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.

RANUNCULUS BULBOSUS

  • Vexation
    • Causes trembling of body
    • Oppresses the breath, can’t inhale sufficiently, dyspnoea from anger
  • Bad effects of alcohol
    • Delirium tremens
    • Day blindness
    • Hiccough in alcoholics
    • Epileptic attacks in
  • Eruptions
    • Vesicular, on hands, feet and body
    • Pustulous exanthema
  • Pain
    • Like a shock through body
    • Whole body feels beaten and pains as if ulcerated
    • Sore spots on body
    • Pains with shuddering
  • Agg < morning, evening
  • Agg < change of temperature (getting cold when heated or getting heated when cold), motion, stretch
  • Crawling
    • Sp about nose, chin
  • Very sensitive to open air
    • Chilliness in chest on walking in open air
  • Pleurisy pneumonia from sudden change of weather
  • Degeneration of spinal cord, symptoms agg change of weather
  • Tingling in fingers
  • Shooting neuralgic pains in chest, paroxysmal
    • Intercoastal rheumatism, < wet stormy weather
    • Shingles/ herpes neuralgia (MEZEREUM)
    • Pleurisy
  • Muscular pains, sp shoulder blade
    • After doing fine work (ACTEA RACEMOSA)
    • After playing piano
  • Corns very sensitive to touch
  • Dreams of drowning/ or swimming

(Think of a person who suffers from bad effects of alcohol. He is quarrelsome and has body aches as if body is beaten like ARNICA. Every change of temperature affects him badly. He gets pneumonia, headaches, neuralgias etc. You might think of SPIGELIA but keep RAN BUL in mind. He also has vesicular eruptions which might lead you to think of RHUS TOX. When you are thinking of RHUS TOX and SPIGELIA think of RANUNCULUS BULBOSUS as it covers both remedies.)

Aude Sapere

RANUNCULUS BULBOSUS Read More »

COFFEA CRUDA

  • Complaints from
    • Joy/ excitement
      • Sleeplessness
      • Weepy from joy
      • Convulsions from excessive laughing and playing
    • Bad effects of wine debauch
    • Fright/ disappointed love
    • Fatigue/ long journey
  • Traumatic fevers
  • Alternate weeping and laughing
  • Throwing things
  • Gives short Answers but becomes talkative when talking about his ailments
  • Oversensitiveness
    • To pain, starts weeping from least pain, pains run into fingertips
    • To air and wind, open air.
    • Pleasure, oversensitive to
  • Tosses in anguish (aconite)
  • Excessive howling and crying over trifles
  • Sleeplessness
    • From joy, cannot sleep from exalted state of mind, ideas
    • From overactivity of mind
    • From itching in anus
  • Live fancies, active imagination, acute memory
  • Severe unsufferable labor pains
  • Eats hastily and greedily
  • Thirst more at night, hence urinates more at night
  • Acute senses
    • Taste
    • Smell, very sensitive to odors
    • Hearing
    • Touch
  • Headache
    • Like a nail pressing in the head, clavus
  • Overeating <
  • Toothache holding cold water in mouth

Aude Sapere

COFFEA CRUDA Read More »

COLCHICUM AUTUMANALE- a snapshot

  • Complaints from
    • Overstudy, night study, mental exertion
    • Getting wet/ cold damp weather (compare RHUS TOX/ NAT SULPH)
    • Misdeeds of others
    • Becoming cold when overheated
    • Grief
  • Irritable (think NUX VOM)
  • Dissatisfied
  • Pleuritis after getting wet (SPIGELIA)
  • Joints
    • Painful
    • Stubbing the toe hurts severely
    • Cannot hold anything
    • Patient screams with pain
    • Redness, heat and swelling of joints sp small joints
    • Superficial pains in body in warm weather, deep seated pains in cold
    • Cardio arthritic pains
    • Iritis scleritis
  • Small rapidly shifting area of pain but no swelling
  • Sensitiveness
    • To external impressions (NUX VOM)
    • To odor, elicit nausea
    • Can even cause fainting
    • Whole body sensitive to touch/ to motion(BRY)
    • Least hurt pains too much
  • Doesn’t want to eat anything, lies quietly
  • Tingling in various parts of body < change of weather
    • Tingling of finger tips and toes
  • Shocks as from electricity through one half of the body with sensation of paralysis
  • Frequent startlings
  • Debility/ weakness
    • From loss of sleep
    • Night study/ hard study
    • Cold weak sensitive and restless
  • Complaints from left to right (LACH)
  • Desires effervescent alcoholic beverages
  • Scanty urine with tenesmus and dark red urine (nephritis)
    • Dropsy
    • Dry skin with scanty urine
    • Albumin and sugar in urine
  • Dysentery
    • With gastric complaints
    • Bloody stools with scrapping of intestines
  • Shreddy gelatinous stools
  • Moist collapse
    • Rapid sinking
  • Creepings
  • Subacute states that finally affects heart
  • Bad effects of suppressed sweat
  • Agg < evening, night, moving, respiration, touch, emotions, cold damp
  • Aml > evacuation, rest, warmth
  • Myelitis
  • Hydrothorax
  • Ascites, abdominal fold hangs over pubic arch.

