Materia medica/ knowledge of medicinal powers

I aim to write about the medicines here as given in Materia Medica s, but would confine myself to only bite-size indications. Occasionally do I plan to provide a full meal😊. Most of what I would be posting here would be practical points that can be used in day-to-day practice.
How to perceive a patient’s symptoms and understand them in light of the language of Materia medica is what I plan to present. It will not be something out of the extraordinary but would be of importance, which is sometimes missed in the sea of symptoms in each medicine. I personally am very fond of a few authors and have been trying to follow them. They are Boenninghausen, Boger, Lippe, Pulford, Guernsey, Hering, Allen, Phatak, and the fountainhead Dr. Hahnemann, and most of what I plan to write would be from these. I would also try to give a reference for what I write. I still find myself learning every day and discovering new things; once a student always a student. I however wish to reduce this struggle for others.
Occasionally I will be sharing the drug picture for better understanding.

Hope you find it helpful.

USTILAGO MAYDIS- a snapshot

  • Suited to large flabby bloated females who have not been able to conceive
  • Great depression of spirits
  • Weepy
  • Tendency to boils
  • Uterus
    • Sub- Involution
    • Flabby, prolapsed
    • Fibroids
    • Promotes expulsion of foreign body from uterus (CANTH, SABINA)
    • Bearing down pains
  • Haemorrhage
    • From uterus on least examination
    • Gushes of blood from uterus on
      • Rising from lying down
      • When suddenly startled or frightened
    • After confinement, abortion or post-partum
    • Partly clotted and partly fluid blood
    • Vicarious menses from lungs and bowels
  • Abortion
    • Habitual every 3 months
  • Males
    • Irresistible tendency to masturbation, a habit that he can’t break despite many efforts, cries and weeps and is exhausted by the same
    • Lascivious, emissions even while talking to women
    • Erotic fancies and lascivious dreams
  • Severe backache
    • Backache with mental irritability
  • Foul leucorrhoea, metritis, infections from
  • Spongy cervix
  • Shifting rheumatic pains.
  • Malaise as if taking cold
  • Falling of hair and nails
    • Not even a single hair left on scalp, complete alopecia
  • Sensation as of a knot
    • In bowels, throat, uterus
  • Skin affections
    • Psoriasis, eczema, milk crust

(It should be compared with SECALE COR which is more suited to thin, scrawny females)

SENEGA- a snapshot

  • Chest, eye and kidneys affected
  • Suited to old chubby fat people
  • Bodily and mental debility
  • Suddenly remembers unimportant regions which he saw long ago
  • Dryness of inner parts that are usually moist
  • Chest, affects chest
    • Burning in air passages
    • Soreness of chest, with coughing, sneezing etc
    • Many chest symptoms are < from rest and in evening
    • Aml > on walking
    • Bronchitis, phthisis, hydrothorax (MERC SULPH) and many other chest pathologies
    • Extraordinary tenacious mucus from bronchi
    • Incessant choking strangling Cough ending in a sneeze
    • Asthenic bronchitis of old people with chronic interstitial nephritis or chronic emphysema. Old asthmatics with congestive attacks
  • Anxiety with hasty respiration
  • Scrapy throat and sneezing
  • Continuous nausea
  • Shreddy scanty urine, mixed with mucus threads
  • Affects eyes
    • Many eye complaints- blepharitis, dryness, diplopia etc
    • Promotes absorption of lens segments after operation
    • Clouded cornea
    • Diplopia > bending backwards
    • Frequently wiping the eyes
    • Eyes feel distended sp in artificial light
  • Paretic states
    • Eyes
    • Paresis of left side of face
    • Weariness in lower limbs
  • Headache going into eyes > cool air (PULS)

(Think of a person easily roused to anger, who is having scrapy throat, severe cough tenacious mucus but wants to walk in cool open air. He has some eye troubles as well and keeps bending back to see properly. Worried about his health, his chest is sore on coughing (you might think of BRYONIA, NAT SULPH, ARS). The mucus is tenacious and does not come out easily. He is probably chubby or even a blue bloater.)

GENTIANA LUTEA

  • Tonic to increase appetite
  • General sadness
  • Confusion of mind while writing
  • Headache
    • Aml- > eating, > open air
    • Brain feels loose and tender
  • Dry thick saliva (EPIPHEGUS)
  • GIT
    • Ravenous hunger with acid rising
    • Inflated and tense abdo
    • Colic in naval region
    • Abdo sensitive to touch
  • Yellow diarrhoea
  • Sensation of constriction
  • Desire to sleep but no sleep

(A very good spasmolytic remedy, the alkaloid present is one of the most bitter substances known.)

