A beginning in this remedy was made by Dr. Reisig, and after Reisig it was used by Bayard. After Bayard’s death Dr. Dyer gave me a vial of the 30th potency, made by Reisig, from which the potencies have mostly been made.
All the milks should be potentized, they are our most excellent remedies, they are animal products and foods of early animal life and therefore correspond to the beginning of our innermost physical nature. If we had full provings of monkey’s, cow’s, mare’s and human milk they would be of great value. Lac defloratum has done excellent work, and so has this remedy. Lac caninum is in its beginnings yet, although it has made some marvellous cures, but many of its symptoms are doubtful and it would take a century to confirm them. Some may think because the milks are only food for the young they are not medicine, but let one who is made sick from milk take it in potentized form and report the result. Provers who dislike milk will become sick from taking it in potencies in a few days, and their symptoms are very numerous.
This remedy abounds in nervous symptoms, although it has no doubt tissue changes as well. It is deep and long acting; the provers felt its symptoms for years after the proving was made. The mental symptoms are prolonged and distressing. It has cured enlarged glands. It makes ulcers very red, and it has cured such ulcers. Ulcerated areas have a dry, glistening appearance as if coated with epithelium. It is an important remedy in complaints following badly treated diphtheria, in paralysis and other conditions dating back to diphtheria. The greater number of its symptoms belong to the nervous system. An oversensitive state prevails, a general hyperaesthesia of the skin and all parts. It makes women violently hysterical, and causes all sorts of strange and apparently impossible symptoms. For example, a woman lay in bed for days with the fingers abducted and would go wild if they touched each other. The fingers were not aggravated from hard pressure, but she would scream if they touched. This state is difficult to cure outside of Lac can. and Lach. Lach. has produced a similar condition. The sensitiveness of the abdomen so that the sheet cannot be permitted to touch the skin belongs to both.
Another strange state is a peculiar vertigo, a condition, when walking, in which she seems to be floating in mid-air, or, when lying, as if she were not on the bed. Other remedies have this. The sensation as if floating, or not touching the bed, or sinking down, belongs to Lach. The sensation of gliding while waking is strong under Asarum Europaeum.
The complaints, almost regardless of kind or quality, change sides. The rheumatism is first found in one ankle and then in the other, and then back again to the original site. If in the knee or hip or shoulder the rheumatism alternates sides. The headaches and neuralgias do the same thing. The ambulating erysipelas first attacks one side, then the other. In inflammation and neuralgia of the ovaries the same alternation is observed. Sore throats affect alternately the sides of the throat or tonsils. Many cases of this sort have been cured by this remedy. The trouble commenced on the right and went to the left and Lyc. failed, but when it returned to the right the alternation was noticed and the remedy revealed. Only a limited number of remedies have alternating sides.
One or two provers had many symptoms, and so not all are reliable; but this remedy so intensifies the imagination and senses that it would be easy for them to imagine symptoms, and that itself is suggestive. Full of imaginations and harassing, tormenting thoughts. Wandering features in the mental sphere, wandering and alternating states. Cannot collect the thoughts. She wants to leave everything as soon as it is commenced, a condition of irresolution common to quite a number of remedies. She is impressed with the idea that all she says is not so, thinks everything she says is a lie, as if there is no reality in the things that be. In this it is somewhat analogous to Alumina, in which the patient feels as if someone else and not himself were saying everything, a lack of consciousness of the reality of things.
Every time a symptom appears she thinks it is a settled disease; fear and anxiety that some horrible disease has come upon her, a delusion that she was suppurating and in a loathsome state; infested with snakes. Horrible sights are presented to the mental vision, not always snakes, and she fears the objects will take form and present themselves to her eyes. This is analogous to Lach., which has the feeling that the atmosphere is full of hovering spirits, although he never sees them.
Imagines he wears someone else’s nose. Imagines she is not herself and her properties not her own. Imagines she sees spiders, snakes, vermin. She cannot bear to lie alone. In Lach. the patient wants to be alone to indulge the strange fancies, and when alone she feels as if she were floating out of the window and over the grassy plains, but a sound will bring her back to the world again. This is on the borderland of insanity or delirium.
