Kalium Carbonicum

Excerpted from: Absolute Homeopathic Materia medica by Drs. P. I. Tarkas and Ajit Kulkarni

Carbonate of Potassium                                                                                                                        

REGION
Nerves: Vagus. Solar plexus. Spinal cord. Mucous membranes: G.I., G.U., B.P.
Serous membranes: Pleura
Muscles: Involuntary. Uterus. Lumbar. Heart. Arms
Glands: Liver. Ovo-uterine. Kidneys. Adrenal. Lymphatic
Blood
Veins: Pelvic. Right heart
Joints. Ligaments. Cartilages
One side; right, right lower chest

WORSE
COLD: Dry winter months. Wet weather. Air. Drafts. Chilling after heating or exercise. Change of weather / atmosphere. Cold water, food. Foggy misty weather, Open air
Warm food, drinks
Small hours after midnight; 3 a.m.
Unexpected touch, sounds
Unguarded motion/action
Rest. During sleep (Lach.)
Lying on painful side
Pressure. Exertion. Lifting
Fasting. Eating
Coition after
Emotions: Cares, shock, stress, grief, bad news, anticipation, suspense
Before menses. Abortion
Lead. Mercury
Depletions
Suppressed eruptions, discharges

BETTER
Mild warm weather. Warmth (dry or wet). Wrapping up. Summer
Open air
Daytime. 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Lying on painful side. Sitting with bending forward
Pressure
Moving about. Activity
Eating. Breakfast
Company. Diversion
Discharges: Deflation, catarrhs, bleeding, pus, menses, eruptions

MONOGRAM
CATARRHO- RHEUMATIC.  CALCAREOUS. SENSITIVE. SLOW.
TREPID. TOUCHY. DRY. DROPSICAL. DEVITALIZED.  ATONIC.
DYSPEPTIC. BILIOUS.  GASSY.  CHESTY.  CHILLY. PARALYTIC.

Highlights:

Lack of vital heat; a constitutional coldness (Psor.). Chilly and shivering; from any draft or uncovering; waiting for the end of winter; loss of resistance to variations of atmospheric states. Slowed down paretic functions; peristalsis, digestion, micturition, stool, menses, expectoration. Sluggish repair. Weakness; all Kalis and all Carbons are weak, and hence Kali-c. is doubly so; great exhaustion of the muscular system (including heart) and joints. Winter instead of bracing acts hostile. Weak, whether losing weight or gaining (as in the aged). All Kalis have 2 or 3 a.m. aggravation.

• Chronicity: Symptoms begin insidiously, progressing slyly towards a final breakdown and organic lesions (gout, phthisis, paralysis, cardio-renal damage etc.); slow repair, with increase of tissue waste due to incomplete metabolism (albumin, urea, sugar, cholesterol etc.), establishing a toxic state.
• Paralysis; ascending; senile, with trembling and cramps in hands, fingers, toes. Vagotonia (increased excitation of the para-sympathetic nervous system).
• All told, a sycotic and syco-syphilitic remedy of wide sweep. Make-up: 
• Declining, weak, ageing, withered, broken-down, wasting, cold and susceptible to colds, and later phthisis. Gaining weight due to incomplete metabolism; in old age.
• Oversensitive both mentally and physically; touchy; soles most sensitive. Chilly.
• Perspire easily, on slight exertion; catarrhal but not exudative. Elderly persons victims of disease, overstrain and deficient power of will or mental energy.
• Children not thriving physically, mentally, socially; after suppressed itch.

Nerves:

• Neuralgias; stitching pains in parts that become cold or are uncovered; after spoiling stomach; less during day and activity, worse about 2-3 a.m.
• Universal commotion: Any surprise causes trembling or thrills in limbs, or orgasms. Cramps. Jerks. Starts. Twitchings. Tingling in limbs; when hungry, Numbness, from cold. Pulsations.
• Pains: Flying in all directions (Kali-s., Puls.); cutting like knives or like hot needles; stitching, sticking, sharp, stinging, burning in internal parts, dry passages.
• Epileptic fits, most at night or small hours, preceded by epigastric fluttering, aborted by drinking (cold) water (Caust.).
• Hysteria; the quartet – Hysteria, flatulence, rheumatism, heart.
• Hemiplegia. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Wrist drop (Plb.).

