ARSENICUM ALBUM

Generalities

• A very deep acting remedy, affecting every organ and tissue.

• Mentally the patient is extremely nervous; restless and anxious.

• Discharges of Mucous Membranes are Acrid, Thin and Scanty; coryza, saliva, sweat etc.

• Blood is disorganized causing pernicious type of anaemia and severe septic conditions.

• Haemorrhages, black, offensive.

• Weakness and emaciation is rapid.

• The prostration seems to be out of proportion to the rest of his illness.

• Pains are maddening; Burning Like Fire; hot needles or wires amel. heat.

• Pains are even felt during sleep; awake the patient.

• Pains cause shortness of breath or chilliness.

• Pains alternating between head, stomach or body.

• It acts on the nerves producing inveterate neuralgias and multiple neuritis amel. heat.

• Frequent fainting.

• Trembling, jerking, convulsions and choreic twitchings.

• Sudden intense effects; Sudden Great Weakness from trivial causes.

• VERY RESTLESS; restless even in affected part; even stupor is interrupted by fits of restles sness, with anxious moaning.

• Low vitality.

• Gradual loss of weight.

• Putrid Cadaveric Odours.

• Emaciation.

• Paralysis.

• Destructive process – carbuncles, gangrene, cancer; malignancy.

• Dropsy; pale, puffy, baggy, SWELLING.

• Spleen is enlarged in malarial fever, kala-azar.

• Child amel. when carried about quickly.

• Ill affects of eating ices; poor diet, fruits esp watery, tobacco, quinine, sea bathing and travelling, mountain climbing.

• Care, grief, fright, ptomaine poisoning, dissecting wounds.

• It is a prophylactic for yellow fever.

• Acute and chronic burns.

• Epilepsy; suddenly becomes unconscious with convulsions, restlessness; then becomes drowsy.

Worse

• Periodically; Midnight; after midnight; After, 2 A.M. ; 14 days; yearly.

• Cold; Ices, Drinks; Cold Foods; Cold air; cold and damp.

• Vegetables.

• Watery fruits.

• Drinking Liquids, Alcoholism.

• Infections.

• Bad meat, food.

• Eruptions undeveloped or suppressed.

– Quinine.

• Lying on affected part.

• Exertion.

• Tobacco,chewing.

• Sea shore.

Better

• Hot; Applications (Dry); Food; drinks.

• Warm wraps.

• Motion.

• Walking about.

• Lying, with head elevated.

• Sitting erect.

• Company.

• Sweating.

• Open air.

Mind

• Oversensitive.

• Anxious.

• Fastidious.

• Fault finding.

• Anguish; despair of recovery.

• Exacting.

• Agonising Fear Of Death; yet tired of living, agg. night.

• Fear; of death, from starvation; of financial loss.

• Violence; self torture, pulls her hair, bites her nails, tears his own body.

• Suicidal; impulses, mania.

• Restless, changes place continually, wants to go from one bed to other; children are capricious, want to be carried; want to go from father to mother, to nurse.

• Melancholy.

• Sees vermin; throws away bugs by handfuls.

– Suspicious.

• Fear of being left alone, lest he do himself bodily harm.

• Fears he has murdered somebody.

• Miserly, malicious, selfish.

• Lacks courage.

• Irritable; increasingly.

• Sensitive to disorder.

• Delirium tremens.

• Dotage.

• Fixed ideas, hallucinations.

• Imagines house full of thieves; jumps and hides.

• Hasty.

• Sees ghosts day and night.

• Groans, moans and weeps, during menses.

• Her desire exceeds her needs.

• Does not want to meet his acquaintances, thinks he has offended them.

Head

• Ache, congestive amel. cold.

• Restless head, it is in constant motion.

• Pain over left eye.

• Hemicrania, with icy feeling.

• Vertigo; with loss of consciousness, during coughing fits, in asthmatics, before epilepsy.

• Scalp very sensitive; can not brush hair.

• Hair become gray early; falling of hair.

• Dandruff.

• Chronic eruptions filled with pus.

• Pain alternates between head or stomach or body agg. by people’s talk.

• Walks with head thrown backwards.

Eyes

• Sunken or protruding.

• Burning in eyes, with acrid lachrymation.

