Mirza Tahir Ahlmad James Tyler Kent
Stannum is a metal used for plating of utensils. In homoeopathic form, it is not used much. In my own experience, I have found it very effective and important. It is quite useful in the treatment of the terminal stage of tuberculosis of the lungs and very useful in the treatment of phlegmatic type of patients. A daytime headache that gets better at night is very amenable to treatment with Stannum. However, its best use is in the treatment of chronic diseases of the lungs and intestinal worm infestation. Its use in the treatment of worms is not much mentioned in the standard literatures, though it is definitely referred to in the repertories. Stannum used over a long period, helps kill or dissolve the intestinal worms and then expel them. It needs to be used for at least a few months. Stannum is also an antidote of lead poisoning. It is also useful in the treatment of blisters inside the mouth.
In the areas where utensils are plated with tin, Stannum should not be forgotten when treating the gastro-intestinal symptoms in that population. In Western countries, tin plating is not in vogue, so it is not much used. However, food and beverages are preserved in cans lined internally with tin. So, wherever the food is consumed out of the cans, Stannum may very well be needed.
The metal “Tin” melts easily and its homoeopathic form helps liquefy phlegm for easier expulsion. In case the lungs have become congested, inflamed and become firm. Stannum will be helpful to treat this condition. Pains related to Stannum begin at sunrise, and then gradually keep on getting worse. The symptoms start subsiding as the day declines and disappear completely at sunset.
Headache becoming worse in the sun responds very well to Natrum Mur, Sanguinaria as well as Stannum.
Stannum has a peculiarity that exposure to the cold affects the nerves, in particular of the face, causing facial neuralgia.
Another symptom of Stannum is that the chest feels weak. The patient feels easily exhausted even on talking as if the chest has lost its strength. The chest becomes weak and the lungs feel lifeless, as a result of which the patient cannot even talk. Some of these patients are chronic sufferers of these conditions. They must be treated with Stannum in high potency, to be repeated every two weeks or so for a few months. The patient will be found getting better surprisingly fast. Stannum is very helpful in the treatment of symptoms of tuberculosis of the lungs.
Another symptom of Stannum is nausea, which can occur from the smell of food being cooked, as in Colchicum. The taste of the mouth becomes bitter. The stomach feels empty, accompanied by cramps (hunger pangs). The feeling of weakness is profound, especially in the chest. The patient finds it difficult to talk. He has dry cough, which gets worse on talking, laughing and singing. The patient always feels tired and feels progressive weakness. He is very sensitive to the change of weather. There is a tendency to palpitate and the heart starts beating fast even on slight exertion. The arms and legs quiver, feel heavy and have cramps. The thumbs get drawn towards the palms which is a prominent feature of Plumbum.
In Stannum, typically, the patient feels exhausted even while descending the stairs, whereas normally in most illnesses, people feel difficulty in climbing the stairs. Muscles at the forearms and the hands feel tight and contracted while writing and typing. Spasmodic twitching of the fingers is its salient feature.
In women, the periods are more frequent and more copious (menorrhagia). There is irritation inside the uterus and a feeling of downward sag. The discharge is pale yellow or whitish and watery, rendering the patient weaker.
In Stannum, light touch aggravates the suffering, while the deep pressure or lying down on a hard surface offers relief. The symptoms aggravate gradually and subside equally slowly. The headache, however, subsides fast.
Adjuvant: Pulsatilla
Potency: 30 to 200
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
STANNUM METALLICUM
Stannum is especially suited to persons who have long been growing feeble.
This is so striking that it may be said that some deep seated constitutional state must be present. There is a history of increasing weakness, cachexia, catarrhal conditions, and neuralgia dating back over years. There is sensitiveness to pain and an increasing aversion to doing anything, aversion to business in a man, and in a woman, to going about her housework; always tired, all work becomes irksome.
The countenance becomes increasingly sallow, even to a waxy, cachectic aspect. Once who has been growing weaker and develops neuralgia of the face, eyes, stomach, and intestines; not the shooting, tearing pains often described, but a pain beginning gradually, increasing steadily and then diminishing gradually.
Pains: The pain sometimes begins with sunrise, increases until noon and gradually diminishes, and ceases with sunset. On the other hand, it may begin at any time, as often at 10 A.M. and increasing for ten or twenty minutes, then gradually diminishing, but especially worse at noon.
Cactus has a sun headaches, Kalmia has a similar headache, not so regularly increasing and diminishing, but especially worse at noon. Cactus has a sun headache. Natrum mur. has never been known to cause it, but has cured it especially when beginning at 10 A.M. and worse from 2 to 3 P- m. Sang. headache coming and going with the sun.
The phthisical tendency of Stannum is closely allied to the neuralgias. If these patients settle down into a neuralgic constitution, the deposit of tubercles is postponed, but most of them then seek palliation with the inevitable result of hastening the end. If the Stannum neuralgia is suppressed, we will see phthisis making its appearance, particularly phthisis pituitosa.