(Similar to collapse remedies VERAT, ARS, CARBO VEG in last stages. So weak that cannot even hold neck when lifted or made to sit down, the head falls back. They are very sensitive individuals, sensitive to others misdeeds, to external stimuli, odors noise etc. They feel nauseated even at the smell of the food. They have joint pains which are very sensitive that mere touch excites pain, least stubbing causes excruciating pain. They have tingling and weakness almost bordering to paralysis. Complaints come after studying hard at night.)

(A detailed d/d of medicines is given in NM Choudhry for nausea of pregnancy. It is as follows:

Nausea of pregnancy

  • In COLCH. the nausea is felt in the head and is worse while riding a carriage or sailing.
  • IPEC. is very much like Colch. The nausea is incessant and there is not a moment’s relief.
  • In KALI CARB we have nausea without vomiting, coming on only during a walk. She feels like lying down anywhere and prefers even dying to such nausea. Great sleepiness while eating is also a marked symptom of Kali carb.
  • In KREOSOTE the patient vomits sweetish water before breakfast. She retains her breakfast and dinner, but vomits out her supper.
  • LOBELIA- nausea and vomiting in Lobelia with profuse running of water from the mouth. She is invariably worse after sleeping, and is relieved by taking a little food; after vomiting she breaks out into profuse sweat.
  • NUX VOM. has ineffectual desire for vomiting. She feels she would be better if she could only vomit.
  • PULSAT. can be very easily distinguished from other remedies by the excessive bad taste in the mouth in the morning.
  • TABACUM should not be forgotten where we notice deathly faintness and pallor of the face relieved by going out into the open air.
  • VERATRUM is to be distinguished by the presence of cold sweat on forehead while vomiting and a great desire for fruits, juicy things, and for acid and salty food.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

COLCHICUM AUTUMANALE- a snapshot Read More »

TEREBINTH- a snapshot

  • Muttering delirium
  • Fear of apoplexy
  • Suicidal disposition by hanging
  • Sedentary habits
  • Kidneys
    • Haematuria, more blood than albumin
    • Rheumatism and
    • Bronchitis and
    • Haemorrhage and kidney symptoms
    • Post scarlatinal dropsy (APIS, HELL, LACH) (post streptococcal glomerulonephritis)
    • Albumin in urine < damp cellars
  • Pain alternate between naval and bladder
  • Lungs
  • Burning
    • Everywhere, mouth, gums, throat, stomach, GIT, rectum, anus
    • Meninges
    • Uterus
    • Air passages, chest,
    • Kidney, bladder, urethra (CANTH, BEREB)
    • Tip of tongue
    • Epigastrium
    • Back
  • Cystitis, cutting in bladder tenesmus
  • Haemorrhage
    • Haematuria, cloudy bloody urine, painless
    • Purpura haemorrhagic, fresh ecchymosis (SULPH AC)
    • Bowels from, with ulceration and epithelial degeneration (as in ulcerative colitis, typhoid ulcers etc), passive oozing from bowels
  • Glazed glossy skin, with prominent papillae (ARG NIT, BELL, KALI BI, NUX MOS), peeled off in patches
  • Excessive distension of abdomen (COLCH)
  • Worms
    • Sp lumbricid
    • With foul breath (SPIG)
    • Itching of anus
    • Choking (CINA, SPIG)
  • Diarrhoea
    • Fetid, exhausting, watery greenish
  • Congestion and inflammation of viscera
    • With haemorrhage
    • With malignant tendency
  • Unconsciousness followed by inability to concentrate mind
  • Capillary bronchitis
  • Convulsions
    • Sp on pressing on bladder
  • Damp weather <<
  • Neuralgia, as if hot water running in tubes
  • Sudden gripping and aching
  • Sore muscles
  • Urination excited by pain
    • Pain in bowels cause frequent urination
  • Pain in knees
  • Advancing purpuric spots
  • Band like headache
  • Enterocolitis with ulceration and haemorrhage from bowels
  • Typhoid
    • With tympanitis
    • Haemorrhage
    • Prostration
  • Biliary colic

