Sodium Chloride: Common Salt, potentized.
Introduction
Natrum mur. is one of the drugs introduced and proved by Hahnemann and five of his provers: reproved by the Austrian provers, and by others: the provings being mostly made from the 1st to the 30th (centesimal) potencies.
HAHNEMANN says in regard to SALT. “If it be true that substances which are capable of curing diseases are, on the other hand, capable of producing similar diseases in the healthy organism, it is difficult to comprehend how all nations, even savages and barbarians, should have used salt in large quantities without experiencing any deleterious effects from that mineral. Considering that salt, when ordinarily used, has no pernicious effect upon the organism, we ought not to expect any curative influence from that substance. Nevertheless salt contains the most marvellous curative powers in a latent state.
“The transmutation, by means of the peculiar mode of preparation adopted in homoeopathy, of a substance like salt, which is apparently inert in its crude state, into a heroic medicine, the use of which requires the greatest discrimination, is one of the most convincing proofs, even to the most prejudiced, of the fact that the peculiar processes of trituration and succession resorted to in homoeopathy, bring to light a new world of powers which Nature keeps latent in crude substances. These processes operate, so to say, a new creation.”
But in a footnote he alludes to the fact that even apparently innocent substances, including salt, when taken to excess, may become hurtful.
BURNETT, in one of his brilliant little monographs, takes “NATRUM MURIATICUM as test of the doctrine of Drug Dynamization.” He points out that many doctors accept Hahnemann’s Law only, but regard potentization as irrational and unscientific. But, he says, “our beliefs have nothing to do with truth: disbelieving a thing does not disprove it : in the same way that the presence of nothing but asthetists in the world could not do away with the Supreme Being.” Again, “Drugs, as has been affirmed by many able practitioners, by Hahnemann himself, and as daily and hourly reaffirmed by men of sound science, DO act differently and better when dynamized. In fact many affirm, as did Hahnemann, that the doctrine” (of potentization) “is of transcendental importance; since many serious diseases can only be cured with dynamized drugs, being entirely incurable with the same drug in substantial doses, and therefore altogether incurable, unless with a highly potentized remedy.”
Burnett, “had had no great respect for Natrum mur. as a remedy and had very seldom used it; because how can any sensible man believe that the common condiment, which we ingest almost at every meal, can possibly be of any curative value: especially as some are known to eat salt in considerable quantities every day without any apparent deleterious effect.” While “to believe in salt as a remedy is almost synonymous with believing in the doctrine of drug dynamization, and a belief in this doctrine is extremely repulsive to one’s common sense. Perhaps the proper spirit would be gratitude to a beneficent Creator”, adds Burnett.
Burnett’s “conversion” was thus. He had a patient with very obstinate neuralgia, on which he had exhausted all the neuralgic drugs, as set down for that disease. Being “at the end of his tether”, he sent her to the seaside, and-she came back worse! The neuralgia had been far worse at the sea. He jumped at the idea that it might have been the salty air that had made her worse, and prescribed Natrum mur.6-and cured her promptly. Worse at the seaside was thereafter one of his great indications for Nat. mur. But this also converted him as regards Hahnemann’s claims for Potentization; this and other cases: for had not this patient been eating salt, inhaling salt, with not only no cure, but with, on the contrary, aggravation of symptoms, and lo! potentized salt immediately cured her. Burnett was no fool: with him, Prejudice bowed before Facts. In that little book-Natrum muriaticum, the test of drug dynamization, he gives a number of brilliant cures by potentized salt.
His idea was that, in the same way that an infant gets ample lime salts in its food, yet fails to assimilate enough for its needs till it gets the stimulus of potentized Calcarea; so the hunger of Natrum mur. for salt is a very real hunger; the patient is not assimilating enough to satisfy his tissue needs, till he gets the stimulus of the potentized drug.
