Carbo vegetabilis

LARYNGITIS.

Carbo vegetabilis is also well adapted to the chronic form, though it may come in early and prevent it, if there is hoarseness equal to Calcarea or Causticum, but is < in the evening or the damp air of evening. It is particularly well adapted to old or elderly people of low or reduced vitality. With both Calcarea and Carbo veg. there may be thick heavy expectoration.

BRONCHITIS.

ACUTE BRONCHITIS.

Antimonium tartaricum is almost always loose cough with much coarse rattling of mucus, which is so abundant that the patient becomes cyanosed and cannot raise it. This is a serious condition and Antimonium tart. will often help. It is particularly found indicated in children and old people. If, notwithstanding the use of this remedy, the rattling and weakness increases, the cyanosis also, until the blood stagnates in the capillaries, the extremities and breath become cold, and the patient gasps fan me, fan harder, Carbo veg. is still able to turn the scale in favor of the patient. I have witnessed this result more than once. It is in these cases more of a bronch.-pneumonia than simple bronchitis.

PERTUSSIS (Whooping Cough).

After this stage is modified or past, the stage of looseness or rattling of mucus follows, and may need such remedies as Pulsatilla if the expectoration is thick, green and the patient craves fresh, cool air, and is > in a cool room. Antimon, tart. if there is much rattling (coarse rattling) of mucus which is difficult to expectorate, especially if the child gets cyanosed from the abundant accumulation. When the child coughs it seems as if a cup full of mucus would come but it does not. Sleepiness or coma results. Expectoration relieves. Carbo veg. may follow it if the weakness and general blueness from unoxygenized blood, with great hunger for oxygen, wants to be fanned hard to breathe, coldness and prostration.

PNEUMONIA.

Arsenicum and Carbo veg. are both indicated in those desperate cases that resist the above remedies.

Carbo veg. Cough by spells or no cough; if cough with rattling but too weak to expectorate (Ant. tart.); Ant. tart. has failed; hippocratic face, nose pinched and cold; lips, hands, feet and skin blue and cold, breath cold, dyspnœa great, wants to be fanned, can’t get oxygen enough, vital force almost expended. I have seen several such cases come out under Carbo veg.y re-action setting in so that other remedies that did not act satisfactorily will now take hold and do better work Antimon. tart. is often of great utility where the case has gone into what might be called the “loosening up” stage. The chest seems full of mucus with coarse rattling and cough which seems as though it must bring up large quantities, but it does not; the patient becomes cyanotic from want of oxygen, which the great accumulation of mucus shuts out, there seems to be lack of strength to expectorate, even threatened paralysis of the lungs; fits of suffocation. This is the condition that precedes the desperate stage of Carbo veg. and may save the patient from it. It is oftenest found in children and very old people.

PLEURITIS.

Carbo veg. complements it if there is great prostration, sunken hippocratic face, general coldness and blueness, and there is rattling respiration and dyspnœa with desire to be fanned hard to help the breathing. These two last remedies of course come into those desperate cases which have defied the former remedies.

PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS.

Carbo vegetabilis. It, like the Kalis, may be indicated in any stage of phthisis. If it begins in the larynx with painless hoarseness; great roughness with deep rough voice (Dros.) which failed on exerting it; < from damp evening air (Caust., < mornings), this is the first remedy. It is particularly good for this condition in elderly people of broken down constitutions, venous system preponderating. But its use is by no means confined to the aged. The Carbo veg. subject is one of generally reduced vitality, which may or may not have followed on the heels of some acute disease from which she never recovered, is apt to be pale, anæmic, with scorbutic gums and flatulent and easily deranged stomach; much gas which presses upward (Lyc., downward, intestinal) and is quite subject to hæmorrhages from gums, nose or lungs. A characteristic of these hæmorrhages with this remedy is the great paleness of the skin. The breathing is short, oppressed, wants more oxygen, hunger for oxygen, wants to be fanned hard, or has doors and windows open. Circulation is weak, with coldness of extremities, especially knees. There is sensation of weakness and fatigue in the chest, sometimes with burning as from glowing coals. Aching through apex to right scapula (left, Myrtus, Sulph.). It has two kinds of cough, one dry, hard, spasmodic, the other loose, with purulent, salty (Kali hyd.) or offensive sputa (Sang. and Creosot.). These with more symptoms show how valuable this remedy is. It is not used so often as it might be with great advantage, especially by the materialists who can see nothing above the twelfth potency. This and other remedies like Nat mur., Sepia, etc., cannot be known in half their possibilities, and especially this one.

Carbo veg., if there is dark or light colored hæmorrhage with perfect indifference, especially if there is excessive paleness of the skin of whole body.

COUGH.

Character—Dry, spasmodic, continuous (in whooping cough), or, expectorates purulent matter as in tuberculosis.

Excited by—Itching in the larynx or roughness or crawling in the throat.

Aggravated by—< evening or midnight; going from warm to cold places; damp air.

Concomitants—Hoarseness and rawness < evenings or damp air; breathing short; wants to be fanned; burning in the chest; hæmoptysis, with pale cold skin; weak, fatigued feeling in the chest; pneumonia, fetid sputum, cold breath and sweat, rattling breathing, threatened paralysis, cold knees, etc.

See remarks under Antimonium tart. Many cases of pneumonia that have seemed hopeless, in a state of collapse, blood stagnating in the capillaries, causing blueness, coldness and ecchymosis, with the foregoing chest symptoms, may be saved by this remedy. The difference between Carbo veg. and Arsenicum in this stage is that the erethism and restlessness is very marked under the latter, and lack of manifestation of vital’ force under the Carbo veg. It is not only here in these affections that Carbo veg. is useful, but in typhoids and other diseases where these conditions are present.