Homeopathic Material Medica – ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM

 

ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM

(Ant-c.)

(Black Sulphide of Antimony)

 

For homeopathic employment, the mental symptoms, and those of the gastric sphere, determine its choice. EXCESSIVE IRRITABILITY AND FRELFULNESS, together with a THICKLY-COATED WHITE TONGUE, are true guiding symptoms to many forms of disease calling for this remedy. All the conditions are aggravated by HEAT AND COLD BATHING. Cannot bear heat of sun. Tendency to grow fat. An absence of pain, where it could be expected, is noticeable. Gout with gastric symptoms.

 

Mind
Much concerned about his fate. Cross and contradictive; whatever is done fails to give satisfaction. Sulky; does not wish to speak. Peevish; vexed without cause. CHILD CANNOT BEAR TO BE TOVXHED OR LOOKED AT. Angry at every little attention. Sentimental mood.

 

Head
Aching, worse in vertex, on ascending, FROM BATHING, from DISORDERED STOMACH, especially from eating candy or drinking acid wines. Suppressed eruptions. Heaviness in forehead. with vertigo; nausea, and nosebleed. Headache with great loss of hair.

 

Eyes
Dull, sunken, red, itch, inflamed, agglutinated. CANTHI RAW AND FISSURED. Chronic BLEPHARITIS. Pustules on cornea and lids.

 

Ears
Redness; swelling; pain in eustachian tube. Ringing and deafness. Moist eruption around ear.

 

Nose
Nostrils CHAPPED AND COVERED WITH CRUSTS. ECZEMA OF NOSTRILS, SORE, CRACKED AND SCURFY.

 

Face
Pimples, pustules, and boils on face YELLOW CRUSTED ERUPTION ON CHEEKS and chin. Sallow and haggard.

 

Mouth
CRACKS IN CORNERS OF MOUTH. Dry lips. Saltish saliva. Much slimy mucus. TONGUE COATED THICK WHITE, AS IF WHITEWASHED. Gums detach from teeth; bleed easily. Toothache in hollow teeth. Rawness of palate, with expectoration of much mucus. CANKER SORES. Pappy taste. No thirst. Subacute eczema about mouth. Throat. Much thick yellowish mucus from posterior nares. Hawking in open air. Laryngitis. Rough voice from over use.

 

Stomach
LOSS OF APPETITE. DESIRE FOR ACIDS, PICKLES. Thirst in evening and night. ERUCTATION TASTING OF THE INGESLA. Heartburn, nausea, vomiting. After nursing, the child vomits its milk in curds, and refuses to nurse afterwards, and is very cross. Gastric and intestinal complaints from bread and pastry, acids, sour wine, cold bathing, overheating, hot weather. CONSTANT BELCHING. Gouty metastasis to stomach and bowels. Sweetish waterbrash. BLOATING AFTER EATING.

 

Stool
Anal itching. (SULPHO-CALC. ALUM.) DIARRHOEA ALTERNATES WITH CONSTIPATION, especially in old people. Diarrhoea after acids, sour wine, baths, overeating; slimy, flatulent stools. Mucous piles, CONTINUED OOZING OF MUCUS. HARD LUMPS MIXED WITH WATERY DISCHARGE. CATARRHAL PROCTITIS. Stools composed entirely of mucus. Urine. Frequent, with burning, and backache; turbid and foul odor.

 

Male
Eruption on scrotum and about genitals. Impotence. Atrophy of penis and testicles.

 

Female
Excited; parts itch. Before menses, toothache; menses too early and profuse. Menses suppressed from cold bathing, with feeling of pressure in pelvis and tenderness in ovarian region. Leucorrhoea watery; acrid, lumpy.

 

Respiratory
Cough worse COMING INTO WARM ROOM, with burning sensation in chest, IKHING OF CHEST, oppression. Loss of voice from becoming overheated. VOICE HARSH AND BADLY PITCHED,

 

Back
Itching and pain of neck and back.

 

Extremities
Twitching of muscles. Jerks in arms. ARTHRITIC PAIN IN FINGERS. Nails brittle; grow out of shape. Horny warts on hands and soles. Weakness and shaking of hands in writing followed by offensive flatulence. FEET VERY TENDER; covered with large horny places. Inflamed corns. Pain in heels.

 

Skin
Eczema with gastric derangements. Pimples, vesicles, and pustules. Sensitive to cold bathing. Thick, hard, honey-colored scabs. URTICARIA; measle-like eruption. Itching when warm in bed. Dry skin. WARTS. (THUJA; SABINA; CAUST.) Dry gangrene. Scaly, pustular eruption with burning and itching, worse at night.

