– M.L.Tyler.
Introduction:
Sulphur is one of the greatest of “polycrests” (drugs of many uses)-is Hahnemann’s Prince of “antipsorics” (remedies of non- venereal chronic diseases), and is one of the constituents of protoplasm, thus not only occurring, but evoking and curing, symptoms in every tissue and organ of the body. Its great and wide range in homoeopathic prescribing is evidenced by the fact that Allen’ s Encyclopedia gives no fewer that I, o40-odd symptoms each with reference that tells not only the authority but the dose responsible. Hahnemann says of Sulphur: “The homoeopathic physician (who alone acts in conformity with natural laws ) will meet many important morbid states for which he will discover and may expect much assistance in the symptoms of Sulphur and Hepar Sulphuris.” He points out the similarity of the eruptions produced by Sulphur with those of itch:- the characteristic itching eruption which Sulphur can excite, “in which is revealed an affection, similar (homoeopathic) to but not identical with the itch and tells us that Homoeopathy requires medicines that produce diseases only similar to those they should be administered for in order to cure them. Homoeopathy has never pretended to produce an identical disease with medicines, but has always enjoined the selection of a medicine for the cure, that produces only a similar affection. Canova’s statue of the captive of St. Helena may be very ; like, but it is not NAPOLEON! Do not our stupid opponents understand that? Are they unable to comprehend the difference between identical (same) and similar? or do they not wish to comprehend it?” And he gives the difference between “true itch and the very-like pimples and vesicles of the itch of workers in wool.” In Materia Medica Pura he scorns the idea of employing diseases for the cure of disease: but later on, in his Chronic Diseases, and indeed in the Organon (possibly in its later editions) he discusses the fact that by preparation and potentization disease products become “so changed as to be no longer idem but simillimum”; and it was Hahnemann himself who prepared and potentized the contents of the itch pustule, and proved it (the proving is to be found in Stapf’s Archives); and showed thereby its great similarity of symptoms to those of Sulphur-and its great difference: thus teaching us when to prescribe the one, and when the other. But it is believed that Hahnemann later on partly proved and used some other disease products: though he did not give us a lead to their use, since they were not sufficiently proved to be capable of scientific employment. (See an interesting article on this subject, HOMOEOPATHY, vol. I, p., 462.) Anyway Sulphur is one of our great skin medicines, but only in such skin conditions as it can produce, or in typical Sulphur patients. It has BOILS (Anthrac., Tarent., cub. Arn., Bellis and a host of others, each in its place): crops of boils, which succeed one another. Itching, extreme; voluptuous” itching relieved by scratching, then burning; worse from heat of bed (Merc.). “Dry , rough, scaly or itching skin, disposed to break out or fester and won’t heal ” (Hep., Sil): even pustular eruptions. And Sulphur eruptions may alternate with other complaints, such as asthma (Ars., etc.). Where we were children a precious Riddle Book had it, “Sulphur comes from volcanoes and is good for eruptions,” and Sulphur is associated in ideas with the Lake of Fire, and Everlasting Burnings; and Sulphur indeed causes BURNINGS; burning pain in eyes, lips, tongue; in nostrils, face, throat; in fauces and pharynx; in stomach and abdomen; in anus; in haemorrhoids etc.; between scapulae (Lyc., Phos.); in fingers, palms (PHOS). Knees, feet, especially at night; in soles, in corns, in chilblains, in skin of whole body, in parts on which he lies. The eruptions of Sulphur BURN. And with all its burning there may be burnings in parts-patchy or local burnings with coldness elsewhere, as feet cold with burning head or face in the same way that Nat. mur. may have irregular distribution of the fluids of the body, as diarrhoea with a dry mouth and tongue, or “dryness of mucous membranes with watery secretions elsewhere”. Sulphur reddens orifices in a way common to no other remedy”- lips (Tun.), eyelids (Graph.), nostrils, red, dirty, discharging (Aurum) ANUS, with itching; and excoriating stools often; and here it is a great remedy for haemorrhoids. One has seen low- potency Sulphur produce them in someone who never had them before or since. The old “low potency” men had a trick of curing piles with Sulphur alternately with Nux (they are complementary remedies). In those days they would have held it a disgrace to have piles “operated” or injected. Sulphur goes through the body from vertex to soles. In the former its pressure symptoms, remind one of LACH., BELL., GLON., and others, while it burns the soles so much that the feet must be thrust out of bed (PULS., MED., CHAM.). Sulphur is, of course, a great remedy of stomach and intestinal conditions. The Sulphur stomach feels empty and “sinking”, especially about II a.m. (or noon, or an hour before the mid-day meal), but then a Sulphur patient will often tell you that she wants no breakfast, but starves at the later hour. And the typical Sulphur diarrhoea (often chronic) torments its victim with hurried early morning stools or diarrhoea, leaving them safe for the rest of the day. It would