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If we study the whole symptomatology of Plumbum, we will be struck with the general paralytic state
in this remedy.
The activities of the body, the functions of the organs, are slowed down
in pace. The nerves do not convey their messages with the usual activity. The muscles are
slow in action, sluggish. There is first paresis and finally paralysis, of parts first and
finally of the whole.
The mind is impaired, slow. Perception is slow. He memorizes with
difficulty. Comprehension is difficult. He cannot recall words to express himself. The
operations of the mind are slow. When in conversation with such a patient you will wonder
what he is thinking about while making up his mind to answer.
There is sluggishness also in the skin. You may prick him and a second
later he says, "Oh", showing the slowness in feeling. You would expect him to feel
the prick instantly. When you begin to conclude that he does not feel at all, his limb will
jerk.
Anesthesia of the skin. There is a state of hyperesthesia in the acute
affections, but the chronic affections are characterized by loss of sensation. Numbness of
fingers and toes, soles, and palms, and this extends to the skin, towards the spine.
The trophic functions are slow in that they do not keep up with the
waste, and so we see emaciation until the patient becomes almost a skeleton. The skin is
wrinkled, puckered, shriveled, and drawn over the bones. The emaciation is sometimes local.
When local it is generally associated with a painful part; the painful
part withers. Pains down the sciatic nerve; burning, shooting; as if the bone were being
pulled out of place; as if being scraped and the limb emaciates. Pain down the arm, in the
shoulder; violent pains in the brachial plexus and the arm withers.
Neuralgia of one side of the face and that side withers. Paralysis of
single muscles and these muscles wither. There is, paralysis of both extensors and flexors,
but especially extensors. The paralysis begins in the extensors, so that we have wrist drop.
He cannot raise or lift anything with the hand. Extension is difficult. This occurs in piano
players; they cannot lift their fingers sufficiently rapid to keep up the pace, while
flexion is all right. Curare is another remedy which corresponds to this state in
piano players; a paralysis from overexertion of the extensor muscles.
When the muscles become fatigued from playing fixed exercises, scales,
etc., for hours at a time, when the player has to do the same thing over and over again, Rhuscomes in, but it is an acute remedy
and only holds for a short time.
It is especially a Rhuscondition when certain muscles become overused and the
patient takes cold and a weakness sets in; after a cold bath or plunge the muscles take on
paresis; getting wet when tired brings on the Rhusstate.
For the chronic state which follows, Plumbum and sometimes Curare will be indicated.
Paresis of the intestines; constipation; cannot strain at stool. The
patient can use the abdominal muscles, but the rectum is in a state of paresis and he cannot
expel the faeces.
The bladder is also paretic; cannot expel the urine, the muscles do not
cooperate to void the urine and there is retention. Plumbum has both retention and
suppression of urine.
The paralyses are found in the chronic state. In the acute we have the
fever, the colic, the sudden constipation; tearing pains in the intestines; indigestion with
vomiting. Everything eaten turns sour.
Violent vomiting of everything eaten. Chronic gastric catarrh with
vomiting of albuminous mucus and sweetish substance. Vomiting of stercoraceous matter,
blackish blood and green fluid. Sour eructations.
The remedy is slow and insidious; it works continuously; it does not
leave the economy but holds on and establishes a miasm of its own. It, therefore, suits slow
and insidious chronic cases, with no tendency to recovery. Progressive muscular atrophy;
progressive paralysis. Chronic constipation; chronic retention of urine; chronic giving way
of the mind.
Aside from the slowness of the mind, which is a general, the remedy is
full of melancholia, sadness, feeling as if something terrible would happen; that she has
sinned away the day of grace; that she has committed the unpardonable sin. The body and mind
are weak.
"Deep melancholy with timidity and restlessness,"
In the mental state, while he is slow to think, yet in this slow thinking
he does a great amount of thinking; he makes an effort to think. His thoughts trouble him
all night and prevent sleep. Insomnia; sleepless from the continual effort to think.
The mind will not operate, yet the patient is full of imaginations and
emotions. Inability to comprehend and to remember. Now, this progresses from periods of
insomnia to periods of coma and this coma is associated with suppression of urine.
Uraemic coma. Uremia. Perhaps it will fix it in your mind if I tell you
something clinical about it. Some years ago a physician came to me in regard to his wife.
She had been unconscious for two days and had passed no urine for days and the catheter
showed there was none in the bladder. She had quite an array of symptoms but they were
common symptoms.
She had had the slowness for days before, and complained of a sensation
of a continual pulling at the navel, as if a string were drawing it back to the spinal
column, and then the coma came on. In the middle of the night this doctor came to me in
great distress. He said she was pale as death and breathing slow. A single powder of Plumbum high was given, and she passed urine in a few hours, roused up and never
had such an attack again.
