Mercury Abstracted from various Materia Medica
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2003 Jan / Feb VOL V NO 1.
Dr Vishpala Parthasarathy

Characteristics: Aching, especially in bones and where flesh is thin over the bones. Swollen, flabby tongue taking imprint of teeth. Gums swollen, spongy, bleeding. Breath very offensive. Sweats day and night without relief in many ailments. Moist tongue (saliva) with intense thirst. Creeping chilliness at beginning of cold.
Mind: Restlessness 8 pm. Time seems to pass slowly.
Nose: Discharge or catarrh thin and excoriating, becoming thicker, greenish and more bland. Coryza better on becoming heated.
Mouth: Gums spongy, sometimes bleeding; tongue swollen, flabby and taking imprint of teeth. Whole mouth moist with saliva, the odour very offensive. Intense thirst.
Throat: Tonsils greatly swollen.
Limbs: Sharp and lancinating pains in hip joints, thighs and knees worse in evening and night and during movement and often with a sensation of coldness in diseased parts.
Modalities: Worse by heat and cold. Worse night.

Patients needing this remedy are human barometers and every change of temperature worsens their conditions.

Roger Morrison: Desktop Guide
The physical constitution of Mercury has often been likened to the Mercury in a thermometer that is to say exquisitely reactive to changes in temperature. Patient is over sensitive to heat and cold, but also to many other changes in his environment. This great reactivity is associated with and in fact causes weakness and debility. In fact there are 62 references in the repertory for factors which generally aggravate Mercury but only 8 factors listed which ameliorate, and 5 these have to do with resting or lying down. Mercury combines weakness and over-reactivity.

Introversion
On the emotional level, the Mercury patient tends to be withdrawn and introverted. The emotions are often strong internally, but are rarely given expression. The patient feels different than other people and has a sort of instinctive reserve about expressing himself and even has a suspiciousness of others. He puts on a façade of normality and conservatism. The patient will often confirm a noteworthy symptom: It is necessary for him to feel that the person he speaks to is listening carefully, with undivided attention or he will be unable to speak. This need for deep congruency may explain why many Mercury patients feel more comfortable in homosexual relationships.

Impulses
Often in Mercury cases these intense emotions which are withheld take the form of impulses. The patient has a strong impulse to strike or even kill an offending person. But these intense feelings are almost never revealed to others. In fact the Mercury patient will often cultivate a deeply conservative and proper appearance toward the world.

Anxiety
Deeper breakdown states occur in some. The inefficiency of mind often is a cause for concern, and to compensate the patient begins to hurry to try to accomplish all of his responsibilities. Eventually he finds that he is constantly rushing about. The Mercury patient may develop deep phobias and anxieties, especially about his mental health. He comes to the interview looking emotionally weak and broken. This is a remedy we must keep in mind for advanced states of depression, paranoia and even organic brain disease and imbecility.

Children

The Mercury child is often very precocious and seems to have almost adult-like emotions. He can seem flirtatious, intense and sensitive. This child has strong emotions and can be very irritable. More often the child is shy or withdrawn. In almost all cases the child suffers with poor resistance to infections chronic otitis media, pharyngitis and stomatitis. The child usually exhibits the typical confirmatory keynotes.

Generals
Aggravation from perspiring.
Night Sweats.
Appearance: Serious, pale face and skin with blotchiness and a translucent quality, like marble.

Clinical Conditions
Abscess. Acne. Anxiety. Balanitis. Bruxism. Colds. Colitis. Conjunctivitis. Connective tissue disease. Eczema. Gastroenteritis. Glossitis. Iritis. Malignancy. Orchitis. Otitis Media. Paranoia. Parkinson’s disease. Pharyngitis. Phobic disorder. Premature ejaculation. Rhinitis. Sexual disorders. Sinusitis. Stomatitis. Syphilis. Tonsillitis. Ulcerative colitis. Upper respiratory infections. Vagnitis.