(Note- Terebinth is an oil prepared from distillation of resinous product from some species of Pines, highly flammable in nature its toxicity closely resembles the symptoms derived in potencies with much finer shades, as happens in provings.)

Link to the medical conditions that are covered by Terebinth

https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/terebinth-wegners-granulomatosis-vasculitis-and-dic-like-conditions/

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

TEREBINTH- a snapshot Read More »

NATRUM PHOS – a snapshot

  • Sadness and melancholy
    • esp after emissions
  • Fear
    • Bad news
    • As if something will happen
  • Lassitude in hot weather
  • Ill effects of mental exertion and sexual vice
  • Easy startling
  • Gets up at night thinking furniture are people
  • Sourness
    • Discharges, sweat, stool, urine, vomitus
    • Eructations
    • leucorrhoea
  • Acidity
    • Gastralgia
    • Colic after eating, stools contain undigested food
    • < milk sugar, fats
    • Mouthful of acidic fluid rises from stomach
    • Sour eructations with one ear hot and itchy
    • Vertigo with gastric derangement
  • < coition
    • Urging for stool and urine after coitus
    • Itching at meatus after coitus
  • Thunderstorm causes trembling
  • < Gaslight
  • Joint pains
    • Esp big toe
    • Alternate with heart complaints, Heart pains better when joint pains aggravate
    • Eruptions around joints
  • One pupil dilated
  • Headache with nausea with one pupil dilated and blurred vision. (? Due to SOL)
  • Dysphagia
  • Worms
    • Colic with worms
    • Child grinds teeth
    • Picking of nose
    • Roundworms and pinworms
    • Squinting of eyes
  • Yellowness of all discharges
    • Tongue coated thick yellow
    • Yellowish leucorrhoea
    • Yellowish d/c from eyes
    • Tonsils covered with yellow coating
    • Yellow phlegm
    • Yellow crusta lactae
  • Very weak/ debilitated
    • Paralytic weakness of lower limbs
  • Stool
    • Sour
    • Undigested
    • While passing flatus fears will pass stool
    • Legs give way while walking
    • Sensation as if a marble dropped down the descending colon at stool
  • Itching
    • Nose, mouth, anus
    • Eczema and itching near ankles
  • Morning sickness in pregnancy
  • Liver enlarged and engorged
    • Jaundice, give 1x
  • One ear red hot other pale, one side of face flushed
  • Sore hamstrings
  • Sterility with acid secretions from vagina
  • Semen fluid and watery, smells like urine
  • Skin
    • Chafing of skin
    • Eczema with creamy honey discharge
    • Hives
    • Rosy erysipelas
    • Eczema with symptoms of acidity
  • Desires
    • Strong tasting flavors, eggs, fried fish, beer
  • Aversion bread and butter

(Comes very close to Sepia in its pain in joints, eruptions around joints and indifference to family. Compare Rheum in sourness. A medicine with many facets.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

NATRUM PHOS – a snapshot Read More »

