Stools
Hard, nodular, insufficient and delayed; Crumbling at the verge of the anus and seem as if burnt; Large, hard lumps or knotty, like sheep’s dung; Faeces covered with mucus and blood.
Before stool
Painful urgings.
During stool
Painful urgings with occasional discharge of mucus; Pressure, with scanty passage or only flatus.
After stool
Burning at the anus; Shuddering for a short time.
Concomitants
Earthy complexion. Good appetite. Nausea in the morning. Swelling o f the abdomen, with cuttings and pinchings. Pain and distress every few days in the hypo-gastric region. Cramps in hysterical women who waste freely and have a tendency to constipation. Weakness and chill, increasing during the continuance of the hysterical accident; globus hystericus and oppression of the breath.
Generalities
Constipation of infants during dentition.
Boenninghausen places Magnesia mur. in the first rank for constipation on account of the hardness of the excrements.
Schwabe places the drug in the same class as Calcarea carb., and Carbo veg.
Case 25
Child, aged 2 years. Diarrhoea and cough for several months; all at once the child became constipated, but the cough continued. Nux vom. and Bryonia were given, but the stools only became harder, and would crumble when escaping from the anus. Magnesia mur. 6, five doses, and the next day the stools were natural and the cough gone. – Dr. Lehman in Raue’s Record, 1871, p. 120.
Case 26
A lady, age 26, was confined two years ago, and since that time has been troubled with constipation. Stools, large and in hard lumps; bowels move about every eight days. Every few days has pain and distress in the hypo-gastric region; pale and weak, otherwise well. Is in the habit of taking a cathartic every three days. Magnesia mur. 200, acted in twenty-four hours like a cathartic, but without pain, and in two weeks she reported herself as having a natural stool daily. –Dr. W. H. Burt in Raue’s Record, 1872, p. 150.