of the throat are dry and red.

Great tumefaction. Extremely sensitive; much swelling; inability to swallow. Great pain on swallowing, with all the sensitivity of the surrounding parts, with the sore throat, and with the inflamed throat.

Inflammation and swelling of the tonsils, with red face, intense heat, throbbing carotids, high fever, coming on from cold. Fauces and pharynx deep red. Soft palate and tonsils swollen.

Swallowing painful, particularly of fluids. Speech thick.

"Feels like a lump in the throat" that is from the swollen tonsils.

Constant scraping and hawking in the throat. The pharynx and larynx are very commonly in a state of spasm; partly from dryness, partly from extreme sensitiveness of the nerves of the part. Clutching of the throat on going to sleep, clutching of throat on coughing. Spasms of the oesophagus.

"Spasmodic constriction of the throat." Constrictions that are spasmodic.

Constrictions of the larynx, of the pharynx, of the throat. Bell. has constructive pains in parts that feel like the clutch of fingers. That sensation of clutching is felt in the uterus; it is a spasm. It is felt, in the liver; it is felt in the brain; it is felt in the throat. Jerking and twitching of muscles, with violent pain, in painful parts.

That is a strong Bell. feature. Patients sometimes in their inability to describe their feelings will say,

"Doctor, I feel a clutching in there."

This constriction that comes in the sore throat occurs just in the act of swallowing fluids or solids, and that action will force the food and fluids up into the nose, and sometimes out of the nose.

Some remedies have it as a paralytic condition, because the muscles of deglutition are paralyzed and they do not favor the natural contracting actions to force the food down the oesophagus, and in that way the food is forced up into the nose and causes strangling.

In Bell., in its acute states, its inflammatory conditions and its spasms would distinguish it from Lachesis, where it occurs as a paralytic condition after diphtheria, and from Alumina, which has a spasm of the oesophagus.

These are slow in coming on Bell. is early. The early part of the fever is the time of its irritation. The latter part of the fever is the time of its relaxation. Rapidly forming aphthous patches upon the tonsils.

With the sore throat such as we have described you will nearly always find an enlargement and inflammation, or soreness of the glands, under the jaws about the neck. Tenderness along with a Belladonna sore throat is a natural concomitant.

A strange feature running through the Bell. fevers of all sorts is an unconquerable craving for lemons, and lemon-juice. Lemonade seems to agree sometimes. In acute diseases when they crave lemon it is good for them.

They often crave things to eat. You must not be so violently temperate and in favor of prohibition that if a patient longs for beer in acute sufferings you will not give it.

"Thirst for water changed into thirst for beer."

Thirst for things that could not be endorsed in health, even.

"Excessive thirst for cold water."

In the stomach and bowels we have inflammatory conditions which can all be grouped as one. Pain, burning, distress, distension; sensitive to a jar, and to the slightest motion, and to the slightest pressure.

Sensitive to a jar, and sensitive to motion.

"Pain in the stomach extending through to the spine."

Inflammation of the stomach from becoming chilled, with intense heat; with much burning. It has violent colic, intense cramping pain in children. Face red and hot; pain relieved only by bending forward.

There are exceptional in stances where it has been relieved by bending backward, when it is similar to Dioscorea. The mother finds that by holding the child on her hand it will relieve the colic.

That is like Colocynth; but Colocynth is without much fever, without much thirst, a pain in one spot, an intense colic in the abdomen ameliorated by doubling up, ameliorated by bending across something hard, is Colocynth.

In that instance Colocynth can be prescribed on that one group of symptoms.

"Great pain in the ileo-coecal region; cannot bear the slightest touch, even the bed clothes."

There are instances where Bell. is the remedy in appendicitis.

Stools: Belladonna has dysenteric troubles. Diarrhoea, with scanty fluid stool; marked straining, but with it the face is flushed.

Heat, redness and burning in the face and head. Cold extremities, with hot head. Much straining, but passes scanty stool.

"Spasmodic constriction of sphincter ani; with hemorrhoids."

Hemorrhoids that are violently painful, that are intensely red, that are greatly swollen and inflamed, a high grade of inflammation; cannot be touched; must lie with limbs wide apart, the hemorrhoids are painful and there is much burning.

Bladder: No remedy has a greater irritation in the bladder and along the urinary tract than Bell. The urging to urinate is constant.

The urine dribbles, and it burns intensely along the whole length of the urethra. The whole urinary tract is in a state of irritation.

Bell. has cured inflammation of the bladder. With the irritation and the congestion there is all the sensitiveness to pressure we find in any other part where Bell. is indicated; sensitive to a jar. irritable state of the mind, irritable state of the whole nervous system.

"Tenesmus of the bladder. After passing urine sits and strains," in torment.

The urine is diminished, bloody, sometimes pure blood, or little blood clots. A considerable quantity of blood in the bladder comes away in little clots.

"The urine looks as if mixed with brick dust, or streaks. Strongly acid."

There is a spasmodic retention of urine and. there is involuntary passing of urine. Dribbling of urine in brain troubles. During sleep, dribbling of urine.

Dreams that he is passing urine, and involuntarily passed it. Retention of urine after shock, or from congestion of the brain, or after confinement. Bladder full; great pain; great sensitiveness.

Involuntary dribbling while standing and walking; or sometimes from mere motion the urine spurts. The urging is violent and sudden. When a little urine has collected in the bladder he has a sudden, painful urging.

Much of the trouble is at the neck of the bladder, and it is spasmodic. He feels the spasmodic clutching. At the time of the urging, and at other times, he has spasm of the neck of the bladder, from shock, from cold, from anxiety, from mental disturbances.

When becoming old, or chilled, or in very cold air, women lose their urine, like Dulcamara and Causticum. Starts in sleep, and wets bed.

Dreams of a fright, which causes a starting, and she wets the bed. On going to sleep, a sudden electric shock goes through the whole body, and she wets the bed.

Bell. is rich with such strange little peculiarities; but it only shows the general spasmodic condition and the general irritability of the whole Belladonna constitution.

We see those strange conditions and states, the irritability in all parts of the body, especially where there are sphincters, where there are circular fibres clutching in thy neck of the bladder; clutching at the mouth of the vagina; constriction of tubes. Constriction of the uterus.

Here we see a special marked feature of it, in the neck of the bladder. It has more troubles in the woman than in the man; that is in the symptoms and conditions in relation to the female sexual organs, and to parturition, and to the breasts, and during the period of gestation there are many conditions where Belladonna will be needed. It is really an important remedy for the nervous sensitive woman, the woman of irritable fiber.

Genitals: In the male genitals we have scarcely any important symptoms; but with the female there are many, and some very distressing ones.

They have symptoms of great suffering, of great excitability, The parts are sensitive; the uterus and ovaries are congested, sore to touch, sensitive to jar. Irritable uterus, until it has become enlarged and painful, and sore to the touch.

Sometimes it remains in this state after parturition. Or, after every menstrual period it is a little larger, and remains. It does not return to its normal state, but remains congested, and the woman feels all through the interim as if she was menstruating.

Bruised feeling; sensitive to a jar. The flow is copious and clotted. But the most striking feature here is the uterine haemorrhage. Uterine haemorrhage from congestion, with spasms, with great sensitiveness.

The uterus contracts with violence, hence, a spasmodic contraction. Great soreness, with a copious flow of bright red fluid mixed with clots, is the characteristic of the Belladonna flow.

It is like Sabina in that respect. Those two medicines have that in a high grade. The uterus fills with a clot, and then comes a contraction like a labor pain and expels it; for a while a copious flow of fluid; and then contractions like labor pains come on again, expelling the clots, and then comes the flow.

The blood clots soon, and the haemorrhage is attended with great exhaustion. Now this occurs almost without any provocation. This haemorrhage occurs also in connection with abortion, Belladonna is a great remedy to check the haemorrhage in connection with abortion or from any cause whatever where the symptoms of sensitiveness are present.

Sensitive to touch, sensitive to a jar; the patient herself is in that state of irritable sensitiveness, great nervous excitement manifested both when awake and in sleep, often with fever. Haemorrhage, with febrile conditions, but usually the haemorrhage takes the place of the fever, and commonly if there is haemorrhage it will relieve the fever.

It is also a great remedy for haemorrhage after confinement. The blood feels hot. Haemorrhage, with hour-glass contraction. It is not an uncommon thing for the placenta to be grasped in its middle by a, contraction like an hour-glass tearing it loose here and there, and from below comes the bleeding; a copious flow of blood. Bell. relieves this hour-glass contraction.

It has also the most violent dysmenorrhoea. Pains like labor-pains. Spasmodic labor-pains. Circular contractions are the commonest forms in Bell.

All of the fibers should take part uniformly and do their work uniformly, and thereby gradually bring to bear a tightening upon the contents. In Bell. it is just like a cord going around the body of the uterus, tightening it and it interferes with labor.

That is the way it is in its dysmenorrhoea. Violent contraction of the circular fibers, and hence, a woman will often describe it as feeling as if the uterus was clutched with a string. As if it were tightened. Bell. is rich in spasmodic conditions, in haemorrhagic conditions, in states of irritation, and in soreness, and the parts are sensitive to pain, and the woman herself is dreadfully wrought up and shocked by pain.

In addition to that, pains in the ovary. Belladonna acts in many instances on the right side. It is common for the right ovary to be more painful than the left, or the right to be entirely affected and the left not at all, in Belladonna. So it is with the right side of the throat. So it is sometimes in the right side of the body.

"Pains in the ovaries with the appearance of the menses. Pains in the pelvic region, which come on suddenly, and cease as suddenly."

The characteristic Belladonna pains come on suddenly, sometimes stay a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes, and leave suddenly. Pains from uterine congestion. Acute inflammation of the uterus.

"Enlargement of the uterus, and periodically spasmodic bearing down,"

It has a relaxation in the parts as well. The uterus has been congested and is enlarged, and heavy, and the little suspensory attachments have become relaxed, and tired, and weak, and have stretched and elongated, and the already distended and over weighted uterus keeps pulling on them, and this creates the sensation that women so often describe, a bearing down sensation as if the uterus would escape.

It is sometimes described as a funneling sensation. These are the expressions of women when they suffer from prolapsus. That relaxation is common in a great number that have been poisoned with Ergot.

