Mirza Tahir Ahmad James Tyler Kent
In Latin, the metal lead is called Plumbum. Some paint used to decorate the houses contains lead. Even after the paint dries, the lead particles remain suspended in the air. Those who are allergic to lead will develop an allergy as soon as they enter a room treated with leadcontaining paint. They will develop severe abdominal pain as if the abdomen is tightly squeezed. Even if the patient is not allergic to lead, a severe type of abdominal pain will benefit from Plumbum.
A special symptom of Plumbum is related to the gums i.e., a blue line (lead line) appears on the gums below the teeth. It darkens with the passage of time.
Plumbum is the best treatment for muscular spasms. Besides this, if the hand becomes paralysed resulting in wrist drop (which may be due to an excessive use of the hand for writing), and the patient has the basic symptoms of Plumbum, then Plumbum acts extraordinarily fast against this condition.
A Plumbum patient is often very slow and lazy. He appears somewhat mentally as well as psychologically deficient. When questioned, the patient either responds after a pause or just repeats the question. Plumbum is ideal for the treatment of delayed response. Sometimes while deeply lost in his thoughts, a person may not listen to a lightly uttered question, but will become aware of the question a little later, when his mind receives the message recorded earlier and wakes him up. Then he will ask what the matter was. Although a delayed response should not only be taken as a sign of Plumbum ailment, nevertheless, a Plumbum patient always reacts slowly. In fact, his perception of pain is also very slow and delayed. Therefore, there is always a danger that by the time such a patient comes to realise the pain, he may have already been seriously hurt. Luckily, only full-fledged Plumbum patients exhibit this symptom. A Plumbum patient understands the matter, but it takes time to register in his mind. The nerves carrying the pain sensation become slow in transmitting the pain message. Sometimes, this slowly progressive sensory loss may end in complete loss of sensation. The skin becomes numb. The feet and other parts of the body may gradually become insensitive and lifeless. When the disease progresses further, the patient becomes physically weak and is ultimately reduced to looking like a skeleton covered with loose skin.
A special symptom of Plumbum is that the painful part of the body ultimately becomes wasted. This symptom is also found in other kinds of paralyses. Fevers causing paralysis, such as typhoid etc., weaken the affected part but this weakness is not due to the pain. Typhoid sometimes paralyses the legs or arms but there is no pain associated with it. However, in Plumbum, there is always some pain in the part that is paralysed. In such a situation, immediate treatment with Plumbum should be started. Plumbum is also very useful in the treatment of sciatica. If other symptoms of it are also present then one must always treat the patient with Plumbum first. Whenever the limbs become flabby, painful and weak due to paralysis, then Plumbum will be found to be an effective treatment.
Piano players often develop paralysis of the finger joints. Their fingers become weak and frail. For this condition, two remedies are very famous, i.e. Plumbum and Curare. Curare is an extremely dangerous poison causing paralysis. Rhus Tox is a very effective remedy for the rapidly developing ill effects of paralysis. When used in the beginning of the disease, it immediately produces a positive response. However, if the use of Rhus Tox is delayed then it does not fully benefit the patient unless combined with Sulphur. Rhus Tox is relatively weak and a slow acting treatment. In contrast to Rhus Tox, Plumbum is a strong and a long-acting homoeopathic remedy.
Treatment by alternating Sulphur with Rhus Tox increases the effectiveness of Rhus Tox. I alternate Rhus Tox with Sulphur. Sulphur activates the immune body system, while Rhus Tox cures the paralysis. By the grace of God, many chronic patients of polio have benefited greatly from this prescription. Rhus Tox is deeply related to paralysis. Although homoeopathic doctors do not usually use it for the treatment of chronic paralysis, although, it is a very useful remedy provided it is alternated with Sulphur.