• Oedema around eyes.

• Intense photophobia.

• Lids granulated.

• Spasms of the eye lids.

• Everything appears green; sees as through a white gauze.

• Conjunctiva; injected; yellow.

• Scrophulous ophthalmia.

• Eyelids red and ulcerated.

• Falling of lashes.

• Eye lids oedematous.

Ears

• Thin, offensive, excoriating discharge.

• Roaring in ears, during pain.

• Hard hearing, to human voice.

Nose

• Thin, watery, excoriating discharge.

• Nose feels stopped up, with fluent coryza.

• Nose colds descend to chest.

• Cold sores; in nose.

• Sneezing, without relief.

– Can not bear the sight or smell of food.

• Hay fever.

• Knotty swelling of the nose.

• Nose pointed.

• Acne of nose.

• Nose bleed, after fit of passion or vomiting.

• Dyspnoea felt in nose.

• Sneezing, with biting watery coryza.

Face

• Pale; anxious, sunken, haggard or distorted, hippocratic, covered with cold sweat.

• Old look; in children.

• Oedematous swelling of face.

• Burning, stinging pains as from red hot needles.

• Lips; black, livid.

• Eruptions on lips.

• Cancer of lips.

• Black dots, acne.

Mouth

• Tongue; dry, clean and red; bluish white.

• Edge of tongue red, takes imprint of the teeth.

• Burning pain in tongue.

• Tongue; burning, trembling; stiff; coated, white, yellowish; brown, black.

• Swelling about the root of the tongue.

• Neuralgia of teeth; feel long; amel. heat; agg. night.

• Swollen bleeding gums, painful to touch.

• Grinding of the teeth in sleep.

• Bites tumbler while drinking.

• Dryness of mouth.

• Aphthae in mouth.

• Fetor oris.

• Gulping up of burning water.

• Taste; bitter to water; after eating and rinking; sour, foul, saltish, sweet in morning.

• Bloody saliva.

• Speech rapid, lisping.

Throat

• Swollen, oedematous, constricted, burning, unable to swallow.

• Everything swallowed seems to lodge in oesophagus.

Stomach

• Can not bear the sight, smell or thought of food.

• Intense, Unquenchable, Burning Thirst; Drinks Little and Often; Craves Ice Cold Water, Which DistressesThe Stomach And Is Vomited Immediately.

• Loss of appetite; with thirst; with nausea.

• Nausea, retching and vomiting after eating and rinking.

• Anxiety felt in the pit of stomach.

• Burning pain in stomach amel. by sweet milk.

• Heart burn, gulping of burning water.

• Vomiting and purging.

• Hiccough; frequent; also when fever ought to have come; with eructations.

• Aversion to sweets, butter, fats; meat.

• Gastritis.

• DRINKS LITTLE AND OFTEN, eats seldom and much.

• Qualmishness.

• Desire for sour things, brandy, coffee, milk.

• Gastralgia, from slightest food or drink.

• Black vomit.

Abdomen

• Induration and enlargement of spleen and liver.

• Violent pains in abdomen, with anguish.

• Has no rest anywhere, rolls about on floor and despairs of life.

• Epigastrium sore, tender.

• Stools; rice water, foul, small, involuntary, acrid, burning, black, mucus, lienteric agg. cold drinks, with much prostration.

• Ulcer above navel.

• Dysentery, cholera, in children.

• Anus; red and sore, burning.

• Acute prolapse of anus.

• Prolapse of piles, with burning amel. hot application.

• Itching and eczematous eruptions around anus.

• Peritonitis.

• Ascites.

Urinary

• Urine; scanty, burning, involuntary.

• Feeling of weakness in abdomen after urination.

• Atony of bladder, in old persons.

• Uremia.

• Albuminuria.

• Diabetes.

• Retention of urine, as if the bladder were paralyzed, after parturition.

• Urine black as if mixed with dung.

• Dysuria.

Male

• Scrotum oedematous.

• Emissions during diarrhoeic stools.

• Erysipelatous inflammation of scrotum.

• Syphilitic ulcers; with burning, stitching.

Female

• Profuse acrid, yellowish, thick leucorrhoea agg. standing, passing flatus.

• Cancer of uterus.

