Sepia is suited to tall, slim women with narrow pelvis and lax fibers and muscles; such a woman is not well built as a woman.
A woman who has the hips of a well-built man is not built for child bearing, she cannot perform the functions of a woman without becoming relaxed in the pelvic organs and tissues. Such a build is a Sepia build, very tall, slim, narrow, straight from the shoulders all the way down.
Mind: One of the strongest features of the Sepia patient is found in the mind, the state of the affections. To a great extent, the remedy seems to abolish the ability to feel natural love, to be affectionate. To illustrate it in the language of the mother:
“I know I ought to love my children and my husband, I used to love them, but now I have no feeling on the subject.”
The love does not go forth into affection, there is a lack of realization, a lack of ability to register such affections; the love does not manifest itself. Upon reflection it will be seen that the love itself cannot be so changed, but the affections can be as they are the expression of the love.
It is a striking feature of this remedy that the affections are stilled; all things seem strange; she does not realize; she may even be estranged and turned aside from those she loves. This is on the border land of insanity; it is quite a different state of affairs from that when a woman abused by her husband knows in her rational mind that she does not love him.
This state is brought out in a woman during confinement, after uterine and other hemorrhages, after prolonged indigestion; high living with disturbance in the circulation, pallor, enfeeblement of body and mind. It is seldom manifested in a man, but it is a striking feature in the woman. It often comes on when nursing a child, from nursing an over-vigorous child or twins who require much lacteal fluid and drag her down. It may be brought out in a woman who has an overvigorous husband. Excessive sexual excitement and over-indulgence brings on coldness and she becomes a cold woman.
She who has been excitable, nervous, and fidgety becomes the opposite, cold, takes on a stoical state of mind. Yet Sepia has all the excitability of any medicine, aggravated by noises, excitement, company, extreme irritability of tissue and mind; an excitable suicidal patient; melancholy, sits and says nothing; taciturn; answers questions in monosyllables when pressed to answer.
An absence of all joy, inability to realize that things are real; all things seem strange; no affection for the delightful things of life; no joy; life has nothing in it for her. She is worse in company yet dreads to be alone; and when she is in company she is spiteful, in the midst of her dullness of mind she is spiteful; she vents her spite on those she loves best. The Sepia woman permits no opposition to her opinions. The best impression of her is lost if controversy arises.
Skin: The next most general state is a peculiar sallowness which you will need to see to fix in your mind.
Sepia has jaundice, yet this peculiar sallowness is a waxy, anaemic appearance, mottled with yellow, a yellow, sallow tint across the nose and the cheeks described as a yellow saddle across the nose and down the sides of the face.
It is also common for the whole face to be covered with enormous freckles, great brown patches as in pregnancy, brown spots on the cheeks, brown warts, warts that have been red or pink become pigmented; liver spots on the face, chest, and abdomen.
The skin of the face is sallow and doughy, looks as if the muscles were flabby; you will seldom see Sepia indicated in the face that shows sharp lines of intellect; a person who has been thinking a long time has the lines and sharp angles of a thinking person, of one who possesses will and intellect. The Sepia subject is one who is rather stupid and dull, thinks slowly and is forgetful; the mind is anything but active and we see it in the face.
Face: In many instances, however, the Sepia patient is a quick patient, but the dullness of intellect is the most striking feature and it reflects itself upon the face.
The face is generally puffed, often smooth and rounded and marked by an absence of intellectual lines and angles.
This patient is anemic, pale lips and ears, pale, sallow face, fingers and hands become shrivelled, sallow, waxy, bloodless. Sepia establishes a progressing emaciation of the body and the skin becomes wrinkled; the person looks prematurely old; wrinkles intermingled with sallow spots on the face in one who is 35 years of age, making him look as if he were fifty. A child looks like a shrivelled dried up old person.
Bowels: With all complaints there is constipation.
