Psorinum

Psorinum has been sufficiently proved to enable us to use it success- fully in the treatment of disease. We find it especially indicated in constitutions which are psoric (to use Hahnemann's word), inpatients who are subject to glandular and cutaneous affections, and who do not react to the apparently well-chosen remedy. Suppose, for example, that the remedy suited to the case is Pulsatilla. The symptoms seem to call for it.

The prescription is in accord with every rule of Insti- tutes, and yet relief is but transient. In such a case; there is some dyscrasia underlying the disease, and this must be removed or modi- fied before it will be possible to cope successfully with the disease. Again, in certain cases of scarlatina your prescriptions avail noth- ing, and the little ones die. Many of these cases could be saved if we investigated this branch of our materia medica more thoroughly.

The various constitutions or dyscrasiae underlying chronic and acute affections are, indeed, very numerous. As yet, we do not know them all. We do know that one of them is due to gonorrhoea. This dis- ease is so frightfully common, that patients with a dyscrasia arising from it are very rapidly increasing.

Now I want to tell you why this is so. It is because allopathic physicians, and many homoeopaths as well, do not properly cure it. Gonorrhoea is not a local disease, and, if it is not properly cured, a constitutional dyscrasia is developed, which may be transmitted to the offspring. I know, from years of experience and observation, that gonorrhoea is a serious difficulty, and one, too, that complicates many of the cases that we have to treat.

The same is true, in a modified degree, of syphilis. Gonorrhoea seems to attack the nobler tissues, the lungs, the heart and the nervous sys- tem, all of which are reached by syphilis only after the lapse of years.

To return from this digression. Psorinum, like Sulphur, is to be

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thought of in cases where there is a decided psoric taint, and the well- chosen remedy refuses to act. Let us look at some of the symptoms, and note the way that Psorinum affects the tissues. It causes an erup- tion on the skin, usually herpetic in character, and accompanied by great itching. This itching is intolerably worse as soon as the patient gets warm in bed.

By and by you will observe that the skin has a dirty, dingy look, as though the patient had never washed himself (which may indeed be the case). In some places the skin has a coarse look, as though bathed in oil. The sebaceous secretion is excessive. In children the eruption is especially noticeable about the head.

It may involve the whole scalp, but it spreads characteristically from the scalp down either side of the face, involving the cheeks and ears, like tinia capitis, which in fact it is. This eruption is, at times, moist, and oozes a matter which is very offensive. At other times it is dry, fur- furaceous, as it is then called, and may disappear in the summer, only to reappear when cold weather sets in. There is usually associated with these skin symptoms an otorrhcea, which is thin, ichorous, and horribly offensive, having an odor like that of rotten meat.

Ulcers appear on the legs, usually about the tibia or around the ankles or other joints. These ulcers have but this to characterize them, they are slow to heal; they are indolent. I may also observe here, that the herpetic and itching eruptions just referred to are apt to appear in the bends of joints, in the bends of the elbows, and in the popliteal spaces. The child is pale, sickly and greatly emaciated.

The entire surface of the body emits an offensive odor, which persists despite the most care- ful washing. This comes from defective action of the cutaneous glands. They do not properly eliminate, and consequently the dis- charges remain and undergo decomposition and give off this odor, which can never be cured until the child's skin is cured.

In summer time these children are very apt to have cholera infan- tum. There is no remedy that replaces Psorinum in its range of symptoms in this disease. The children are apt to be nervous and restless at night as a precursory symptom to the cholera infantum. They awake at night as if frightened, or they cry out during sleep; then, two or three nights afterward, they begin with diarrhoea; the stools are profuse and watery, dark brown or even black in color, very offensive, almost putrid in odor, worse at night, or driving the patient out of bed early in the morning.

Psorinum cures a form of chronic cephalalgia with bursting,

150 A CLINICAL MATERIA MKDICA.

throbbing pains in the head, preceded by flickering, dimness of vision or spots before the eyes, and accompanied by hunger. Sometimes the patient is inordinately hungry the day before the attack. This hun- gry feeling is a frequent concomitant of Psorinum complaints. Canine hunger preceding an attack of diarrhoea. Hunger at night, must get up and eat something, like Phosphorus and China, a condition some- times met with in pregnancy.

We also find Psorinum indicated in the bad effects of suppressed itch. This disease is produced, you know, by the itch insect. You are justified in using as a local application anything that will kill the insect but not suppress the disease. Such an application you have in Oil of lavender, which kills both the insects and their ova. When itch has been suppressed, Psorinum is an excellent remedy to develop it; usually, too, it will cure the disease after its redevelopment.

Psorinum is also useful when pustules or boils remain after itch has been cured by some other remedy.

There is another use that may be made of Psorinum, which I have not mentioned, but which is as important as any other. Sometimes, after acute or violent diseases, we find the patient greatly prostrated. For instance, after typhoid fever he is depressed in mind, weak in body, low-spirited, hopeless of recovery, and yet you know that there is no absolute certainty that the patient cannot get well; that there are no organic lesions remaining. He has weakening night-sweats.

Perhaps Sulphur has been given without result. In such cases Psori- num is the remedy.

Here you may also consider China or Cinchona, which is an excel- lent remedy for rapid exhaustion following acute diseases, especially when there has been loss of blood, protracted or profuse diarrhoea, or profuse sweat. It is similar to Psorinum in the night-sweat; but the latter is the remedy when there is the mental state just described — the despair of recovery.

Laurocerasus is to be thought of when there is lack of reaction, espe- cially in chest troubles.

Capsicum is indicated in lack of reaction occurring in persons of lax fibre.

Opium is a very superior remedy in these cases when the patient is stupid and drowsy.

Valerian, Moschus and Ambra grisea are to be used in nervous affec- tions when the apparently well-chosen remedy fails.

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Carbo veg. is indicated in cases of abdominal disease when there is great coldness of the body. The breath is cold, and the pulse rapid.

Psorinum is very similar, as you see, to Sulphur. It complements that remedy. It is inimical to Lachesis, and is antidoted by Coffea.

Merc, Nitric ac, Lach. Nux, Puis., Bry. Bapt., Arsenicum. Calc. ostr., Lye, Silic, Aconite, Bell., Bry. Phos., Ant. t.; Ars.