Tissues:

• Dropsies everywhere; notable above upper eyelids; on glabella; lips, in abdomen, chest, feet; hepatic, renal, cardiac, senile. A sagging of tissues. Inflammatory swellings. Proper functioning of organs and tissues halted from glandular inadequacy; dropsies from menstrual troubles.
• Membranes: Mucous membranes catarrhal but not exudative, even dry; serous membranes also dry and stitching.
• Muscles and joints easily give way. Articular rheumatism; osteoarthritis of major joints; hysterical; tubercular; suppurating; gouty. Hip-joint diseases (right).
• Growths: Tumors (with stitching pains). Warts, on face and fingers. Vulvar cysts. Uterine fibroids and malignancies; moles.
• Blood: Hemorrhages. Profound anemia, effect of T.B. or rheumatism and affecting glandular functions. Continuous suppurations (like Calc-hp.); muco-purulent discharges: blenorrhea, pyorrhea, leucorrhea, bronchorrhea, cystorrhea. Abscesses in eyes, liver, lungs, anywhere. Hemangiopathy is however the prerogative of Kali-i., minor ischemia apart.
• Sequelae of: Suppressed eruptions (even in childhood), closing up of old ulcers and fistulous openings, pneumonia, pleurisy, abortion, confinement, (incomplete) exanthema etc. (Carb-v. a lesser Kali-c.); sudden surprises, unexpected and therefore unprepared against any such attacks.
• A general feeling of emptiness (in the whole body); in pit of stomach from a sudden slip. Also a feeling of heaviness, weight in pelvis, chest, on lumbar back.

Injuries:

• Sprains (esp. back). Contusion (glands). Blow on kidney. Fall (epilepsy, lumbago). Wounds (erysipelas). Pricks.

Mind:

• A personality uninteresting, dry, drab, undeveloped (or shrunk, of old age). Miser and hoarder. A shirker. A yielder. A defeatist. An escapist.

In consequence of chronic illness, over strain (of struggle) on his nerves, sexual excesses, badly mangled, because of deficient will power of mental-physical energy, he reacts feebly to the hard realities of life, unable to stand up courageously (manly) to the challenges thrown to him; he will resign the moment someone comes forward to take up the burden; unwilling to take up responsibilities he will let events take their own course; avoids taking serious decisions himself; he will not defend himself when wrongly accused, nor defend his rights.

• A lily-livered, pusillanimous approach to life.
• He cannot absorb bad news; he must run to the closet first. Also (like Arg-n.) he is subject to anticipatory upsets (like diarrhea etc). Apprehensiveness, rather than anxiety < night. Is apprehensive but not nervous.
• Fear of everything, ungrounded or unjustified or frivolous fears. Night (and esp. darkness) brings vague fears to these timid, neurotic souls (like , but unlike it); yet tense and quarrelsome. Easily alarmed, easily startled; from a sudden noise as a slam at the door, from an unexpected touch anywhere on the skin (esp. on back and soles).

All these surprises, and emotional shocks are registered in the epigastrium (Ambr.,Arg-n.). Solar plexus people. Makes a great ado about comparatively little suffering (hypochondriac). Fear of darkness; of dogs; of snakes; of ghosts; of future, of losing control; of appearing in public (speaking, demonstration); of disease; of AIDS; of cancer; of heart disease; of death.

Fear of poverty makes him possessive and avaricious. Fear that he may not be able to earn enough, or things may not be available when needed, hence hoards whatever comes by even picks up things thrown away on streets. Clings to money, to clothes, to everything. The hoarding instinct pertains to psora (Sulph.).

• Restless; hurry, panicky, flurry (Med.). Hurry in thought and action; in eating, talking and occupation. Has several things under way simultaneously, leaving each partly done and none finished; he has an inner dread of accomplishing and pushing his work. There is also an awkwardness; drops things, falls over furniture. Active, but timid (like Arg-n.). Suspense hatred. Sympathetic. Never at peace. Increased industry, seems busy, with inability to dispose of matters.
• Aversion to company, yet dread of being alone (). Also, desires company yet treats them hard. Averse to husband and child, yet clings tenaciously to them.
• Inherent/spontaneous attachment of strong type (which itself is a source of trouble); interpersonal relationship is like oxygen (Puls., which is more parasitic).
• Strong sense of duty. Sensitive, irritable, to the extent of being quarrelsome even at the cost of his own interest. Rigid. Stiff. Introvert. Whimsical. Peevish. Jealous. Hatred. Malicious. Emotional instability. Desire to hurt others before menses.
• Finally, brain fag, slow ideation. Absent-minded. Forgetful. Apathetic. Deficiency of expression; always in search of the right turn of expression. Bluntness of speech; difficulty to explain or make himself clear; is misleading or ambiguous in statements, with intense desire to be understood. Dementia; after emotional upsets. Apraxia (). Stupefied from prolonged talking, > pressing eyes together; dazed, suddenly.

