The Realm of Arsenicum in Surgery
- C. E. Fisher, M. D.,American Institute of Homoeopathy,
Under modern surgical methods, asepsis and antisepsis, the field for arsenicum in connection with surgical practice is limited. In fact, it is only where there has been a violation of asepsis that it is called for at all, in connection with the surgery of accident or operation. Given, clean surgery, aseptic surgery, perfect prevention of infection, and it is then only in the strictly arsenicum patient that any surgical disorder will arise that needs the deep medication for which arsenicum stands when it stands for anything. For it is a "profound remedy."
But introduce sepsis, whether of the simple, malignant or mixed type, and arsenicum symptoms are very likely to arise. These are cardinal. There can be no mistaking them. There are the prostation, exhaustion, anemia, pallor, restlessness, apprehension, anxiety, perspiration, hypocratic countenance, etc., of arsenicum almost always. I rarely find the so-called typical arsenicum thirst, "desire for small quantities often," yet it is occasionally met with, and when present the call is all the louder for this remedy. But its absence is no contradiction if the other arsenicum symptoms are in evidence.
Sepsis has chills, or chilly sensations, hectic, either hot or cold sweatings, diarrhea, debility, anguish. Arsenicum has all of these. In sepsis the crises are likely to occur after mid-night, when the vital forces are low and nature is asleep, a very characteristic expression for arsenicum.
The restlessness is not of the violent, explosive, vehement aconite type, nor is it in the intolerable restlessness of rhus. It is neither, and yet both, paradoxical as this may seem. It is a restlessness due to apprehension, to a sort of dread, a kind of premonition, as it were. It is the restlessness of anguish, of an indescribable thought, feeling, terror, or something else that the patient is very sick, is likely to die. He cannot keep still if he would. He moves not to be moving, but because he cannot help it. At the same moment instead of there being the frightful tossing of the acute aconite, or the irresistible restlessness, and throwing of one's self about as with rhus, the arsenicum subject keeps up his little jerkings and shiftings while anguished, despairing and knowing not what is about to happen. And it is almost always either after midnight or in the early afternoon that this restlessness and anguish occur.
In sepsis calling for arsenicum the discharges are foul, the diarrhoea fetid, the pus thin and watery, also foul-smelling, the wound unhealthy. Debility is the characteristic, pallor the complexion. General feebleness of circulation and physical reaction leads on to dropsical accumulations in the tissue, as under the eyes, in the extremities of the lower limbs, the backs of the hands, etc.
With these characteristics arsenicum is a tower of strength in the sepsis of surgery. - C. E. Fisher, M. D., in Progress.
But introduce sepsis, whether of the simple, malignant or mixed type, and arsenicum symptoms are very likely to arise. These are cardinal. There can be no mistaking them. There are the prostation, exhaustion, anemia, pallor, restlessness, apprehension, anxiety, perspiration, hypocratic countenance, etc., of arsenicum almost always. I rarely find the so-called typical arsenicum thirst, "desire for small quantities often," yet it is occasionally met with, and when present the call is all the louder for this remedy. But its absence is no contradiction if the other arsenicum symptoms are in evidence.
Sepsis has chills, or chilly sensations, hectic, either hot or cold sweatings, diarrhea, debility, anguish. Arsenicum has all of these. In sepsis the crises are likely to occur after mid-night, when the vital forces are low and nature is asleep, a very characteristic expression for arsenicum.
The restlessness is not of the violent, explosive, vehement aconite type, nor is it in the intolerable restlessness of rhus. It is neither, and yet both, paradoxical as this may seem. It is a restlessness due to apprehension, to a sort of dread, a kind of premonition, as it were. It is the restlessness of anguish, of an indescribable thought, feeling, terror, or something else that the patient is very sick, is likely to die. He cannot keep still if he would. He moves not to be moving, but because he cannot help it. At the same moment instead of there being the frightful tossing of the acute aconite, or the irresistible restlessness, and throwing of one's self about as with rhus, the arsenicum subject keeps up his little jerkings and shiftings while anguished, despairing and knowing not what is about to happen. And it is almost always either after midnight or in the early afternoon that this restlessness and anguish occur.
In sepsis calling for arsenicum the discharges are foul, the diarrhoea fetid, the pus thin and watery, also foul-smelling, the wound unhealthy. Debility is the characteristic, pallor the complexion. General feebleness of circulation and physical reaction leads on to dropsical accumulations in the tissue, as under the eyes, in the extremities of the lower limbs, the backs of the hands, etc.
With these characteristics arsenicum is a tower of strength in the sepsis of surgery. - C. E. Fisher, M. D., in Progress.
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