Like so many other articles of
diet, Sugar may be a poison and a medicine as well as a food. Sugar preserves food, as salt
does; and both sugar and salt have produced scurvy. Cases of scurvy-rickets in bottle-fed
children have been traced to excess of sugar in their food; and the exclusion of sugar from
the dietary of the gouty, rheumatic, and the diabetic, shows the pathogenetic power it is
credited with among practitioners of the present day. Acidity of the stomach and itching at
the anus are common effects of taking too much Sugar. Lippe published "Fragmentary
provings and clinical observations obtained principally from S. Bœnninghausen and S. E.
Bute, who proved the 30th potency on himself" (Allen). To these symptoms have been
added others observed by Swan on a patient who accidentally discovered, after twenty-five
years of suffering, that the cause of his trouble was Sugar.
All the symptoms disappeared when he abstained from sugar in food or drink, and only
reappeared when he took it again by way of experiment. Then, from two to four days after
taking sugar, the same train of symptoms invariably occurred in this order: (1) A burning at pit of stomach. (2)
A white coat on tongue, so thick as to cause stiffness of it. (3)
Sharp burning pains run up from kidneys to shoulders, passing under scapulæ. (4) Pains in bones from head to foot, causing a rigidity of the
muscles so that it was impossible to rise from bed till he had been rubbed. (5) Chill commencing in small of back and spreading up and down.
Severe headache and occasional vomiting with the chill. Fever followed with headache, morbid
hunger, and a hectic flush. (6) Increased urine, strong
odour, white sediment. (7) Great pain in kidneys. (8) Constipation. (9)
Sleeplessness. (10) Œdema of feet and ankles. (11) Weakness of legs, as if paralysed, causing staggering. (12) Painful jactitation of feet and legs during the burning in
the Stomach. (13) Oppression, slight cough, profuse
cream-like expectoration, very offensive, cold. Sac. a.
10m and 5m cured him of some remaining symptoms, and the 41m enabled him to eat sugar with
impunity. Swan also reports (Org. iii. 342) this case:
Miss L. was continually eating candies, of which she was very fond, till her digestive
organs were affected. A few doses of Sac. a. 30m changed
her taste so that she ate no more, and could not even bear the sight of them. This case was
also cured with Sac. off.: "Vomiting bile, < in night and at 1 a.m.; old-standing dyspepsia, milk, eggs,
and bread being the only food tolerated; great longing for sugar, which > the symptoms." Farrington traces a great similarity
between Sac. off. and Calc.
Sac. off. is indicated, he says, in children who are large-limbed, fat, and
bloated, with a tendency to dropsy. It has produced opacity of the cornea, and ought to cure
it. The children are dainty and capricious; care nothing for substantial food, but want
little "nick-nacks"; always cross and whining, and, if old enough, are insolent,
and do not care to occupy themselves in any way. Everything too much trouble. H. C. Allen
relates (H. P., x. 478) a case of opacity of cornea
cured with Sac. a.; and with the same remedy in 2m
potency he cured swelling round the ankles following rheumatism. According to Lippe,
black-and-tan terrier dogs that eat sugar go blind. The cataract and amblyopia of diabetics
are well known. Here, again, Salt and Sugar meet: Burnett has shown in his Supersalinity of the Blood that excess of salt in food has been
an important factor in the production of cataract. The symptoms are <
in early morning. < From anger. > In erect position (dyspnœa).
