Carbo vegetabilis

REMEDIES FOLLOWING THE FIRST OR PRODROMAL STAGE OF TYPHOID FEVER

CARBO VEGETABILIS AND MURIATIC ACID

After Arsenicum has done all it can, if the case goes on from bad to worse, we have still two remedies that offer hope. They are Carbo vegetabilis and Muriatic acid.

Carbo veg. can sometimes save life after all else fails. It is the stage of collapse, dissolution of the blood, and paralytic conditions beyond the reach of anything else. There is almost total obliviousness to everything. The face is deathly pale, sunken, hippocratic, cold. There may be hemorrhages from nose, mouth or anus, one or all at a time, and always with that deathly paleness. Abdomen meteoristic, with rumbling and gurgling of wind. Diarrhœa of cadaverous smell and often involuntary. Rattling breathing in bronchi, filled with mucus (threatened paralysis of lungs). The circulation becomes so weak that the blood stagnates in the capillaries, with cyanotic blueness of face, lips and tongue. The nose and breath grow cold, as do also the extremities which are covered with cold sweat, and under the extremely weak heart action the breathing becomes so difficult that the patient from hunger for oxygen, gasps, “fan me! fan me!” All this indicates beginning paralysis of the heart (heart failure) and is a picture of complete torpor of the vital forces. The prostration is beyond that of Arsenicum even, which is always more or less associated with erethism. I have seen such a case revive and completely recover under the action of Carbo veg., and let me mention right here that if the improvement brought about by Carbo veg. in such a case needs further help, China officinalis is generally the best remedy. No two remedies that I know of, oftener complement each other better.