The uterus comes down and is partly exposed between the labiae. Prolapsus as if the whole inner parts were coming out is a common feature, and with this she is worse from a jar.

There is a great sensitiveness in the parts. There is a great soreness in the uterus, and a sensation of heaviness. I have seen women sit with their limbs wide apart so sensitive is the neck of the uterus that is protruding from the vulva.

"Must sit; cannot lie down."

Many of the Bell. cases cannot lie down, because of the stretching of the abdominal muscles. When they lie down they must draw up the limbs to relax those muscles.

Must sit, or take a flexed posture. Great sensitiveness in the parts. Pressing and urging towards the genitals.

There are all sorts of positions, and aggravations, and ameliorations in Belladonna, in accordance with what particular muscles are involved.

Some patients can lie better than they can sit. Almost all are worse standing. Some are made better by sitting with the limbs, wide apart. Most are aggravated by bending forward too much. Sitting in a chair she cannot bend forward too much, neither can she bend backwards without increasing the suffering.

So sensitive, and so much swelling in these parts. She is worse from motion, worse from jar, worse from excitement, worse from the slamming of the door, because that makes the muscles twitch.

All this illustrates how sensitive the irritated parts are. Then in the external and internal genitals and ovaries there is burning, and twitching, and much heat. Often tearing pains; the tearing pains are generally an exaggeration of those clutchings and constrictions, and such are known as spasms especially of the circular fibres.

Belladonna is well suited to pregnant women who are extremely sensitive, who are plethoric, who have congestion from taking cold, who have soreness, where there is threatened abortion, or during or after abortion when there are hemorrhages.

Then again Bell. is useful in red-faced plethoric, vigorous women who have married late in life and become pregnant, and when the day of delivery comes the muscular fibres are in a state of tension.

The uterus will not relax. She is flushed and has heat, and is in a state of excitement, sensitive to touch, sensitive to jar.

Relaxation will soon follow. It is not to be expected that she will have an easy labor, because women who marry at 28 or 30, or later, suffer from prolonged labor.

There is one strong feature of the hemorrhages and, of the discharges; the flow of blood feels hot. During confinement gushes of blood that feel hot. After abortion, gushes of blood that feel hot.

A lochial discharge that feels hot, along with the sensitiveness and soreness of the parts. Tenderness to pressure.

There are inflammatory conditions of the breasts accompanying confinement. Milk fever. When the breasts become red, extremely sensitive to touch.

She cannot turn over in bed; she cannot have the bed jarred, the face is flushed and the carotids are throbbing; there is fever; the sensitivity is aroused throughout the economy.

Great induration; hard as a stone. Bell. will stop the pain in the breast in a few hours. It will stop that congestion, and, will relieve all suffering.

When the mammary glands are inflamed without any general symptoms but merely an inflammation of the glands give Phytolacca.

Larynx: Inflammation of the larynx. There is that clutching again and choking. It begins with a- rawness in the throat a smarting, and scraping, and the formation of a little mucus. After much scraping and hawking, it extends up the throat a little but before, he begins to cough it is quite dry.

There is smarting, and loss of voice. As soon as he attempts to go into a sleep, that clutch comes on and wakes him up. Hoarseness and rawness and clutching in the throat.

Laryngitis with sensitiveness.

"Sudden attacks of hoarseness;"

every motion, or the slightest attempt to talk, the slightest effort to move the larynx or to touch it causes suffering.

Moving the head backward, or moving the head from side to side, causes pain and cough. Swallowing aggravates. As the bolus goes down behind the larynx he feels a great big sore place, it is the larynx. The voice changes.

One minute it is one key, and in another it changes. Sometimes it is hoarse and sometimes it is squeaky. And then, there is complete loss of voice, unable to utter a sound.

"Croup-like spasms in the larynx. Spasms of the glottis. All the symptoms of croup," but no membrane.

It is simply a dry, denuded larynx, with rawness and scraping; an inflamed condition. And this is the form of the acute laryngitis; it comes ort very suddenly. His respiration is short, rapid and painful. Often asthmatic.

Chest: Asthmatic condition, with spasmodic breathing. And again, these symptoms seem to involve the whole chest. Oppression of the chest. Asthma in hot damp weather.

The Belladonna cough comes on from clutching in the larynx. As it a little speck of something had crept into the larynx; a little dust, or a little food, or a drop of water had gotten into the larynx, and he coughs.

"Dry, spasmodic cough."

An intense cough. Cough at night. Cough when lying down, more at night than in the daytime. The cough is spasmodic, barking, short. It is a remedy for whooping cough, with spasms of the larynx which cause the whoop and difficulty of breathing.

Finally after long coughing, the expectoration of a little blood, or a little thin white mucus, is the result of the violent turmoil going on in the air passages from coughing. The Belladonna cough is peculiar.

As soon as its great violence, and the great effort have raised a little mucus he gets peace for a little while, and stops coughing. But during the restful period the larynx and the trachea, and the air passages grow dryer and dryer, and finally they commence to tickle, and then comes on the spasm, as if all the air passages were taking part in it, and the whoop and the gagging, and sometimes vomiting.

Then he gets up a little mucus and the cough subsides. Another little interval and he has another spell. That is the way its goes on, like whooping cough, but during, all of the interim there is constant dryness. Hence the cough is called paroxysmal.

Tightness in the chest, Painfulness in the chest. Soreness in the chest. In Bell. the child will cry the instant it feels that urging to cough, because it knows what a great suffering is going to take place. The chest is so painful, the child dreads the cough and screams. By the child's cry we know that it is going to have a coughing spell .

Just like, Bry., Hepar and Phos., which have that feature more, than other remedies. There is burning in the chest; violent congestion in the chest; With all of these chest complaints there is that dry, harassing spasmodic cough; worse at night.

This remedy cures pneumonia and pleurisy. I am sure every one here could picture a Belladonna pneumonia, or a Belladonna pleurisy. I am sure you know the patient so well that I need not describe the patient, the head, the congestion, the red face, or the burning; but in pleurisy I will tell you its secret. Bell. prefers the right side.

Great pain; extreme soreness of the part; cannot lie on it; worse from the jar of the bed and you have the Bell. pleurisy.

Bry. also prefers the right side, but the Bry. patient must lie on that side; must have pressure, and is not so sensitive to a jar; he has not the intense heat, he has riot the great throbbing, and the burning.

Every kind of sickness that you go to you have to individualize in that way. There is no other way to practice Homoeopathy.

Remember, with all the inflammatory conditions there will be throbbing heat redness, burning, soreness to touch, and sensitiveness to a jar.

With Bell. it means he cannot lie on the inflamed part; while with Bry. he is ameliorated from lying on the inflamed part.

Throbbing in all the arteries. Great congestion. Vascular excitement. These are present with all the congestions, and inflammations.

Joints: Belladonna cures inflammatory rheumatism, when all the joints are swollen, or a great number of them, and they are hot, red, and burn.

We have in the rheumatism the heat, redness and burning running through; with the same sensitiveness of the whole patient, and a sensitiveness of the joints to the jar of the bed.

He wants to lie perfectly still is very much worse from motion and has considerable fever. Sometimes when the fever in inflammatory rheumatism runs pretty high there is delirium. But the striking features are the swelling of the joints with the redness, and great sensitiveness to motion and to a jar.

It is especially suitable to those that are very sensitive to cold, who cannot bear the least uncovering, cannot bear a draft, very sensitive to the motion, of the covers, and ameliorated by heat.

The very stamp and character of Bell. is in its rheumatic state, like it is in all of its other complaints. It is the patient that has given Bell. that character in provings; it is the patient that gives disease that character when he had it, and it is only the fulfillment of the Law of Similars when these come, together, and the remedy annihilates the sickness.

Inflammation of the joints, coming on from sudden exposure of that particular joint. Or from a severe attack of cold one joint becomes inflamed. A trouble that is localizing itself. It may be any joint- of the body, for Bell, affects all the joints.

The sudden exposure to cold in plethoric individuals, is one of the most prominent. causes of the Bell. sickness. In chronic cases the taking of cold generally, locates, or creates, a disturbance, and increases disorder, that manifests itself in the weakest place.

Vigorous people take cold in the nose, where they throw it off easily. You can often say to sickly patients that your cold now affects you in the weakest place. If you have liver trouble, "your cold will settle in the liver," and so on; "but when you get well you will take cold like other people, in the nose."

Absolutely healthy people seldom take cold, but we do not have many such, they are so rare that we do not often see them; and the snuffles, and sneezing, and the running at the nose are simply throwing off of the cold of ordinarily healthy people.

Limbs: In the limbs, again, we have convulsions, which is a part of the generals. In all the muscles in the limbs, and throughout the body, convulsions.

Children go into convulsions with head troubles, with congestion of the brain, with irritation of the brain. Convulsions from taking cold, in plethoric children, and the limbs are most, likely to show forth these convulsive efforts of the muscles.

Violent cramping. All the limbs are in a state of convulsive movements. Sometimes the spasms are clonic, and sometimes tonic. The convulsions in the limbs are sometimes such as draw them up, suddenly, throw them out suddenly; sometimes convulsions that throw the body backward, called opisthotonos, and sometimes throwing the body forward, called opisthotonos.

The most of the complaints in Bell. are ameliorated by keeping still. The drawing pains, the pulsations, the inflammatory conditions drive the patient into a desire for perfect rest, are aggravated from motion.

The disinclination and aversion to the slightest motion is common in Bell., and as strong in Bell. as in Bry. Bell. is so sensitive in parts that the motions of talking are painful; so sensitive that the conclusion of the voice is painful in the sore spots.

A person with a strong voice, a bass voice, hardly thinks of the concussion that takes place; and much less is that of the female voice, and yet I have seen that aggravation from motion, and that aggravation from jar so marked in the female that her voice was like the pounding of hammers. In inflammation of the uterus, and ovaries, and the bowels, she refrains from talking, because her voice creates a concussion in the sore parts.

That only illustrates the extremes of this great sensitiveness to motion and to jar. Jar is only an exaggerated form of motion, bringing out that sensitiveness.

If you will study the nerves you will find the greatest array of peculiar nervous manifestations, such as sensitiveness of the nerves, aggravated from shock; spasms; various disturbances of the whole nervous, system; twitching; jerking; trembling; subsultus tendinum, etc. Cramps, and spasms, and convulsions in children.

