There are three things that stand out most prominently in Kreosotum, and when they appear together the symptoms in minor degree will be likely to be associated. These three characteristics are: 1. Excoriating discharges; 2. Pulsations all over the body, and 3. Profuse bleeding from small wounds.
When these three things are associated in a high degree Kreosote should be examined. A prick of a pin will cause the oozing of bright red blood, and mucous membranes bleed easily. Any pressure upon the mucous membranes will cause oozing. Bleeding here and there about the body. The lachrymation is excoriating. It excoriates the margins of the lids and cheeks, and they become red and raw, and smart. If there is a purulent discharge it is acrid. The corners of the lips and mouth are red and raw, and the saliva burns and smarts. The moisture about the mouth, whatever it may be, excoriates and the mouth is raw. The eyes smart and burn as if raw. The leucorrhoea causes smarting and burning about the vulva, so that the mucous surfaces of the labia are red and raw, sometimes inflamed, but always burning. The vagina burns during coition, and there is bleeding after coition; granulations of the vagina and os uteri, so that the pressure of the act of coition brings on bleeding and burning, smarting and excoriation. And the male organ will smart and burn after coming in contact with the secretion of the vagina during coition. The urine burns and smarts. This tendency to excoriation from the excretions and secretions applies to all the tissues of the body.
Every emotion and exciting circumstance is attended with throbbing all over the body, pulsations to the ends of the fingers. Every emotion is attended with tearfulness. Music that will in the slightest way excite the emotion, minor strains and music that strikes home to the heart, pathetic music, will bring out tears that are acrid, and palpitation and pulsation that are felt to the extremities.
When the Kreosote sore throat is present the least pressure of the tongue depressor will establish oozing, little drops of blood will appear. During the coryza there is nosebleed. When the eyes are red and raw and inflamed, they will bleed easily. If an individual pricks the finger the blood will not merely be a single drop, but a good many will flow. Prolonged hemorrhage from the passages; hemorrhage from the kidneys, from the eyes, the nose, the uterus. Hemorrhage after coition. Tumors bleed easily.
These are the most marked features of Kreosote. If these are fixed in your mind, we have what may be known as a Kreosote constitution, out of which may come all the rest of the symptoms in all their minute, and little symptoms and fragments in every organ. You have in this one group the strong features of Kreosote. No matter how many particulars you may have in a case, if you do not have something of these general features you need not expect to find your patient constitutionally cured or relieved by Kreosote. These may be considered essentials.
Mentally the patient is so irritable that there is nothing that will suit him. The wants are so numerous that nothing satisfies. The patient wants everything and is satisfied with nothing, that is, he wants something and when he has it he does not want it. That is the state of irritability and lack of satisfaction in a chronic condition. You see the child in the mother’s arms. It wants a toy, and when given it throws it in the face of somebody; it wants this and that and is never satisfied, always wanting something new – a new toy which it throws away the moment it gets it and then calls for something else. The lips are red and bleeding, the corners of the mouth are raw, the eyelids red and the skin excoriated. If it has, in connection with all this, loose passages from the bowels and you examine the fissure between the nates, you will find it is red and raw. If the child be old enough to make such motions he will put the hands upon the sore genitals and fissures and cry out in a most irritable way, because of the smarting. Such is the Kreosote baby. It may be suffering from cholera infantum; it may be subject to wetting the bed; it may have spells of vomiting, in which it vomits all its food; it is a Kreosote baby. Kreosote has attacks of diarrhea and vomiting; all sorts of disturbances of the urine; great distension and trouble with the bowels; abdomen distended from flatus. You look over the whole case at once as a Kreosote case, because of these general features that can be summed up in the aspect of the child.