PARTICULARS

Head: 

• Vertigo: gastric; as if bed were sinking; photophobic; < riding, moving (in open air), staring; alternates with asthma.
• Headaches: Catarrhal, congestive, bilious (Lach.), gastric (Bry.). Hair dry, brittle, rough; falling out (also of) eye-brows (Anan.); in brain disease; after nervous fevers.

Eyes:

• Stitches in, while reading, sewing. Muscular asthenopia after: measles, abortion, coition, sexual excesses, depletions, fine sewing work. Various illusions of vision (like Hyos.). Pannus, after seminal emission.
• Cornea: Abscess; ulcer; leucoma, albugo (white opacity). Cataract. Ears:
• Cold one and hot other; in gastritis, gastric ulcer. Wax serous. Otitis media, stitching outward pains; abscess. Various noises.

Nose:

• Descending cold in the head; nose stuffs up in warm room, opens in cool air but it causes a headache (due to unfree discharge); after spoiling stomach (like Nux-v.); with lachrymation (like All-c.).
• Epistaxis; on washing face in morning (Am-c., Mag-c.).

Face:

• Puffy, bloated; or haggard, pinched. Greasy. Yellowish, after vexation. Pale after meals. Hot one side; with cold feet. Spots on: freckles; red on one cheek.
• Lips: Peeling, dry, cracked, ulcerating. Tremors of facial muscles in pneumonia.

Mouth:

• Teeth decay; catch cold; painful while chewing; stitching in, or in left chest. Gums inflamed, scorbutic, receding, ulcerated, bleeding.
• Chronic catarrhal inflammation; aphthae. Salivation, after taking cold, < at 3 a.m., in arrhythmia; or dry without thirst.

Throat:

• Cold, settles in. Catarrhal inflammation; atrophic catarrh.; with stitching splinter-like pains (Hep.). Oesophagus: myasthenia or stricture. Lump feeling in, and in pit of stomach.

Stomach:

• Desires sweets, sour. Aversion to bread, milk, fats. Neutral to salt.
• Appetite best for breakfast, less for lunch, none for supper. Hunger upsets him, but feels oppressed after meal (from flatulence).
• Radiating gastric pains; stitches, with anxiety. Heavy beating in pit; on eating or talking. Deathly nausea, with anxiety.
• Retching: After a happy surprise; when fasting. Gagging at height of cough. Biliousness.
• Worse after: Legumes. Milk. Bread. Banana. Fats. Flushes of heat while eating warm food. Flatulent dyspepsia; all food turns into gas; colic; twinges (in chest); insufficiency of vagus impairs metabolism; atony of the gastro-intestinal canal with abdominal plethora. Many troubles after eating, and esp. after midnight.
• Dyspepsia of the chilly, declining; of gastro-pectoral or gastro-cardiac type; incarcerated flatulence; menstrual reflex.

    Abdomen: 

• Old chronic liver troubles, hepatitis with jaundice and dropsy; periodical bilious attacks; congested; sluggish; enlarged; stitches from liver through right scapula to chest; > lying on left side (Chel.); preceded by flatulent dyspepsia.
• Abdominal troubles with sharp pains < open air, early morning. Peritonitis; tubercular; puerperal; infantile. Appendicitis.
• After abdominal surgery: Colic (like Coloc.), flatulence, tympanites, coldness in abdomen, peristalsis dulled (causing constipation). Lax abdominal muscles (herniation?), regurgitation.

Rectum:

• Obstinate constipation; atonic. Chronic diarrhea; painless, from gastro-hepatic troubles; < 3-4 a.m., alternates with (same time) asthma.
• Hemorrhoids: Stitch or burn; in child-bed (after labour); < jerks, > (cold sitz) bath. Fistula.

Urinary:

• Catarrh of urinary organs.
• Nephritis: After a blow, or taking cold; stitching; burning. Polyuria, < daytime; bed-wetting (nightly). Micturition retarded, but more pressure gets less flow.
• Urine more than one drinks; contains urates, albumin; uremia; diabetes; lithic acid diathesis (calculus, gout).