The Plumbum patient suffers from severe constipation. The stools are hard, rounded and difficult to be excreted. Often, ulcers form in the rectum. The rectum may need to be evacuated digitally or with instruments. The reason for the problem is that the circular muscle fibres in the wall of the intestines become paralysed and lose the strength to push the faecal matter onwards. This paralytic condition slowly becomes worse and the constipation becomes more severe and chronic. Such constipation should be patiently treated with Plumbum, over a long period. Full results of the treatment show up in about fifteen days of the treatment. Those diseases that develop slowly, must respond to the treatment relatively slowly. However, sometimes the homoeopathic treatment may produce immediate response, e.g. the relief of griping pain and spasmodic pain in the abdomen. In homoeopathy, the effects of a poison which appear immediately can be cured equally fast by treatment with the homoeopathic potency of the same poison. In Plumbum, due to the paralysis of the bladder wall, the patient loses strength to void urine, resulting in retention of urine. Urine continues to collect in the bladder and then excreted drop by drop (retention with overflow). This is not related to the prostate; rather the condition is due to the paralysis of the bladder wall. The symptoms of the two diseases (bladder weakness and enlarged prostate) are obviously different. Urinary stoppage is not necessarily due to only one cause. When urination stops after delivery of a child, then Causticum happens to be the most ideal treatment. If this condition develops after an operation, then Strontium Carb is better. Plumbum also can be effective if the kidneys stop functioning due to sudden shock. Plumbum stirs up the kidney function.
One symptom of Plumbum is that whatever kind of food is taken, it produces acidity in the stomach, leading to severe vomiting. Usually the partially digested food with the gastric secretions passes on to the small intestines within three hours. If the stomach fails to empty itself within this period, then the food starts rotting in the stomach. This produces acidity and foul smelling belches. Acidity in the stomach can also be caused by decreased peristaltic movement of the intestine and the resulting stasis. Plumbum is the best remedy in this condition.
In Plumbum, the vomited material is either dark in colour or greenish and is sometimes mixed with blood. The function of the stomach and liver becomes deranged. The stomach feels full and heavy. The belly button becomes retracted.
Plumbum is famous for the gradually progressive weakness of the muscles (progressive muscular dystrophy). There are two to three different remedies useful in this disease. Opium and Kali Phos are also good remedies for this disease. When treating with Kali Phos, the dose should be increased gradually. In progressive muscular dystrophy, the neurons in the central part of the brain responsible for the voluntary control of the muscles start to die. There is no known cure for this disease. The patients slowly become more and more weak and often die before attaining the prime of their youth. Even if they remain alive, their life is very miserable. Progressive muscular dystrophy being a hereditary disease, sometimes all the children may be affected. No definite cure has yet been found for the disease. However, the patients obtain some relief with homoeopathic treatment.
Occasional rapid heartbeat (tachycardia) along with convulsions, benefit from Plumbum. For a sudden feeling of the heart being squeezed, Cactus Grandiflora is the best remedy.
Plumbum is said to be capable of treating the bad habit of cheating and dishonesty. If this is true, then it should be used freely throughout the world!
Plumbum is a good remedy for the treatment of chronic kidney diseases associated with loss of albumin and sugar in the urine. Plumbum improves the function of the kidney tubules and helps retain both the albumin and the sugar.
The symptoms of Plumbum also resemble those of Opium. In apoplexy, there is sudden rush of blood towards the head, which can result in cerebral haemorrhage. The face becomes congested with blood, and the pupils of the eyes become dilated. These symptoms often lead to death. Arnica and Opium given in high potency at the onset of the symptoms proves very useful. It is also necessary to treat the patient of Plumbum with high doses of Plumbum. Both Opium and Plumbum show their effects at the same time. Dr. Kent states that the treatment should first be started with Opium and later Plumbum should be added to the treatment. This is correct because the initial symptoms of the disease resemble those of Opium.
Two other remedies are also considered very useful in the treatment of apoplexy. If there are multiple red bleeds, then Phosphorus is better but Alumina is also famous for the treatment of this condition.
