DRUGS elicit queer and characteristic symptoms, mental and physical, from their provers : and when these match the queer and characteristic symptoms, mental and physical, of sick persons, they cure. The nearer the correspondence, the more certain the cure. Argentum nitricum — silver nitrate — is the " devil's stone " or " hell-stone " of Old School, which has not much use for it, except as Lunar Caustic ; because in allopathic doses, or when accidentally swallowed during the process of cauterizing the throat, it has turned people permanently blue — a condition known as " argyria." With us it is a most precious remedy, and no other can take its place. The earlier provings of Argentum nitricum, given in Allen's Encyclopedia are, as we shall see, chiefly concerned with its physical symptoms, which are very definite and suggestive, and have led to splendid curative work in stomach conditions, etc. But other provings, given in Hering's Guiding Symptoms, bring out its interesting and unique mental peculiarities ; and these are our most precious indications for its use. Remedies, as we Homoeopaths learn to realize them, step forth as personalities. They haunt us in 'bus and tram, and confront us in our patients. They become creatures of temperaments — mental and physical. They have likes and dislikes, cravings and a versions sensitiveness to meteoric conditions, as well as to human intercourse and environment. We realize their terrors, real or imaginary — their strange obsessions. And in measure as this is so, we are able to apply them with success for the relief of persons of like idiosyncrasies and distresses. Silver nitrate is a remedy of very vivid personality, quite unlike all others. It has such strange weaknesses and self tormentings ! — and knowing it so well, and having experienced its splendid power to help, it may seem a strange thing to say, but one regards it with something like affection. Old School has no conception of the wonderful power to strengthen and to comfort, of this remedy. Its mental and intellectual distresses are great. Let KENT , in his vivid way, detail for us some of the mental inwardness of Arg. nit. which we must condense. He describes, " disturbances in memory — disturbances in reason." He says, " Arg. nit. is irrational : does strange things, and comes to strange conclusions : does foolish things. " He is tormented by the inflowing of troublesome thoughts, which torment him till he is in a hurry and fidget, and he goes out and walks and walks, and the faster he walks the faster he thinks he must walk, and he walks till fatigued. He has an impulse that he is going to have a fit — or that he is going to have a sickness. A strange thought comes into his mind that if he goes past a certain corner of the street he will create a sensation — perhaps fall down in a fit : and to avoid that he will go round the block. He avoids going round that corner, for fear he will do something strange. " There is an inflowing of strange thoughts into his mind. In crossing a bridge, or high place — the thought that he might kill himself — or jump off, or what if he should jump off : and sometimes the actual impulse comes to jump off that bridge into the water. When looking out of a high window, the thought comes into his head, what an awful thing it would be to jump out of that window ; and sometimes the impulse comes to actually jump out. " There is a fear of death — the over-anxious state that death is near (Acon.). When looking forward to something he has to do, or has promised to do, or in expectation of things, he is anxious. When about to meet an engagement, he is anxious. Breaks into a sweat with anxiety . . . when going to a wedding — to the opera — to church, the anxiety is attended with fear — even to diarrhea (Gels.). " So we have a wonderfully queer medicine. " Mental exhaustion, headaches, nervous excitement and trembling, and organic troubles of heart and liver ; in business men, students, brain workers, in those subject to long excitement, in actors who have kept up a long time the excitement of appearing well in public. . . . " Like Pulsatilla, Arg. nit. wants cold air, cold drinks, cold things. Suffocates in a warm room. Cannot go to church or the opera, must stay at home. Dreads a crowd, dreads certain places. " And then the physical side. . . . Full of ulceration — especially on internal parts, and mucous membranes. Kent says this tendency to ulcerate seems rather strange ; peculiar that it should have in its pathogenesis such a tendency, when the Old School has been using it to cauterize ulcers, and yet it heals them up. . . . It has cured prolonged and almost inveterate ulceration of the stomach, when there has been vomiting of blood. " Do not forget that this medicine is one of the most flatulent medicines in the books. He is distended to bursting ; gets scarcely any relief from passing flatus or eructations. " Desires sugar : feels he must have it and it makes him sick. He cannot digest it ; it acts like physic and brings on diarrhea. So marked is the aggravation from sugar that the nursing infant will get a green diarrhoea if the mother eats candy." Kent gives a case where nothing helped the baby " till he found out that the mother ate candy — her husband brought her home a pound of candy every day. The baby did not get well till it got Arg. nit., and the mother stopped eating candy.' " Arg. nit. has the most intense eye symptoms : catarrhal, ulcerative ; to opacities of cornea. But all, worse for heat and relieved by cold. Profuse purulent discharge from lids." NASH quotes Allen and Norton , in regard to eyes. " The greatest service that Argentum nitricum performs is in purulent ophthalmia. With a large experience in both hospital and private practice, we have not lost a single eye from this disease, and every one has been treated with internal remedies, most of them with Argentum nitricum of a high potency, 30th or 100th. We have witnessed the most intense chemosis, with strangulated vessels, most profuse purulent discharge, even the cornea beginning to get hazy and looking as though it would slough, subside rapidly under Argentum nitricum internally. The subjective symptoms are almost none. Their very absence, with the profuse purulent discharge, and the swollen lids from a collection of pus in the eye, or swelling of the sub-conjunctival tissue of the lids themselves, indicates the drug." (One may say that such a case, in a child, during the 1914-18 War, with Arg. nit. 200 and bathing the eye with normal saline, was amazingly better the next day, and soon well. This was impressed on one's memory, since eye cases have seldom come one's way.) Arg. nit. has some peculiar physical symptoms : Stick in the throat sensation (Hepar, etc.), simultaneous vomiting and purging — " gushing both ways " like Arsenicum. All these things, Argentum nitricum has caused, and can (and has) cured. Now for more of the physical symptoms, extracted from Allen's Encyclopedia. " Anxiety which makes him walk rapidly.