Convulsions: Convulsions come on, with great suddenness.

They come on entirely unexpected. In most instances of convulsions in the long acting remedies and medicines of the zymotic type, the patient has not been prospering in the last days of her gestation; but with Bell. she goes on part way through the labor, or finishes it, and little is expected.

Perhaps her face is a little too red, but she goes into a convulsion unexpectedly, a violent

one from head to foot.

Congestion of the brain, with excitement. Intense heat; everything is intense, violent, sudden and unexpected.

The pains sometimes leave in confinement suddenly, and a convulsion comes on. But look and see that all the sensitiveness that I have described runs through the patient.

The pains cease suddenly. The blood seems to mount to the head. The face becomes red. Congestions come on suddenly. Convulsions epileptiform in character.

Bell. is not suitable for those numerous recurrent complaints, even though the single attack should be mitigated with Bell. Take any of these attacks; whether they are convulsions or headaches, or congestion of the brain, they are running down and become excitable, take on congestive attacks of the head, go right to bed, and roll the head.

You treat those with Bell.; the attack is relieved. Take notice, I start out by saying this is only one of a series. You may not know it. This may be the first one.

You reduce that one, and when that same exposure comes again, that same attack comes back; but Bell. does less this time than it did before. After two or three attacks Bell. will do no more and you are worse off this time than you were before.

When it has broken the first one the physician should see that this is one of a series, and that Bell. is not suitable. Often it is a case that needs Calc., I say often, not always.

All the symptoms should be examined between the attacks, so that the child may be elevated above these attacks because the acute remedy will do no more than suit the first, or second, or third at most. It has not the depth of action, it has not the length of action. It does not affect the economy profoundly enough. It passes away after a few days; has to be frequently repeated.

The patient should be followed up and watched in all these recurrent spasmodic and periodical complaints. Bell. is not a good remedy for recurrent complaints for it lacks periodicity, just as it lacks continuance of complaints.

Even if the first attack looked like Bell. the next attack would come back just the same. Belladonna is suitable in those complaints that if conquered have no tendency to recur; those complaints that end in death or recovery. It will only mitigate those complaints that are periodical.

Sleep: Its sleep is a congestive sleep, a stupor; full of dreams full of violence. Wake's with fright from a horrible dream, a nightmare. Jerks and twitches in sleep.

"Restless sleep."

Moaning and groaning in sleep. Doing all sorts of violence. Delirium in sleep.

"Starts in sleep as if frightened."

In sleep sometimes the patient will commence to talk, will talk faster and louder, the head becomes hot, and the feet cold, and he ends with a shriek.

"Restless tossing in sleep. Feet becoming icy cold in sleep. Head getting hot, in sleep. Wakes up in a fever, and excitement."

It has symptoms so much like a typical old-fashioned Sydenham scarlet fever that it has been useful in scarlet fever.

Perhaps it is one of the most frequently indicated medicines in that disease. In some seasons, at least it will run all through, and the majority of cases will be Bell. cases, with the bright red face and glossy appearance of the skin.

Bright red, intense heat, great congestion; after a short time if Bell. is not administered it will grow darker.

But running through all this are those three words, heat, redness and burning. Burning everywhere. The temperature I described among the generals as being so marked, so intense that you will carry it with you on the ends of your fingers for hours after you have touched a Bell. scarlet fever.

It differs wholly from the Apis case, which has a rough rash. Bell. is smooth and shining. Apis wants to be cool, wants to be uncovered; Bell. wants to be warm, wants a warm room; Apis has no thirst, to speak of; in Bell. it is the exception to have no thirst, generally very thirsty for water, little and often.

The intense dryness of the mucous membranes and skin. Coldness of the extremities with hot head. In Arum triphyllum there is a constant picking of the mouth, with suppressed or scanty urine; pale surface, only here and there a little rash; the itching of the fingers, toes, nose and lips will lead you to prescribe Arum.

You remember the Baptisia case, with that mental state where he is feeling all over the bed "to get the pieces together."

On the other hand, where there is no rash to speak of, now and then a patch enough to make a diagnosis, or the diagnosis is made from the fact of someone else having the disease in the family, the child is swallowing ice water, but vomiting it up when it gets warm in the stomach, who would not give Phosphorus?

So it is at the bedside we pick out the distinguishing, things and see that these remedies are not at all alike.

Bell. stands out with its heat, its redness, its turmoil. Remember it has, not continued fever; it is not suitable in typhoid. Bell. in a night will bring down the fever, will allay the delirium; but how is it the next night?

On comes the fever, and the patient is worse than he was before. Simply because Bell. cannot hold what it starts with. It is not suitable.

It has not that continued feature in it. We are led to a medicine that corresponds to continuous fevers, and such must be selected when we go into the typhoid state.

Our earlier practitioners often only thought of what they saw at the time. It was only after our school had considerable experience that it was found that periodicity constitutes a symptom.

Every remedy has its pace, its times of aggravation and its, times of amelioration.

So it is with Bell. . Its time is 3 o'clock in the afternoon, commonly. Its complaints, are generally worse in the night. Its complaints commonly start about three o'clock in the afternoon, and run till three in the morning, or until after midnight.

So that during the night its fever is highest. The fever comes on, and rises rapidly, to a very high temperature, sometimes 104°F or 105°F, and runs down again to almost normal; but not with a complete apyrexia.

It is not suitable in complaints with complete apyrexia, for that marks complete periodicity which Bell. has not.

Skin: The heat, the redness and the burning characterize most of the skin symptoms.

It has a fine rash; not the coarse rash, but the fine, scarlet red, smooth rash. It has inflammation of the skin, phlegmonous, a deep inflammation.

First bright red, gradually grows bluish or purple, or mottled; and in this there is the heat, redness and burning.

It is not suitable generally for the erysipelatous inflammation of the skin and deeper tissues, covered with vesicles, like Rhus.

Vesiculation is sometimes present, but it is the exception, while in Rhus it is the general character. Rhus begins with inflammation; it has heat, redness and burning; but whenever Rhus begins an inflammation, just that instant it throws out a great blister and it fills with serum.

Almost any Bell. surface that is inflamed is likely to throw out a red rash. In intense fevers, where there are not scarlet fever or any of the common rashes, a red, fine, glossy eruption is likely to come out.

It is not an uncommon thing in congestion of the brain, and in bilious fevers, for this rash to appear, and it sometimes deceives the physician into making a diagnosis of one of the eruptive diseases, whereas it is a mere hybrid.

The Bell. skin, while it turns red, has such a passive redness that you can write your name, almost, on the skin. As you take your finger and make a line on it, it leaves a white line behind your finger.

That was an old diagnostic phase of scarlet fever, and it shows that Bell. produces upon the surface that peculiar passive congestion very much like the scarlatina. So we have in the Bell. provings a symptom that is even a pathognomonic symptom of scarlatina.

But we do not prescribe on a symptom. Of late years no homoeopathic physician ever thinks of giving a medicine simply for the purpose of bringing the pulse down, or bringing the fever down.

He prescribes for the patient. It is true that the temperature does come down, if we get the right remedy; but to prescribe a remedy to bring the pulse down is going at it wrong end to.

One who thinks homoeopathically never prescribes to remove a symptom; but guided by the symptoms he selects the remedy, no matter what follows.

It is true the symptoms subside. Others might say he prescribed to remove the symptoms, because they subside.

Learn to keep the ideal of Homeopathy in mind, and think rationally; in order to do that you will have to rid yourselves of a tremendous amount of inheritance.

We have inherited the way to think wrong end to.

"Yellowness of the skin from congestion of the liver, and catarrh of the duodenum."

When persons have been over-medicated with quinine until they take cold on every occasion, and a sudden attack of congestion of the liver comes on, with the great soreness, and the skin becomes yellow with all the sensitiveness of this remedy, Bell. will cure such cases.

There are conditions that follow Bell. that relate to its chronic state. Where Bell. has been suitable for the acute conditions, the congestions, but there is that periodicity that I have mentioned, it has its natural followers, and Calcarea is one of them.

In boys that are big-headed, plump, plethoric, precocious, that take cold easily, and come down, with headaches and congestion; school children that get headaches which Bell.

At first helped; very commonly if you look carefully into the case it will turn out to be a Calc. case.

It is so common for Calc. to relate in this way to Bell.

Now-a-days we frequently find the dry, backing cough in the hands of doctors who have given too much Lachesis.

Lachesis is commonly given to over-sensitive women, and it produces many of those conditions; it sometimes cures great troubles, but it leaves behind for weeks a dry, hacking cough that keeps her from sleeping.

Sometimes it comes on after the first sleep, which is commonly about 2 o'clock; a dry, hacking cough from lying down.

Bell. will cure this old effect of Lach., the nervous state and excitability and the cough. Bell. will be suitable as an antidote for Lach., that is, for the acute symptoms.

Calc. is an antidote for the more chronic effects of Lach.

After the abuse of Bell., Calc. comes in as one of the natural antidotes.

A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, John Henry Clarke

Atropa Belladonna. Deadly Nightshade. (Greece, Italy, Britain.) N. O. Solanaceae. Tincture of whole plant when beginning to flower.

Clinical.─Abscess. Acne. Amaurosis. Apoplexy. Bladder weakness. Boils. Brain, affections of. Bronchial glands, disease of. Carbuncle. Colic. Constipation. Convulsions. Cough. Croup. Delirium tremens. Depression. Diarrhoea. Dysentery. Ear, affections of. Enteric fever. Epilepsy. Erysipelas. Erythema. Excitement. Eye, affections of. Fear, effects of. Glandular swellings. Goitre. Gout. Haemorrhoids. Headache. Heart, affections of. Hydrocephalus. Hydrophobia. Hyperaemia. Influenza. Kidney, affections of. Lung, affections of. Malignant pustule. Mania. Measles. Meningitis. Menstruation. Mouth affections. Mumps. Neuralgia. Nose, affections of. Nyctalopia. Nymphomania. Paralysis. Parametritis. Perichondritis. Perimetritis. Peritonitis. Phlegmasia alba dolens. Pleurisy. Pneumogastric paralysis. Pneumonia. Pregnancy, disorders of. Puerperal mania. Rheumatism. Roseola. Scarlatina. Sensitiveness. Sleep, disorders of. Smell, disordered. Strangury. Taste, disordered. Tenesmus. Testicles, affections of. Thirst. Throat, sore. Tongue, affections of. Tuberculosis. Ulcers. Uterine affections. Vaccinia. Vertigo. Whooping-cough. Worm fever.