Violent spasmodic palpitation of the heart, worse lying on the left side,
with marked anxiety in the cardiac region. Hypertrophy and dilatation of the heart.
Stitching pain in the heart.
Hysterical diathesis hysterical contractures; cramping of the fingers;
hysterical motions convulsions of parts, hands, feet, whole body; an apparent delirium;
cardiac pains; numbness in parts - all hysterical phenomena.
Plumbum produces an
inclination to deceive, to cheat. The Acetate
of lead produced in a woman, who took a little
of it for suicide, a confirmed hysterical state. She would be in a hysterical condition for
hours when any one was looking at her. When she thought no one was near she would get up,
walk about, look in the glass to see how handsome she was, but when she heard a foot on the
steps she would, he on the bed and appear to he unconscious.
She would bear much pricking and you could scarcely tell she was
breathing. Plumbum establishes a hysterical state in the economy; an
inclination to deceive, to feign sickness; to exaggerate one's ills; and it goes to the root
of the evil providing the symptoms agree.
Changeable; continually changing from one thing to another, from one
group of imaginations to another, from one group of emotions to another. The whole remedy is
intensely emotional. While the intellect is slowed down, yet most of the symptoms are
emotional.
Plumbum cures kidney
affections with albumen and sugar in the urine. The urine is dark, scanty, and of high
specific gravity. Retention of urine from lack of sensation that the bladder is full.
Apoplexy. Stupor, when Opium is sufficiently similar to remove the cerebral
congestion which always surrounds the apoplectic clot, Plumbum may follow. Plumbum, Phosphorus and Alumina are three sheet anchors.
They conform to the symptoms often when the first state as been like Opium. The paralysis of
muscles, the paralytic weakness of one side of the body, or single parts of the body, show
its relation to such cases.
There is another feature of the upper part of the body, of the head and
mind, which is not clear in the books and which is worthy of your attention. The mental
symptoms, the emotional symptoms, and the head symptoms are greatly exaggerated by any
exertion, especially exertion in the open air.
While walking in the open air the patient becomes hot in the head, pale
in the face, and cold in the extremities, hands and feet cold as ice, as if dead; and if he
continues the exertion the face becomes fairly cadaveric. Persons cannot exercise and
continue it without cold extremities.
An irritable brain; pain in the base of the brain, back of the neck, in
the nerve centers. Cold extremities from exertion; yet can do considerable mental exertion
without becoming cold. It is from physical exertion like walking in the open air. Paroxysmal
pain in the limbs, evening and night; better by pressure and worse from motion.
Lightning-like pains. Jerking and trembling of all the limbs.
The Plumbum patient is cold and emaciated, needs much clothing even in
warm weather, not about the head, but over the body. Extremities cold, blue, numb and
emaciated. Sweat on the extremities, and on the feet it is stinking. Feet and toes withered
like a washerwoman's hands. Toes blistered; blisters between the toes, smarting.
Ulcerations. Molecular death and even gangrene of the skin of the fingers and toes. Calluses
about the feet, corns and bunions.
With the chronic affection of the head there is contraction of the
muscles of the back and neck; drawing and twitching indicating meningeal troubles; spasmodic
jerking.
"Swelling of the submaxillary and sublingual glands."
Convulsions often like tetanus, with lockjaw.
"Distinct blue line along the margins of the gums."
"Gums pale, swollen, show a lead-colored line; blue, purple, or
brown; painful with hard tubercles."
"Tongue dry, brown, cracked; coated yellow or green; dry, red,
glazed in chronic gastritis."
Breath foetid, dryness of mouth, ulceration, aphthae.
"Sensation of a plug in the throat; globus hystericus."
"Paralysis of throat and inability to swallow," a paralysis of
the oesophagus.
The stomach has no ability to digest food. Assimilation is also
destroyed. Pains in the abdomen, tearing, like colic, doubling the patient up. Constant
sensation of pulling at the navel as by a string; as if the abdomen were drawn in. At times
the abdomen does become concave, as if the abdomen and back were too close together.
Constipation is a common and well known feature. The constipation, colic,
and abdominal symptoms are commonly associated.
"Constipated stools, hard, lumpy like sheep’s dung; with urging
and terrible pain from constriction or spasms of anus; knotty faeces in form of balls."
No matter how much straining he cannot expel the stool.
"Constriction of intestines; navel and anus violently
retracted."
"Excessive pain in abdomen radiating from thence to all parts of the
body."
"Severe colic; contracted abdomen; bends backward, motor nerves most
affected."
Rumbling and flatulence. Impaction of faeces. Vaginismus in keeping with
the spasmodic action.
"Inclination to take strange attitudes and positions in bed."
"Anemia, chlorosis, emaciation, muscular atrophy, wandering pains,
dropsical swellings, yellow skin, jaundice."
Burning in ulcers is in keeping with the remedy
everywhere.
