Key Characteristics
Primary Action: Useful in marasmus, metastasis, and conditions involving suppressed secretions or alternating symptoms. Affects nutrition, joints, and mucous membranes.
Constitution: Suited for emaciated children or gouty individuals with suppressed discharges, weakness, or alternating symptoms.
Key Symptoms
1. Marasmus:
- Emaciation, especially of lower extremities (legs), despite good appetite (Iod., Nat. m., Sanic., Tub.).
- Skin flabby, hangs loose in folds, especially neck (Nat. m., Sanic.).
- Head weak, cannot hold it up (Aeth.).
- Ravenous hunger, yet losing flesh while eating well.
2. Mind:
- Cross, irritable, anxious, depressed, or violent tendencies.
- Child: Ill-natured, irritable, despondent, desires to be cruel.
3. Gastrointestinal:
- Alternate constipation and diarrhea; lienteric diarrhea (food passes undigested).
- Distended abdomen with hard lumps; sensation as if bowels are sinking.
- Painful, cutting, gnawing stomach pain, worse at night.
- Hemorrhoids: Frequent urging, bloody stools, worse when rheumatism improves.
- Oozing from umbilicus; ascarides (worms).
4. Rheumatism & Gout:
- Rheumatism from suddenly checked diarrhea or secretions.
- Painful, stiff, swollen joints (wrists, ankles) with pricking sensation.
- Painful limb contractions, especially after colic or cramps.
- Alternates with hemorrhoids or dysentery.
5. Respiratory:
- Exudative pleurisy, tuberculous peritonitis, or post-chest surgery with pressing sensation impeding respiration.
- Dry cough following diarrhea; raw feeling in chest; severe pain around heart.
6. Skin:
- Flabby, loose, purplish skin; suppressed eruptions.
- Itching chilblains (Agar.), furuncles, falling hair, angioma of face.
7. Face:
- Wrinkled, pale, cold, dry; blue rings around dull eyes; nosebleed; comedones.
8. Back & Extremities:
- Weak neck, unable to hold head up; lame, weak back.
- Lumbar pain extending to spermatic cord; sacral pain with hemorrhoids.
- Pricking, coldness in fingers/feet; greatly emaciated legs.
9. General:
- Great weakness, prostration, hectic fever in children; inability to stand.
- Post-influenza weakness (compare Kali phos.).
- Nosebleed and hydrocele in boys.
Modalities
- Worse: Cold air, suppressed secretions, night (stomach pain).
- Better: Motion.
Relationships
- Compare: Scrophularia, Bryonia, Stellaria, Benzoic acid (gout); Iodine, Nat. mur. (marasmus).
- Follows well: After Hepar (furuncles); Aconite, Bryonia (pleurisy with pressing sensation).
Dose
- Third to thirtieth potency.