Complementaries: Ars, Bad, Puls, Aur
Inimical: Sil
Comparisions
Ars- Anxiety, miserliness, impulses, offensiveness, diarrhea, ulceration, general syphilitic tendency.
Puls- Chronic otitis media of children, catarrhs with greenish mucous, craving for butter.
Plb- Slowed speech, weakness of memory, tremor of hands, Parkinson’s disease.
Kali-br-Paranoia, anxiety disorder, fear of insanity, aggressive impulses, compulsive disorders, sleep disturbance.
Nat-m, Alum, Sil, Syph, Nux-v.

Keywords: Filthy in mind and body-Destructive processes. Excessive salivation. Sweat without relief. Complaints agg. at night.

Mind: Deceived ambition, disappointment. Fright, sexual excesses. Mortification.
Physical: Stings of insects. Suppressed foot sweat, sugar, vapours, Suppressed gonorrhoea.
Female:
Suicidal thoughts during menses, amel weeping. Collapse and fainting at the start off menses. Sterility, with profuse menses. Cancer of mammae and uterus. Leucorrhoea and prolapse of uterus amel by coition. Milk in breasts instead of menses. Ulcerative pain in breasts at every menses.
Male:
Bloody emissions. Gonorrhoea. Milk in breasts of boys. Ulcers on glans with cheesy base.
Child:
Precocious Children pull and scratch at genitals; from a kind of itching which makes them do so. Leucorrhoea in small girls causing prostration.

Best of Burnett
When angina pectoris is due to organic change in the hearts own substance or in its own arteries, metals and minerals will come into play, such as Aurum, Mercurius, Vanadium, Arsenicum, Phosphorous etc.
Hence, we see that neither Koch’s nor any other fluid; neither Bacillinum nor any other remedy will, in itself, suffice, in the majority of cases, for the simple reason that each will act only in its own sphere, ie that to which it is homoeopathic it will cure and naught else. Of course, to a man who really understands Homoeopathy this is self-evident; all the same we are apt to lose sight of it more particularly in the presence of a series of successes, so that unless we are mindful of this, our very successes will in the end land us on the rocks. In fine: remedies cure homoeopathically and not otherwise, and hence a specific is only so far a specific as it is homoeopathic to any given case in its totality-for where there are other pathologic elements, in the case the specific does not cure these other pathological elements, it is not homoeopathic thereto, and it will, therefore, not cure them, it will only cure that part of the case to which it is homoeopathic; the other part, or parts, of the case must be treated by their similars. I dwell upon this, and reiterate, because of its essential importance to correct views and successful practice. Thus, I would refer to a case, mentioned at the beginning, of syphilis and tuberculosis manifested in a urinary fistula; in this case Mercurius and Bacillinum in alteration cured the case while neither alone would do so. This kind of alteration is, I think, really scientific and sound practice.
So we must always analyse our case aetiologically and pathologically as well as individualize them synthetically.
(Editor: Bacillinum may be the Anti-miasmatic as we understand it.)

Dental Neuralgias
Many cases of toothache are neuralgic and require one or more of the already named remedies and such others as Silicea, Nitric-acid, Mercurius, Kreosotum, Hecla-lava. Perhaps three-fourths of the cases of toothache are not due either to caries, necrosis or abscess, primarily, but to the general state of the constitution more particularly is toothache, in my opinion, very frequently due to the Stomach, and I have sometimes wondered whether decaying teeth are at times anything more than constitutional issues, for I have several times noticed that profoundly dyscratic complaints have taken on increased morbid action soon after the dentist had extracted a bad tooth. Particularly in cases of tumours have I noticed this, and for sometime I have been in the habit of forbidding any extraction of bad teeth until the graver malady had been quite cured when oddly enough the teeth commonly cease from troubling. I am well aware that the local inflammatory processes of dental, anal, aural, and vaginal pains neuralgias, as I understand the term-do indeed give rise to the pain, but I hold that the only real cure of the neuralgia-the pain arising from the local morbid process-is the extinguishment of the morbid condition itself that lies at the bottom of the inflammatory carious, necrotic or neoplastic process. In neuralgia how true it is that "things are not what they seem."

