– Kent J. T.
The Kali carb. patient is a hard patient to study, and the remedy itself is a hard one to study.
It is not used as often as it should be, and the reason is that it is a very complex and confusing remedy. It has a great many opposite symptoms, changing symptoms, and this it is related to patients that withhold their symptoms and have many vague symptoms.
The patient is whimsical, irascible, irritable to the very highest degree, quarrels with his family and with his bread and butter. He never wants to be alone, is full of fear and imaginations when alone, “fear of the future, fear of death, fear of ghosts”. If compelled to remain alone in the house he is wakeful, sleepless, or his sleep is full of horrible dreams. He is never at peace, is full of imaginations and fear. “What if the house should burn up!” “What if l should do this or that!” and “What if this and the other thing should happen!”
He is oversensitive to everything, sensitive to every atmospheric change; he can never get the room at just exactly the right temperature; he is sensitive to every draft of air and to the circulation of air in the room: He cannot have the windows open, even in a distant part of the house. He will get up at night in bed and look around to see where that draft of air comes from. His complaints are worse in wet weather, and in cold weather. He is sensitive to the cold and is always shivering. His nerves feel the cold; they are all painful when it is cold. The neuralgias shoot here and there when it is cold, and if the part affected be kept warm the pain goes to some other place. All his pains change place and go into the cold part; if he covers up one part. the pain goes to the part uncovered.
This remedy is full of sticking, burning, tearing pains, and these fly around from place to place. Of course Kali carb. has pains that remain in one place, but usually the pains fly around in every direction. Pains cutting like knives. Pains like hot needles, sticking, stinging and burning. These pains are felt in internal parts and dry passages. Burning in the anus and rectum, described as if a hot poker were forced into that passage; burning as with fire. The haemorrhoids burn like coals of fire. The burning of Kali carb. is like that of Arsenicum.
Again from studying the text it will be seen that it is a common feature of this medicine to have its symptoms come on at 2, 3 or 5 o’clock in the morning. In Kali carb. the cough will come or have its greatest (