be impossible to give all the black letter symptoms of Sulphur-i.e. the symptoms again and again produced and again and again cured by that drug-they are far too numerous for the space at our command; but we will delve a little into Kent, and glean from that great prescriber his experiences derived from a very large and successful practice and from years of teaching Materia Medica. The more one goes to Kent, the more one needs to go. He, more than anyone, probably, has imbibed the spirit of Hahnemann, and expounded and perpetuated his doctrines. KENT says, “Sulphur is such a full remedy that it is difficult to tell where to begin. It seems to contain a likeness of all sickness, and a beginner reading over the provings of Sulphur might naturally think that there was no need of any other remedy, as the image of all sickness seems to be contained in it.” Yet, he says, “it will not cure all the sickness of man, and must not be used indiscriminately. It seems that the less a physician knows of Materia Medica the oftener he gives Sulphur; but it is very frequently given by good prescribers, so that the line between physicians knowledge and ignorance cannot be drawn from the frequency of their use of Sulphur. “The Sulphur patient is lean, lank, hungry, dyspeptic with stoop-shoulders; yet many times it must be given to fat, rotund, well-fed people.” “The sulphur state may be brought on by being housed up in meditation-philosophical inquiry, taking no exercise: must eat only the simplest foods and not enough to nourish them and end up by going into a philosophical mania. Another class, dirty- looking, shrivelled, red-face. If a child, may be often washed, but looks as if perfunctorily washed. The Sulphur scholar- inventor-works day and night in threadbare clothes and battered hat; has uncut hair and dirty face; his study is uncleanly- untidy, books piled indiscriminately, no order. Sulphur seems to produce this state of disorder, uncleanliness, `don’t care how things go,’ and a state of selfishness. He becomes a false philosopher-disappointed because the world does not consider him the greatest man on earth. He has on a shirt that he has worn many weeks: if he had not a wife, he would wear his shirt till it fell off him.” (One has seen with triumph how a dose or two of Sulphur, in such a patient, has produced a clean shirt!) “Cleanliness is not a great idea with a Sulphur patient,” says kent. “Sulphur is seldom indicated in cleanly people, but it is commonly indicated in those who are not disturbed by uncleanliness. The sulphur child is subject to catarrhal discharges from nose and eyes, etc., and mothers will tell you that the child will eat the discharges from the nose. That is peculiar, because the Sulphur patient is oversensitive to filthy odours; but the filthy substances themselves he will eat and swallow., Has filthy odours, and they nauseate him. Imagines he smells things. Discharges not only offensive but excoriating. Stools, nasal discharge, excoriating, burn and make raw the parts. Boils-suppurations-abscesses- eruptions, but always with burning. Burning runs through Sulphur. Burning soles: palms: vertex. Worse warm in bed. Nightly complaints are a feature.” And so on for many pages. Sulphur has some weird sensation, perhaps not often met with, but helpful where they occur. A band tightly bound round forehead; as if bed too small to hold him: as if swinging, or standing on wavering ground. Pressure vertex, as if brain beating against skull: as if head would burst. As if scalp were loose; as if eyes had been punctured; as if sounds came out thorough ears but forehead; as of a lump or hair in throat; intestines in knots; as if bowels too weak to retain their contents; as if a lump of ice in chest; as if chest would fly to pieces when coughing or breathing deeply; as of a mouse running up arms and back. (See Calc.) And many others. As of a rivet through upper third left lung to scapula. Sulphur has also some weird mentalities. As GUERNSEY puts it, “fantastic illusions of the intellect, especially if one turns everything into beauty as an old rag or stick looks to be a beautiful piece of workmanship-everything looks pretty which the patient takes a fancy to. Wishing to touch something ” one has had this symptom in children, and failed to find it! Sulphur is one of the remedies that has periodicity. Pains in head, for instance, every seven days, every fourteen days; “an intermittent, periodic neuralgia with aggravation every 24 hours, generally at mid-day or mid-night.” Diarrhoea at 5 a.m. The Sulphur patient hates, or is the worse for a bath: and though a “warm patient” is worse for wet, or cold wet-weather. Sulphur has a big reputation for clearing up acute conditions that hang fire: pneumonias-exudations into serous sacs, following inflammations (as pleural effusions-we have seen this). Complaints that are continually relapsing (Tub.). But, in a “Sulphur patient.” By the way, Sulphur has, in poisoning, produced convulsions, and it is one of the first things one thinks of for epilepsy-in a Sulphur patient, or when the patient has had a Sulphur-like eruption. When first one started “working out” one’s cases, it seemed as if Sulphur must always come through, such a constant appearance does it present in the various rubrics, but that is by no means the case . Its symptoms are very definite and very striking : it has its own place and does its own