Painful severe cramps of the legs in the evening, which get relieved on movement and by application of local pressure, can possibly be treated with Plumbum. A lightning type of undulating pain is a symptom of Plumbum, which is also found in Causticum and Caulophyllum.
With regards to cold and heat, the nature of Plumbum resembles Psorinum i.e. the patient is very sensitive to cold. He keeps himself covered with a blanket even during summer. Like Arnica, the head of the patient is warm and there is a tendency to form blood clots.
Often, blisters develop between the toes of the feet. Besides Plumbum, Sulphur is also very useful for such boils. If gangrene develops in the fingers or toes, or knots form in the feet, then also Plumbum will be effective if the patient is of the constitution of Plumbum.
Plumbum is also very good for the treatment of the swelling of the glands beneath the tongue (sublingual salivary glands). The tendency towards severe body jolts and locking of the jaw, the paralysis of the muscles in the wall of the windpipe and the food pipe (oesophagus), resulting in the entry of the food into the air passage and choking due to water or food entering the windpipe or nose, are all the symptoms of Plumbum. Symptoms of many other remedies related to paralysis are also found in Plumbum.
Sometimes, the severe abdominal colic related to Plumbum leads to a tendency towards delirium. The patient feels as if a painful ball is moving from the throat up, towards the brain. The hair become dry, pupils constrict and the eyes become yellow. Sometimes, the patient may suddenly become unconscious and blinded. The face becomes pale, the cheeks wrinkle, and the skin becomes greasy and shiny with the formation of dark brown spots.
In Plumbum, the symptoms aggravate at night and with movement, while they ameliorate with local pressure
Antidotes: Alumina, Petroleum, Platinum
Potency: 30 to 200, 1000 or even CM
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
PLUMBUM METALLICUM
This drug illustrates a doctrine of Hahnemann: the doctrine of attenuation.
Generalities: When you think of the insolubility of lead, and then think of it as spread on the wall of a room, and then remember how many become sick from sleeping in a newly painted room, you will then wonder how much lead it took to make them sick.
Many patients cannot sleep in a newly painted room - they come down with lead colic or the acute affections of lead. Many people are sensitive to lead. This sensitivity is more marked than is observed in painters, who may use it for years with impunity, but all at once become susceptible to it.
You wonder how much he gets, given off in the air. It is too attenuated to be examined by the microscope and yet enough to make him sick.
We have no measure by which to find out how much he gets. We make use of such susceptibility, the lead palsy of lead workers, the lead colic in painters - these things add to the proper proving and give a well-rounded image of Plumbum.
General paralytic state: If we study the whole symptomatology of Plumbum, we will be struck with the general paralytic state in this remedy.
The activities of the body, the functions of the organs, are slowed down in pace. The nerves do not convey their messages with the usual activity. The muscles are slow in action, sluggish. There is first paresis and finally paralysis, of parts first and finally of the whole.
The mind is impaired, slow. Perception is slow. He memorizes with difficulty. Comprehension is difficult. He cannot recall words to express himself. The operations of the mind are slow. When in conversation with such a patient you will wonder what he is thinking about while making up his mind to answer.
There is sluggishness also in the skin. You may prick him and a second later he says, "Oh", showing the slowness in feeling. You would expect him to feel the prick instantly. When you begin to conclude that he does not feel at all, his limb will jerk.
Anesthesia of the skin. There is a state of hyperesthesia in the acute affections, but the chronic affections are characterized by loss of sensation. Numbness of fingers and toes, soles, and palms, and this extends to the skin, towards the spine.
The trophic functions are slow in that they do not keep up with the waste, and so we see emaciation until the patient becomes almost a skeleton. The skin is wrinkled, puckered, shriveled, and drawn over the bones. The emaciation is sometimes local.
When local it is generally associated with a painful part; the painful part withers. Pains down the sciatic nerve; burning, shooting; as if the bone were being pulled out of place; as if being scraped and the limb emaciates. Pain down the arm, in the shoulder; violent pains in the brachial plexus and the arm withers.
