The common vision of Magnesia carbonica portrays sour, gassy babies with cutting colics and greenish, frothy, floating stools. Being an antipsoric also, it has other uses mostly based upon symptoms found in Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases.
One of the most outstanding of these is sharp shooting pains, like lightning, along nerve tracts, apt to be worse at night; then the patient gets up and walks about for relief; so-called neuralgia, not always easy to trace to its lair, although not infrequently the digestive tract is at fault.
The typical Magnesia carb. patient is a pretty sensitive chap with a restless flair as well as a desire to keep warm. He feels changes of weather and cold winds acutely, more so on the dry than wet days; they make him tense and nervous.
There are some very distinctive symptoms referable to the median line of he anterior truck, the most decided one being a pain at the junction of the fifth right rib with the sternum, noticed more on wiping the anus. The following peculiar symptom have also been produced by it.
Distressing sense of dryness within the ears.
Pain or sweat over the right eye. Has helped right-sided cataract.
Cramps on the back of hands.
Awakes tired in the morning.
Desire for open air, yet sensitive to cold.
Averse to heat, yet can’t bear uncovering.
Nodes under the skin. This symptom reminds me of a patient who was bitten on the left lower leg by a rat when a small boy. In his sixty-third year a hard dark mass as large as a half dollar appeared on this spot, which radiated shooting pains up and down the limb, more so at night.
There was a history of two cases of cancer in the immediate family and a physician advised its removal, which the patient declined. He had attacks of feeling as if about to sink down, of sudden sleepiness, and general numbness. He could not lie comfortable on the right side at night (Mag. mur.) From the history he was presumably a sour bottle fed baby and, as a boy, had a foot sweat suppressed. He was always nervous in dry, bright weather. A dose of Magnesia carb. occasionally for several years removed the pains entirely, reduced the growth to the size of a nickel, made it soft and much paler, while his general health improved greatly. He also had the costosternal pain spoken of above.
It is noteworthy that this remedy presents quite a few of the modalities of Pulsatilla and of Rhus tox. and for this reason is often overlooked, often being needed when Rhus is given. It is a common complaint that poison ivy doesn’t act long or thoroughly enough; when a careful scrutiny of the Magnesia carb. symptomatology will show that it should have been given instead.
Born in Western Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and subsequently Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He moved to Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1888, practicing there, but also consulting worldwide. He gave lectures at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and taught philosophy, materia medica, and repertory at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Postgraduate School. Boger brought BÅ“nninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory into the English Language in 1905. His publications include :
Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Boenninghausen's Antipsorics
Boger's Diphtheria, (The Homoeopathic Therapeutics of)
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica, 1915
General Analysis with Card Index, 1931
Samarskite-A Proving
The Times Which Characterize the Appearance and Aggravation of the Symptoms and their Remedies