ARGENTUM METALLICUM

Emaciation, a gradual drying up, desire for fresh air, dyspnœa, sensation of expansion and left-sided pains are characteristic. The chief action is centered on the articulations and their component elements, bones, cartilages, and ligament's. Here the small blood vessels become closed up or withered and carious affections result. They come on insidiously, lingering, but progress. The larynx is also a special center for this drug.

Mental

Hurried feeling; time passes slowly; melancholy.

Head

Dull paroxysmal neuralgia over left side, gradually increasing and ceasing suddenly. Scalp very tender to touch. Vertigo, with intoxicated feeling, on looking at running water. Head feels empty, hollow . Eyelids red and thick. Exhausting coryza, with sneezing. Pain in facial bones. Pain between left eye and frontal eminence.

Throat

Raw, hawking, gray, jelly-like mucus , and throat sore on coughing. Profuse and easy morning expectoration.

Respiratory

Hoarseness Aphonia. Raw, sore feeling when coughing. Total loss of voice of professional singers. Larynx feels sore and raw. Easy expectoration, looking like boiled starch. Feeling of raw spot near supra sternal fossa. Worse from use of voice. Cough from laughing . Hectic fever at noon. On reading aloud, must hem and hawk. Great weakness of chest ; worse left side. Alteration in timbre of voice. Pain in left lower ribs.

Back

Severe backache; must walk bent, with oppression of chest.

Urine

Diuresis. Urine profuse, turbid , sweet odor. Frequent urination. Polyuria.

Extremities

Rheumatic affections of joints, especially elbow and knee. Legs weak and trembling, worse descending stairs. Involuntary contractions of fingers, partial paralysis of forearm; writer's cramp. Swelling of ankles .

Male

Crushed pain in testicles. Seminal emissions, without sexual excitement . Frequent micturation with burning.

Female

Ovaries feel too large. Bearing-down pain. Prolapse of womb. Eroded spongy cervix. Leucorrhœa foul, excoriating. Palliative in scirrhus of uterus. Pain in left ovary. Climateric hæmorrhage . Sore feeling; throughout abdomen; worse by jarring. Uterine disease with pain in joints and limbs.

Modalities

Worse from touch, toward noon. Better in open air; cough at night when lying down (opposite Hyoscy).

Relationship

Antidotes: Mercur; Puls .

Compare: Selen; Alum; Platina; Stannum; Ampelopsis (Chronic hoarseness in scrofulous patients).

Dose

Sixth trituration and higher. Not too frequent repetition.