POPULUS CANDICANS- a snapshot

  • Colds/ catarrh
    • Acute colds
    • Deep hoarse voice even aphonia
    • It is said to be an instantaneous voice producer like coca
    • Throat feels dry, voice is toneless
    • Sore bruised body
  • Insensibility of the surface
    • General insensibility of surface (worse, back and abdomen); rubbing and pounding borne without pain, and is grateful on account of warmth produced.
    • Finger-ends thickened, horny; insensible to pinching and pricking
    • Tongue thick and numb
    • Numbness in back, radiating from spine
  • Discusses her symptoms with everyone
  • Cold sores on lips (nat mur)
  • Hot head, cold extremities
  • Burning
    • Everywhere
    • Eye, mouth, respiratory tract, nostrils, throat, vagina, In back
    • As if scalded
  • Raw sore chest
  • Cough in children caused by naso pharyngeal catarrh, post nasal dripping
  • Blisters
    • Big, on skin
    • Aml- > hot fomentation
    • Burn like coals of fire

NUPHAR LUTEUM

  • Excessive moral sensibility. Great pain in witnessing sufferings of animals
  • Cannot bear contradiction, becomes impatient
  • Involuntary emissions
    • Sleep during
    • Stool during
  • Voluptuous thoughts but they do not cause any no erections
  • Yellow diarrhoea
    • Early morning
    • With great exhaustion
  • Agg- < day after coition
  • Psoriasis
  • Red patchy spots with scales

AURUM MUR NATROMATUM- a snaphot

  • Affects uterus and its appendages
  • Habitual abortions
  • Pains that are boring in nature
  • Uterus
    • Chronic metritis
    • Ulcerated cervix
    • Indurated or enlarged uterus
    • Prolapse, fibroids etc
  • Ovaries
    • Inflamed
    • Indurated
  • Arteriosclerosis
  • Ataxia
  • Psoriasis
  • Swollen
    • Testicles sp left
    • bones
  • Deep syphilitic ulcers on skin

LAC FELINUM- a snapshot

  • Morbid conscientiousness
  • Great fear of sharp objects, thinks that they will pierce the eyes
  • Severe headache with pain in left eye, the pains penetrate into brain backwards and to right side of vertex.
  • Great photophobia
  • Styes
  • Desire to eat paper
  • Eyes get affected every September

(Think of this remedy when you think of SPIGELIA. Both have piercing eye pains and fear of sharp objects)

KALIUM ARSENICUM/ KALI ARS- a snapshot

  • Complaints tending towards malignancy
  • Restless nervous, anaemic
  • Frightened expression
  • Jealous, quarrelsome
  • Doesn’t want to answer
  • Nights are filled with sufferings
  • Aggravation- < noise, touch, cold feet, 1-3am
  • Amelioration- > Rainy days
  • Skin
    • Intolerable itching
    • Chronic eczema, psoriasis, lichen
    • Agg- < undressing, warmth, walking
    • Fissures in bend of joints
    • Sudden onset in skin malignancy
    • Numerous nodules under skin

PLUMBUM METALLICUM- a snapshot

  • Affections more of emotions than of intellect
  • Slow insidious processes
  • Marasmus with large hard abdomen and constipation, in children
  • Impaired memory (compare ANACARDIUM, BARYTA CARB, LAC CANINUM)
  • Changeable incoherent symptoms in single parts
  • Exaggerates illness
  • Impulse to stretch
  • Inclined to cheat, deceive
  • Stiffness
  • Taciturn timid restless anxious
  • Fears assassination
  • Greasy oily shiny skin of face (NAT MUR, SELE, THUJA)
  • Tremors of nasolabial muscle
  • Fainting on going to a room full of people
  • Hysteria only when watched
  • Tendency to abortion
  • It feels as if there isn’t enough space for the foetus to grow
  • Stools
    • Constipation
    • Stool like sheep dung
    • Stools passed with colic
    • Cold sweat during stool
  • Paralysis
    • Touch < the part
    • Of single parts
    • Wrist drop
    • Loss of plantar reflexes
    • Lower limbs
  • Twitching pains and cramps
  • Cold feet during walking
  • Disposition to yawn and stretch
  • Convulsions/ cramps
    • With haemorrhage
    • Periodical
    • Or hyperaesthesia
  • Chronic epilepsy with marked aura
  • Physical labor exhaust the mind
  • Delirium
    • Nocturnal
    • Alternating with colic or pain in limbs
    • Alternating delirium and somnolence
  • Pain in atrophied limb alternating with colic
  • Skin
    • Skin of face oily greasy (compare NATRUM MUR, SANIC, SELENIUM, THUJA)
    • Skin dry and oversensitive
    • Dry burning ulcers
    • Distended veins on forearms and legs
  • Foetid food sweat
  • Falls asleep while speaking
  • Sclerosed spine with lightening like pains > pressure
  • Interstitial nephritis
    • With great pains in abdo
    • With cerebral symptoms and amaurosis
  • Intussusception
  • Strangulated hernias
  • Blue margins along gums
  • Tremors of tongue, can’t put it out
  • Eye
    • Glaucoma
    • Optic nerve inflamed
  • Very dry hair
  • Multiple sclerosis
    • Lightening pains exhorting cries
    • Rapid emaciation
  • Progressive muscular atrophy
  • Rapid and excessive emaciation
  • Paraesthesia or hyperaesthesia after pains