Neuralgia of one side of the face and that side withers. Paralysis of single muscles and these muscles wither. There is, paralysis of both extensors and flexors, but especially extensors. The paralysis begins in the extensors, so that we have wrist drop. He cannot raise or lift anything with the hand. Extension is difficult. This occurs in piano players; they cannot lift their fingers sufficiently rapid to keep up the pace, while flexion is all right. Curare is another remedy which corresponds to this state in piano players; a paralysis from overexertion of the extensor muscles.
When the muscles become fatigued from playing fixed exercises, scales, etc., for hours at a time, when the player has to do the same thing over and over again, Rhus comes in, but it is an acute remedy and only holds for a short time.
It is especially a Rhus condition when certain muscles become overused and the patient takes cold and a weakness sets in; after a cold bath or plunge the muscles take on paresis; getting wet when tired brings on the Rhus state.
For the chronic state which follows, Plumbum and sometimes Curare will be indicated.
Paresis of the intestines; constipation; cannot strain at stool. The patient can use the abdominal muscles, but the rectum is in a state of paresis and he cannot expel the faeces.
The bladder is also paretic; cannot expel the urine, the muscles do not cooperate to void the urine and there is retention. Plumbum has both retention and suppression of urine.
The paralyses are found in the chronic state. In the acute we have the fever, the colic, the sudden constipation; tearing pains in the intestines; indigestion with vomiting. Everything eaten turns sour.
Violent vomiting of everything eaten. Chronic gastric catarrh with vomiting of albuminous mucus and sweetish substance. Vomiting of stercoraceous matter, blackish blood and green fluid. Sour eructations.
The remedy is slow and insidious; it works continuously; it does not leave the economy but holds on and establishes a miasm of its own. It, therefore, suits slow and insidious chronic cases, with no tendency to recovery. Progressive muscular atrophy; progressive paralysis. Chronic constipation; chronic retention of urine; chronic giving way of the mind.
Aside from the slowness of the mind, which is a general, the remedy is full of melancholia, sadness, feeling as if something terrible would happen; that she has sinned away the day of grace; that she has committed the unpardonable sin. The body and mind are weak.
"Deep melancholy with timidity and restlessness,"
In the mental state, while he is slow to think, yet in this slow thinking he does a great amount of thinking; he makes an effort to think. His thoughts trouble him all night and prevent sleep. Insomnia; sleepless from the continual effort to think.
The mind will not operate, yet the patient is full of imaginations and emotions. Inability to comprehend and to remember. Now, this progresses from periods of insomnia to periods of coma and this coma is associated with suppression of urine.
Uraemic coma. Uremia. Perhaps it will fix it in your mind if I tell you something clinical about it. Some years ago a physician came to me in regard to his wife. She had been unconscious for two days and had passed no urine for days and the catheter showed there was none in the bladder. She had quite an array of symptoms but they were common symptoms.
She had had the slowness for days before, and complained of a sensation of a continual pulling at the navel, as if a string were drawing it back to the spinal column, and then the coma came on. In the middle of the night this doctor came to me in great distress. He said she was pale as death and breathing slow. A single powder of Plumbum high was given, and she passed urine in a few hours, roused up and never had such an attack again.
Violent spasmodic palpitation of the heart, worse lying on the left side, with marked anxiety in the cardiac region. Hypertrophy and dilatation of the heart. Stitching pain in the heart.
Hysterical diathesis hysterical contractures; cramping of the fingers; hysterical motions convulsions of parts, hands, feet, whole body; an apparent delirium; cardiac pains; numbness in parts - all hysterical phenomena.
Plumbum produces an inclination to deceive, to cheat. The Acetate of lead produced in a woman, who took a little of it for suicide, a confirmed hysterical state. She would be in a hysterical condition for hours when any one was looking at her. When she thought no one was near she would get up, walk about, look in the glass to see how handsome she was, but when she heard a foot on the steps she would, he on the bed and appear to he unconscious.
