Quiz 8

The Materia Medica is so vast, that every time we read a drug from any our books, we find a symptom that we had never seen before.

Allen’s ‘Keynotes of the Leading Remedies’ is a book that we use from the day we join a homeopathic college, and it continues to be of use, years after one graduates and settles down comfortably with a successful practice. It should be noted however that the ‘Allen’s Keynotes’ is not a source book but a mere compilation from other books. Hence, to understand the Materia Medica, one must read the other original reference works.

Here are a few symptoms from the Allen’s Keynotes. Do you know to which remedy they belong? (A new set of symptoms will be put up every month).

Happy quizzing!

1.      Quantity of urine voided is larger than the amount of water drunk.

2.      Dyspnoea: < sitting, after sleep, in room, > dancing or walking rapidly.

3.      Constipation with ineffectual urging > by drinking cold milk.

4.      Backache: must sit up to turn over in bed.

5.      Vomiting of water as soon as it reaches the stomach, food retained longer.

6.      Lack of muscular co-ordination; muscles refuse to obey the will.

7.      Assumes strangest attitudes and positions in bed.

8.      Palpitation: violent, visible and audible, ……...

9.      Cough has a gurgling sound, as if water was being poured from a bottle.

10.  Laughing excites cough and produces profuse mucus in larynx.

11.  Shining glazed appearance of diphtheritic deposit, chancres and ulcers.

12.  Thick, yellow, green, offensive, musty, hard discharge from nose; often ceasing after a meal.

13.  Bad effects: from mountain climbing or ballooning; of stimulants, alcohol, tobacco.

14.  Epistaxis: when coughing; at night during sleep; hangs in a dark clotted string from the nose, like an icicle.

15.  A weak, empty, all-gone sensation in head, chest, stomach and entire abdomen..

16.  Circumscribed red cheeks in afternoon; burning in ears; in bronchitis, pneumonia, phthisis.

17.  Greedily swallows cold water; bites spoon, but remains unconscious.

18.  Mental symptoms appear as physical symptoms disappear and vice versa.

19.  Piles swollen, pain most severe when sitting.

20.  In spring and autumn, when damp weather commences, coughs of children get worse.

Answers:

1. Mercurius;  2. Sepia; 3. Iodium; 4. Nux vomica; 5. Bismuth;  6. Gelsemium; 7. Plumbum; 8. Spigelia; 9. Cuprum metallicum; 10. Argentum metallicum; 11. Lac caninum; 12. Natrum carbonicum; 13. Coca;  14. Mercurius solubilis; 15. Phosphorus; 16. Sanguinaria; 17. Helleborus niger;  18. Platina; 19. Thuja occidentalis; 20. Antimonium tartaricum