Wood Charcoal.
Introduction
FROM the earliest times, Hahnemann tells us, physicians considered charcoal to be non-medicinal, and powerless.
Then came the curious discovery of the chemical properties of wood charcoal in especial, its power of removing from putrid and mouldy substances their bad smell, and preserving fluids from fetid odours. Then physicians began to employ it externally. In fetor of the breath they caused the mouth to be rinsed with powdered charcoal, and applied powdered charcoal to putrid ulcers, and in both cases the fetor was immediately removed. Again, administered internally in autumn dysentery it removed the evil odour of the stools.
But, he tells us, this is merely a chemical use of wood charcoal, which takes away the foul odour of putrid water when mixed with it in coarse lumps, and does so most effectually in coarse fragments.
But this was merely a chemical, not dynamical employment, penetrating the inner vital sphere. The mouth rinsed only remained free from fetor for a few hours. The old ulcer was not improved, and the fetor, chemically removed for the moment, always recurred. The powder taken in autumn dysentery removed the fetor of the stools only for a short time; the disease remained, and the disgusting smell of the stools soon returned.
Pulverized wood charcoal, he says, can exercise almost none other than a chemical action. And a considerable quantity of wood charcoal may be swallowed without producing the slightest alteration in health.
And yet Carbo vegetabilis is one of our most powerful and precious remedies: at times “a veritable corpse-reviver”, as one has seen : and it is one of the striking proofs of the value of Hahnemann’s great discovery in regard to the liberation of power, in inert substances, by dynamization or sub-division of particles.
He puts it thus. “It is only by prolonged trituration of the charcoal (as of many other dead and apparently powerless substances) with a non-medicinal substance, such as sugar of milk, that its inner, concealed, and, so to speak, slumbering medicinal power can be awakened and brought to life,” and he found that a minute quantity of the “millionth-fold power- attenuation, ingested, produced great and medicinal effects and derangement of the human health”. He did not advise the use of a stronger potentization than the millionth-fold (the third cent. potency). And his provings were made with this “Million-fold power-attenuation.”
KENT says of Carbo veg. “It is a comparatively inert substance made medicinal and powerful, and converted into a great healing agent, by grinding it fine enough. By dividing it sufficiently, it becomes similar to the nature of sickness and cures sick folks. It is a great monument to Hahnemann. It is quite inert in the crude form and the true healing powers are not brought out until it is sufficiently potentized. A broad-acting, deep-acting, long-acting medicine. It affects the vascular system especially; more particularly the venous side of the economy–the heart and the whole venous system. Sluggishness is a good word to think of when examining the pathogenesis of Carbo veg.: sluggishness, laziness, turgescence. Everything about the economy is sluggish, lazy, full, distended, swollen, puffed. The hands are puffed; the veins are puffed; the body feels full and turgid: the head feels full the limbs feel full, so that the patient wants to put the feet up to let the blood run out. The veins are lazy, relaxed and paralysed. Vaso-motor paralysis varicose veins.
“The mental state, like the physical, is slow. Slow to think; sluggish; stupid; lazy. The limbs are clumsy the skin is dusky. The capillary circulation engorged. The face is purple and dark.”
Carbo veg. has BURNING–and COLDNESS. Burnings in veins, in capillaries, in head, itching and burning of skin. “Burning in inflamed parts. Internal burning, and external coldness. Coldness with feeble circulation, with feeble heart. Icy coldness. Hands and feet cold: knees cold: nose cold: ears cold: tongue cold. Coldness in stomach with burning. Covered with cold sweat: collapse with cold breath, cold tongue, cold face. (Camph.) Looks like a cadaver, yet in all these conditions the patient wants to be fanned.”–Kent.
Or, as NASH has it. “Vital force nearly exhausted; complete collapse. Blood stagnates in the capillaries; venous turgescence; surface cold and blue.
“In the last stages of disease, with copious cold sweat, cold breath, cold tongue, voice lost, this remedy will save a life.”
One has seen that–in one extreme case, in especial: the sort of case one does not forget, and which one quotes to show what Carbo veg. can do in the most desperate conditions, where the symptoms agree. It was a small girl with heart disease, and an acute exacerbation supervening that was abruptly ending her young life. She had a pneumonia with pleural effusion, an endocarditis with pericardial effusion, and one morning, when the Physician was going his round accompanied by several other doctors, she was found lying forward on the supports that had had to be provided, because she could not rest otherwise, cold, white, unconscious; just alive, because she was still giving the infrequent sharp gasps of the dying. Carbo veg. (I think 200) was quickly administered, while one of the doctors of wide experience exclaimed, “I’ll eat my hat if that child lives!” But before the ward round was finished she had regained warmth and consciousness–death had passed on! And, under Kali carb. (the complementary remedy, by the way!) she got well, so far as the damaged heart would permit. It is such experiences that have gained for Carbo veg. the name “corpse reviver”.
It is curious and important to note that these Carbo veg. patients even in extremis, with the coldness of death already present, have air-hunger, and want to be fanned.
But apart from such desperate conditions, Carbo veg. is one of the useful remedies of everyday life–where symptoms demand its use.
For instance it is one of the most FLATULENT *For excessive flatulence Carbo animalis seems equally, if not more effective, than Carbo veg. Nothing could be more striking than its prompt relief of flatulent distension after operations on the abdomen. One has seen this more than once. of remedies (Lycopodium, China). Stomach feels full and tense, with great accumulation of flatus: this is worse at night: worse when lying down. In one’s experience there may be belching and belching by the hour, with great distress, and then a dose of Carbo veg, and it all subsides, without any more coming up. We know that vegetable charcoal in the crude state has an extraordinary capacity for absorbing gases–the amounts it can absorb are phenomenal: but one does not expect this strange power to be carried into the realm of the potencies! Explanations may be difficult: but it is facts that count every time. In the same way Carbo veg. in the potencies will banish fetor far more effectually than in the crude form. But here a word of warning. Carbo veg. will work its miracle on flatulence night after night, and will need to do it again and again, night after night–if it is not a Carbo veg. case. Whereas some other drug–perhaps Argentum nit., whose symptoms do correspond to those of the patient, will act curatively, and the condition will not return; certainly not for some thirty days and then not with the same intensity. To the correct remedy the reaction will be curative, not merely palliative.
GUERNSEY tells us that Carbo veg. has also “complaints from obstructed flatulency (may be pains in the head, around the heart or anywhere, which are relieved by the discharge of flatus). Flatus has a putrid and very stinking smell”.
In regard to its stomach conditions, Kent has a telling little paragraph–Kent’s Lecture on Carbo veg. gives a wonderful picture of the drug and its uses! He says: “The Carbo veg. patient has a longing for coffee, acids, sweet and salt things. Aversion to the most digestible and the best kinds of food. Now if I were going to manufacture a Carbo veg. constitution, I would commence with his stomach. If I wanted to produce those varicose veins and the weak venous side of the heart, this fullness and congestion, and flatulence, this disordered stomach and bowels, and head troubles and mind troubles– sluggishness of the whole economy–I would begin and stuff him. I would feed him with fats, I would feed him with sweets, with puddings and pies, and sauce, and all such indigestible trash, and give him plenty of wine–then I would have the Carbo veg. patient. Do we ever have such people to treat? Just as soon as they tell their story you know enough about their lives to know that they are mince pie fiends: they have lived on it for twenty years, and now they come saying, `Oh, doctor, my stomach; just my stomach: if you will simply fix up my stomach.’ He has burning in the stomach, distension of the stomach, constant eructations, flatulence, passing of horribly offensive flatus.”