COCCULUS INDICUS

  • Light haired bookworm, romantic girls
  • Ailments from
    • Grief and anger
    • Night watching
    • Travelling, motion sickness
    • Tea drinking
  • Easily offended, at least trifles, weeps
  • Discontented
  • Agg by least contradiction
  • Vomiting of cerebral tumors
  • Paralysis
    • One sided
    • Lower half of body
    • Numbness and weakness
  • Weakness
    • Paralytic
    • Exhausted after least exertion
    • Cannot hold up neck
    • Can’t talk it fatigues (STANNUM, CALC)
  • Mania
    • Escaping, talking more and hastily
    • Irresistible desire to sing
  • Anxious
    • Health of others about
    • As if have committed a crime
  • Sits and stares, doesn’t care about anything that goes around
  • Can read only left half of the line
  • Liver
    • Enlargement after anger
  • Cracking of joints
  • Sensation
    • Emptiness of inner parts
    • Bones broken, tearing
  • Vertigo as if swimming with giddiness
  • Hard swollen glands with stinging pain
  • Fever
    • Angry and irritated during fever
    • Intermittent fever with lameness of back
    • Chilliness and perspiration with heat
  • Eating or drinking cold causes tearing in the limbs
  • Obstinate constipation with tendency to hernia after nux von fails
  • Aversion to open air
  • Spasms
    • Oesophagus, throat, stomach, everywhere
  • Swallowing difficult after paralysis
  • Aversion to sour food
  • Desire beer
  • Menses
    • Severe weakness during menses, cant even stand.
  • Feels better at night than at day
  • Time passes rapidly
  • Slowness, takes time to complete each job
    • Speaks slowly, cannot comprehend
  • Occipital headache
  • Metallic taste in mouth
  • Troubles during pregnancy
    • Vomiting
    • Backache

(Compare- GELSEMIUM, PETROLEUM)

(Think of a person who has suffered grief or anger or both, some personal tragedy or trauma. Think in myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis, brain tumors, or conditions which cause great weakness. Weakness and paralysis after that. Feels empty inside. Can’t bear contradiction and cries. Trembles. Startles. In a dazed state.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

COCCULUS INDICUS Read More »

BISMUTH

  • Extremely restless, cannot sit in one place, anguished and keeps moving.
  • Peevish and dissatisfied as if very ill
  • Clings on to mother and wants her to keep the company
  • Constant complaining
  • Severe gastralgia
    • Vomits least food or drink.
    • Food eaten long back is vomited
    • Complaints after surgery on abdomen like laparotomy.
    • Thirst for cold water.
  • Headache/ facial neuralgia alternates with gastralgia
  • Itching around ankles, with erosion from scratching
  • Extreme prostration
  • Pain
    • Heaviness in inner parts
    • Screwing and pressing pains
  • Angina radiating to left arm      
  • Toothache amelioration by holding cold water in mouth

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

BISMUTH Read More »

PETROLEUM

  • Quarrelsome
  • Angry disposition
  • Worried about future
  • Easily offended at least trifles
  • Complaints from long lasting grief, vexation. Fright
  • Thinks death is near, and wants to settle affairs.
  • Strumous diathesis
  • Affects oil glands, sweat glands
  • Sense of duality as if another person in bed
    • Sleep or delirium during
  • Skin
    • Folds, behind ears
    • Eczematous eruptions
      • Scrotum < at night
    • Extremely sensitive
    • Doesn’t heal well
    • Corroding spread
    • Bed sores
    • Herpes on chest
    • Cracks in hands, thickened skin, dry
    • < winters
    • Aml summers
    • Suppression of skin eruptions causes diarrhoea
  • Car sickness
  • Symptoms come and go rapidly
  • Cold
    • Easily affected by cold
  • Stiff limbs
  • Affections of glands after injuries
  • Vertigo
    • Rising on
  • Headache    
    • With, severe occipital pain
    • Leaden heavy
    • Cold breeze felt on head
    • Hold head, temples during headache
  • Eye
    • Marginal blepharitis
    • Loss of eyelash
  • Tip of nose itches
  • Coccydynia
  • Gastralgia
    • Pregnancy of
    • Aml eating
  • Diarrhoea
    • Daytime only
    • After cabbage / sauerkraut
    • Yellow gushing
  • Sweat
    • Of genitilia
    • Offensive foot sweat
  • Nausea from hunger
    • After stools
  • Involuntary urination on rising
  • Visual hallucination

(Think of person with oily skin and lot of skin complaints, who has a h/o some long lasting emotion, he fears he’ll die so wants to wind up his affairs quickly. He cannot bear hunger though, and has nausea if doesn’t eat. He may be prone to diarrhoea esp during day. A lesser used yet valuable remedy to be thought of in complaints from long lasting grief and other emotions.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

PETROLEUM Read More »