In Bright disease a past grand master in therapeutics has all his work cut out, and he will need all his knowledge, however great of climate, diet, raiment, and therapeutics. The remedy which taken by itself, has done most in my hands in chronic Bright’s disease is Mercurius, about the third trituration. A tincture of cloves, in the same strength, will bring down the quantity of albumen excreted very frequently and concomitantly there with there is a rise in patient’s feeling of well being. Considering that cloves cause albuminuria, their use as a condiment should be condemned and forbidden.

Mercurius: Large bleeding varices which suppurate haemorrhage after micturition, haematuria with violent frequent urging to urinate prolapsus recti after stool, rectum black and bleeding pain in the sacrum, as after the lying on a hard couch, great weakness, with ebullition and trembling from the least exertion.

Mercurialism and Aurum:
What I mean is that if a given individual shows chronic symptoms of mercurialism pure and simple, or mercurial symptoms with symptoms of any given disease, the chronic mercurialism may be successfully combated with refracted doses of Gold. The utter childishness of asserting that Homoeopathy consists in treating acute cases of poisoning with homoeopathic remedies is only equaled by that other party assertion that Homoeopathy means to grow giants on infinitesimal portions of a bread crumb. An Australian worthy has lately rediscovered this old mare’s nest. And, he even accuses a well known homoeopathic author with inconsistency for teaching the same treatment of cases of poisoning as is recognized by the authorities in toxicology.

Such nonsense is believed by the simple and is hence noticed in passing. Nevertheless, even in acute cases of poisoning after the ingested poison has been eliminated or chemically antidoted or rendered chemically inert, the remaining symptoms can truly be successfully ameliorated by homoeopathically cholera remedies.

Mercury

Aurum and Mercury
All authorities agree that Gold is chemically cousin-german to mercury, a comparison of their pathogeneses reveals the fact that they are no less so physiologically.

Mercury and Aurum
Neither, do I propose to join in the insane cry of the so called antimercurialists; on the contrary, if I were reduced to one remedy in the treatment of protean manifestations of this disease, I should certainly choose Mercury. Mercury is facile princess, the anti-yphillitic remedy. But the dose? Ay, there’s the rub! To do the good without risking the harm is the true test.

Moreover, I do not propose to vaunt the use of Gold in this special disease, but rather to point out that it deserves a very much higher place in the armamentarium of the physician than is accorded to it in general. For centuries Gold has been used with excellent effect in scrofula, heart disease, skin disease, tedium vitae, melancholia and the Morbus Gallicus or syphilis.

In the treatment of some heart disease, some bone disease, and of sarcocele, to know the medicinal value of Gold or to ignore it is, just the important difference between curing and failing. But of course the metal must be first triturated, so that it may become remedial.

Inveterate Eczema
An American gentlemen, 63 years of age, came under my observation on May 14, for a very severe eruption on the skin-inveterate eczema of many years duration. Latterly, it has been getting much worse and more extensive and extends now to the penis, prepuce and eyelids and conjunctivae. There was a specific air about it, but this was strictly denied, a gonorrhoae only being admittedly historic.

I began with Platanus-occidentallis Q, but in eight days from its commencement patient returned to me, bitterly complaining that there was no improvement.

May 21-Six grains of Aurum-metallicum three times a day. This did him some good certainly, but not very much. Then followed Mercurius-solubilis Hahn, in a low trituration and it was soon clear that we had hold of the right remedy, but it would not quite finish the cure, though it came very near doing so. A month of Kali-chlor 3, and patient considered himself cured except the redness of the eyes. This opthalmia was cured by Jequirity 3x, six drops in water night and morning. I saw this gentlemen a year and a half later, when he declared himself quite well in health and free from eczema.

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