 

Sleep
CONTINUAL DROWSINESS IN OLD PEOPLE.

 

Fever
Chilly even in warm room. Intermittent with disgust, nausea, vomiting, eructations, coated tongue, diarrhoea. Hot sweat.

 

Modalities
AGG.: in evening, from heat, acids, wine, water, and washing. Wet poultices.

AMEL.: in open air, during rest. Moist warmth.

 

Relationship
Compare: ANTIMONIUM CHLORIDUM. Butter of Antimony. (A remedy for cancer. Mucous membranes destroyed. Abrasions. Skin cold and clammy. Great prostration of strength. Dose-third trituration.) ANTIMON. IODAT. (Uterine hyperplasia; humid asthma. Pneumonia and bronchitis; loss of strength, and appetite, yellowish skin, sweaty, dull and drowsy.) In sub-acute and chronic colds in chest which have extended downwards from head and have fastened themselves upon the bronchial tubea in the form of hard, croupy cough with a decided wheeze and inability to raise the sputum, especially in the aged and weak patients (Bacmeister). Stage of resolution of pneumonia slow and delayed. Compare: KERMES MINERAL- Stibiat .sulph. rub. (Bronchitis.) Also PULS, IPECAC, SULPH. Complementary: SULPH. Antidote: HEPAR.

 

Dose
Third to sixth potency.

 

ANTIMONIUM
CRUDUM

(Ant-c.)

You will be
surprised, when studying full provings of this substance, to notice
that all the symptoms seem to centre about the stomach; it does not
matter much what kind of complaints he suffers from, the stomach
takes part in it. The pains disturb his stomach and bring on
nausea; with his headache he is sick at the stomach; with all
complaints his stomach is out of order, and, on the other hand,
whenever he disorders his stomach he is sick all over. Complaints
that manifest themselves through the stomach very frequently need
this medicine.

MIND

First in importance
are the mental symptoms showing the type of constitution likely to
need this remedy. It produces a very serious state in the mind, an
absence of the desire to live. It is well known to physicians that
the case is a serious one if the patient has no desire to live;
life is a burden. When I hear a patient say: “Oh, doctor, if I
could only die.” I do not like such a case; there is some
deep-seated trouble in the economy that is hard to remove.
Something is threatening, and when it comes it is a common thing to
see the patient actually die. “Loathing of life.” You will find
this especially in a low, lingering, continued fever, such as
typhoid. This remedy has all the prostration of typhoid, and it has
the continued type of fever as well as the intermittent and
remittent. The prostration is similar to ARSENICUM, but ARS. has
overwhelming fear of death, while this medicine has loathing of
life; and so they both part company. ARS. has overwhelming
restlessness, this remedy is seldom restless. ARS. has an intense
thirst, this medicine is thirst less. So even though both these
remedies have excessive exhaustion with continued fever, we see
they have features dissimilar enough to make them wholly distinct.
Such a typhoid will sometimes be seen in young girls about puberty
who are threatening to go into chlorosis. They have loathing of
life, but it is a hysterical loathing of life. Moments of great
exhaustion, sudden attacks of weakness and fainting. You will
commonly find another feature with this, not coming at the same
moment, but alternating with it, or only present at times, namely,
these over-excitable, intense, nervous, hysterical, ecstatic young
girls and women are overcome by mellow lights such as flow through
stained glass windows or the mellow light from the moon in the
evening. That is what is meant when it says in the text:
“Sentimental mood in the moonlight.” It is a hysterical state; a
disorderly outburst of the affections, such affections as can be
aroused only in one who is sick, or one who is unbalanced in the
general nervous system. This kind of patient gives us the mental
state and constitution of Ant-c., and along with such mental states
the physical conditions seem to strike to the stomach, as it
were.

PHYSICAL

We have running
through this remedy a general state that you should keep in mind,
that is, a gouty or rheumatic state, in which the symptoms change
with the changes of the weather; worse in cold, damp weather, worse
from cold bathing, better from the heat of a hot bath, worse from
taking sour wine, and worse from stimulants of any kind.

When you use the
expression “worse from wine,” it is not only important to know that
the patient is worse from wine, but also the character of
complaints that are worse from wine. This patient becomes easily
intoxicated, but the physical symptoms are more disturbed than the
mental; his gouty symptoms are worse from sour wine; all the pains
and aches of the body are worse from sour wine; headaches come from
this cause and the gastric disturbances are greatly aggravated from
sour wine.

