Psorinum

The therapeutic field of this remedy is found in so-called psoric manifestations. Psorinum is a cold medicine; wants the head kept warm, wants warm clothing even in summer. Extreme sensitiveness to cold. Debility , independent of any organic disease, especially the weakness remaining after acute disease. Lack of reaction , i.e, phagocytes defective; when well-chosen remedies fail to act. Scrofulous patients. Secretions have a filthy smell . Profuse sweating. Cardiac weakness. Skin symptoms very prominent. Often gives immunity from cold-catching. Easy perspiration when walking. Syphilis, inherited and tertiary. Offensive discharges .

Mind

Hopeless; despairs of recovery. Melancholy , deep and persistent; religious. Suicidal tendency.

Head

Awakens at night with pain as from blow on head. Chronic headaches; hungry during attacks; with vertigo. Hammering pain; brain feels too large; worse, change of weather. Dull, pressive pain in occiput. Humid eruption on scalp; hair matted. Hair dry.

Eyes

Agglutinated. Blepharitis. Chronic ophthalmia, that constantly recurs . Edges of lids red. Secretion acrid.

Mouth

Obstinate rhagades at corners. Tongue, gums ulcerated; tough mucus of foul taste adheres to soft palate.

Nose

Dry, coryza, with stoppage of nose. Chronic catarrh; dropping from posterior nares. Acne rosacea.

Ears

Raw, red, oozing scabs around ears . Sore pain behind ears. Herpes from temples over ears to cheeks. Offensive discharge from eczema around ears. Intolerable itching . Chronic otorrhœa. Most fetid pus from ears , brownish, offensive.

Face

Swelling of upper lip. Pale, delicate. Humid eruption on face . Sickly.

Throat

Tonsils greatly swollen; painful swallowing, with pain in ears. Profuse, offensive saliva; tough mucus in throat. Recurring quinsy. Eradicates tendency to quinsy . Hawking up of cheesy, pea-like balls of disgusting smell and taste ( Agar ).

Stomach

Eructations like bad eggs. Very hungry always ; must have something to eat in the middle of the night . Nausea; vomiting of pregnancy. Pain in abdomen after eating.

Stool

Mucous, bloody, excessively fetid, dark fluid . Hard, difficult stool, with blood from rectum and burning piles. Constipation of infants , in pale, sickly scrofulous children.

Female

Leucorrhœa fetid, lumpy, with much backache and debility . Mammæ swollen and painful. Pimples oozing an acrid fluid that burns and excoriates the glands.

Respiratory

Asthma, with dyspnœa; worse, sitting up; better, lying down and keeping arms spread wide apart. Dry, hard cough, with great weakness in chest. Feeling of ulceration under sternum . Pain in chest; better, lying down. Cough returns every winter, from suppressed eruption. Hay-fever returning irregularly every year.

Extremities

Weakness of joints, as if they would not hold together. Eruption around finger-nails . Fetid foot-sweats.

Skin

Dirty, dingy look. Dry, lusterless, rough hair. Intolerable itching . Herpetic eruptions, especially on scalp and bends of joints with itching; worse, from warmth of bed. Enlarged glands. Sebaceous glands secrete excessively; oily skin. Indolent ulcers, slow to heal. Eczema behind ears. Crusty eruptions all over. Urticaria after every exertion. Pustules near finger-nails.

Fever

Profuse, offensive perspiration; night-sweats.

Sleep

Sleepless from intolerable itching. Easily startled.

Modalities

Worse , coffee; Psorinum patient does not improve while using coffee. Worse , changes of weather, in hot sunshine, from cold. Dread of least cold air or draft. Better , heat, warm clothing, even in summer.

Relationship

Complementary: Sulphur .

Compare: Pediculus -Head-louse--(psoric manifestations in children. Eruption on dorsum of hands, feet neck. Prurigo; pellagra. Unusual aptitude for study and work). Pediculus (Cooties) transmit typhus and trench fever). In lack of reaction compare Calcarea and Natrum ars. Gaertner (Pessimistic, lack of confidence, subjective troublesome eye symptoms, fear of heights. Urticaria. Use 30th and 200th (Wheeler).

Dose

Two hundredth and higher potencies. Should not be repeated too often. Psorinum requires something like 9 days before it manifests its action, and even a single dose may elicit other symptoms lasting for weeks (Aegedi).