Pregnancy

Threatened miscarriage in nervous subjects. Puerperal mania, childbed fever. Feeble and ineffectual labor-pains, spurious labor-pains, tedious labor from constitutional weakness. Mastitis when the pus is brownish, dirty-looking, offensive odor, adynamic condition.

Respiratory Symptoms

Asthma, from the least food. Asthma (large doses and often repeated, 3x), depressed condition of nervous system. Loss of voice from paralysis of vocal cords. Hay asthma. Hoarseness with exhausted feeling from overexertion of the voice, if rheumatic or nervous. Cough from irritation in the trachea, which feels sore. Expectoration thick, yellow, salty, fetid. Chest very sore. Whooping cough in the highly nervous, with great exhaustion. Acute oedema of lungs, spasmodic cough with frothy, serous masses being brought up in excess and threatening suffocation. Shortness of breath when going up-stairs, or on any exertion. Croup, last stage, extreme weakness, pale or livid countenance.

Ciculatory Organs

Feeling of faintness in nervous people, or dizziness from weak action of the heart. Faintness from fright, fatigue, etc, Intermittent action of the heart, with nervous sensitiveness, from emotions, grief or care, with palpitation. Functional disturbances of the heart with weak, anxious, nervous state. from slightest mental emotion or from walking up-stairs. Pulse intermittent, irregular, or below normal. Palpitation after rheumatic fever, with exhaustion. Anaemia, blood poor, palpitation with sleeplessness and restlessness. Sluggish circulation.

Back And Extremities. Spinal Anaemia

Idiopathic softening of the spinal cord, patient has trouble in guiding himself; loss of power of movement, he tumbles and trips easily. Paralytic or rheumatic lameness, with stiffness after rest, yet becoming better by gentle motion. Pain in back and extremities, relieved by motion, aching between scapulae. Finger tips as if asleep. Itching of palms and soles. Itching of legs at night with numbness and weakness. Burning of feet - fidgety feeling in feet. Pains worse on rising from a sitting posture and by violent exertion. Bruised and painful feelings in parts affected, also discoloration. Acute and chronic rheumatism, pains disappear on moving about, severe in the morning after rest and on first rising from a sitting position, parts feel stiff. Exertion and fatigue aggravate. Stiffness, paralytic tendency. Pain in the hips. Paralyzing, drawing pain in sole of foot. Chilblains on the toes. Muscular weakness after severe illness.

Nervous Symptoms

The great nervous tissue salt. Neuralgic pains occurring in any organ, with depression, failure of strength, sensitiveness to noise and light, improved during pleasant excitement, and by gentle motion, but most felt when quiet or alone. Sciatica. Dragging pain down back of thigh to knee, torpor, stiffness, great restlessness and pain, nervous exhaustion, etc. Nervousness without any reasonable cause; patient sheds tears and makes "mountains out of molehills." Paralysis of any part of the body, partial, paraplegia, hemiplegia, facial, or of the bladder, upper lid, etc. Paralysis usually comes on suddenly. Atrophic paralysis. Locomotor paralysis, loss of motor force, or stimulating power. Creeping paralysis in which the progress is slow, and tendency to wasting of the body, with loss of sense of touch, facial paralysis. Epilepsy, sunken countenance, coldness and palpitation after the attack. Attacks come from a fright. Hysteria, attacks from sudden emotion, feeling of a ball rising in the throat, nervous, restless, fidgety feeling. Trembling sensation. General debility, with nervousness and irritability. Bodily pains felt too acutely. Easily startled. Fears burglars. Neurasthenia, especially from sexual excess, characterized by severe spinal irritation.

Paroxysms of pain, with subsequent exhaustion. Infantile paralysis. Spinal anaemia from exhausting diseases, with laming pain, worse while at rest, but manifest on beginning to move.

Sleep

Sleeplessness, after worry or excitement from nervous causes. Somnambulism, walking in sleep in children. Yawning, stretching and weariness, with sensation of emptiness at pit of stomach. Hysterical yawning. Constant dreaming of fire, robbers, of falling, ghosts, etc. Night terrors of children. Awakening from sound sleep screaming with fright. Lascivious dreams. No desire to rise in the morning. Twitching of muscles, on falling asleep.

Febrile Symptoms

Intermittent fever; fetid, debilitating, profuse perspiration. Typhus, malignant, putrid, camp, nervous or brain fevers. The chief remedy in typhoid, gastric and enteric fevers with brown, dry tongue, petechise, sleeplessness, stupor, delirium, etc. All typhoid and malignant symptoms are met by this drug. High temperature. Scarlet fever, putrid conditions of the throat, exhaustion, stupor, etc. Excessive and exhausting perspirations with fetid odor. Perspiration while eating, with weakness at stomach. Hay fever; for nervous irritability.

