New England School of Homeopathy

Case to Illustrate Kali Carbonicum

The New England Journal of Homeopathy
Spring 1996, Vol.5 No.2

Paul Herscu ND, MPH, DHANP

(Click here to read the materia medica of Kali carbonicum – we suggest you read that first and then follow up with the case below)

Anne, who is 30 years old presented with a chief complaint of allergies. The allergies began 13 years ago, when she moved to the Northeast from the Southwest to attend undergraduate school. When she was 17, her allergies included hay fever symptoms which progressed to bronchitis, pneumonia and finally to spasmodic asthma. She was taking Theodur twice a day, sometimes needing a third dose. She was allergic to trees, cats, different grasses, dust and molds. She had developed itchy eyes, sneezing, tightness in her chest and eventually asthma, with a wheezing cough. The asthma was worse from cold, worse lying down and being flat and better sitting up. The allergies also manifested as skin rashes that looked like small hives, accompanied by intense itching. She also developed puffiness around her nose and lips during asthma. She felt weak and chilly and would protect her neck and shoulders from the cold. She occasionally awoke with it at 4-5 am. During her asthmatic times and her allergic times she was more sensitive to people and more irritated by them, especially by the noises they made; she might even yell at them. During the asthma and during coughing crises there was perspiration, diarrhea and salivation; all somewhat non-descript.

Review of symptoms: her digestion was fine except for constipation. She desired sweets, pasta and fish. She was thirsty for cold drinks, especially orange juice.

She would wake to urinate 2-3 times per night. Her sleep was otherwise fine, except for cramps in her lower calves during sleep. She talked in her sleep

Temperament – Anne was pleasant, upbeat, a real people person. She always had a lot of energy for people. She was neat and organized. When sad, she needed consolation. She had a strong fear of death, especially when she became weak with allergies and asthma. She also had a fear of cancer.

Premenstrual symptoms – she had intense irritability which was ameliorated by the flow. She was weepy before the flow. She had eight people working for her, they loved to work for her, but if they didn’t do something in accordance with her wishes she became meditative, first trying to think if they did the right thing or did they not do the right thing. “Did I ask too much of them, did I not ask enough of them,” and then even though she felt irritated, she would approach them and talk about it.

Her menses were heavy with a lot of cramping especially at 3am.

She had an ankle injury two years earlier and had surgery on the ankle and since that time she experienced swelling of both ankles.

Even though this is a shortened version of Anne’s case history, it is enough to show that every case has hundreds and hundreds of symptoms from which one may choose to repertorize. The question is, how do you combine them, how do you use them, how do you choose the ones which will lead you to the right prescription? This patient had several ideas that encompass all her symptoms. The rigidity is seen in the contracted side: we have symptoms of her needing to protect the neck, the cramping with the menses, the contracted spasmodic asthma, the cramps in the calves during sleep, the neat and organized life. The aggravation from lying down and amelioration from sitting up reflect her improvement from closing off.

Symptoms of retention are seen in the premenstrual symptoms, the puffiness of the nose and lips before and during the asthma, and the swollen ankles.

Hypersensitivity is seen in the irritability toward people and noises, the irritability before the menses, and the rashes on the skin which itched intensely.

The discharge is evident in the frequency of urination at night, talking in the sleep, weepiness, yelling at people, and the salivation, diarrhea, and perspiration during asthma.

The weakness and feeling ‘too open’ is seen in her fear of death and cancer, her aggravation from cold during the asthma, and the need she felt to protect herself.

This leads to the need to replenish herself, the high thirst, and desire for sweets. Her desire for people and company and being a people person are other expressions of this as are her amelioration from consolation.

I think Anne is a good example of how people can be happy and upbeat on one side of this diagram and the same person can be very irritated on the other side. It isn’t so much a question of should I repertorize the irritability or the happiness or which symptom should I use in the repertorization. It is understanding what makes the person work and how the person works. And how such different symptoms can exist within the same person.

This is just a short case to illustrate Kali carbonicum. Notice that some of the rubrics, such as salivation with cough, does not contain Kali carbonicum. Here is the beauty of this type of analysis and repertorization. We can incorporate several symptoms together. For instance, in both Kali carbonicum and in Anne exists the idea of discharge (seen in her irritation, where she is yelling at people because of their noisiness, in the salivation with the cough, the frequent urination, and the talking in her sleep). We could either agonize over which rubric to take, i.e. which is truly representative of her or we can decide that actually they are all different expressions of the same problem and that we should combine those symptoms into the same idea. If you do that, Kali carbonicum comes up. If you do not, and you decide that salivation with a cough is an important symptom, you lose Kali carbonicum.

Let me close the discussion of Anne by saying that even though we can see several key symptoms for this remedy, she actually had many, many symptoms and had been given many remedies over the years by different homeopaths who just could not believe that this sweet person could need Kali carbonicum. That is why I chose to present this case, to show how a patient who mainly is happy and upbeat and a real people person can still need a remedy like Kali carbonicum even though what has been written about it is usually harsh. She is not an anomaly to the remedy, but just more fully represents what the remedy is about. Kali carbonicum 200c, and again repeated six months later has her doing very well now for two years.

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