Certain remedies, such as Sulphur, Silicea, Phos. and Sulph. a.c., owing to their power of expelling foreign bodies, are very dangerous in some diseases, as these bodies can only be got rid of by suppuration. In far advanced phthisis with tubercular deposit or where healing of the diseased part with calcareous deposit has taken place, or when foreign bodies, such as bullets, are encysted near vital organs, this danger is a very real one.
There are two classes of symptoms in all advanced tubercular and suppurative lung diseases, viz., the toxaemic and constitutional; the chest pains, the hectic fever, the mental symptoms and dreams being toxaemic.
If one of this group of remedies, say Silicea, only corresponds to the toxaemic symptoms and not to the constitutional ones, it will palliate by subduing the toxaemic symptoms without doing any damage.
But, if prior to the formation of the tubercle, the patient suffered from weekly headaches coming up the back of the head, offensive foot sweats, sensitiveness to cold, etc., and though these may have all disappeared even before the phthisis came on, the Silicea will prove a most dangerous remedy-(K., Journal of Homoeopathics, Nov.1899).
At times these remedies for the same reason are apt to cause damage after haemorrhage into the brain or other important organs.
Ferrum and Acetic acid are dangerous in many cases of advanced phthisis, owing to their power of inducing haemorrhage.
Ferrum in old syphilitics is apt to render ulcers phagedenic.
Antipsorics apt to do harm in active as syphilis, i.e., as long as the syphilis is the uppermost miasm. But many antipsorics are also anti-syphilitics, and they are not to be excluded by the rule.
It is dangerous to stop the diarrhoea of advanced phthisis even by the indicated remedy.
Kali carb. is a very dangerous remedy in old gouty cases, but Kali iod. is often very beneficial,- (K.)
Arsenic is a very dangerous remedy in irritable heart, especially if organic, as it is apt to cause parenchymatous nephritis -(K).
Arsenic is a dangerous remedy in dysentery if not the exact simillimum, as it is very apt to spoil the case - (K., Med. Adv., Nov. 1899).