• Burning in ovarian region.

• Pressive, stitching pain in ovary, into the thigh, which feels numb and lame agg. motion or bending.

• Menorrhagia, with black blood.

• Burning in mammae amel. motion.

• Increased sexual desire at menses.

-;Menses suppressed, in weak, tired careworn women.

• Stitching in rectum during menses.

• Dysmenorrhoea amel. heat.

Respiratory

• SHORTNESS OF BREATH; unable to lie down, must sit up; agg. odours, laughing, ascending, turning in bed, or receding eruptions, amel. coffee or sweet water.

• Whistling, wheezing breathing.

• Asthma, agg. taking cold, in mid summer.

• Cough alternating dry and loose, dry at night amel. sitting up agg. drinking.

• Expectoration scanty, frothy.

• Great dyspnoea; in nose; face cyanotic, covered with cold sweat, great anxiety.

• Aphonia.

• Emphysema.

• Pulmonary oedema.

• Burning or coldness in chest.

• Cough excited by smoking.

• Sensation as of vapours of sulphur in larynx.

• Cough, with bloody sputum.

• Haemoptysis; burning all over or with pain between scapulae; in drunkards; suppressed menses.

• Gangrene of the lungs.

• Darting pain through upper third of the right lung.

• Yellowish spots on chest.

Heart

• Weak, trembles.

• Palpitation, with anguish agg. lying on back, ascending stairs, with slight causes.

• Heart pains into neck and occiput, with anxiety, difficult breathing, fainting spells.

• Angina Pectoris.

• Pulse more rapid in the morning.

• Hydro-pericardium.

• Palpitation, with tremulous weakness after stools.

• Beats audible.

• Visible pulsations.

Neck and back

• Stiffness of the back ascends from coccyx to nape.

• Cold creeps on back.

• As if warm air streaming up spine to the head.

• Bruised pain in small of back.

• Weak lumbar region.

Extremities

• Twitching, trembling, violent starting, during sleep.

• Drawing pain from elbow to axilla.

• Weariness of limbs.

• Trembling of hands, of limbs.

• Tingling in fingers.

• Fingers can not be extended.

• Nails; blue, discoloured.

• Ulcers on finger tips, with burning pain.

• Feet; weak, weary and numbb, oedematous.

• Ulcers on soles and toes.

• Wooden feeling in soles.

• Sore pain in ball of toes, while walking.

• Uneasiness in lower limbs, must move feet constantly or walk about.

• Toes bend downwards.

• Peripheral neuritis.

• Cramps in calves.

• Swelling of feet.

• Limbs heavy.

• Restless feet.

• Sciatica amel. walking and hot applications.

• Paraplegia, with atrophy.

• Paralysis, with contraction of limbs.

Skin

• Dry, rough, scaly, dirty, shrivelled.

• Looks seared.

• Eczema.

• Acuminate eruptions.

• Free desquamation.

• Hives agg. eating shell fish.

• Ulcers; chronic, with burning, with cutting pain and bloody discharge.

• Gangrene.

• Phagedena.

• Carbuncles.

• Psoriasis.

• Skin, like parchment.

• Skin symptoms alternate with internal affections.

• Spots; blue, black, white.

• Pimples, vesicles, burning violently.

Sleep

• Disturbed, anxious, restless.

• Shocks on dropping to sleep.

• Dreams; of death, full of care, sorrow, and fear.

• Sleeps with hands over head.

• Yawning, with stretching of limbs.

• Sleeping sickness.

• Talks in sleep.

• Awakened by pains.

Fever

• Externally COLD, with internal burning heat.

• COLDNESS; in spots.

• Sensitive to cold, yet amel. in open air.

• Chills irregular, shaking; craves hot drinks during chill; dyspnoea during chill.

• Heat as of hot water in veins; or they burn like lines of fire.

• High fever, hectic fever.

• Sweat, with great thirst, dyspnoea or exhaustion.

• Sweat cold.

• Waves of icy coldness in blood vessels or intense boiling heat.

• Intermittent fever, yellow fever.

Complementary

• All-s; Carb-v; Lach; Nat-s; Phos; Puls; Sulph; Thuj.

Related

• Sul-ac; Verat.

Source : Phatak materia medica