Nature seems to be able to throw off effects through mucous discharges. If the neuralgia is not permitted to, have sway the patient becomes oversensitive to cold, takes cold easily. When let alone every cold settled in the nerves and every draft caused neuralgias about the eyes, sensitive to every change in the weather, the hydrogenoid constitution of Grauvogl.
But when palliated in any way by Quinine and inappropriate homoeopathic remedies that have the tendency to, catch cold in the chest like Phos., he after a while does not get over his cold, but there is a continuous catarrh of the chest, and later he will die of miliary tuberculosis. Stannum is useful in warding off phthisis, and is a wonderful palliative in that disease.
The pain has been likened to the pulling of a string, gradually increasing and gradually letting up. The Puls. pain is somewhat similar in its first half; it gradually becomes intense, but suddenly lets up with a snap; comes gradually and stops suddenly.
Remember what is said about the Bell. pain. It comes suddenly and reaches its intensity at once, where it may remain for hours, but ceases suddenly.
The Stannum pain is at times so severe that there is a throbbing pulsating intermingled with it, and the mind seems stunned.
"Headache every morning, over one or the other eye, mostly the left, gradually extending over the whole forehead and increasing and decreasing gradually, often with vomiting."
"Violent, glowing, beating pain." It is sometimes attended with burning.
"Felt as if the head would burst with inward blows.
Neuralgia of the left eye gradually increasing from 10 A.M. to noon, then gradually decreasing, with lachrymation during pain.
Intermittent supra-orbital neuralgia from 10 A.M. to 3 or 4 P.M., gradually increasing and attaining its acme, and then again gradually decreasing, after the abuse of quinine."
This is when the body is weak, with sallow countenance and tendency to phthisis, full of pain, and the earlier history shows that instead of taking cold in the chest or nose, as others take cold, every cold settles in the nerves.
Finally he begins to take cold in the chest, with dyspnoea, violent, racking cough, gagging, retching, vomiting, and the most intense sufferings.
Copious, thick, yellow-green, bloody expectoration, which tastes sweetish (Phos.). Retching when coughing is marked; thick, white, yellow or green tenacious mucus. Cannot walk, cannot do anything without cough.
Always tired; it is an effort to work. Wakens in the morning with the chest filled with mucus, and coughs and expectorates, and yet some remains; he gags, retches and vomits, and it strings out of the mouth tasting sweetish, sometimes salty or sour.
Voice: This great weakness is manifested in the voice; hoarseness, loss of voice; the vocal cords will not respond; a paralytic weakness. Talking makes him feel weak, especially in the chest.
"Hoarseness, weakness, emptiness in the chest on beginning to sing, so that she was constantly obliged to stop and take a deep breath; at times a few expulsive coughs removed the hoarseness for a few minutes.
Rawness in the larynx."
Rawness in the trachea and smarting all the way down when coughing. Irritation to cough, as from mucus in the trachea; or breathing, with cough either loose or dry, felt more while sitting bent over than when walking.
"Accumulation of great quantities of mucus in the trachea, easily thrown off by coughing.
Oppressed breathing from ascending, from the slightest movement when lying down, in the evening, from coughing."
"Cough in fatiguing paroxysms; epigastric region painful as if beaten; violent, shattering, deep, short, from time to time, as from weakened chest, with a hoarse.
Weak sound.
Cough caused by talking, singing, laughing, lying on the side and from drinking anything warm."
"Sputa like white of egg; yellow, green pus; sweetish, putrid, sour or saltish during day.
Chest so weak that he cannot talk; empty feeling in the chest,"
This remedy is frequently indicated in cases where the routinist would prescribe Bry., etc., in low potencies to loosen the cough. Stannum is not dangerous in phthisis, and will palliate the case if it is incurable.
It will not rouse up the whole economy like Silica, but there may be an aggravation of the nervous symptoms; if there is anything to build on it will cause the patient to rally. If it brings back his old neuralgic pains, and you know he has not a long time to live, and seems to suffer much, Puls. is the natural antidote.
When a loose, easy cough is turned into one that is violent, dry and racking under Stannum, and seems to be inclined to be prolonged, Puls. will restore the loose cough. This is not a good action of the remedy; in incurable cases you can get the best results by not going too high.
Women: Another feature is seen in women.
If you ever meet with a case who has suffered with violent neuralgia and she says since the obliteration of these pains she has had a copious, thick yellow, green leucorrhoea, think of Stannum. There is great weakness, which seems to proceed from the chest. The leucorrhoea has saved her from consumption.
Menses too early and too profuse; bearing down in the uterine region; prolapsus uteri and vaginae.
Paralytic symptoms; writers' cramp; women cannot let go of the broom (Dros. cures most cases).
"Constipation; stools hard, dry, knotty, or insufficient and green."
Inactive rectum, i. e., a paralytic state; even though there is much urging there is inability to pass the stool, which at times is soft. Colic better from pressure, lying on the stomach (Coloc., Cupr.); worse from motion; better from bending double.
"Very much exhausted from talking or reading aloud.
Great lassitude from walking; weariness of the whole body, especially when ascending stairs great sense of weakness in larynx and chest, thence all over the body trembling worse from slow exercise."
by James Tyler Kent