The Kreosote face has a yellowish pallor; it is a sickly countenance, semi cachectic, intermingled with blotches that are reddish looking, as if erysipelas were going to set in. In olden times this countenance was called a scorbutic countenance. ‘
Take a woman with this kind of countenance; at every menstrual flow she complains of much swelling and rawness of the genitals; the flow is copious, clotted, stops and then starts again, comes too soon and lasts too long; at times it is black, very fetid, produces rawness upon the thighs and the genitals, with much swelling; at every menstrual period there is rawness of the lips and fissures in the corners of the mouth; the tears become acrid; at the menstrual period all the fluids of the body seem to be acrid and they burn wherever they touch. Very often there is a loose stool, which is also acrid and smarts the anus at the menstrual period. All the symptoms are worse at the menstrual period, sometimes in the early part, sometimes at the middle, sometimes all through, and sometimes at the close. Something more about the scorbutic constitution is brought out in relation to the gums; the gums become puffed and red and tumid and settle away from the teeth. They become spongy and bleed easily. In the mouth there is much ulceration and little ulcers spread from aphthous patches, smarting and burning; the tongue has ulcers upon it, which bleed easily upon touch.
At the close of a typhoid fever hemorrhage from the bowels, bleeding from the mucous membranes. The mouth becomes raw, and wherever there is a mucous membrane there is a rawness, and the fluids that ooze continue to eat and cause ulceration. If at the close of a typhoid fever, when the time comes for convalescence, vomiting comes. Vomiting, bleedings, diarrheas. The fluids vomited from the stomach are so acrid that they seem to take the skin off from the mouth, set the teeth on edge, make the lips raw. So excoriation from acrid fluids, as well as throbbing all over the body, are features that you must bear in mind with Kreosote.
The discharges from the body are offensive; offensive, bloody, acrid discharges from the nose; offensive, watery discharges from any part of the body; sometimes even putrid; the leucorrhoea is very offensive. Rapid emaciation, with spongy, burning ulceration, pus acrid, ichorous, fetid and yellow. Sometimes the inflammatory condition will run so high in an ulcer, only a small ulceration, that gangrene will set in, and hence we have a gangrenous ulceration; gangrene of parts that are inflamed. Very low formations occur upon the margins of mucous membranes; crusts form. Indurations under the crusts, and the crusts continue to form. The circulation is so poor, so feeble in the parts all about the margin of the lips and the corners of the mouth, and corners of the eyes, and eyelids, and upon the genitals, and there is so much venous engorgement that crusts form and ulcerate and bleed and pile up, and this continues until a phagedenic spot comes. This condition is so much like epithelioma that Kreosote has cured epithelioma.
The next striking thing in Kreosote is its stomach symptoms. Soon after eating there comes a burning pain in the stomach. and then a sense of fullness and an increasing nausea, ending in vomiting of the food, which looks as it did when taken; it looks undigested, but it is sour and acrid, coming up an hour or two after eating. Vomiting, the stomach seems unable to digest, and after the patient empties it there is constant nausea. a swallow of water a prolonged bitter taste remains in the mouth. There is aggravation from eating cold things and relief from warm diet. In malignant diseases of the stomach when this symptom is present, Kreosote becomes a great palliative; it relieves the burning and improves the digestion for a while, but the trouble comes again. Many times our remedies furnish us the greatest known palliation in cancerous affections. Homeopathy should at all times furnish a degree of palliation in cancerous and other incurable malignant diseases of the stomach. This palliation will bring more comfort to the stomach than can possibly be brought about by Morphine. I have watched patients under Morphine and under homeopathic medicine, and as a mere matter of comfort I will take the homeopathic medicines. This has been the experience of many. When you hear a homeopath say that he prefers anodynes in cancerous affections of the stomach and in other painful affections, it is pretty sure evidence that he is not able to find the medicines that are suitable for the patient. These cases test the ability of the physician.
Kreosote is a great remedy for diarrheas in the summer, especially for infants. The infant that I described as to his temper may be the infant suffering from the worst form of summer complaint, or having a light attack of cholera infantum. Or he may be “teething,” and suffering from the troubles that are sometimes associated with teething. Infants have troubles at the time of teething only because they are sick, and if the child were not in disorder he would not have trouble when teething. Teething is a crisis, and the things that are within will come out at the time, just as there are troubles that are likely to come out at the time of puberty and at the climacteric period.
A marked feature of the Kreosote constitution is that when the desire to urinate comes he must hurry or the urine will escape. The urine is passed during sleep. Bloody urine; clots in the urine; acrid and excoriating urine; weakness of the bladder; inability. to hold the urine. Smarting and burning in the pudenda, during and after micturition. “Sugar in the urine.” It has cured diabetes. Generalize the symptoms given and you will see what kind of a diabetic patient will need Kreosote.