Stools
Dry, difficult, irregular; Like sheep-dung; accompanied by a mucous secretion; Alternately firm and liquid.
Before stool
Continual but fruitless desire for stool; Ineffectual urging; Colic pains.
During stool
Prolonged straining (even with soft stool; Sensation as if part of the faeces remained in the rectum and could not be expelled; Sharp, splinter-like, cutting pains in rectum during stool (with ineffectual urging); Burning in rectum toward the perineum; Tearing, spasmodic pains (fissures in anus); Pressure upon the rectum with desire for stool, but only a little passes.
After stool
Burning in rectum with shooting pains; Painful prolapsus of the rectum, and sensation of constriction of anus; Colic pains and great prostration; Painful haemorrhoids with haemorrhages.
Generalities
Haemorrhoidal constipation.
Hahnemann says : This medicine is better suited to brunettes who have a rigid fibre, than to the blondes whose fibres are dry. The MM. Simon in translating the works of Hahnemann render this passage somewhat different : “This medicine suits better those subjects who have brown hair and rigid fibre, than those with soft fibre and blonde hair.” They add in parenthesis that Nitric acid will be rarely chosen for lymphatic temperaments and scrofulous constitutions.
Dr. Chargé says : It is especially in intestinal dyspepsia, when the characteristic feature of the case is constipation, that Nitric acid has shown its superiority. This constipation lasts for several days but does not give rise to pain. The pains in the rectum after stool may be prolonged for some time, and not depend on the difficulty of the defecation, for they often happen even after a liquid stool occurring accidentally.
The MM. Simon write : suitable for certain dyspeptic conditions characterized by disgust for fatty food, nausea, swelling of the stomach and bowels in consequence of an enormous collection of gas, great sensibility of the abdomen to the influence of cold, soft or hard stools which are difficult to expel.
[Hempel and Arndt write : Constipation may find its remedy in Nitric acid, if the patient is of a bilious habit, laboring under tedious hepatic derangements, syphilitic affections, or suffering from the effects of Mercury. Dry, difficult stools, preceded and followed by colicky pains, and followed by great prostration. Such a state of affairs is frequently found during convalescence, from a protracted and servere fit of sickness.]
Dr. I. Guérin-Menneville says : In later years Nitric acid has taken a front place among the remedies for cough. Sir Duncan Gobb has written a book upon whooping cough for the purpose of exalting its virtues. Dr. Bayes says : “Another affection in which Nitric acid has rendered service is the chronic laryngeal cough without expectoration, and which is characterized by a sensation of pricking or excoriation, as if there existed there a small ulcer, and which is generally felt upon one side.” Dr. Dyce Brown has recommended it in several forms of disease of which laryngeal cough is one of the dominant traits, and especially in those cases where there is a general physical depression. Dr. Brown also mentions the peculiar constipation of Nitric acid in the cases of cough, and he adds that he had seen it disappear so often under the use of this drug, that he conceived the idea of employing it for this affection itself and with so great a success that he places this remedy in the front rank among the efficient means for its treatment.