Although the patient has all these strange feelings, yet she goes around all day about her business, and no one knows them unless she confesses them. Chronic sadness, everything so dark; irritable, ugly, hateful. Full of vertigo, but it is a sensorial symptom, unusually refined: not the vulgar swaying or tossing or feeling as if things were going round It affects the whole body, as if she were swimming or floating in the air, spirit-like.
The headaches are violent and are mostly frontal, but it has also occipital headaches. Headache above the eyes from riding in the cold wind, ameliorated in a warm room. Both the frontal and occipital headaches are aggravated by turning the eyeballs upwards and using the eyes for fine work. Pains in the head during the day, first on one side then on the other, either side being first affected. Pains in the face or eyes, alternating sides, perfectly unbearable, ameliorated going into the open air. The rheumatic symptoms are ameliorated by cold and cold applications, thus classifying it with Puls. . and Led. Some headaches are noted as relieved by warmth.
Sensitiveness is marked; sensitive to light and noise. The page is not clear when reading. She sees faces before her in the dark. Old, troubled distorted, disagreeable faces come to the vision or imagination. Dark, hideous faces she has seen come up, and she is tormented by them. This is not really a symptom of the vision, but a state of the brain.
Sounds seem far off. Paralysis of the throat with diphtheria; fluids return by the nose when drinking. Coryza, with sore throat and sneezing. Stuffed nose; discharge of thick white mucus. Face ache; pain aggravated by exertion, ameliorated by warm applications, but only cold applications relieve the soreness.
Putrid mouth is a strong feature. The mucous membrane and teeth are coated with a fuzzy, shining, silvery substance, somewhat like milk. In the throat there is a felt-like exudation, ashy gray or silvery shiny deposit. It has been used in diphtheria for the class of cases taking alternate sides, and it has also cured paralysis following diphtheria. The pain in the throat pushes toward the left ear. Pains take alternate sides. The throat is ameliorated by cold or warm drinking, and aggravated by empty swallowing. It is indicated especially in a glazed, shiny, red appearance of the throat like Kali bich. The diphtheritic membrane is also white like silver. Lac c. has cured most alternating cases, with patches first on the right tonsil, then on the left. Membranous croup. Wherever there is mucous membrane there will be exudate, a gray, fuzzy coating, like that piling up on the tongue. I once cured with Lac c. a chronic affection in which the whole buccal cavity had a white exudate without inflammation or ulceration, an apparent infiltration which dipped down everywhere extending under the tongue. It was white and silvery, looking as if a mouthful of carbolic acid had been swallowed, and the mouth was so sensitive that the patient could not swallow anything but milk.
The abdomen is full of distress. Pressive pain in the pelvis; acute pain in left groin. Constant urging to urinate. Irritable bladder.
The female sexual organs furnish a mass of symptoms. Severe pain in the region of the right ovary, ameliorated by the flow of bright red blood. is again somewhat like Lach. These pains take alternate sides. Zinc. also has pain in the ovaries ameliorated by the flow; she never feels well except when menstruating; hysterical at all other times but well at the menstrual period, is Zinc. Membranous dysmenorrhoea is another example of the exudative tendency of Lac. c. Sore throat beginning and ending with the menstrual period. Mag. carb. has sore throat before the menstrual period and Calc. c. has cured painful throat when menstruating.
Escape of gas from the vagina. The fermentation of mucus and other substances in the bladder causing the escape of gas when urinating is found only under Sars.; the urine flows with a loud noise. It is not uncommon for a child to break wind when urinating, and the urine is passed with a gurgling noise; this is cured by Sars.
Much trouble with the mamma; they feel as if they would suppurate. When a mother has lost her infant and it is necessary to dry up the milk, Lac c. and Puls. are the best remedies for this purpose, when no symptoms are present. They will do it speedily. The Lac c. patient is imaginative and sensitive to pain and her surroundings, hyperaesthesia and touchiness. Puls. will be called for in the Puls. constitution.
Rheumatism with swelling of the lower extremities, especially when it affects the limbs alternately; aggravated by motion and heat, ameliorated by cold. Pains in the limbs as if beaten. Rheumatic swellings of joints.