Skin

Eczema if oversensitiveness and nervousness accompany it. Felons, abscess and carbuncle when the matter becomes fetid. Pemphigus malignus, blisters and blebs over the body, watery contents, skin wrinkled and withered-looking. Greasy scabs with offensive smell. Alopecia areata. Irritating secretions on skin. Itching: of the inside of hands and feet where the skin is thickest Itching of the skin with crawling sensation; gentle friction agreeable, excess causes soreness and chafing. Smallpox, putrid conditions. Chilblains on the toes, bands or ears, tingling and itching pain. Malignant pustule.

Tissues. Anaemic Conditions

Losing flesh all the time. Atrophy, wasting diseases with putrid stools. Hemorrhages. Blood dark, thin and not coagulating, putrid. General debility and exhaustion. Persons who suffer from suppressed sexual instinct or too much indulgence. Serous, ichorous, sanious, foul and offensive exudations, corroding, chafing exudations. Gangrenous conditions. Mortification in the early stages. Cancer; for the pains, offensive discharges and discoloration. Rickets with putrid discharges from the bowels. Scurvy with gangrenous conditions. Septic hemorrhages. Suppurations with dirty, foul, ichorous, offensive discharge of pus. Leucaemia lienalis, typhus, putrid states. Atrophic condition in old people, tissues dry, scaly, lack of vitality. Discharges have a carrion-like odor.

Modalities

Many symptoms of this remedy are aggravated by noise, by rising from a sitting posture, by exertion and continued exercise and after rest. Cold air aggravates all pains. The characteristic ameliorations are gentle motion, eating, under excitement and company; worse when alone. Pains and itchings worse 2 to 5 A. M.

Homoeopathic Data

The remedy has been proved by the Provers' Union of Chicago, under the direction of Dr. H. C. Allen, the salient features of which are included in the above symptomatology. Another so-called proving has been made for Dr. B. Fincke, in a very sensitive young woman, with the am. potency held between the fingers! We must confess that we have not read the account of this heroic proving, as we could not conscientiously incorporate it in our treatise. However, any one interested in this curiosity can find a report of it in the Proceedings of I. H. A. Transactions, and also in The Medical Advance, March, 1892, in which number also Dr. Allen's arrangement of his proving can be found. A carefully prepared differentia! diagnosis of the phosphates from the imperfect materials, then in hand by the late Dr. Samuel Lilienthal, can be found in the Transactions of the American Institute of Homoeopathy for 1890. The drug merits more extended, careful provings with all potencies.

Administration

The lower potencies seem to work best; thus the ax or 3x in asthma is recommended by Schussler. However, the higher, 6x and 12x, and high potencies have all been employed with success.

Relationship

Probably the nearest analogues are Rhus tox. and Phosph., with which it has many symptoms in common. The nervous symptoms of Pulsat. seem to depend on the amount of Kali phos. present. The peculiar mental state of Pulsat. is also found under this remedy. Phytol. also has many symptoms in common with Kali phos. Compare the sciatica. Ignat., too, probably contains Kali phos., as the hysterical symptoms are nearly identical. Kali phos. in its actions as a nerve sedative is related to Ignat., Coffea, Hyoscy., Chamom. In menstrual headaches compare Zinc, Cimicif., Gelsem., Cyclamen, etc. In bladder troubles Kali phos. often finds a complementary remedy in Magnes. phos., the latter corresponding more to the spasmodic affections, while Kali phos. more to the paralytic symptoms. In incipient paralysis of the brain, when nephritic irritation accompanies, compare Zinc, phos. In hemorrhages, bright or dark red, thin, watery, not clotted, follow Kalt phos. by Natr. mur., also Nitr. ac. After weakening diseases, the French variety of mushrooms, which contain large quantities of Kali phos., restore the muscles more quickly than anything else. In its disordered mental conditions compare Cyclam., which frequently corrects the abnormal, dreamlike, mental state of the insane.

Compare Kali mur. in puerpural fever. In post-diphtheritic complaints compare Lachesis, Canst. In the gangrenous conditions compare Kali chlor.

Groups for study with Kali phos.:

1. Nervous system, Cimicif., Hyos., Stramon., Zinc, Silicea, Ignat., Anacard., Canium, Staphisag.

2. Blood degeneration, Baplis., Mur. acid, Laches., Crotalus, Kreosote, Arsenic, Carbo, China.