Characteristics.─Belladonna acts primarily on the brain, and Teste very acutely explains the diversity of its action on men and animals by suggesting that it acts with an intensity proportionate to the brain development. On goats and rabbits it has no poisonous action whatever. On carnivorous animals it acts with moderate intensity. On man it acts with highest intensity. But on idiots, as Hufeland mentions, it has no more action than it has on some of the carnivora. An enormous number of the symptoms of Bell. are developed in and from the head and sensorium. Conformably with this, the pains of Bell. run downwards, i.e., away from the head. (Silic. and Gels. have a pain running up the back). To understand aright the action and uses of this great medicine it is necessary to bear in mind some leading features which characterise its action in all parts of the organism. But before alluding to these I will briefly refer to its correspondence to scarlatina. Cases of Belladonna poisoning have frequently been mistaken for cases of scarlatina. But it is the smooth form only, these presenting a smooth, even, red surface that come under its controlling action and prophylaxis. When such an epidemic is about, any one who may be exposed to infection may obtain almost certain immunity by taking Belladonna two or three times a day.

The several points to be remembered about Belladonna are that it is a medicine which has great general sensitiveness and also sensitiveness of the special senses─sensitive to light; to slightest noise; to motion or jar as when someone touches the bed. This is one feature which renders Bell. so appropriate in hydrophobia. It is a chilly medicine; sensitive to changes from warm to cold, to draught of air, to damp weather, to chilling from having the head uncovered, or having the hair cut; better from being wrapped up warmly in a room. Under this drug there is a remarkable quickness of sensation, or of motion; the eyes snap and move quickly. The pains come and go suddenly no matter how long they may last. They are in great variety, but throbbing, burning, and stabbing are very characteristic: "stabbing from one temple to the other."

The great intensity and variety of the head pains has caused Bell. to be regarded as the headache medicine par excellence. Congestion of blood to the head. Vertigo, mostly at night on turning over in bed, or when getting up in the morning, also when walking and on every change of position. Headache with flushed face and brilliant eyes, dilated pupils. Feeling in brain like swashing of water. Throbbing, pulsating headache, with beating arteries and violent palpitation of the heart. It has cured a very severe headache in a nervous man occurring whenever he was exposed to tobacco smoke. In the mental sphere are mania; rage; disposition to bite, scratch and tear things. Fantastic illusions when closing eyes. Dull and sleepy; half asleep and half awake. Spasms and twitchings are very marked. Many disorders of vision. Heat, redness and burning are three great characteristic notes of Bell., and are constantly cropping out in the pathogenesis. The face is purple, red, and hot, or yellow. Redness and pallor alternate. The mouth is exceedingly dry without thirst. Stinging in oesophagus, < swallowing or talking. Oesophagus feels contracted. Sensation of a hand clutching intestines. Stool in lumps like chalk. Spasmodic contraction of anus; obstinate constipation. Bleeding piles; back pains as if breaking. The menstrual flow is hot; of light colour; or bad smell. Cough short, dry, tickling, similar to cough of Rumex and Phos. Whooping-cough; with crying or pains before the attack; flushed face; nose-bleed and bloody expectoration; sparks before eyes; stitches in spleen; involuntary stool and urine. Paralysis of lungs and heart (vagus nerve). Violent palpitation of heart. Stitches in chest. Swelling of breast with bright red streaks radiating from centre of inflammation. Rheumatism < by motion. Sweat on covered parts only.

A striking picture of Bellad. is sometimes seen in cases of worm-fever. A case (aet. 3, pale, feeble child) reported by Lutze had the following symptoms: Awakened, or at least sits up at night in bed screaming, cannot be pacified; wets bed at night; passes worms now and then; cheeks and ear-tips brilliant scarlet, other parts of face, especially round mouth, white as snow; eyes brilliant, staring; pupils dilated. Skin dry and hot like fire. On being spoken to coaxingly flew into a violent rage. Cina 200 had ameliorated. Bell. cm. and m. cured permanently.

Bell. is a great children's remedy, not less important than Cham. Complaints come suddenly; hot, red face, semi-stupor, every little while starting or jumping in sleep as if it might go into convulsions. A very general characteristic of Bell. is < on lying down. It refers to headache and all kinds of inflammatory affections. Some characteristic symptoms are: "Tenderness of abdomen, < by least jar." "Pressing downward as if contents of abdomen would issue through vulva, < mornings; often associated with pain in back as if it would break." Starting, twitching, or jumping in sleep. Moaning in sleep. "Sleepy, but cannot sleep." The characteristic skin of Bell. is: "Uniform, smooth, shining, scarlet redness, so hot that it imparts a burning sensation to the hand of one who feels it." "Sweat on covered parts only" is also a marked symptom of Bell.

A number of cases of poisoning have been reported from application of Belladonna plasters to the skin, classical symptoms of the drug being produced and no little danger to life. One practitioner was warned by his patient that she could not tolerate a Belladonna plaster, but he, thinking there must have been a mistake, and that cantharides must have been in the plaster she had formerly used, had one made up under his own eyes and applied it himself. In less than one hour there was an unbearable pain and when the plaster was removed the surface was found to be blistered.

A case of poisoning reported in the Medical Press (September 9, 1891) brings out the profound and long-lasting effects of the drug. Three children, aged 7, 5, and 3 1/2, ate a number of the berries. Three days after, a doctor saw them. The condition of the eldest was as follows: pupils dilated to maximum and insensitive to light; pulse frequent; breathing feeble and hurried; skin dry, bright red; temperature lowered; extremities and face cold; urination and defecation suspended. Co-ordination was lost; the patient staggered as if drunk and acted like a mad person. When asked his name he would shout as loud as he could, falling backwards with his hands in the air, his legs slightly bent as if about to sit down on a low stool, and then tumble on the floor. When raised from the ground and seeing his friends again he began to talk without ceasing, laughing, and singing local melodies in a boisterous manner. Suddenly his whole demeanour would change in to a melancholic depression of agony; he would look blank and wild on all around. He would instantly jump up, run at the wall, and endeavour to spring on the highest articles in the room with the strength of a wild animal, and it was with difficulty that his movements could be controlled.

The youngest of the three lay depressed, in a soporific condition, eyes closed, skin cold, limbs powerless. Pupillary reaction, tendon and muscular reflex were almost gone, whilst the sense of heat and cold still remained. On shouting loud in his ear, he slowly tried to open his eyes in wonder; when shaken and put on his feet he made two or three steps backward as his elder brother and fell senseless on the floor. The second eldest lay in a deep sleep, face cyanotic; skin of extremities and part of body dry and cold; breathing feeble, pulse scarcely perceptible. Loudest crying, or shaking could not rouse him; feeling and reaction lost. Washing out the stomach was effected in the eldest, but no evidence of the berries was obtained in that way. A long injection tube was inserted into the rectum and irrigation with hot and cold water alternately was carried out, with the object of exciting peristalsis. This was successful. Besides a great quantity of black-brown masticated fruit with skins and seeds, broken berries were found to the number of 28 in the case of the eldest, 39 in the second, and 37 in the youngest. Pilocarpin and morphia were injected in the case of the eldest, and camphor subcutaneously in the other two. The skin was rubbed, warm applications administered and rectal injections of milk, egg and brandy.

Nothing was heard of the children till "June of the present year" (1891), [the date of the poisoning is not stated, but it was probably the previous autumn] when the children were brought to the doctor by their father. They all looked pale and feeble; the pupils contracted slowly, and all were sensitive to light. The eldest was irritable and desponding. In the other two hearing and speech were almost gone. The almost. absolute deafness in these cases is noteworthy in connection with Dr. Cooper's cure of a very chronic case of deafness with single drop doses of Bell Ø.

Bell. is predominantly (but by no means exclusively) a right-side medicine: all affections of internal head, right side right eye; right ear right face; right teeth; right hypochondrium right chest; right upper extremity; right lower extremity; mouth and fauces left side. It is suited to plethoric persons with red face; and to conditions where there is local plethora, that is, inflammatory states with pain, throbbing, shiny redness as in acute gout. Symptoms are < afternoon; 3 p.m.; 11 p.m.; after midnight; during the night and not at all in the day; morning. By touch; draught of air; cold applications; having hair cut; looking at shiny things; drinking; sleeping; lying down; lying on affected side. > Bending affected part backwards or inwards; leaning head against something; standing; by warmth. Bell. is suited to the bilious, lymphatic temperament. Light hair and complexion, blue eyes. It grows in dry limestone soils and is the acute correlative of Calc. c.

Relations.─Bell. must be compared with the other Solanaceae: Caps., Dulc., Lycopers., Hyos., Stramonium and the alkaloids Atropia and Solania. Antidotes: To effects of large doses, Vegetable acids, infusion of galls, or green tea, Coffea., Hyoscy; to effects of small doses, Camph., Coff., Hep., Hyo., Op., Puls., Sabad. (salivation), Vinum. It antidotes: Aco., Arum t., Atrop., Chi., Cup., Fer., Hyo., Jaborandi, Merc., Op., Plat., Plumb., sausage poisoning; oil of turpentine. It follows well: Ars., Cham., Hep., Lach., Merc., Phos., Nit. ac., Cup. Is followed well by: Chi., Cham., Con., Dulc., Hep., Hyo., Lach., Rhus, Seneg., Stram., Valer., Verat. Similar to: Acon., Alcohol (merry craziness); Ars. (pains of cancer); Bry. (rheumatism < by motion. In pleurisy and pneumonia it is distinguished from Bry. in that it has < lying on affected side whilst Bry. has the opposite); Calc. c., Cham., Cicut., Coff., Cup., Eupat. purp. (diuresis and vesical irritation, but Eupat. has more hyperaemia and vesical inflammation); Gels., Hep., Hyo., Lach., Lil. tig. (Lil. has > by motion; Bell. < by motion), Merc., Nux v., Op., Puls., Rhus, Stram. (rage), Tereb., Verat.; Arn. (whooping cough). Complementary: Calc. c. Incompatible: Vinegar.

Causation.─Hair-cutting. Head, getting wet. Sausages. Sun. Wind, walking in.

SYMPTOMS.