She would bear much pricking and you could scarcely tell she was breathing. Plumbum establishes a hysterical state in the economy; an inclination to deceive, to feign sickness; to exaggerate one's ills; and it goes to the root of the evil providing the symptoms agree.
Changeable; continually changing from one thing to another, from one group of imaginations to another, from one group of emotions to another. The whole remedy is intensely emotional. While the intellect is slowed down, yet most of the symptoms are emotional.
Plumbum cures kidney affections with albumen and sugar in the urine. The urine is dark, scanty, and of high specific gravity. Retention of urine from lack of sensation that the bladder is full.
Apoplexy. Stupor, when Opium is sufficiently similar to remove the cerebral congestion which always surrounds the apoplectic clot, Plumbum may follow. Plumbum, Phosphorus and Alumina are three sheet anchors.
They conform to the symptoms often when the first state as been like Opium. The paralysis of muscles, the paralytic weakness of one side of the body, or single parts of the body, show its relation to such cases.
There is another feature of the upper part of the body, of the head and mind, which is not clear in the books and which is worthy of your attention. The mental symptoms, the emotional symptoms, and the head symptoms are greatly exaggerated by any exertion, especially exertion in the open air.
While walking in the open air the patient becomes hot in the head, pale in the face, and cold in the extremities, hands and feet cold as ice, as if dead; and if he continues the exertion the face becomes fairly cadaveric. Persons cannot exercise and continue it without cold extremities.
An irritable brain; pain in the base of the brain, back of the neck, in the nerve centers. Cold extremities from exertion; yet can do considerable mental exertion without becoming cold. It is from physical exertion like walking in the open air. Paroxysmal pain in the limbs, evening and night; better by pressure and worse from motion. Lightning-like pains. Jerking and trembling of all the limbs.
The Plumbum patient is cold and emaciated, needs much clothing even in warm weather, not about the head, but over the body. Extremities cold, blue, numb and emaciated. Sweat on the extremities, and on the feet it is stinking. Feet and toes withered like a washerwoman's hands. Toes blistered; blisters between the toes, smarting. Ulcerations. Molecular death and even gangrene of the skin of the fingers and toes. Calluses about the feet, corns and bunions.
With the chronic affection of the head there is contraction of the muscles of the back and neck; drawing and twitching indicating meningeal troubles; spasmodic jerking.
"Swelling of the submaxillary and sublingual glands."
Convulsions often like tetanus, with lockjaw.
"Distinct blue line along the margins of the gums."
"Gums pale, swollen, show a lead-colored line; blue, purple, or brown; painful with hard tubercles."
"Tongue dry, brown, cracked; coated yellow or green; dry, red, glazed in chronic gastritis."
Breath foetid, dryness of mouth, ulceration, aphthae.
"Sensation of a plug in the throat; globus hystericus."
"Paralysis of throat and inability to swallow," a paralysis of the oesophagus.
The stomach has no ability to digest food. Assimilation is also destroyed. Pains in the abdomen, tearing, like colic, doubling the patient up. Constant sensation of pulling at the navel as by a string; as if the abdomen were drawn in. At times the abdomen does become concave, as if the abdomen and back were too close together.
Constipation is a common and well known feature. The constipation, colic, and abdominal symptoms are commonly associated.
"Constipated stools, hard, lumpy like sheep’s dung; with urging and terrible pain from constriction or spasms of anus; knotty faeces in form of balls."
No matter how much straining he cannot expel the stool.
"Constriction of intestines; navel and anus violently retracted."
"Excessive pain in abdomen radiating from thence to all parts of the body."
"Severe colic; contracted abdomen; bends backward, motor nerves most affected."
Rumbling and flatulence. Impaction of faeces. Vaginismus in keeping with the spasmodic action.
"Inclination to take strange attitudes and positions in bed."
"Anemia, chlorosis, emaciation, muscular atrophy, wandering pains, dropsical swellings, yellow skin, jaundice."
Burning in ulcers is in keeping with the remedy everywhere.
by James Tyler Kent