This patient is
worse at night, worse in damp weather, worse from damp cold, better
from lying down quietly, better from applied heat, but much worse
from over-heating and from radiated heat, and in a warm room. Many
of the symptoms come on in the sun’s rays and from the heat of an
open grate. The open fire is wholly against the Ant-c.
patient.

A child with
whooping cough will cough more after looking into the fire. Such
things are queer; they are so strange that there is no
philosophical hypothesis to explain them, no theory that looks
toward an explanation, but they are facts which we must
accept.

The whole gouty
nature of the case seems to change so suddenly that you wonder
where the more exterior symptoms have gone to, for all at once in a
night or a day the patient commences to vomit and you have
persistent vomiting, lasting days and weeks, until the gouty
symptoms come back into the extremities. It is wonderful how
quickly this old-fashioned metastasis will come on, this changing
from one place to another. The gout suddenly ceases in the
extremities and stomach symptoms come on, and you may call it gout
in the stomach if you will.

There are catarrhal
symptoms in this remedy; catarrh of the nose, stomach, rectum,
etc., and an increased flow of mucus from any of these localities
from drinking sour wine and from taking cold. A distressing feature
of the catarrh is the stuffing up of the nose at night. As soon as
he gets into an overheated room, his nose gets stuffed up. The
coryza has a tendency to become chronic, because of the low and
feeble circulation and the poor constitution. When it becomes
chronic it is worse at night and is associated with headaches. As
the catarrh slackens up and becomes dry the headache becomes worse;
he has neuralgia in the head, crushing pains and dreadful sickness
at the stomach with vomiting. He often has an attack of sick
headache and it will be called by the family a gastric sick
headache, but the condition just mentioned comes on from taking
cold, which slacks up the thick discharge into a dryness of the
nose and the inhaled air burns the nose like fire. Sometimes these
troubles pass off after an intense vomiting spell; sometimes they
do not, but the headache may remain for days not relieved by
vomiting, or relieved only after prolonged vomiting. There are
remedies full of headache and as soon as he vomits he feels better,
but in this remedy he vomits long, and becomes relaxed and
exhausted. The headache is worse moving about, worse at night,
better from lying down, from keeping quiet, better in the open air,
worse in warm room, worse from overheating, worse from radiated
heat and light. You see now how the catarrh, the headache and
gastric symptoms all belong together. It is because the patient is
sick that you cannot take symptoms separately, you must prescribe
for the whole man.

There is another
feature belonging to the mucous membranes, and an important one;
these membranes have a tendency to throw out a milky white
exudation or deposit, and it is especially noticed upon the tongue.
The whole tongue is covered with a milky-white coating. This you
find in all diseases where the remedy is indicated. In the stomach
disorders of children, in gastric fevers, in complaints with fever
and much vomiting, great irritation of the whole nervous system and
in irritation of the stomach in typhoids, the tongue looks white.
Upon the slightest provocation he will retch and gag. Everything
seems to disturb him. He has loathing of food; the thought and
smell of food disturb him. This is like ARSENICUM.

He takes a cold bath
at night on going to bed and gets up in the morning voiceless;
cannot speak a word. This has come on in an apparently painless
manner; he does not know that it is present until he attempts to
speak in the morning. This may be present with spasms of the
larynx, clutching of the throat. Colds sometimes go down into the
throat and into the trachea, producing a bronchitis or
pneumonia.

COUGH

Dry, hacking
spasmodic cough in diminishing paroxysms, I will explain that: The
first paroxysm occurs with great violence, racking his whole frame,
and lasting a longer or shorter period, to be followed by one with
less violence and another with less violence; perhaps after a dozen
or less paroxysms of diminishing violence, he ends up with a dry,
hacking cough which is not a paroxysm. When this first cough shakes
the whole body, whether it is a bronchitis or whooping cough, and
the tongue is white, and there are more or less gastric
disturbances, Ant-c., is the remedy. It will change the whole
aspect of the case at once. The chest remains sore, lame and
bruised from the violence of the cough.

STOMACH

The stomach symptoms
must be particularly considered. Constant nausea, lump in the
stomach, feeling all the time as if he had an overloaded stomach,
as if he had eaten too much, and that is when he had not eaten at
all. The stomach feels distended although the abdomen is flat. He
feels distended and vomits the contents of the stomach; he vomits
slime after he has emptied the stomach of its contents; prolonged
retching, nausea, sickening load in the stomach and it seems to go
on and on. The vomiting does not relieve and there is increasing
exhaustion.