Male: 

• Atony, premature ejaculation.
• Neurotic complaints: After coition or sex abuse, weakness, nervousness, tremulousness, weak vision. Scanty white gleet.

Female:

• Menses: Too early, too copious, too prolonged; or opposite; painful; mentally upset before; vicarious; > flow (Lach.).
• Metrorrhagia: After curetting or abortion; during pregnancy. Delayed first menses with various troubles.
• Leucorrhea yellow, acrid.
• Pain from left labium ext. through abdomen to (left) chest. Bearing down pains.
• Pregnancy: Toxemias. Labor pains inefficient; confined to back, going down thighs; in distant parts like occiput. Threatened abortion. After-pains. Retained placenta. Bloated abdomen from suppressed lochia. Sub-involution. In puerperum: metritis; metrorrhagia, debility, backache, dyspepsia. Incipient phthisis from over-lactation (Calc-hp.) or repeated child-bearing.
• Climacteric: Flushes of heat, with cardiac disturbances (Lat-m.).
• Mammae: Fine stitches in; cancer.

Respiratory:

• Asphyxia, during sleep. Emphysema. Asthma, < any period from midnight to 5 a.m.; lying, > sitting erect, with head bent forward on knees. Violent, hard, racking cough: dry, barking; spasmodic (or whooping); with gagging, vomiting, fever, spurting, sneezing. < in winter; fasting; lying; sitting erect; becoming cold. > breakfast.
• Expectoration: Purulent, sour, sweet, viscid, yellow or globules, not easy (paretic muscles); sometimes like prune-juice.
• Bronchitis, catarrhal, capillary. Bronchiectasis. Pleurisy; tubercular diathesis; dry. Pleural adhesions and fibrosis (Ran-b.).
• Pneumonia: Right sided; later stages, with gastric upset and cardiac exhaustion; never well since; tendency to T.B. (ulcerative), to abscess. Infantile pneumonia with choking cough, cyanosis; after measles.
• Chest: Intense anxiety and heavy oppression, with hurried or impeded breathing; < lying on right side, after emotions; accompanies most complaints. Stitching or cutting pains. Soreness from talking or lifting. Pleurodynia. Chest colds. Flatulent twinges. (Distress or fluttering in, after lunch).

Heart:

• Weak (as in all potashes), with a feeling of unsteadiness. Chronic inflammations, with effusion, adhesions. General toxemia affecting the heart muscle. Stitches about heart ext. backward to left scapula.
• Constrictive pain. Burning. Throbbing. Coldness or oppression in epigastrium, chest, heart. Violent ebullitions of blood with throbbing in all arteries even to the termini; ebullitions; with palpitation, Low B.P., High B.P.
• Threatened heart failure; in pneumonia. Coronary occlusion (after Carb-v.). Mitral valve insufficiency. (Cerebral embolism?).
• Disposition to phlebitis. Hypercholesterol. Tendency to fatty degeneration.
• Pulse: Rapid, in morning; intermitting, in digestive disturbances; extra-systoles (Bry.); weak, soft; irregular (arrhythmia).

Back:

• Severe pains; of females (during pregnancy or labor and after).
• Neck: Pain on deglutition; stiff, with shooting pains through chest.
• Lumbar: Everything affects it, or pains start there. Broken as if. Feels weak. Sticking; sudden sharp pains extending up and down. Must first turn on the (well) side to sit. < stooping, straightening, rising, walking, > pressing. Squeezing pain. Occasional stitch from lumbar (or from left thigh) through abdomen to chest (left).

Locomotor:

• Heaviness, weariness, uneasiness. Want of muscular strength (esp. arms.). Trembling; sudden; hands when writing. Thrill on touch. Cold; with various complaints; numb and cold (esp. arms). Brachial girdle pain, from right pectoral muscle, through shoulder, to between scapulae and down.
• Legs devoid of energy but restless (esp. night in bed). Sciatica; pain from lumbar to posterior thigh or in lateral part of thigh; from hip to knee (right).
• Feet cold, puffy, cyanotic, numb and torpid after eating; so toes. Soles tickle/thrill on touch; burn (Sulph.).