1. Mind.─Melancholy, with grief, hypochondriacal humour, moral dejection, and discouragement.─Great agitation, with continual tossing about, inquietude, and anguish, chiefly at night, and in the afternoon, sometimes with headache and redness of face.─Desire to die, and inclination for suicide.─Lamentations, groans, cries, and tears.─Perversity, with tears (in children).─Timidity, disposition fearful, mistrustful, and suspicious; apprehension and inclination to run away.─Fear of approaching death.─Mental excitation, with too great sensibility to every impression, immoderate gaiety, and disposition to be easily frightened.─Nervous anxiety, restlessness, desire to escape.─Dotage, delirium, and mania, with groaning, disposition to dance, to laugh, to sing, and to whistle; mania, with groans, or with involuntary laughter; nocturnal delirium; delirium with murmuring; delirium, during which are seen wolves, dogs, fires, etc.; delirium by fits, and sometimes with fixedness of look.─Stupefaction, with congestion to the head; pupils enlarged.─Delirium.─Great apathy and indifference, desire for solitude, dread of society and of all noise.─Repugnance to conversation.─Disinclination to talk, or very fast talking.─Ill-humour, disposition irritable and sensitive, with an inclination to be angry and to give offence.─Folly, with ridiculous jesting, gesticulations, acts of insanity, impudent manners.─Fury and rage, with desire to strike, to spit, to bite, and to tear everything, and sometimes with growling and barking like a dog.─Dejection and weakness of mind and body.─Dread of all exertion and motion.─Loss of consciousness.─Fantastic illusions (when closing the eyes).─Dementia, to such an extent as no longer to know one's friends, illusions of the senses and frightful visions.─Complete loss of reason, stupidity, inadvertence, and distraction, inaptitude for thought, and great weakness of memory.─Memory: quick; weak; lost.

2. Head.─Confusion of the head, cloudiness, and apparent intoxication, chiefly after eating or drinking, or else in the morning.─Apoplexy.─Fits of vertigo, with tottering, swimming in the head, dulness, giddiness, nausea, trembling of the hands, anxiety; sparks before the eyes, chiefly in the morning on getting up, on standing upright, or on stooping.─Vertigo with anguish, and falling with loss of consciousness, or with weariness and fatigue before and after the attack.─Vertigo, with stupefaction, vanishing of sight and great debility.─Vertigo, with anguish and falling insensibly on the l. side, or backwards, with flickering before the eyes, esp. when stooping, and when rising from a stooping posture.─Stupor and loss of consciousness, so as to know one's friends only at most by the hearing, sometimes with pupils dilated and mouth and eyes half open.─Fulness, heaviness, and violent pressure on the head, chiefly on the forehead, above the eyes, and nose, or on one side of the head, and sometimes with giddiness, stupor, and sensation as if the cranium were going to burst, or with ill-humour and groans, drawing up of the eyelids and desire to lie down.─Sensation of inflation and pressive expansion in the brain.─Sharp, tractive, and shooting pains in the head.─Dartings into the head, as if from knives.─Violent throbbings in the head.─Strong pulsation of the arteries of the head.─Ebullition and congestion of blood in the head, chiefly on stooping.─Congestion of blood to the head, with external and internal heat; distended and pulsating arteries, stupefaction in the forehead, burning, red face; < in the evening, when leaning the head forward, from the slightest noise, and from motion.─Stupefying, stunning headache, extending from the neck into the head, with heat and pulsation in it; < in the evening and from motion; > when laying the hand on the head, and when bending the head backward.─Sensation of cold or of heat in the head.─Headache, from taking cold in the head, and from having the hair cut.─Sensation of fluctuation in the brain, as if there were water in it.─Sensation, during the pains, as if the cranium were too thin.─Sensation of a dull balancing in the brain, and shocks in the head, chiefly on walking quickly or ascending.─Daily pains in the head, from about four o'clock in the afternoon till towards three o'clock the following morning, < by the heat of the bed and by a recumbent posture.─The pains in the head are generally aggravated by movement, especially of the eyes, by shaking, by contact, by free air and a current of air; they are mitigated by holding the head back and by supporting it.─Cramp-like pain in the scalp.─Copious sweat in the hair.─Affections of the hair, which may split, or come out, or be hard and dry, etc.─Profuse pungent-smelling perspiration, esp. on the covered parts, while the body is burning.─Shaking or turning of the head backwards.─Hydrocephalus, with boring with the head in the pillows; sensation as if water were moving in the head; < in the evening and when lying; > from external pressure, and when bending the head backwards.─Boring with the head on the pillow while sleeping.─Boring headache in the r. side of the head; changing to stitches in the evening.─Pressing headache, as if the head would split, pupils contracted, voice faint.─Swelling of the head and of the face.─Smooth, erysipelatous, hot swelling, first of the face, then extending over the whole head, with stupefaction or delirium, violent headache, red, fiery eyes.

3. Eyes.─Heat and burning in the eyes, or pressure as from sand.─Aching in the eyes and the sockets, extending into the head.─Sensation of weight in the eyelids, which close involuntarily.─Quivering in the eyelids.─Ectropium.─Paralysis of the optic nerve.─Falling down of the eyelids, as if from paralysis.─Shooting in the eyes and in the corners, with itching.─Eyes red, brilliant, and convulsed, or fixed, sparkling, and prominent, or dull and turbid.─Congestion of blood to the eyes, and redness of the veins.─Look fixed, furious, and wavering.─Look wild, unsteady, wavering.─Spasms and convulsive movements of the eyes.─Eyelids wide open.─Inflammation of the eyes, with injection of the veins and redness of the conjunctiva and of the sclerotica.─Heat in the eyes.─Distension of the sclerotica.─Inflammatory swelling and suppuration of the lachrymal aperture.─Softening of the sclerotica.─Spots and ulcers on the cornea.─Medullary fungus in the eye.─Swelling and inversion of the eyelids.─Yellowish colour of the sclerotica.─Eyes as if affected by ecchymosis, with haemorrhage.─Sensation of burning dryness in the eyes; or flow of acrid and (salt) corrosive tears.─Pupils immovable and generally dilated, but sometimes also contracted.─Agglutination (nocturnal) of the eyelids.─Desire for light, or photophobia, with convulsive movements of the eyes when the light strikes them.─Distortion, spasms, and convulsions of the eyes.─Momentary blindness.─Confused and weak sight, or obscuration and entire loss of sight.─Blindness at night (moon-blindness).─Presbyopia.─Mist, flames, and sparks, before the eyes.─Diffusion of the light of candles, which appear to be surrounded by a coloured halo.─White stars and silvery clouds before the eyes, esp. on looking at the ceiling of the room.─Objects appear double or reversed, or of a red colour.─Trembling and sparkling of the letters when reading.

4. Ears.─Piercing, aching, sharp pain, pinching, squeezing, and shooting in the ears.─Inflammation of the external and internal (r.) ear, with discharge of pus.─Excretion of pus from the ears.─Stinging in and behind the ears.─Ringing, murmuring, and buzzing in the ears.─Humming and roaring in the ears.─Paralysis of the auditory nerves.─Great acuteness of hearing.─Hardness of hearing; sometimes as if there were a skin before the ears.─Swelling of the parotids, with shooting and tractive pains, which sometimes extend even to the throat.─Stitches in the parotid gland.

5. Nose.─Pain, as of a bruise, in the nose, esp. on touching it, and sometimes with burning.─Nocturnal shootings in the nose.─Swelling, redness, and burning it the point of the nose.─Inflammatory swelling and redness of the external and internal nose.─Bleeding of the nose, with redness of the face.─Painful ulceration of the nostril.─Nose very cold.─Bleeding of the nose, chiefly night and morning.─Haemorrhage from the nose and mouth.─Great dryness of the nose.─Sense of smell either too sensitive, esp. to tobacco smoke, or diminished.─Putrid smell in the nose.─Fluent coryza of one nostril, alternating with stoppage of the nose.─Smell like herring in the nose during the coryza.

6. Face.─Paleness of the face, which sometimes suddenly alternates with redness.─Face hollow, with anxious look of the features, and wandering air.─Burning heat of the face, sometimes without redness.─Glowing redness and bloated appearance of the face, as from drinking wine.─Deep, or scarlet, or bluish redness of face.─Purple, red, hot face, or yellow colour of the face.─Hard swelling and bluish redness of face, principally (of one) of the cheeks, and sometimes with burning, shooting, piercing, and pulsation.─Erysipelatous swelling of the face.─Semi-lateral swelling of the face.─Spots of a scarlet or deep red colour on the face.─Eruption of red pimples on the temples, in the corners of the mouth, and on the chin.─Purulent and scabby pimples, chiefly on the cheeks and on the nose.─Thickening of the skin of the face.─Cramp-like pressure, sharp and drawing pain in the cheek-bones.─Nervous, violent incisive pain in the face, following the course of the sub-orbital nerve.─Nervous prosopalgia, with violent, cutting pains.─Muscular palpitations and convulsive movements in the face, chiefly in the mouth, which is drawn towards the ear.─Spasmodic distortion of the mouth (risus sardonicus).─Swelling, of the upper lip.─Induration and swelling of the lips, with shootings in rough weather.─Deep redness and dryness of the lips.─Pimples, scabs, and ulcers; with a red circular margin, on the lips and in the corners of the mouth.─Convulsive clenching of the jaws, which renders it impossible to open the mouth.─Sensation as if the lower jaw were drawn very far back.─Sharp pains in the jaws; shooting and tension in the maxillary articulations.─Mouth half open, or spasmodically closed by lock-jaw; sensations under the jaw; affections of the articulations of the jaws (sometimes while chewing).─Swelling of the sub-maxillary glands, and of those of the neck, with nocturnal (shooting) pains.

7. Teeth.─Violent grinding of the teeth.─Sharp and drawing pains or successive pullings in the teeth, sometimes with pain in the ears, and chiefly at night or in the evening, during intellectual labour, or else after having eaten.─The toothache is < by exposure to the air, or by the touch, while masticating.─Toothache with inflammatory swelling of the cheek.─Piercing in carious teeth, and flow of blood on sucking them.─Painful swelling of the gums, with heat, itching, and pulsations, or with ulcerative pain on being touched.─Bleeding of the gums.─Vesicles on the gums, with pain like that of a burn.