In regard to this veritable transmutation of Sodium chloride from a common ailment into a powerful remedial agent by potentization, one remembers that the late Dr. Molson used to tell how he got the Coastguard at Brighton “because they had nothing to do” to go on triturations Natrum mur., to produce higher and higher potencies. Instead of the usual three triturations which reduce a substance to one in a million, and by which the most intractable substances, becoming soluble in water and alcohol, are easily run up into the higher potencies, he found that by such repeated trituration his Natrum mur. became so intensely- almost explosively-active, that at last he was positively afraid to administer it.
Dr. Burnett, when first experimenting with Nat. mur. used to take frequent pinches of the potentized drug, to see what it could do. Inter alia it opened a crack in the middle of his lower lip!- a thing he had never had before, and never had again after discontinuing his pinches. It was his habit to thus crudely prove remedies that interested him, on himself.
Different persons realize, or visualize the self-same drug in different ways, according to their experiences of its different powers and uses. It is therefore wise to study drugs as described by different writers; and for that reason we try to give the “cream of a whole library” in regard to any drug we are trying to picture. One finds one point emphasized by one exponent, one by another.
Burnett’s Natrum mur. was a very chilly patient, with especial coldness of knees: coldness of legs, knees to feet. This chilliness over and over again disappeared after taking Natrum mur.
Worse at the seaside.
Deep crack centre of lower lip.
Unconquerable sleepiness after dinner in the evening.
Muddy urine, or urine very pale and limpid. He found that Nat. mur. would clear the urine; or, in curing other troubles, would, in eliminating, cause the urine to become thick and cloudy.
Lachrymation with headache. Great lachrymation very characteristic.
MALARIA; and ailments since malaria and quinine. With Nat. mur., he cured fever and ague in a sailor, uncured by the salt provisions of those days, and by sea air. It needed the potentized drug to put him right.
I believe that it is to Dr.Compton Burnett that we owe this all- important use of Natrum muriaticum in malaria and quinine poisoning, even of years ago. It is one of the precious little tips that save the situation again and again for us.
Natrum mur. has “fiery zigzags” before headache (Sepia, etc.).
Emaciation, especially about the clavicles and upper parts of the body. (Lycopodium)
Face shines greasily.
Nat. mur. has very marked periodicity. In malaria, the chill starts at 10 a.m.; or 9-10; 10-11 a.m., and the drugs has other very definite hours for chill, headache, neuralgia, etc.
A Burnett tip which one has verified, -cases of apparent phthisis in patients who have had malaria and quinine, may clear up astonishingly on Nat. mur.
Mentally Nat. mur. is IRRITABLE:- hates fuss and consolation:- weeps :-weeps more, or flies into a passion if consoled.
Nat. mur. tries to remember old disagreeables-old insults-for the purpose of brooding over them and being miserable.
The Lycopodium mentality gives way on the intellectual side, that of Nat. mur. on the emotional and sentimental side. Kent says Nat. mur. is the chronic of Ignatia, and where the latter is too superficial, cures. “Falls in love with the wrong person, and breaks her heart. Is absurdly obsessed by a foolish passion for a married man-falls in love with the coachman, and Natrum mur. brings order and sanity.”
A little symptom-complex that means Natrum mur., and Natrum mur. only is:
Hates sympathy, fuss and company.
Craves salt.
Loathes fat.
(Without the salt-craving it might be Sepia.)
But the late DR. BLUNT, a very keen and successful homoeopathic prescriber, once wrote me:
“Nat. mur. is the last remedy I would part with. I have more Nat. mur. cases than any two other drugs put together. When I get (<) heat and cold, (>) in open air, then I ask early, ‘How does wind affect you?’ ‘Eyes water.’ ‘You say you weep? from what?’ Nat. mur. will answer ‘from admonition and pity’. Is worse consolation. These people hide their tears for fear of pity and consolation. If asked, how are you? Nat. mur. will answer, ‘Better thank you’, when he is not. ‘Lachrymation with laughter’ is pure gold. As for ‘Fond of salt; aversion of fats; greasy skin; crack lower lip.’- I have found the remedy in Nat. mur. when all these are absent.”
