CHINA :

-PHYLLIS SPEIGHT

Characteristics Extreme debility after excessive loss of fluids and consequent debility, (diarrhoea, vomiting, haemorrhage etc.) after prolonged strain and overwork. Great flatulence with sensation as if the abdomen were packed full; not ameliorated by eructations or passing flatus. Excessive sensitiveness, especially to light touch, draught of air. Hard pressure relieves. Worse every other day. Sweats on least exertion.

Mind:Great irritability worse at night.

Head: Pain congestive, throbbing, like many hammers on temples, better hard pressure.

Cinchona Officinalis.

Mouth: Bitter taste, even water tastes bitter.

Stomach: Total loss of appetite. Full feeling after the least food, but belching only ameliorates temporarily. Digestion is slow and China is one of the most flatulent remedies.

Stools:These patients are prone to diarrhoea which is very debilitating. Stools acrid; undigested; watery; bilious; black; painless; profuse and putrid.

Modalities: Worse slight touch; least draught of air; every other day. Better hard pressure.

China is given mostly after loss of fluids when there is very great debility and other complaints there may be profuse haemorrhages with faintness, loss of sight and ringing in the ears.

The modalities are: worse slight touch, least draught of air, every other day better by hard pressure on the painful part.

When a patient is very debilitated, think of China and on taking the case you will very often find loss of vital fluids' such as profuse leucorrhoea.

China is a very flatulent remedy and should be compared with Carbo veg., and Lycopodium. Guernsey states Uncomfortable distention of the abdomen with a wish to belch up, or a sensation as if the abdomen were packed full, not in the least relieved by eructation'. The impaired digestion is shown by a tendency to diarrhoea especially from eating fruit.

Note the watery stools which are painless.

This is the drug which Hahnemann first proved to discover on what principle it so acted and the following is part of his picture of China:

A very small dose of China acts for hardly a couple of days but a large dose, such as employed in ordinary practice, acts for several weeks, if not got rid of by vomiting or diarrhoea and thus ejected. If the homoeopathic law be right as it incontestably is right without any exception, and is derived from pure observation of nature, viz: that medicines can only easily, rapidly and permanently cure, where the disease symptoms match the drug disease-symptoms discovered by the administration of the drug to healthy persons, then we find, on a consideration of the symptoms of China, that this medicine is adapted for but few diseases, but that where it is accurately indicated, owing to the immense power of its action, one single, very small dose will often effect a marvellous cure.'

He goes on to say I say Cure, and by this I mean a recovery undisturbed by after sufferings. Have practitioners of the ordinary stamp another, and to me unknown idea of what constitutes cure? Will they call cures the suppression by this drug of agues for which bark is unsuited ? I know that almost all periodic diseases, and almost all agues, even such as are not suited to China must be suppressed and lose their periodic character by this powerful drug administered usually in enormous and oft-repeated doses;but are the poor sufferers thereby really cured? Has not their previous disease undergone a transformation into another and worse disease? Thus, they no longer complain of their paroxysms appearing on certain days and at certain hours but note the early complexion of their puffy faces, the dullness of their eyes! See how oppressed is their breathing, how hard and distended is their epigastrium, how tensely swollen their loins, how miserable their appetite, how perverted their taste, how oppressed and painful their stomachs by all food, how undigested and abnormal their faecal evacuations, how anxious dreamful and unrefreshing their sleep. Look how weary, how joyless, how dejected, hoe irritably sensitive or stupid they are, as they drag themselves about.'

And this is what China in small doses can and does cure.

China has proved of great value to patients who after an attack of influenza crawl about feeling that they would never be well again.

CARBO VEG. Characteristics: Desire for air wants to be fanned. Burning internally cold externally. Skin cold; cold sweat. State of collapse. (Sometimes from surgical shock). Flatulence.

Mind: Timid; slowness; sluggish; lazy.

Head: Vertigo after slightest movement. Pain pressive, worse warmth of bed. Pain from being overheated. Pain burning and throbbing worse breathing deeply. Pains better eructations.

Nose:Nose feels cold.

Face: Face flushes after drinking wine.

Stomach: Weak digestion with enormous production of flatulence, better eructations. Excessive accumulations of gas, feels full and tense. Flatulence worse milk. Flatulent colic worse lying. Symptoms worse wine; worse warmth, worse evening.

Respiratory: Dry, hacking cough, distressing patient. Cough worse on entering cold air from warm room. Rawness and soreness of larynx; hoarseness; worse evening; worse warm, moist weather. Loss of voice worse morning.

Limbs: Rheumatic pains better eructations. Feet and hands cold; knees cold.

Modalities: Patient is better from eructations and from being fanned. Worse morning on waking. Perspiration copious and cold.

This is a Corpse reviver and in desperate cases of collapse, where the patient is icy cold and demands to be fanned, it has saved life.