8. Mouth.─A sensation of great dryness, or a real and extreme dryness and choking in the mouth.─Dryness of the mouth, without thirst.─Foam before the mouth, sometimes of a reddish colour, or having the smell of rotten eggs.─Accumulation and flow of saliva, viscid, thick, and whitish.─Great accumulation of viscid, whitish mucus in the mouth and in the throat.─Offensive smell of the mouth, chiefly in the morning.─Inflammatory swelling and redness of the buccal cavity, and of the pharynx.─Violent haemorrhage of the mouth.─Excoriation of the interior of the cheek; the orifices of the salivary ducts are as if ulcerated.─Sensation of cold, of torpor, and of numbness in the tongue.─Tongue red, hot, dry, and cracked, or loaded with whitish mucus, or yellowish, or brownish; redness of the edges of the tongue.─Inflammatory swelling and redness of the papillae of the tongue.─Phlegmonous inflammation of the tongue.─Soreness of the tongue, esp. on touching it, with a sensation as if it were covered with vesicles.─Heaviness, trembling, and paralytic weakness of the tongue, with difficult and stuttering speech.─Dumbness.─Voice weak, whistling, and nasal.

9. Throat.─Pain of excoriation, scraping, and shooting in the throat and in the amygdalae, principally on swallowing, and sometimes extending to the ears.─Great dryness and burning in the throat and on the tongue.─Inflammation and swelling of the throat, of the velum palati, of the uvula, and of the tonsils; suppuration of the tonsils.─Inflammation of the throat, with sensation of a lump, which induces hawking, with dark redness and swelling of the velum palati and tonsils.─Burning and dryness in the oesophagus.─Stinging in the oesophagus, in the tonsils; < when swallowing, and when talking.─Tonsils inflamed, swollen, ulcers rapidly forming on them.─Painful and difficult deglutition.─Complete inability to swallow even the least liquid, which frequently passes out through the nostrils.─Constant inclination to swallow, with a sensation as though suffocation would otherwise follow.─Sensation of contraction, strangling, and spasmodic constriction in the throat.─Sensation as if there were a tumour in the throat, or a plug which cannot be detached.─Paralytic weakness of the organs of deglutition.

10. Appetite.─Loss of taste.─Food appears insipid or too salt.─Putrid, or insipid, or slimy, or bitter taste of the mouth.─Rye bread tastes acid.─Want of appetite and distaste for all food, chiefly for meat, acids, coffee, milk, and beer.─Burning, excessive, intolerable thirst, often with dread of all drink; or constant desire to drink with inability to swallow a single drop of liquid.─Drinking is performed with trembling precipitation.─Great and unbearable hunger.─After having eaten, a feeling of intoxication, colic, pains in the stomach, heat, and thirst.

11. Stomach.─Frequent risings, often bitter, or putrid, or sour and burning.─Pyrosis.─Obstructed and abortive risings.─Nausea and inclination to vomit, chiefly on beginning to eat, or in the open air, or after breakfast, sometimes with burning thirst.─Retching and violent vomiting, principally in the evening or at night; retching, with entire inability to vomit; vomiting of food, or of mucous or bilious matter, of blood; or acid and serous matter; vomiting with diarrhoea, or with vertigo, heat, and sweat.─Spasmodic hiccough, sometimes with sweats and convulsions.─Pressure, cramp-like and contractive pains, sensation of fulness and inflation in the stomach and in the epigastrium, principally after having eaten or while eating.─Shootings, beatings, pulsations, and burning in the stomach and in the precordial region.─Inflammation of the stomach and of the duodenum.

12. Abdomen.─Colic with constipation, abundant flow of urine, risings and nausea.─Violent pain in the abdomen, which allows no rest whatever.─Shootings in l. side of the abdomen, on coughing, on sneezing, and on being touched.─Pains and burning in the hypochondria.─Pressure in the abdomen, as if by a stone, chiefly in the lower part of the abdomen and in the groin.─Painful pressure in the pit of the stomach and stomach, esp. after eating.─Painfully distended abdomen, very sensitive to the touch.─Inflation and tension of the abdomen, chiefly in the hypochondria.─Colic, with restlessness, below the umbilicus, as from clutching and griping with the nails, < from external pressure.─Cramp-like, contractive, and constrictive pains and pinching in the abdomen, and esp. round the navel or in the hypogastrium, with a sensation as if one or other of the parts were squeezed, or seized with the nails; the pains necessitate a bending of the body, and are sometimes accompanied by vomiting, or by inflation and protrusion of the colon in the form of a pad.─Digging in the abdomen.─Cuttings and shootings in the abdomen, as from knives.─Heat and great anguish in the abdomen.─Rumbling in the abdomen, with frequent escape of flatus without smell.─Soreness of the whole abdomen, as if everything in it were excoriated and raw, and painful sensibility to the touch of the teguments of the abdomen.─Shootings in the groins.─Itching in the abdomen.

13. Stool and Anus.─Suppressed evacuations and constipation, sometimes with inflation of the abdomen, heat of the head, and copious sweats.─Hard and scanty evacuations.─Frequent inclination to evacuate, with tenesmus, but without result.─Frequent small evacuations, often with tenesmus.─Frequent small diarrhoeic stools of mucus.─Evacuations whitish like chalk, or greenish; evacuations watery or slimy.─Thin, green stools, with frequent micturition and perspiration.─Dysenteric stools.─Before stool, perspiration.─During stool, shuddering.─Spasmodic stricture of the rectum.─Stinging pain in the rectum.─Loose evacuations, with nausea and aching pains in the stomach.─Involuntary evacuations, from paralysis of the sphincter of the anus.─Bleeding piles; back pains as if breaking.─Mucous membrane of anus seems swollen as if pressed out.─Prolapsus ani.

14. Urinary Organs.─Frequent desire to make water.─Retention of urine.─Difficult discharge of urine (and then discharge of a few drops of bloody urine only).─Continual dribbling of urine.─When passing water, faeces escape.─Frequent emission of urine, copious, pale, and watery, sometimes with profuse perspiration, thirst, increased appetite, diarrhoea, and obscuration of sight.─In continence and involuntary emission of urine, even in the night and during sleep.─Paralysis of the neck of the bladder.─Strictures of the urethra.─Urine turbid, of a yellow colour, or clear, the colour of gold or citron; or scanty and of a brownish-red colour, or the colour of blood, or a bright red colour.─Red, or whitish and thick sediment in the urine.─Sensation of motion in the bladder, as of a worm.─Nocturna pressure in the bladder.─Shooting, burning pains in the renal region.

15. Male Sexual Organs.─Sharp and drawing pain in the spermatic cords, chiefly while making water.─Retraction of the prepuce.─Soft and painless nodosity in the glans.─Shootings in the testes, which are drawn up.─Inflammation of the testicles, great hardness in the drawn-up testicles.─Pollutions, with flaccidity of the penis.─Nocturnal sweat of the genital parts.─Flow of prostatic fluid.─Sexual desire diminished, with perfect indifference to all voluptuous excitement.

16. Female Sexual Organs.─Violent pressure towards the genital parts, as if all were going to protrude, principally when walking, or when in a crouching posture.─Shooting in the internal genital parts.─Great dryness of the vagina.─Prolapsus and induration of the matrix.─Catamenia too copious, and too early, or too tardy.─Catamenia too pale.─Before the catamenia, fatigue, colic, loss of appetite, and confused sight.─During the catamenia, nocturnal sweat on the chest, with yawning and transient shiverings, colic, or anguish of heart, burning thirst, sharp and cramp-like pains in the back and in the arms.─Flow of blood beyond the period of the catamenia.─Flow of blood between the periods.─Menstrual discharge bright red, feeling very hot like hot sealing-wax.─Metrorrhagia of clear red blood, with a discharge of fetid clots; with violent pain in the small of the back and bearing-down.─Menstrual blood of bright colour, or of a bad smell.─Leucorrhoea with colic.─Diminished lochia.─Spasmodic contraction of the uterus.─Labour pains too distressing, spasmodic; too weak, or ceasing.─After-pains.─Congestion and inflammation of the uterus and labia.─Stitches in the organs.─Puerperal fever, nymphomania.─Flow of milk from the breast.─Mammae swelled, inflamed, or indurated.

17. Respiratory Organs.─Catarrh with cough, coryza, hoarseness with tenacious mucus in the chest.─Voice weak, hoarse, and whistling; nasal-toned voice.─Loss of the voice.─Great soreness of the larynx, with danger of suffocation on pressing the gullet, as well as on coughing, on speaking, and on breathing.─Spasmodic constriction of the larynx.─Larynx very painful, with anxious starts when touching it.─Constriction of the trachea.─Short, dry cough, from tickling in the larynx, with headache, redness, and heat in the face.─Cough with stitches in the chest, in the lumbar region, in the hip, in the uterus; pain in the sternum, with tightness of the chest; with rattling of mucus on the chest.─Dry spasmodic cough, with vomiturition, esp. after midnight.─Whooping-cough, with crying, or pain in the stomach before the attack, with expectoration of blood (pale or coagulated), congestion of blood to the head, sparks before the eyes, spasms in the throat, bleeding from the nose, stitches in the spleen, involuntary stool and urine, oppressed breathing, stiffness of the limbs, shaking of the whole body, and dry general heat.─Cough, as if one had swallowed dust, or as if there were some foreign body in the larynx, or in the pit of the stomach, which excites the cough; chiefly at night, or in the afternoon, in the evening in bed, and even during sleep; the cough is mostly dry, short, and sometimes convulsive, fatiguing and shaking, or hollow and barking.─Before the cough, tears, or pains in the stomach; when coughing, shootings in the abdomen, or retching, or pain as of a bruise in the nape of the neck; after the paroxysm, sneezing.─The least movement, when in bed at night, renews the cough.─Cough with rattling in the chest, or with catarrh, and shootings in the sternum, or with headache and redness of face.─Expectoration of thick and puriform mucus with the cough.─Cough with spitting of blood.