The bowels lose their ability to expel their contents and the patient is always constipated; constipation during pregnancy; slow, difficult stool; stool like sheep dung. Always has a feeling of a lump in the rectum, never able to empty the bowels; though he goes to stool there is always a sensation of a lump remaining in the rectum. When the stool passes into the lower bowel, it is not expelled until there is an accumulation, which presses the stool out.
Hunger: Another feature present in most Sepia patients is a gnawing hunger, seldom satisfied; even though he eats plentifully he feels a gnawing, empty, hungry feeling in the stomach, not relieved by eating or relieved only for a moment. This is striking especially when associated with the constipation and the peculiar state of the affections.
When these symptoms are associated with prolapsus, Sepia will certainly cure, no matter how bad the prolapsus has been or what kind of displacement there is. It is the result of the state of relaxation of all the internal parts as if they were let down, wants a bandage to hold the parts up or wants to place the hand or napkin on the parts; a funneling sensation, better sitting down and crossing the limbs.
When these symptoms group themselves together, the gnawing hunger, the constipation, the dragging down, and the mental condition, it is Sepia and Sepia only. One is not sufficient but it is the combination.
Sepia has a marked catarrhal tendency, tendency to milky discharges from mucous membranes. Long after digestion has ceased and the stomach is empty comes nausea and sometimes vomiting.
It is a catarrhal state of the stomach and when it persists with the milky vomiting, Sepia is very valuable. This is not an uncommon feature in the vomiting of pregnancy. Vomits up food and after emptying the stomach of its contents, vomits or eructates a milky fluid; morning vomiting, first of food, then a milky substance. Do not confound this with vomiting of milk. Some medicines vomit milk alone and Sepia does this also.
Whitish, milky discharges from the posterior nares, from the vagina, excoriating, milky leucorrhea, which at times takes on the appearance of curds, thick, cheesy, and horribly offensive; it has also thick, green and yellow discharges; it has dry crusty formations on mucous membranes.
Nose: Prolonged inveterate catarrh of the nose, thick, green, and yellow crusts are blown from the nose and sometimes are hawked from the posterior nares, thick, leathery formations.
Loss of taste and smell. The smell of cooking food, meat and broth causes nausea. Catarrh of the chest with thick, tenacious, yellow expectoration, accompanied with a violent cough, retching, gagging, violent prolonged retching, vomiting; dry cough and yet there is rattling. Whooping cough; asthmatic cough with retching and loss of urine.
Cough: The cough is a violent one.
Cough during first sleep (Lachesis, in irritable children Chamomilla). Tuberculosis. Quick consumption after a suppressed gonorrhea; if given soon enough it will check. Spasmodic dry cough in the evening until midnight; holds the chest during the cough (Bryonia, Natr. sulph., Phosphorus)
Skin: Eruptions of the skin.
Tendency to produce herpetic eruptions about the genitals, lips and mouth; ring-worm upon the face and body. It has cured zona, and herpetic eruptions of the labia and foreskin. Vesicular eruptions in the axilla, upon the tip-s of the elbows; eruptions that pile up in great crusts on the elbows; thick crusts form upon the joints; eruptions between the fingers; moist eruptions that pour out a watery fluid, or thick, yellow, purulent fluid.
Sepia produces the induration that belongs to some forms of eruption like epithelioma; indurations will form on the lips and crack and bleed. The scaly eruption that looks like epithelioma is especially Sepia. When the scales come off a yellow, green, ichorous base remains, and as soon as one crust peels off, another forms; finally if torn off prematurely, it bleeds. Sepia has cured epithelioma of the lips, wings of the nose, and eyelids It has cured old indurations caused by the use of a clay pipe, where it continues to form, and beneath it is seen this thick, yellow, purulent exudation.
It is indicated in lumps and lupoid formation on the skin, where there is infiltration; sometimes healing from the centre to form a ring; this is a typical Sepia condition. The hardness and purple color are what are peculiarly Sepia. Sepia stands on a par with Lachesis for this purple aspect.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.
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