Natrum Muriaticum


James Tyler Kent describes the symptoms of the homeopathic medicine Natrum Muriaticum in great detail and compares it with other homeopathy remedies. …


Generals and aspect: Salt is so common an article of diet that it has been assumed that it could be of no use in medicine.

This is only the opinion of men who, operate entirely on the tissues. There are no constitutional effects from crude salt.

One may find an individual growing thin with all the symptoms of salt; he is taking salt in great quantities, but digesting none of it. Salt will be found in the stool, for it does not enter into the life. There is a Natr. mur. inanition, a starving for salt. The same is true of lime. Children can get plenty of lime from their food and that is better when the salt or the lime is given in such shape that it cannot be resisted by the internal man – aimed not at the house he lives in, but at the individual himself-then the bone, salt inanition, the Natr. mur. inanition, will soon pass away.

We do not with our small dose supply the salt that the system needs, but we cure the internal disease, we turn into order the internal physical man, and then the tissues get salt enough from the food. Drugs must all be administered in suitable form. We may need to go higher and higher until the secret spring is touched.

Natr. mur. is a deep acting, long acting remedy. It takes a wonderful hold of the economy, making changes that are lasting when given in potentized doses.

A great deal is presented that can be seen by looking at the patient, so that we say: this looks like a Natr. mur. patient. Experienced physicians learn to classify patients by appearance. The skin is shiny, pale, waxy, looks as if greased. There is a wonderful prostration of a peculiar kind. Emaciation, weakness, nervous prostration, nervous irritability.

Mind: There is a long chain of mental symptoms; hysterical condition of the mind and body; weeping alternating with laughing; irresistible laughing at unsuitable times; prolonged, spasmodic laughter.

This will be followed by tearfulness, great sadness, joylessness. No matter how cheering the circumstances are she cannot bring herself into the state of being joyful. She is benumbed to impressions, easily takes on grief, grieves over nothing.

Unpleasant occurrences are recalled that she may grieve over them. Consolation aggravated the state of the mind – the melancholy, the tearfulness, sometimes brings on anger. She appears to bid for sympathy and is mad when it is given.

Headache comes on with this melancholy. She walks the floor in rage. She is extremely forgetful; cannot cast up accounts; is unable to meditate; forges what she was going to say; loses the thread of what she is hearing or reading. There is a great prostration of the mind.

Unrequited affection brings on complaints. She is unable to control her affections and falls in love with a married man. She knows that it is foolish, but lies awake with love for him. She falls in love with a coachman. She knows that she is unwise, but cannot help it. In cases of this kind Natr. mur. will turn her mind into order, and she will look back and wonder why she was so silly. This remedy belongs to hysterical girls.

In a mental state where Ignatia temporarily benefits the symptoms, but does not cure, its chronic Natr. mur. should be given. It is as well to give Natr. mur. at once if there is an underlying constitutional state too deep for Ignatia

Modalities: Aversion to bread, to fats and rich things.

The Natr. mur. patient is greatly disturbed by excitement, is extremely emotional. The whole nervous economy is in a state of fret and irritation, < from noise, the slamming of a door, the ringing of a bell, the firing of a pistol, < music.

The pains are stitching, electric-like shocks, convulsive jerkings of the limbs on falling asleep, twitchings, shooting pains. She is oversensitive to all sorts of influences, is excitable, emotional, intense.

Complaints come on in the warm room, worse in the house, she wants the open air. The mental complaints are > in the open air. She takes cold easily from sweating, but is generally > in the open air, though worse on getting heated; < by sufficient exertion to heat up, but > by moderate exertion in the cold air.

Both Natr. carb. and Natr. mur. have the general nervous tension of Natrum, but one is a chilly patient, the other warm, blooded.

Face: The face is sickly looking, the skin greasy, shiny, sallow, yellow, often chlorotic, covered with vesicular eruptions around the edges of the hair, the ears and back of the neck.

There are scaly and squamous eruptions, with great itching, oozing a watery fluid, or sometimes dry. An exfoliation takes place, a shining surface is left. In the meatus, scales form, and peel off, leaving an oozing surface.

Watery vesicles form about the lips and wings of the nose, about the genitals and anus. Vesicular eruptions, white, oozing a watery fluid, come and go. Great itching of the skin is present,

The skin looks waxy, dropsical. There is great emaciation, the skin looking dry, withered, shrunken. An infant looks like a little old man. There is a down on the face that passes away when improvement sets in. Emaciation takes place from above downward.

The collar-bones become prominent and the neck looks scrawny, but the hips and lower limbs remain plump and round. Lycopodium also has emaciation from above downward. The directions of remedies will often enable us to distinguish one from another.

Discharges: The characteristic discharge from the mucous membranes is watery or thick whitish, like the white of an egg.

There is a marked coryza with a watery discharge, but the constitutional state has thick, white discharges. He hawks out a thick, white discharge in the morning. There are gluey oozings from die eyes. From the ears flows a thick, white, gluey discharge. The leucorrhoea is white and thick.

With the gonorrhoea the discharge has existed a long time and become gleety. There is smarting m the urethra only after urination.

Head: The headaches are awful; dreadful pains; bursting, compressing, as if in a vise; the head feels as if the skull would be crushed in. The pains are attended with hammering and throbbing. Pain like little hammers in the head on beginning to move.

Hammering pains in the head on waking in the morning.

The pain comes on in the latter part of sleep. There is great nervousness during the first part of the night; she falls asleep late and awakes with hammering in the head. There are also headaches beginning at 10 to 11 A.M., lasting until 3 P.M. or evening.

The headaches are periodical, every day, or third day, or fourth day. Headaches of those living in malarial districts, > from sleep; the patient must go to bed and be perfectly quiet, > from sweating, headaches associated with intermittent fever.

During the chill it seemed as though the head would burst; he is delirious and drinks large quantities of cold water. There is no relief to the head until after the sweat. Sometimes all the symptoms are relieved by the sweat except the headache.

In another form of headache; the greater the pain the more the sweat; sweating does not relieve; the forehead is cold, covered with a cold sweat. When the head is covered warmly he is > moving about in the open air.

Headache due to disturbance of vision where there is inability to focus rapidly enough. Headache < from noise.

Headache involving the whole back of the head and even going down the spine in troubles following the brain diseases, hydrocephalus.

Spine: In spinal troubles, when there is great sensitiveness to pressure an irritable spine.

The vertebrae are sensitive and there is a great deal of aching along the spine. Coughing aggravates the pain in the spine, also walking makes it worse, but it is > from lying on something hard, or pressing the back up against something hard; they may sit with a pillow or the hand pressed against the back. In menstrual troubles, you find the woman lying with some hard object under the spine.

A general nervous trembling pervades the body. There is jerking of the muscles, trembling of the limbs, inability to keep the limbs still, as in Zincum.

Stomach and liver: The stomach and liver are closely related.

The stomach is distended with flatus. After eating there is a lump in the stomach. It seems to take a long time for food to digest. < from eating. Whitish, slimy mucus is vomited attended with relief.

There is great thirst for cold water, sometimes there is relief from drinking, sometimes the thirst is unquenchable. We find fullness in the region of the liver with stitching, tearing pains.

The bowels are distended with gas. There is slowing down of the action of the bowels, the stool being very difficult, in hard, agglomerated lumps.

Bladder: There is slowing down of the action of the bladder.

Must wait before the urine will start, and then it comes slowly-dribbles; there is not much force in the flow.

After urination there is a sensation as if more urine remained in the bladder. If anyone is present he cannot pass urine, cannot pass it in a public place.

There is also continued urging, he must pass the urine often.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.

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