Skin:

• Excessively dry, and harsh. Waxy. Dark spots; of aged (Lach.); in Addison’s disease, bronzed (, Sulph.). Burning-itching-sticking; frostbites (purple); itching during menses (urticaria).
• Erysipelas; of the aged (, Lach.). Eczema, < warm weather (and chest troubles in cold weather). Herpes. Ulcers; burrowing; oozing in dropsies.

Sleep:

• Yawning and drowsy during day. Nondescript insomnia; after mid-night (Mag-c.); wakes suddenly with several complaints.
• Dreams: Frightful, of quarrels or pleasant. During sleep starts, walks or talks.

Thermic:

• Chill: Constant chilliness. Chill with thirst (but heat without); after pains are over; with coldness of heart. Local coldness; one-sided.
• Heat: With ebullition, surging of blood and throbbing in blood-vessels.
• Sweat: Easy; after warm drinks; after spasms; on upper body; nightly, in incipient T.B. But generally non-sweaty.
• Catarrhal fevers. Intermittent. Remittent, bilious, continued. Typhoid, last stage, violent cough, skipping pulse, nervous, easily frightened, orbital swelling, stupor, sweat. Hectic. Puerperal.
• Inflammatory. (Gastric).

Relations:

• Affiliated to (or via it) to Calc. Caust. (also a Kali.) is collateral (i.e. analogous or parallel).
• Arg-n. is counterpart of both Kali-c. and Lyc. is counterpart of Arg-n. and Caust. This connects Arg-n., Caust. and Lyc. with Kali-c.
• Symbiotic: Kali-i., Kali-n., Lach.
• Antidotes: , Carb-v., Coff., Nit-s-d., Psor.
• Complementary: , Ars-i., Bac-7., Calc., Calc-hp., Carb-v., Caust., Chel., Fl-ac., Helon., Kali-i., Lach., Lyc., Mag-c., Merc., Nat-ar., Nat-m., Nit-ac., Nux-v., Phos., Psor., Phyt., Puls., Ran-b., Rhus-t., Sep., Sil., Sulph., Thuj., Tub.
• Acutes: Am-c., Ant-t., Ars., Asc-t., Bell., Bry., Carb-v., Chel., Colch., Dulc., Hell., Kali-s., Lach., Nux-v., Phos., Ran-b., Rhus-t., Rumx. (contains potassium), , Squil., Stann., Ter.
• Kali-sil. (which is a mineral ), Sil. and Psor. are all mirrored in Kali-c. in one aspect or another. So also Ran-b.
• If a Kali-c. patient becomes neurotic, he will first require Ran-b. (or Arg-n.) before Kali-c. could help him gainfully.
• Kali-c. and are twins: Kali-c. goes deeper in gastro-pectoral-cardiac sphere while Caust. does so in paralysis or neuro-muscular sphere; Caust. anxiety is more diffuse than Kali-c., Caust. has no true inflammation.
• Lach. is symbiotic in the aged’s fibrous-food and garlic intolerance causing oppression about 3 a.m., esp. if lying on right side. Lach., Rhus and (its appellate) Pyrog. clear up the ptomaine poisoning of Kali-c. and (their chronic) Calc.
• Kali-c. may beget
• Kali-c. is cross between and Nat-c.
• Calc. is energized by Nit-ac. which is energized by Kali-c.; so indirectly Kali-c. would energize Calc.
• Carb-v. is an acute and symbiotic to Kali-c. (Carb-v. emphasizes on blood, Kali-c. on vagus, and through it on metabolism, Carb-v. affects it directly) and is a lesser Kali-c. A depressed system of Kali-c. may come in helpfully if a preliminary course of Carb-v. to nurse up is rendered.
• Asc-t. and are nearest analogues and close-ups.
• Compare also: , Phyt., Rumx., Squil., Visc.
• The Iodides and Murs are less deep-acting than Carbs; and of the former, Iodides are more angrily acting than the other two. lods and Sulphs never disown their parents Iodine, Sulphur.
• Castoreum a simplified Kali-c. and helper to it; with more emphasis on spasm, syncope and collapse, and absence of rheumatic symptoms.
• Mag-c. is a forerunner of Kali-c. Mag-c. after suppression of eruptions may become Kali-c (the sycotic taint) and Kali-c. may turn to Mag-c. after lead poisoning.
• Kali-c. and Kali-i. help each other in more ways than one; as e.g. the former in gastro-cardiac syndromes and psychogenic troubles and the latter in blood-dyscrasias, accretions (growths).

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