: There
are three things that stand out most prominently in Kreosotum, and when they
appear together the symptoms in minor degree will be likely to be associated.
These three characteristics are:
When these three things arc associated in a high degree Kreosote should be examined. A prick of a pin will cause the oozing of bright red-
blood, and mucous membranes bleed easily. Any pressure upon the mucous membranes will cause
oozing.
Bleeding here and there about the body. The lachrymation is excoriating.
It excoriates the margins of the lids and checks, and they become red and raw, and smart. If
there is a purulent discharge it is acrid. The corners of the lips and mouth are red and
raw, and' the saliva burns and smarts. The moisture about the mouth, whatever it may be,
excoriates and the mouth is raw. The eyes smart and burn as if raw.
The leucorrhoea causes smarting and burning about the vulva, so that the
mucous surfaces of the labia are red and raw, sometimes inflamed, but always burning. The
vagina burns during coition, and there is bleeding after coition; granulations of the vagina
and os uteri, so that the pressure of the act of coition brings on bleeding and burning,
smarting and excoriation. And the male organ will smart and burn after coming in contact
with the secretion of the vagina during coition.
The urine burns and smarts. This tendency to excoriation from the
excretions and secretions applies to all the tissues of the body.
Every emotion and exciting circumstance is attended with throbbing all
over the body, pulsations to the ends of the fingers. Every emotion is attended with
tearfulness, Music that will in the slightest way excite the emotion, minor strains and
music that strikes home to the heart, pathetic music, will bring out tears that are acrid,
and palpitation and pulsations that are felt to the extremities.
When the Kreosote sore throat is present the least pressure of the
tongue depressor will establish oozing, little drops of blood will appear. During the coryza
there is nosebleed. When the eyes are red and raw and inflamed, they will bleed easily. If
an individual pricks the finger the blood will not merely be a single drop, but a good many
will flow. Prolonged haemorrhage from the passages; hemorrhage from the kidneys, from the
eyes, the nose, the uterus. Haemorrhage after coition. Tumors bleed easily.
These are the most marked features of Kreosote. If these are
fixed in your mind, we have what may be known, as a Kreosote constitution out of which may
come all the rest of the symptoms in all their minutiae, and little symptoms and fragments
in every organ. You have in this one group the strong features of Kreosote. No
matter how many particulars you may have in a case, if you do not have something of these
general features you need not expect to find your patient constitutionally cured or relieved
by Kreosote. These may be considered essentials.
Mentally the patient is so irritable that there is nothing that will suit
him. The wants are so numerous that nothing satisfies. The patient wants everything and is
satisfied with nothing, that is, he wants something and when he has it he does not want it.
That is the state of irritability and lack of satisfaction in a chronic condition.
You see the child in the mother's arms. It wants a toy, and when given it
throws it in the face of somebody; it wants this and that and is never satisfied, always
wanting something new, a new toy which it throws away the moment it gets it and then calls
for something else.
The lips are red and bleeding, the corners of the month are raw, the
eyelids red and the skin excoriated. If it has, in connection with all this, loose passages
from the bowels and you examine the fissure between the nates, you will find it is red and
raw. If the child be old enough to make such motions he will put the hands upon the sore
genitals and fissures and cry out in a most irritable way, because of the smarting.
Such is the Kreosote baby. It may be suffering from cholera infantum; it
may be subject to wetting the bed; it may have spells of vomiting, in which it vomits all
its food; it is a Kreosote baby.
Kreosote has attacks
of diarrhoea and vomiting; all sorts of disturbances of the urine; great distension and
trouble with the bowels; abdomen distended from flatus. You look over the whole case at once
as a Kreosote case, because of these general features that can be summed up in
the aspect of the child.
The Kreosote face has a yellowish pallor; it is a sickly
countenance, semi-cachectic, intermingled with blotches that are reddish looking, as if
erysipelas were going to set in. In olden times this countenance was called a scorbutic
countenance.
Take a woman with this kind of countenance; at every menstrual flow she
complains of much swelling and rawness of the genitals; the flow is copious, clotted, stops
and then starts again, comes too soon and lasts too long; at times it is black, very foetid,
produces rawness upon the thighs and the genitals, with much swelling; at every menstrual
period there is rawness of the lips and fissures in the corners of the mouth; the tears
become acrid; at the menstrual period all the fluids of the body seem to be acid and they
burn wherever they touch.
Very often there is a loose stool, which is also acrid and smarts the
anus at the menstrual period. All the symptoms are worse at the menstrual period, sometimes
in the early part, sometimes at the middle, sometimes all through, and sometimes at the
close. Something more about the scorbutic constitution is brought out in relation to the
gums; the gums become puffed and red and tumid and settle away from the teeth.
They become spongy and bleed easily. In the mouth there is much
ulceration and little ulcers spread from aphthous patches, smarting and burning; the tongue
has ulcers upon it, which bleed easily upon touch.
At the close of a typhoid fever haemorrhage from the bowels, bleeding
from the mucous membranes. The mouth becomes raw, and wherever there is a mucous membrane
there is a rawness, and the fluids that ooze continue to, eat and cause ulceration. If at
the close of a typhoid fever, when the time comes for convalescence, vomiting comes.
Vomiting, bleedings, diarrheas. The fluids vomited from, the stomach are
so acrid that they seem to take the skin off from the mouth, set the teeth on edge, make the
lips raw. So excoriation from acrid fluids, as well as throbbing all over the body, are
features that you must bear in mind with Kreosote.
The discharges from the body are offensive; offensive, bloody, acrid
discharges from the nose; offensive, watery discharges from any part of the body; sometimes
even putrid; the leucorrhea is very offensive. Rapid emaciation, with spongy, burning
ulceration, pus acrid, ichorous, foetid and yellow. Sometimes the inflammatory condition
will run so high in an ulcer, only a small ulceration, that gangrene will set in, and hence
we have a gangrenous ulceration; gangrene of parts that are inflamed.
Very low formations occur upon the margins of mucous membranes; crusts
form. Indurations under the crusts and the crusts continue to form.
The circulation is so poor, so feeble in the parts all about the margin
of the lips and the corners of the mouth, and corners of the eyes, and eyelids, and upon the
genitals, and there is so much venous engorgement that crusts form and ulcerate and bleed
and pile up, and this continues until a phagedenic spot comes. This condition is so much
like epithelioma that Kreosote has cured epithelioma.