Introduction
TYPICAL Silica crawls nervously in, or is dragged in on his mother’s hand, and you can hardly miss him.
He is the most homoeopathic drug you can imagine! Read the black type only in Allen’s Cyclopedia, and see how extraordinarily suggestive the provings are in regard to tuberculosis, especially abdominal; to pustules, boils and abscesses; to effects of splinters, stings and abrasions; to lack of reaction against injury and disease.
Silica, they say, lacks, grit-needs sand. And doses of Silica stimulate mightily these weaklings who are going under, to put up a fight, mental and physical.
You look up, as poor little Silica is dragged reluctantly in. He is listless; not interested; not frightened.
You see a pale, sickly, suffering face; and you realize at once that there is something deeply wrong here; no mere ailment- DISEASE.
Now for the mother’s story-in Allen’s black type- for they are identical: “He doesn’t get on, he doesn’t. He doesn’t thrive. He doesn’t learn; he doesn’t eve play. He is irritable and grumpy. He is always at the bottom of everything, and his teacher can’t make nothing of him; she writes, see!-`he shrinks from effort, from the least responsibility, and is utterly lacking in self- confidence and self-assertion.’ Doesn’t seem to have no `go’ in him. He doesn’t seem to be able to think! He can’t fix his mind. He can’t read or write. And yet he’s always worried to death over little things he’s done wrong. That’s it: he’s so odd, and so unlike the others.
“He gets violent attacks of headache, she says, and complains that the back of his head is cold. That’s where the pain is, but it goes all over his head. He says his head will burst. He wants it tied up tight. He wants it warm. Warm and tight, that’s what his head has got to be-when he gets one of his attacks.
“And a funny thing she has noticed, he’s always ill with the new moon!
“And he’s got a shocking cough, pore little mite. He spits up awful stuff with it-lumpy and yellow, or greenish, it is; and it sinks to the bottom of any fluid, and smells horribly. It’s more like `corruption’ (matter).
“And he’s all wrong somehow, all over, he is! Look at his nails- rough and yellow; and feeling as if he had got a splinter in his finger. Or gets a red swollen finger that throbs and feels like a felon. Or look at that finger, how it is swollen, and the bone feels big. he wakes crying, and says his hands have gone to sleep.
“And then his skin won’t heal., He’s an awful boy for knocking bits off of himself, or falling and scratching his knees; and every little scratch and hurt fester and ulcerates, and they won’t never heal. And in every sore he gets sticking pains or burning pains. He is so thin; and such a lot of sore places.
“Boils, too!-such a boy for boils as you never see. A boil on his chin; then boils on his neck; pustules or boils anywhere on his body. To her mind he has never been right since vaccination.
“And the child is so cold; never seems to be warm. Chilly with every movement. Why, he seems extra chilly in a warm room! That ain’t natural in a child! Cold up to his knees, he is. Can’t sleep for cold feet.
“And then with all his coldness, he’s awful one for sweating! He’s just drenched at night; with no appetite; and so tired always!
“So weak and tired. Always wants to lie down. Going into a decline, that’s what she thinks he is, if you ask her. At night he’s a terror one way or the other. Feels as if he was all sore on the side he lies on; yet if he turns over, shifting the clothes and moving makes him more cold. And then his dreams- frightful!
“Sometimes it’s only his head that perspires, and in sleep. But that’s not all; it’s the awful smell of the perspiration of his feet not only smells enough to turn you, but it makes his poor little feet that sore! Sore between the toes, they are, till he can scarce shuffle along. In his armpits too, there’s a very smelly sweat.
“If he runs, he goes deathly white.
“Oh! and she had forgotten that. He seems always wet about the back passage; and he seems to have a lot of pain there, as if it was tight closed. And he always seems to be wanting to pass something, though as often as not it is only a little jelly stuff. But he has horribly offensive stools; often hard and difficult. He has to strain that awful, it makes his whole stomach wall sore; and sometimes when the motion is half out, why, it slips back again. (Were this mother an American doctor, she would describe it as a `bashful stool’.)
“Oh, and she had forgotten that, too, his stomach is so hard. and swollen, and big. He seems to have an awful lot of wind, and it awful smelling. And that don’t seem right somehow.
