Potassium Iodide. Kali hydroiodicum. KI. Solution. Trituration.
Clinical
Actinomycosis. *Aneurism. *Anhidrosis. *Bright’s disease. *Bubo. *Bunions. *Cancer. *Caries. *Cold. Condylomata. Consumption. Cough. Croup. Debility. Dropsy. Ears, otalgia, tinnitus. Emaciation. Erythema nodosum. *Eyes, affections of,* cysts on lids of. *Fibroma. *Glandular swellings. Gonorrhoea. Gout. *Gumma. Haemorrhages. Hay fever. *Housemaid’s knee.** Influenza. Inter-menstrual haemorrhage. *Joints, affections of. Laryngitis. *Liver, diseases of.* Locomotor ataxy. Lumbago. Lungs, hepatization of, Oedema of. Menstruation, disorders of. *Neuralgia. Nodes.* Noises in ears. Nystagmus. *Odour of body, abnormal. Oedema glottidis. *Pancreatitis. *Paralysis. Pleurisy. *Prostate, affections of. *Rheumatism. Rickets. *Rupia. Sciatica. Scrofula. Small-pox Spine, Pott’s curvature of. Spleen. *Syphilis. Tic-douloureux. Tongue, neuralgia of. Tumors. *Ulcers. *Wens.
Characteristics
*Kali-i. is one of the few medicines of whose definite action reliance can be placed in ordinary practice. In active secondary syphilis, in ulcers of the constitutional type, and in cases of subacute rheumatism, *Iodide of Potassium will generally do what is expected of it. That its action is specific is generally admitted, and *specific is the same thing as *homoeopathic. I rarely find occasion to use it in lower attenuations than the 30th. The history of the drug in relation to syphilis is both interesting and important. As we should naturally expect, *K-i., being anti-syphilitic, is also antidotal to mercury. Experience seems to show that it is those patients who are charged with the disease or with mercury, or both together, who can support the massive doses of *K-i. which are sometimes given. But the salt is often given as a diagnostic, and then, if care is not taken, there is great danger to the patient. I have seen patients irretrievably reduced in strength by *K-i. given on the supposition that they were syphilitic. I have recorded in my Diseases of the Heart (p. 165) the case of a gentleman, 74, who had a psoriasis-like skin affection for which he consulted a homoeopath. His health remained excellent, but his skin did not get well, and he consulted a well-known skin and syphilis specialist, who at once pronounced it to be syphilitic, though the patient denied that he had ever had the disease. Massive doses of *K-i. were given, and the skin disease disappeared in a fortnight. But the patient was practically killed. He cried like a child without knowing why. He lost over a stone in weight. He could eat very little, and every thing caused distress and a full sensation. Palpitation came on at all times, and kept him awake at night. The pulse was a mere flicker in the attacks, and was irregular, intermittent, or very frequent in the intervals between. It was in this state that he came to me, but the powers of reaction were destroyed, and nothing that I gave made any impression. He left London, and died very shortly afterwards. Here is another case of *K-i. poisoning, when unbalanced by antidotal drugs or disease. It is related by Jonathan Hutchinson. The patient, a man of 26, had been treated with 5-grain doses of *K-i. at a hospital for a swelling in the groin which was diagnosed as syphilis. There was no skin eruption at that time, but shortly one did appear, and was thought to confirm the diagnosis. The dose was increased to 10 grains at the end of the week, ten days later to 15 grains, and still later to 20 grains. This was kept up from July 23rd to October 9th. Mercury was then substituted, but this made no change, and the patient, who was getting worse the whole time, died of exhaustion in a fortnight. The last part of the time he was in the London Hospital, to which he had been removed, and it was there found, on careful inquiry, that no evidence of syphilis existed. This was his condition when he arrived in the London Hospital a few days before his death: There was a generalized skin eruption, consisting of swellings varying in size from small papules to enormous tuberous masses, some of the latter being ulcerated. The swellings attained the greatest size of face, legs, and upper chest. A coloured plate illustrating the case was published, showing the tumors to be dark purplish red in colour. The antidotal action of syphilis to *K-i. is further borne out by the observation of Fournier (Allen’ Encyclop, Appendix), who noted the occurrence of purpura in patients under its influence. But it only occurred in an intense form in persons who had no signs of syphilis, and to whom it was given “only as a preventive.” But the anti-syphilitic relation of K-i. only takes in a small part of its power as it is known to homoeopaths. Though it has not been extensively proved, the recorded and attested effects of overdosing are numerous enough. P. Jousset (*L’ Art Medical, October, I899, 241) has referred to Rilliet’s experiments with the drug on the healthy. He experimented on twenty-eight persons, mixing their table-salt with one ten-thousandth part of *K-i., so that in two years each would have taken 40 centigrammes. Here is one of the cases: A man, 45, of very strong