ABDOMEN

Inflammation and
hardness of the liver or any portion of it. Pain in the region of
the gall bladder. Great pain in the region of the liver, rending,
tearing pains in the liver. Jaundice is associated with these
symptoms at times.

In the abdomen we
have a group of symptoms; violent abdominal pains, burning, great
distension; there appears to be an increasing distension as if by a
screw, gradually forcing down upon something gradually increasing
the tension. We find this state in the tympani tic condition of
typhoid fever, we find it in cases of flatulence, we find it in
summer diarrhoea. It will be associated with gastric symptoms and
the white tongue, especially if such disturbance had been brought
on by drinking sour wine, by taking a cold bath, in one who has a
gouty constitution, where the nodules in the finger joints become
painless and the stomach and bowels become distended and
painful.

STOOL

This remedy has
nondescript diarrhoea, but also lumpy and liquid diarrhoea.
Diarrhoea from sour wine. It seems to take a long time to empty the
bowels. He hurries to stool and passes a little lump and some
liquid, and is soon hurried again to stool and more lumps and
liquid are passed, and this goes on in summer diarrhoeas until
finally the bowel is emptied and then there is great tenesmus. It
is a diarrhoea ending in dysentery; inflammation of the rectum and
colon, with suffering, much tenesmus, prolonged efforts and great
exhaustion.

RECTUM

Troublesome
haemorrhoids in old gouty constitutions. They are always sore and
inflamed from a cold, wet day, from cold bathing and are always
worse if he is foolish enough to drink sour wine or take sour food.
The stomach, bowel, rectum and haemorrhoidal complaints are all
worse from disordering the stomach with sour wine, sour fruit or
indigestible substances, from cold bathing and wet
weather.

GENITALIA-FEMALE

The pelvic viscera
become greatly relaxed, especially in women, so much so that there
is a dragging down in the pelvis. It seems as though the contents
of the pelvis would be expelled, or would fall out. There is
prolapsus of the uterus and a discharge resembling leucorrhoea.
Disturbances of various kinds at the menstrual period. Irritable
and painful ovaries, such as we find associated with hysterical
girls; those who suffer from unrequited affections;
dreamers.

PERSPIRATION

This medicine
produces sweating; copious, exhaustive sweats, night sweats, such
as we find in lingering diseases. Sweats from the slightest
exertion. If he becomes slightly overheated he fairly boils with
perspiration and then takes cold.

SKIN

The skin is
ulcerated and has a tendency to grow warts, callosities, bad nails
and bad hair. Hard, horny excrescences grow under the nail and are
extremely painful. From the ends of the fingers little horn-like
excrescences appear. The slightest pressure will produce a
callosity, or a sore place, and in working men you will find an
unusual tendency to thickening of the skin on the soles of the
feet. They are very sore to walk upon, because these callous places
are sensitive and have numerous centres of little-corns. The
tendency to build up and indurate belongs to the remedy. Warts grow
upon the hands. The hair is unhealthy. Pustules form upon the skin
with red areola. Pustular eruptions have an inflamed base that is
red, and sensitive.

Now, if you will
study the proving and get the particulars of the remedy, and fit
them into this framework, you will understand something of Ant.
crud.

 

ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM (Ant-c.)

 

Affections of stomach and digestion.

 

STOMACH: emotions are felt in stomach. Indigestion after taking a cold, after sour food. Vomiting of curdled milk. Children vomit mother’s milk. Nausea and vomiting after being overheated, after sour wine.

Desire for cucumbers.

EYES: conjunctivitis with redness and soreness of eyes esp. the outer canthi. Itching, mucus or pus in canthi  aggravated by heat (esp. of fire)

 

HEAD: gastric headache. Nausea during headache. Headache alternating with stomach pain.

APPEARANCE: milky, heavily coated white tongue.

 

RESPIRATION: dry, hacking spasmodic cough, shaking the whole body. Aggravation on entering a warm room, on becoming warm. Burning pain in chest during cough.

ABDOMEN: diarrhoea in aged people. Diarrhoea after cold bathing, after indiscretion in eating.

 

MENTAL PICTURE: children are irritable, moaning, dissatisfied. Capricious. Cannot bear to be approached, looked at, touched.

MODALITIES:

Aggravation: heat, warmth (warm stove, room, bed, becoming warm), weather changes,sour wine and food, vinegar, sun, bathing.

Amelioration: open air.