CANTHARIS

  • Affects both mucous and serous membranes
  • Rt sided affection, sp behind ears, under jaw
  • Haemorrhage
    • From nose, intestines, inner parts of body
  • Rapid progress of disease, inflammations
  • Mania
    • Rage, tearing and barking like a god, agg touch and seeing bright objects, as in hydrophobia
    • Amorous and sexual, increased desire
  • Burning pains
    • Rawness everywhere
    • Internal as well as external
    • Throat, kidney, stomach, head etc
    • Severe burning pain in meningitis, start at nape of neck and extend forward
  • Dropsy
    • Pleurisy with stitching pains in chest (AESU TUB, BRY, SPIG)
    • Pericarditis
      • Irregularpulse palpitation, tendency to syncope
  • Urine
    • Raw burning pains in bladder and urethra before during and after urination
    • Urine bloody, shreddy with mucus, bran like scales, pus etc.
    • Gonorrhoea
  • Bloody serous discharges
  • No appetite, disgust for everything, food, drink despite burning thirst
  • Skin
    • Burns
    • Erysipelas, vesicular, with burning pains
    • Erythema from exposure to sun
  • Tongue
    • Burnt by hot fluids
    • Suppuration of tongue
  • Ear
    • Dental fistula (upper incisors)
    • Bones of ears painful (CAPS)
  • Yellow vision
  • Throat
    • Aphthous ulceration in throat
    • Raw burning pains in throat
    • Cannot swallow liquids
    • Tough stringy mucus in bronchi, difficult to expectorate (KALI BI, BOVISTA)
  • Female
    • Menses
      • Too early and too profuse
    • Expels moles and dead foetus and promotes fecundity
    • Retain placenta (SEP) with painful urination
    • Metritis with painful urination
    • And nymphomania.
  • Males
    • Satyriasis
    • Increased desire with painful erections (PIC AC) and painful urination (thuja has erections without painful urination)
    • Bloody semen (LEDUM, MERC, PETRO)
  • Urinous odour on genitilia
  • Stools
    • Bloody
    • Like scrapping of intestine
  • Aggravation
    • Severe agg from coffee, it causes nausea, pain in stomach, fullness in abdomen and many other GIT symptoms
    • Cold drinks
    • Oil agg
    • Urination agg
    • Periodic, every 7 days
  • Amelioration
    • Rubbing

(Think of a person who is weepy, who doesn’t know what he wants, constantly trying to do something but gets nothing done, he has severe urinary infection with burning pains and chills. He also has cough and cannot seem to get out the tenacious mucous. The discharges are bloody, and he feels very weak, so much so that even speaking is an effort. Now urinary concomitant can be with any complaint that he may have. With cough, with meningitis, in erysipelas or other skin conditions etc; the pains are burning and raw and are agg touching but aml rubbing. He has severe heel pain. Cantharis also helped him when he had burns. Timely application prevented blister formation and he recovered quickly.)

Aude Sapere

Shivangi Jain
BHMS, MD, PGDMLE, PGDHHM
drshivangijain79@gmail.com
https://drshivangihomoeopathy.com/

CANTHARIS Read More »

ALUMEN- a snapshot

  • Sensitive to cold
    • Skin chaps on least exposure
    • Throat gets affected with tonsillitis
  • Attacks come and go suddenly
  • Affections of eyes
  • Doubts people
  • Thinking about disease causes palpitation
  • Severe constipation
    • No desire for days together with sheep dung like stools
  • Haemorrhage
    • Fearful bleeding after tooth extraction
    • Clots in urine
    • Haemorrhage after childbirth
  • Indurations and hardenings
    • Uterus
    • Rectum, scirrhous of
    • Tongue
    • Ulcers with indurated base
    • Breast
  • Air passages
    • Nasal polyp
      • With neuralgic headaches
    • Complete aphonia can’t talk
    • Bronchitis
    • Epidemic membranous croup
  • Mouth
    • Ulcers
    • Salivation
  • Oesophagus
    • Burning and constriction of oesophagus
    • Difficulty in swallowing liquids

(Think of this medicine in a person who complains of chapping of skin in winters and recurrent sore throats and tonsillitis. Anxious about his disease he has severe constipation and bleeds easily. There may be an induration tendency in body.  vocal cords are specifically affected with hoarseness, pain and aphonia. It’s difficult for him to even swallow liquids.)

(Compare- Prepared from a salt of aluminium it shows many similar characteristics with alumina when it comes to constipation, scirrhous tendencies and affections of throat.)

Aude Sapere

ALUMEN- a snapshot Read More »