Phosphorus

REMEDIES FOR PNEUMO-TYPHUS, PHOSPHORUS, HYOSCYAMUS, RHUS TOX. AND SULPHUR

For Pneumo-typhus the leading remedies are Phosphorus, Hyoscyamus, Rhus toxicod. and Sulphur. We have occasionally a case in which the typhoid poison “seems to localize principally in the chest, causing hypostasis of the lungs, pneumonia or violent bronchitis, while the characteristic affections of the small intestines are comparatively light, or even wanting.” Such conditions used to be called complications. In such a case, if there is hard dry cough (Bryonia) with tightness of the chest, or the cough is more loose with rusty expectoration, cough worse in the evening until midnight, and especially worse lying on the left side there may be hepatization, especially of the lower right lung, these symptoms being so prominent as to cover to quite a degree the other typhoid symptoms, Phosphorus may be given, and may, with the relief of these symptoms, change the whole case favorably and usher the patient into the road that leads to recovery. In such a case it is quite common to find a serious degree of cardiac weakness, for which Phosphorus is also one of our best remedies.

While this remedy has not the strongly-developed characteristics in this disease that many others have, it has, on the other hand, a general wide range of action that lets it in on what Jahr used to call “tout ensemble” of the symptoms. The indications for Rhus tox. in these cases are already given, except the pneumonic infiltration, which must be added. Phosphorus is hardly ever indicated, though it may be, before Rhus tox., but follows it well if the latter remedy cannot control the pneumonic manifestations.