Introduction
Sulphur is one of the greatest of “polycrests” (drugs of many uses)-is Hahnemann’s Prince of “antipsorics” (remedies of non- venereal chronic diseases), and is one of the constituents of protoplasm, thus not only occurring, but evoking and curing, symptoms in every tissue and organ of the body. Its great and wide range in homoeopathic prescribing is evidenced by the fact that Allen’ s Encyclopedia gives no fewer that I, o40-odd symptoms each with reference that tells not only the authority but the dose responsible.
Hahnemann says of Sulphur: “The homoeopathic physician (who alone acts in conformity with natural laws ) will meet many important morbid states for which he will discover and may expect much assistance in the symptoms of Sulphur and Hepar Sulphuris.”
He points out the similarity of the eruptions produced by Sulphur with those of itch:- the characteristic itching eruption which Sulphur can excite, “in which is revealed an affection, similar (homoeopathic) to but not identical with the itch and tells us that Homoeopathy requires medicines that produce diseases only similar to those they should be administered for in order to cure them. Homoeopathy has never pretended to produce an identical disease with medicines, but has always enjoined the selection of a medicine for the cure, that produces only a similar affection. Canova’s statue of the captive of St. Helena may be very; like, but it is not NAPOLEON!
Do not our stupid opponents understand that? Are they unable to comprehend the difference between identical (same) and similar? or do they not wish to comprehend it?” And he gives the difference between “true itch and the very-like pimples and vesicles of the itch of workers in wool.”
In Materia Medica Pura he scorns the idea of employing diseases for the cure of disease: but later on, in his Chronic Diseases, and indeed in the Organon (possibly in its later editions) he discusses the fact that by preparation and potentization disease products become “so changed as to be no longer idem but simillimum”; and it was Hahnemann himself who prepared and potentized the contents of the itch pustule, and proved it (the proving is to be found in Stapf’s Archives); and showed thereby its great similarity of symptoms to those of Sulphur-and its great difference: thus teaching us when to prescribe the one, and when the other.
But it is believed that Hahnemann later on partly proved and used some other disease products: though he did not give us a lead to their use, since they were not sufficiently proved to be capable of scientific employment. (See an interesting article on this subject, HOMOEOPATHY, vol. I, p., 462.)
Anyway Sulphur is one of our great skin medicines, but only in such skin conditions as it can produce, or in typical Sulphur patients. It has BOILS (Anthrac., Tarent., cub. Arnica, Bellis and a host of others, each in its place): crops of boils, which succeed one another. Itching, extreme; voluptuous” itching relieved by scratching, then burning; worse from heat of bed (Mercurius). “Dry, rough, scaly or itching skin, disposed to break out or fester and won’t heal ” (Hepar, Sil): even pustular eruptions.
And Sulphur eruptions may alternate with other complaints, such as asthma (Arsenicum, etc.).
Where we were children a precious Riddle Book had it, “Sulphur comes from volcanoes and is good for eruptions,” and Sulphur is associated in ideas with the Lake of Fire, and Everlasting Burnings; and Sulphur indeed causes BURNINGS; burning pain in eyes, lips, tongue; in nostrils, face, throat; in fauces and pharynx; in stomach and abdomen; in anus; in haemorrhoids etc.; between scapulae (Lycopodium, Phosphorus); in fingers, palms (PHOS). Knees, feet, especially at night; in soles, in corns, in chilblains, in skin of whole body, in parts on which he lies. The eruptions of Sulphur BURN. And with all its burning there may be burnings in parts-patchy or local burnings with coldness elsewhere, as feet cold with burning head or face in the same way that Nat. mur. may have irregular distribution of the fluids of the body, as diarrhoea with a dry mouth and tongue, or “dryness of mucous membranes with watery secretions elsewhere”.
Sulphur reddens orifices in a way common to no other remedy”- lips (Tun.), eyelids (Graphites), nostrils, red, dirty, discharging (Aurum) ANUS, with itching; and excoriating stools often; and here it is a great remedy for haemorrhoids. One has seen low- potency Sulphur produce them in someone who never had them before or since. The old “low potency” men had a trick of curing piles with Sulphur alternately with Nux (they are complementary remedies). In those days they would have held it a disgrace to have piles “operated” or injected.