18. Chest.─Breathing laboured, unequal, quick, with moaning.─Rattling noise, and crepitation in the bronchia.─Vehement expirations.─Feeling of suffocation when swallowing, or when touching and turning the neck.─Oppression of the chest, difficult respiration, dyspnoea and shortness of breath, sometimes with anxiety, and chiefly in the evening in bed, and after having drunk (coffee).─Oppression of the chest in the morning when rising, cannot breathe in the room, better in the open air.─Congestion to the chest.─Irregular respiration, at one time small and rapid, at another time slow and profound.─Respiration short, anxious, and rapid.─In the morning after rising, want of breath, relieved in the open air.─When walking, cramp-like oppression of the chest, with necessity to fetch a long breath.─Pressure on the chest, with pain in the shoulder-blades and short breath.─Tension in the chest.─Shootings in the chest, sometimes as if from knives, and chiefly on coughing and yawning.─Great inquietude and beatings in the chest.─Painful blisters, filled with water, or small spots of a deep red colour on the chest.

19. Heart.─Violent beatings of the heart, which sometimes are felt in the head.─Palpitation of the heart when ascending.─Trembling of the heart, with anguish and pressive pain.─Violent palpitation of the heart, reverberating in the head.

20. Neck and Back.─Painful swelling and stiffness in the neck and in the nape of the neck.─Painful swelling in the glands of the neck and in those of the nape of the neck.─Sharp pains in the armpits.─Red and purulent pimples on the back and nape of the neck.─Veins in the neck swollen.─Sour sweat, only on the neck.─Pain, as of dislocation; rheumatic and drawing pains in the back and between the shoulder-blades.─Furunculus on the shoulder.─Dartings, as if from knives, in the bones of the spine.─Gnawing in the dorsal spine, with cough.─Painful stiffness and cramp-like pains, in the sacral regions and in the back.

22. Upper Limbs.─Arms benumbed and painful.─Tractive pressure, with sensation of torpor, and sharp pains in the arms.─Inclination to stretch the arms.─Arms heavy, as if paralysed.─Torpor and heaviness of the arms.─Swelling and scarlet redness of the arms and of the hands.─Drawing and aching pain in the shoulder, running rapidly from the top to the bottom of the arms, and exhibiting itself particularly at night, diminished by external pressure, excited by motion.─Painful startings, cramp and convulsions in the arms and in the hands.─Trembling of the hands.─Pressure, with sharp pains in the carpal and metacarpal bones.─Arthritic stiffness in the joints of the hand.─Frequent dislocation of the joints of the fingers.─Drawing back of the thumbs.

23. Lower Limbs.─Shootings and burning pains, aggravated by fits, in the coxo-femoral joint, more unbearable at night, and increased by the least contact.─Stiffness in the hip, after sitting for some time, with difficulty in getting up.─Pain in the hip, which causes lameness.─Involuntary limping.─Tottering walk, when rising from bed in the morning, the legs refuse their service.─Trembling of the knees.─Drawing pains in the legs, esp. in the knees.─Heaviness and paralysis of the legs and of the feet.─Bending of the knees and of the feet in walking.─Tension of the tendons of the ham.─Swelling of the feet.─Crawling sensation in the feet.─Phlegmasia alba dolens.

24. Generalities.─Shooting, or tearing, aching pains in the limbs.─Bruise-like pains in the joints and bones.─Rheumatic pains (in the joints) flying from one place to another.─The pains are aggravated, chiefly at night, and in the afternoon towards three or four o'clock.─The least touch, and sometimes also the slightest movement, aggravates the sufferings.─Some of the symptoms are aggravated, or make their appearance after sleep.─Jerking in the limbs, muscular palpitations and shocks of the tendons.─St. Vitus's, dance.─Sensation in the muscles, as if a mouse were running over them.─Cramp, spasms, and convulsive movements, with violent contortion of the limbs; convulsive fits, with cries, and loss of consciousness; epileptic convulsions, drawing back of the thumbs.─Renewal of the spasms by the least contact, or from the glare of light.─Hydrophobia.─Burning in the inner parts.─Attacks of immobility and of spasmodic stiffness of the body, or of some of the limbs, sometimes with insensibility, swelling of the veins, bloatedness and redness of the face, pulse full and quick, with copious sweat.─Spasms in single limbs, or of the whole body, in children, during dentition.─Full habit (plethora).─Swelling in general of the parts affected.─Inflammation of the glands; induration of the glands; glands painful, prickling, swelling, hot swelling of the glands.─Attacks of tetanus at times, with the head thrown back.─Spasmodic attacks, with involuntary laughter.─Before the convulsive fits, formication, with a sensation of swelling and torpor in the limbs; or colic and aching in the abdomen, extending to the head; after the attack, oppression at the chest, as if from a heavy weight.─The attacks are renewed by the least touch, as well as by the slightest opposition.─Great uneasiness in the head and limbs, chiefly in the hands.─Trembling of the limbs, with fatigue and lassitude.─Heaviness in the limbs, with weariness, great indolence and dread of all movement and of all labour.─Failing of strength, paralytic weakness, and paralysis of the limbs.─Paralysis and insensibility of one side of the body.─Fits of swooning and of syncope, with loss of all sensation and of all motion, as in death.─Ebullition of blood, with congestion to the head, and fatigue even to fainting.─Congestions (head, lungs).─Apoplexia.─Over-excitement and too great sensibility of all the organs.─Tendency to be chilled easily, with great sensibility to cold air.─Formication in the limbs.

25. Skin.─Swelling, with heats and scarlet redness of the whole body, or of several parts, chiefly the face, the neck, the chest, the abdomen, and the hands.─Cutting of the skin as though "sliced" with a sharp knife.─Erysipelatous inflammations, with phlegmon, which sometimes turn to gangrene.─Gangrene and sphacelus of several parts.─Red places, inflamed and scarlet spots on several parts of the body, sometimes with small, quick pulse, difficulty of respiration, violent cough, delirium, liveliness of memory, inclination to rub the nose, and dilated pupils.─Red spots, the colour of blood, over the whole body, principally on the face, neck, and chest.─Eruption resembling morbilli.─Eruption of petechiae, with itching and redness of the whole body.─Miliary eruptions.─Vesicles which discharge a great deal of serum, and are so painful as to extort cries and groans.─Bleeding soreness of the bends of the joints.─Eruption of pustules with whitish edges, with black slough, and oedematous swelling of the diseased part.─Boils (returning every spring).─Red scaly eruption on the lower part of the body.─Scrofulous tumours and nodes, which are painful.─Pain, as of excoriation, burning and pulling in ulcers, principally on being touched, during motion, and in the night.─Dry, burning-hot skin.─Burning of the skin, particularly when the hand continues to burn after touching the skin, as though a hot stove had been touched, very characteristic.─Red, hot, and shining swelling of the diseased parts.─Smooth, even shining (not circumscribed) redness of the skin, with bloatedness, dryness, heat, burning itching and swelling of the parts (esp. face, neck, chest, abdomen and hands).─The ulcers secrete a purulent and sanguineous matter.─Chilblains.─Painful swelling of the glands (inflamed, stinging).

26. Sleep.─Constant drowsiness, sometimes with cloudiness, and yawning, and chiefly towards the evening.─Fits of somnolence and of lethargy, with profound sleep, immobility of the body, jerking of the tendons pale and cold face, hands cold, and pulse small, hard, and quick.─Somnolence: stupor, lethargy (with snoring).─Coma, interrupted by momentary wakings, with furious looks.─After the fit of coma, great hunger, burning heat, and dryness of the mouth.─Pulsations of the blood-vessels; may hear the pulsations of the blood-vessels so loud when trying to sleep as to be kept awake by it.─Comatose sleep at night, with frequent waking and convulsive movements.─Sleep, with moaning and tossing about.─Nocturnal sleeplessness, sometimes with desire to sleep and useless efforts to go to sleep, mostly in consequence of excessive anguish or great agitation.─On sleeping, frequent starts with fright, groans, cries, starting of the limbs, carphology, aggravation of pains, singing, talking, delirium, and continual dreams.─Nightmare.─Dreams: anxious, terrible, frightful, vivid, dreams of fires, of robbers, and assassins; meditative dreams.─On closing the eyes in order to go to sleep, frightful visions and jerking in the limbs.─On waking, headache and aggravation of sufferings.

27. Fever.─Coldness over the entire body, with paleness of face, or coldness of the extremities, with bloatedness and redness of the face.─Shiverings and partial shuddering, chiefly in the back or the pit of the stomach, or in one arm, and sometimes with heat in other parts, chiefly in the head, or followed by universal shivering.─Cold limbs, with hot head.─Chilliness not relieved by the heat of the stove.─Continuous dry, burning heat, with perspiration only on the head.─Internal heat with restlessness; hot forehead and cold cheeks.─Dry heat and thirst, and perspiration only on the head and neck (sour-smelling).─The shiverings appear mostly in the evening, sometimes with nausea; bruise-like sensation, and pulling in the back and in the limbs, pricking in the chest and obscuration of the eyes.─Febrile attacks, in which shiverings alternate with heat, or of shiverings followed by heat, with aggravation at night or in the evening, resembling quotidian, or double quotidian, or tertian, with complete adypsia, or burning and inextinguishable thirst.─Dry, burning heat, often with swelling of the veins, pulsation of the carotids, heat, redness and bloatedness of the face, burning thirst, agitation, furious delirium, and shiverings on being even slightly uncovered.─Pulse strong and quick, or full and slow, or small and quick, or hard and wiry.─If slow, the pulse is full.─Pulse full; hard; strong, bounding, double.─Sweat with or after the heat; copious sweat during the night, or in the morning; sweat of the parts that are covered only; ascending from the feet to the head; sweat when asleep; sweat of an empyreumatic smell, or which imparts a yellow colour to the sheets.