“And-such a funny thing for a boy!-one nipple seems to be swollen and painful, it almost seems as if it was gathering; and he says he has shooting pains in the other. All his pain are like splinters; or stitching pains; or pains; like a gathering.”
That is Allen’s black type. What is your diagnosis, before you put a finger on the child? Is it not all graphic? You would expect a T.B. abdomen-a T.B. dactylitis-a T.B. family history. Not the acute phthisis type- he cannot even put up an acute tuberculosis- he is just-Silica. And Silica and Tuberculinum bov. may make a man of him yet.
No wonder Silica, with such a proving should be a drug to think about in abscesses, whitlows, unhealthy skin, smelly feet, mammary abscess, mammary cancer, wounds that refuse to heal, tubercle of skin, bone, abdomen. But the old homoeopaths say, “Use Silicea with caution in pulmonary phthisis.” It has a well- known trick of ulcerating out foreign bodies and breaking down scar tissue. It may liberate tubercle. Do not use it high in tuberculosis.
Its great sphere is connective tissue. We know now, since Old School experiments with colloidal Silica, that it not only breaks down scar tissue, in potencies, but, in poisonous doses has produced cirrhosis of liver and kidneys, etc.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
And a few very important italic symptoms given in brackets.
Sensitive to noise. (Most excessive scruples of conscience, about trifles frequently.) (Great difficulty in firing the attention. Thought difficult.)
HEADACHE rising from nape of neck to vertex. (The most violent headache.)
Tearing in the whole of the head, starting from the occipital protuberances and extending upward and forward over both sides of the head.
(As if head would burst) relieved by binding the head tightly.
Pressive pain in occiput, relieved by warm wrapping up of the head soon followed by stitches in the forehead, with chilliness nape of neck and back.
The head was sore to touch externally.
The itching spots on head are painful, as if sore after scratching.
Swelling in the region of the right lachrymal gland and sac.
Painful sensitiveness of the ear to loud sounds.
The gum is painfully sensitive on taking cold water into the mouth.
Sensation of a hair lying on forepart of tongue.
Inflammation and suppuration of salivary glands.
ABDOMEN hard, tense.
Very offensive flatus.
Moisture in the ANUS.
Haemorrhoids painfully sensitive.
STOOL remedies a long time in rectum.
Cutting in rectum. Stinging in rectum.
Tension in the anus.
Pain in the anus as if constricted during stool.
Burning in anus after a hard, dry, stool.
Frequent desire for stool, but discharge of only mucus, with chilliness of the body.
Constant but ineffectual desire for stool.
Horribly offensive stools.
Stool of hard lumps evacuated only with great effort.
Stool scanty, difficult: after great urging and straining until the abdominal walls are sore, the stool that has already protruded slips back again.
Very hard stool, followed by burning in anus.
Very hard, nodular stool like clay-stones, evacuated only with great effort.
Very hard, unsatisfactory stools, with very great effort.
Fissura ani and fistula in ano.
EXPECTORATION thick, yellow, lumpy.
Purulent expectoration when coughing.
The right BREAST is hard, painful, and swollen at the nipple-it feels as if it were “gathering.”
Darting and burning pain in left nipple.
Aversion to mother’s milk: if child nurses, it vomits.
Stiffness nape of neck, with headache.
The COCCYX is painful, as after a long carriage ride.
Stinging in the os coccyx, which is also painful to pressure.
Weakness of all the LIMBS.
Falling asleep of the hands at night.
Finger nails rough and yellow.
Sensation as if the tips of the fingers were suppurating.
Pain in the left index finger as if a panaritium would form.
Whitlow extending to tendons and bone.
Weakness of lower extremities.
Pain in hips.
The knees is painful, as if too tightly bound. intolerably bad, carrion like odour of the feet, without perspiration, every evening.
Offensive perspiration on the soles and between the toes; they become quite sore while walking.
Offensive perspiration on the feet.
Every morning perspiration which sometimes was very profuse.
Sense of great debility; she wants always to be lying down.
Great weariness. Great weakness.
Internal restlessness and excitement.
Sensitiveness to cold air.
He took cold very easily.