Sulphur goes through the body from vertex to soles. In the former its pressure symptoms, remind one of LACH., BELL., GLON., and others, while it burns the soles so much that the feet must be thrust out of bed (PULS., MED., CHAM.).
Sulphur is, of course, a great remedy of stomach and intestinal conditions. The Sulphur stomach feels empty and “sinking”, especially about II a.m. (or noon, or an hour before the mid-day meal), but then a Sulphur patient will often tell you that she wants no breakfast, but starves at the later hour. And the typical Sulphur diarrhoea (often chronic) torments its victim with hurried early morning stools or diarrhoea, leaving them safe for the rest of the day.
It would be impossible to give all the black letter symptoms of Sulphur-i.e. the symptoms again and again produced and again and again cured by that drug-they are far too numerous for the space at our command; but we will delve a little into Kent, and glean from that great prescriber his experiences derived from a very large and successful practice and from years of teaching Materia Medica. The more one goes to Kent, the more one needs to go. He, more than anyone, probably, has imbibed the spirit of Hahnemann, and expounded and perpetuated his doctrines.
KENT says, “Sulphur is such a full remedy that it is difficult to tell where to begin. It seems to contain a likeness of all sickness, and a beginner reading over the provings of Sulphur might naturally think that there was no need of any other remedy, as the image of all sickness seems to be contained in it.” Yet, he says, “it will not cure all the sickness of man, and must not be used indiscriminately. It seems that the less a physician knows of Materia Medica the oftener he gives Sulphur; but it is very frequently given by good prescribers, so that the line between physicians knowledge and ignorance cannot be drawn from the frequency of their use of Sulphur.
“The Sulphur patient is lean, lank, hungry, dyspeptic with stoop-shoulders; yet many times it must be given to fat, rotund, well-fed people.”
“The sulphur state may be brought on by being housed up in meditation-philosophical inquiry, taking no exercise: must eat only the simplest foods and not enough to nourish them and end up by going into a philosophical mania. Another class, dirty- looking, shrivelled, red-face. If a child, may be often washed, but looks as if perfunctorily washed. The Sulphur scholar- inventor-works day and night in threadbare clothes and battered hat; has uncut hair and dirty face; his study is uncleanly- untidy, books piled indiscriminately, no order. Sulphur seems to produce this state of disorder, uncleanliness, `don’t care how things go,’ and a state of selfishness. He becomes a false philosopher-disappointed because the world does not consider him the greatest man on earth. He has on a shirt that he has worn many weeks: if he had not a wife, he would wear his shirt till it fell off him.” (One has seen with triumph how a dose or two of Sulphur, in such a patient, has produced a clean shirt!) “Cleanliness is not a great idea with a Sulphur patient,” says kent. “Sulphur is seldom indicated in cleanly people, but it is commonly indicated in those who are not disturbed by uncleanliness. The sulphur child is subject to catarrhal discharges from nose and eyes, etc., and mothers will tell you that the child will eat the discharges from the nose. That is peculiar, because the Sulphur patient is oversensitive to filthy odours; but the filthy substances themselves he will eat and swallow., Has filthy odours, and they nauseate him. Imagines he smells things. Discharges not only offensive but excoriating. Stools, nasal discharge, excoriating, burn and make raw the parts. Boils-suppurations-abscesses- eruptions, but always with burning. Burning runs through Sulphur. Burning soles: palms: vertex. Worse warm in bed. Nightly complaints are a feature.” And so on for many pages.
Sulphur has some weird sensation, perhaps not often met with, but helpful where they occur. A band tightly bound round forehead; as if bed too small to hold him: as if swinging, or standing on wavering ground. Pressure vertex, as if brain beating against skull: as if head would burst. As if scalp were loose; as if eyes had been punctured; as if sounds came out thorough ears but forehead; as of a lump or hair in throat; intestines in knots; as if bowels too weak to retain their contents; as if a lump of ice in chest; as if chest would fly to pieces when coughing or breathing deeply; as of a mouse running up arms and back. (See Calcarea) And many others. As of a rivet through upper third left lung to scapula.