work; and often comes in , as we said, to clear up difficult conditions, and those that hang fire-in a Sulphur patient. To do rapid and at all creditable out-patient work, where the patients crowd in as they do with us, and where they have to be considered as individuals, and not as this or that disease, and treated accordingly, one must have the various drug pictures of Sulphur-Sepia-Lycopodium and a dozen other common remedies of common complaints at one’s finger-tips. And when you get one or two of the little Sulphur drug pictures by heart, and prescribe Sulphur correctly, it is surprising how long it will hold you patient-i.e. a chronic patient. Many of these return only after many months to ask for “the medicine you give me, which always puts me right”. Sepia is another of these medicines of very definite symptoms, easy to recognize; and when one turns to the patient’s page, and sees Sepia inscribed thereon, one nearly always knows that the patient will say, “Much better!” and that the call for repetition will be long-delayed. One must be pardoned for dragging in “out patients” so often; but continuous heavy out-patient work for at least thirty years has impressed some things on one’s consciousness. A few years ago we gave a Paper to the British Homoeopathic Society on “DRUG PICTURES” which still persists in pamphlet form. That little paper was so much appreciated, and one was urged so often to go on with such pictures, that it has led to the present efforts in the same direction. And the little Sulphur pictures in that paper-they only ran to a page-are so concise and to the point that we are minded to reproduce them here. Sulphur has been called the “ragged philosopher”. An argumentative, stoop-shouldered person, who is always on the look-out for a chair to drop into. Untidy-unkept. Coarse, lustreless hair, which takes its own rebellious way, likes its owner; not amenable to conventions. Famished before meals: famished at II a.m. Eats anything. Craves fat. (Sulphur is the only WARM drug that craves fat.) Intolerant of clothing-of flannel on the skin. Morning diarrhoea; but after that, safe for the rest of the day. One Curious aspect of the sulphur mentality is the admiration for what is not admirable. Rags may seem beautiful. Ecstasies over things in which normal persons can see nothing to admire. Sulphur exists in every tissue of the body: there is nothing that Sulphur cannot help, IN A SULPHUR PATIENT. It is the greatest of polycrests. Again, elderly women with flushes. Throw off the bedclothes. Starving at II a.m. Put their burning soles out at night to cool. (CHAM. MED., PULS., and one or two others do this also.) Again,-Warm, hungry babies. Kick off the bedclothes- impossible to keep them covered at night. Very obstreperous hair-(?) sandy-harsh and lustreless- grows every way. Dirty nosed children: sore discharging nostrils. (Aur). Orifices brilliant red; anus, nostrils, eyelids, lips, Itching at anus. NASH says, :”Every true homoeopath knows the value of these and many more symptoms of this remedy. No one else appreciates them. Again. none but those who use potentized Sulphur can ever know what it is capable of curing.”
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Foolish happiness and pride, thinks himself in possession of beautiful things; even rags seem beautiful. Indisposed to everything, work, pleasure, talking or motion; indolence of mind and body. Melancholy mood; dwelling on religious or philosophic speculations; anxiety about soul’s salvation; indifference about lot of others. Too lazy to rouse himself up, and too unhappy to live. Hypochondriasis after suppression of eruption. Dread of being washed (in children). Heat on crown of HEAD ; cold feet ; frequent flushing. Brain affections in children who do not like to be washed, have pimples, boils and other eruptions on head, face, and everywhere, pick at nose, have red lips, crave sour things, feels faint in forenoon, may have diarrhoea early in morning; sleep restless, start when falling asleep, cry out during sleep, or murmur, whine, moan or snore; feet cold in morning, hot in evening; they run about but do not like to stand, sit hunched and walk stooping. Severe itching on forehead and scalp. Itching pimples on forehead ; inflamed, painful to touch. Inflamed and suppurating pimples on hairy scalp. Humid, offensive eruption on top of head, filled with pus, drying up into honey-like scabs. Dry, offensive, easily bleeding, burning eruption, begins on back of head and behind ears; pains and cracks; (>) from scratching. Humid, offensive eruption, with thick pus, yellow crusts, bleeding and burning. Dimness of vision; as of a veil or gauze EYES; as from a fog; with headache; as if cornea had lost its transparency; sudden paroxysms of nyctalopia; while reading; objects seem more distant; for near and distant objects; with weakness of eyes, blindness, cataract, glaucoma; with innumerable, confused, dark spots floating before eyes. Keratitis parenchymatosa in a scrofulous subject, cornea like ground glass , photophobia, lids swollen and bleed easily. Burning heat in eyes ; painful smarting. Lachrymation; in morning, followed by dryness; and burning in morning; profuse and burning from acrid, excoriating tears; in open air, dry in room; itching and biting in eyes. DEAFNESS; preceded by oversensitiveness of hearing; especially for human voice; from disposition to catarrh; (