Keynotes and Characteristics with Comparisons of Some of the Leading Remedies of the Materia Medica (Allen's Keynotes), Henry Clay Allen

Deadly Nightshade (Solanaceae)

Adapted to bilious, lymphatic, plethoric constitutions; persons who are lively and entertaining when well, but violent and often delerious when sick. Women and children with light hair and blue eyes, find complexion, delicate skin; sensitive, nervous, threatened with convulsions; tuberculous patients. Great liability to take cold; sensitive to drafts of air, especially when uncovering the head; from having the hair cut; tonsils become inflamed after riding in a cold wind (Acon., Hep., Rhus - takes cold from exposure of feet, Con., Cup., Sil.). Quick sensation and motion; eyes snap and move quickly; pains come suddenly, last indefinitely and cease suddenly (Mag. p.). Pains usually in short attacks; cause redness of face and eyes; fulness of head and throbbing of carotids. Imagines he sees ghosts, hideous faces, and various insects (Stram.); black animals, dogs, wolves. Fear of imaginary things, wants to run away from them; hallucinations. Violent delirium; disposition to bite, spit, strike and tear things; breaks into fits of laughter and gnashes the teeth; wants to bite and strike the attendants (Stram.); tries to escape (Hell.). Head hot and painful; face flushed; eyes wild, staring, pupils dilated; pulse full and bounding, globular, like buckshot striking the finger; mucous membrane of mouth dry; stool tardy and urine suppressed; sleepy; but cannot sleep (Cham., Op.). Convulsions during teething, with fever (without fever, Mag. p.); come on suddenly, head hot, feet cold. Rush of blood to head and face (Amyl., Glon., Mel.). Headache, congestive, with red face, throbbing of brain and carotids (Met.); < from slight noise, jar, motion, light, lying down, least exertion; > pressure, tight bandaging, wrapping up, during menses. Boring the head into the pillow (Apis, Hell., Pod.). Vertigo when stooping, or when rising after stooping (Bry.); on every change of position. Abdomen tender, distended < by least jar, even of the bed; obliged to walk with great care for fear of a jar. Pain in right ileo-coecal region, < by slightest touch, even of the bed- cover. The transverse colon protrudes like a pad. Skin: of a uniform, smooth, shining scarlet redness; dry, hot, burning; imparts a burning sensation to examining had; the true Sydenham scarlet fever, where eruption is perfectly smooth and truly scarlet. Pressing downwards as if the contents of abdomen would issue from the vulva; > standing and sitting erect; worse mornings (Lil., Mur., Sep.).

Relations. - Complementary: Calcarea. Belladonna is the acute of Calcarea, which is often required to complete a cure. Similar: to, Acon., Bry., Cic., Gels., Glon., Hyos., Mel., Op., Stram.

Aggravation. - From touch, motion, noise, draught of air, looking at bright, shining objects (Lys., Stram.); after 3 p. m.; night, after midnight; while drinking; uncovering the head; summer sun; lying down.

Amelioration. - Rest; standing or sitting erect; warm room.

Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics, Eugene Beauharnais Nash

All acute inflammatory diseases present prominent head symptoms, pain, red puffed face, throbbing carotids and delirium, and spasms, or jerks and twitchings.

Eyes staring, red, blood-shot and pupils first contracted, then greatly dilated.

Mouth and throat very dry, red, sometimes greatly swollen; all mucous surfaces correspondingly dry and hot.

Pains appear suddenly, and after a while disappear as suddenly as they came.

Skin very red and hot, fairly radiates heat; burns the hand touching it, but sweats on covered parts.

Several inflammations which streak out in radii from a center.

Modalities: < after 3 P. M. or after midnight from uncovering, or draft of air, and lying down; > from covering and head high.

Great liability to take cold; sensitive to draft of air, especially when uncovering the head; from having the hair cut (Hep.); tonsils swell after riding in a cold wind (Acon.).

Imagines he sees ghosts, hideous faces, and various insects (Stram.); black animals, dogs and wolves.

Abdomen tender, distended < by least jar, even the bed; obliged to walk with great care for fear of a jar.

Pain in right ileo-caecal region, < by slightest touch, even the bed covers.

Pressing downwards, as if the contents of abdomen would issue from the vulva; < standing and sitting erect; worse mornings (compare Lil., Mur., Sep.).

Tongue: Red and dry, with red edges and white coating in the middle; Papillae bright and prominent, like scarlatina (Acon., Ant. t.), offensive, putrid taste in throat when eating or drinking, although food tastes natural.

* * * * *

We now come to consider what I call the trio of delirium remedies – Belladonna, Hyoscyamus and Stramonium. Many other remedies have delirium, but these three deserve to head the list. Belladonna may also be called pre-eminently a head remedy. In most complaints where this remedy is indicated head symptoms preponderate. The blood all seems to be rushing to the head. (Amyl nitrite, Glonoine, Melilotus). The head is hot while the extremities are cool. The eyes are red and blood-shot. The face is also red, almost purple red. The carotid arteries throb so as to be plainly visible. There is either great pain, pressure or sense of fullness, or an almost stupid condition. The wild, terrible delirium, if present, may be found with pain, or even with no complaint of pain. In delirium the patient "imagines he sees ghosts, hideous faces and animals and insects". Fears all sorts of imaginary things and wants to run away from them; breaks out into fits of laughter or screams and gnashes his teeth; bites or strikes those around him; in short, Performs all sorts of violent acts and is controlled with great difficulty. No remedy has more presistently violent delirium than Belladonna. One of the characteristic features of Belladonna in delirium as compared with the other two remedies is the decided evidence already mentioned of a surcharge of blood in the brain. When the throbbing of the carotids, the heat, redness and congestion of face and conjunctiva go away, the delirium subsides in proportion. Belladonna may have delirium with pale face as its alternate, but it is the exception. Even the upper lip is congested and swollen.

In inflammations, which localize, Belladonna is in the first stage as often the leading remedy as any other. It does not make much difference where they localize, whether in head, throat, mammae or elsewhere, if they come on suddenly, pursue a rapid course, are red, painful and especially throbbing. It is astonishing how many local inflammations, even a carbuncle or boil, will so disturb the general system and circulation, as to produce the general inflammatory fever, with the characteristic head symptoms calling for Belladonna, and no less astonishing how this remedy controls the whole condition, both local and general, when indicated. What! exclaims the believer in local applications, give Belladonna internally for a boil on the hand or foot? Yes, indeed, not only Belladonna, but Mercurius, Hepar Sulphuris, Tarantula Cubensis, and many others, and you will not have any need for local medication at all. It is only in the first or congestive or active inflammatory stage that this remedy is in place; but, if properly administered then, it will often abort the whole thing and never leave it to finish all its stages, or if not, so modify as to make it comparatively insignificant.

Belladonna is one of our best remedies in the diseases of children, even vieing with Chamomilla. They come suddenly, almost without warning. This sudden and intense onset of fever is sometimes duplicated in Cina cases, but there is helminthiasis in connection with it. Child is well one minute and sick the next, and one very characteristic symptom in these cases is, the child is very hot, with red face and semi-stupor, but every little while starts or jumps in sleep as if it might go into spasms. This condition is often found in children and then Belladonna is like "oil upon troubled waters". Remember Belladonna inflammations localize more than they do in Aconite. I drew the difference between these two remedies in inflammations and inflammatory fevers when writing upon Aconite. There is no use of confounding them. Some do so; but, in so doing, only exhibit their ignorance.

There are, in every remedy, symptoms of sensation, circumstance, constitution or modality which are peculiar both to diseases and remedies. These symptoms are not always easily accounted for. The attempt to explain them from a pathological standpoint is not always possible or even necessary were it possible. A simple acceptance of them as facts is often more sensible than to wait long to find the often unfindable. To act as a prescriber upon what we know is better than waiting, because we cannot explain or account for it. For instance, it is not easy to tell why "the pains of Belladonna appear suddenly and after a time disappear as suddenly as they come", while those of Stannum "gradually increase to a great height and as gradually decline", or Sulphuric acid "begin slowly and decline suddenly", or "gradually increase and suddenly cease" but so it is, and the acceptance of these facts enables the homoeopathic prescriber to cure his patient, whether he can explain them or not. Guernsey says – "This medicine is particularly applicable, and in fact takes the lead over all others in cases in which quickness or suddenness of either sensation or motion is predominant." To be sure all these symptoms have their pathological explanation if we could give it; but, acting on our law of Similia, we can cure our patients and are not left at sea, without chart or compass, because we cannot explain. We know that these symptoms are the natural outcry of the pathological state, and that the administration of a poison which is capable of setting up a similar outcry cures the patient. What else is necessary? Either this is true, or Homoeopathy is a humbug.

The simple fact, abundantly proven, that the remedy having the symptoms corresponding to the symptoms of the patient, cures him, no matter what the pathology, where a cure is at all possible, is one of the greatest discoveries of scientific investigation. Long live the name of Hahnemann the discoverer.

From out description thus far of this remedy you would expect it to be a good one for congestive headaches, and so it is, and not only so, but for neuralgic headaches. Throbbing pains, with the already described evidence of congestion of blood to the head. Belladonna headaches, whether congestive or neuralgic, are worse on stooping forward, bending downward, or lying down, anything that takes the patient out of the perpendicular. "Worse on lying down", in fact, seems to be a very reliable general characteristic. The elder Lippe once told me of a case of suspicious enlargement or swelling and pain of the breast of long standing, which, as he expressed it, seemed likely to prove a case for the surgeon (cancer), which was entirely cured by a few doses of Belladonna, to which he was guided by this symptom of the pains being so much worse on lying down. Since then I have observed and verified this symptom in many cases of different kinds. I will not stop to give all the symptoms that might be present in Belladonna headaches.

No remedy has greater affinity for the throat. The burning, dryness (Sabadilla), sense of constriction (constant desire to swallow to relieve the sense of dryness, Lyssin), with or without swelling of the palate and tonsils, is sometimes intense. I once witnessed a case of poisoning in which these symptoms were terribly distressing.

There are two very characteristic symptoms in the abdominal region, viz.: "Tenderness of the abdomen, aggravated by the least jar, in walking, or stepping, or even the bed or chair, upon which she sits or lies"; and "pressure downward as if the contents of the abdomen would issue through the vulva, < mornings". This last symptom is found under other remedies, notably Lilium tigrinum and Sepia. With Belladonna there is often associated with this pressure downward a pain in the back "as if it would break". "Starting and jumping", or "twitching in sleep", or on going to sleep is characteristic.

So also is "sleepy, but cannot sleep", and "moaning during sleep".

With Belladonna the head likes wrapping up or covering, takes cold when it is uncovered or from cutting the hair (Silicea). (Glonoine; can't bear hat on).

Uniform, smooth, shining, scarlet redness of the skin, so hot that it imparts a burning sensation to the hand of one who feels of it, is very characteristic (H. N. Guernsey).

Convulsions with other symptoms of Belladonna are very frequently found under this remedy.

I have here endeavoured to give an outline of this great remedy. A volume might be profitably written upon its virtues. No one remedy would be more greatly missed than this, if it were to be expunged from our great Materia Medica, but we must leave it here and proceed to notice.