constitution, never had any illness. At the end of seven months he began to waste, had palpitation, became sad and melancholy, had fixed ideas, weakness, indefinably malaise in the lower abdomen with constipation. The iodized salt was accidentally suspended during January and February, and he completely recovered. Returning home in the month of August, he commenced the salt again, and the same symptoms returned with much more intensity than before: notable and progressive wasting with voracious appetite, trembling, palpitations, fixed look, yellow complexion, above all the moral disturbances were very pronounced: agitated even to tears, irritability, disgust and discouragement, agitated sleep. It took two months for him to recover this time. The record says that the man’s health was again “completely restored,” but this is not quite correct. After the first poisoning, although complete health was apparently regained, there was left an extreme susceptibility to the drug’s action, so that a much shorter period of poisoning was required to reproduce the symptoms in a greatly aggravated degree. And two years after this, although health was apparently perfectly restored, a visit of twenty-one days to the seaside nearly cost the man his life. The same symptoms reappeared. He was reduced to a skeleton, the appetite being all the time exaggerated. In walking he was almost bent double, trembling and out of breath at the slightest movement. Pulse weak and very frequent. Finally he was compelled to keep his bed, and had great difficulty in reaching his home in Geneva. There he promptly got better. But in spite of the apparent recovery a very profound change in the organism had occurred, and from this experience ” worse at the seaside” must be numbered among the conditions of *K-i. Two others, both women of sixty, had the same symptoms as this man, one at the end of two months, the other at the end of four. On the rest of the twenty-eight experimented upon no symptoms were observed. Joussett quotes from the same authority experience with the same salt in the treatment of goitre. A man of fifty had a round, indolent, non-fluctuating goitre on the right side of the neck, the size of an orange, of very slow growth. He took every morning, fasting, a spoonful of water containing one gramme (15 1/2 grains) of *K-i. From the first day of the treatment he felt an indefinable anguish. The sixteenth day there was increased malaise and considerable wasting, and the patient threw his portion into the lake. Two days later his doctor found all the grave symptoms of the poisoning, but the *goitre was three parts gone. The patient was sent to the country and was ill all the summer, but completely recovered in the winter, the *goitre having returned to its original size. This experience was repeated on three other patients, but a goitrous dog was more fortunate. Two centigrammes (gr. 1/6 ) was sufficient to produce all the symptoms in him, and his goitre disappeared and did not return when he recovered from the poisoning. In this connection may be mentioned the power of the salt over tumors of other kinds. Enlarged lymphatic glands, syphilitic nodes, condylomata, and tumors of the breast and uterus have been removed by it. This has occurred under the action of the crude salt for the most part, and the general explanation is that the solvent action of the drug is most powerfully excited on the more lowly organized new tissues. But this would not apply to all cases. We have seen in Hutchinson’s case that *K-i. can produce tumors as well as remove them, but Jules Gaudy has put on record another experience (journal Belge d’homoeopathie., vi. 57). Several cases of abdominal tumour were successfully treated by him with *K-i. in 3x, 10 and 15 centesimal triturations. Two of these had been unsuccessfully treated with the crude salt before coming under his care. This they could not tolerate on account of loss of appetite and irritation of the mucous membrane of mouth and throat. One of these patients had a large tumour on the level of the great curvature of the stomach extending on both sides, plunging into the abdominal cavity and extending into the pelvis, it was adherent and difficult to define. She had a jaundiced, dirty- looking skin, and loss of appetite, and mostly vomited her food. A suspicion of latent syphilis led Gaudy to the remedy, which was perfectly tolerated in attenuation, though not in the crude. Health rapidly improved, and in three months there was hardly any tumour to be discovered. The remains of it evidently depended from the epiploon. The second case was very similar in nature to this. Cooper reports this case: ” Womb packed with fibroids, pain in right inguinal region on exertion, spirits depressed, tinnitus like buzzing of flies, constant tired, sleepy feeling down the limbs, hot burning feet, though sometimes intense shivering all over, pains in the breasts, which are tender, unable to go long without food, constant distension as from flatus, sinking at scrobiculus cordis at 11 a.m., sleep dreamy, all these symptoms moved away under *K-i. 30, leaving the patient in absolute comfort. “Cooper adds this note: “There is much resemblance
