• Craves things which make him sick
• Better rapid fanning, wants to he fanned
• Hoarseness in the evening
• Coldness of the body, especially of the legs

Source: Mineral kingdom
Synonyms: Wood charcoal, Vegetable charcoal
Prove: Dr Hahnemann
Duration of Action: Upto 60 days
Miasmatic Background: Psora
Temperament: Sanguine
Diathesis: Haemorrhagic
Thermal Relationship: Very Hot

Introduction and History: It is a life saving drug and useful in the last stages of some fatal diseases; in collapse condition with coldness and Sweating. It is mainly indicated during childhood and old age. It is a very chronic, deep, long acting, antipsoric medicine.

It maintains the vitality and integrity of all the organs and tissues. This is a desperate remedy for a desperate condition, a condition where the vitality has been drained to the very bottom.

Description: It is prepared from wood by burning. Wood charcoal is a black, porous and brittle substance. It is odourless, tasteless and when heated in air it is converted into carbon dioxide. When burning, it gives no smoke.

Preparation and Parts Used: The wood is thoroughly heated to redness. Triturations are prepared from wood ash with sugar of milk to third trituration from which higher potencies are prepared.

Constitution and Physiognomy: It is best adapted to debilitated women at climacteric age and cachectic people. The face is puffy, bluish, pale and hippocratic. Vital power is weakened.

Ailments From: Bad effects of quinine, suppressed malaria, loss of vital fluids, bad effects of an old injury, abuse of salt, meat or fish, abuse of mercury, getting overheated, alcohol, ice water, bad food, eggs, wine, butter, strains, change of Weather, overheating, etc.

Seat of Action (Pharmacodynamics): Mucous membranes, digestive tract, stomach, heart, circulation, blood, veins, capillary, gastrointestinal tract, lungs, vascular system, etc.

Doctrine of Signature

1. When charcoal burns, the fumes go upwards; likewise the gas accumulates in the upper side of the abdomen of the patient.
2. Vegetable charcoal is blackish in colour; likewise the patient looks bluish and blackish due to cyanosis.
3. Ash is collected on the outer surface; externally it looks cold but heat is present internally, likewise patient is cold externally but there is intense heat internally.
4. Vegetable charcoal requires fanning from very close distance to ignite; likewise patient wants to be fanned from a close distance.
5. While preparing charcoal the burning wood is devoid of oxygen, likewise patients do not get a good supply of oxygen and are hence, cyanosed.

Physio-pathological Changes (Pathology)

1. It acts upon the nervous system producing vasomotor paralysis.
2. Acts on the head; the head feels full and the limbs feel dull and puffy.
3. Acts on different parts of the body, causes sluggishness, turbidity and swelling of parts.
4. Acts on veins, blood and capillaries causing haemorrhage and debility.
5. It acts on the mucous surface of the vegetative system causing excessive acidity and excessive accumulation of gas in the stomach or abdomen.

Characteristic Mental Symptoms (Psychology)

1. Confusion in the head, thinking difficult.
2. Very irritable, excitable and inclined to anger.
3. Fear of ghosts at night time.
4. Patient is very restless, anxious from 4 to 6 pm.
5. Slowness of thoughts and weakness of memory.
6. Ideas flow slowly; stupor, collapse.
7. Indifference, listens without any feeling of pleasure or displeasure.
8. Vertigo, when stooping from flatulence.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms

Prostration: Great debility and prostration from least exertion; sudden prostration. Great debility from nursing, exhausted vitality from loss of vital fluids.

Air hunger: Wants to be constantly fanned rapidly and from a close distance in all complaints.

Bleeding: Haemorrhage from any mucous outlet; blood oozes from weakened tissues; vital force exhausted. Haemorrhage may be from nose, gums, stomach, bowels, bladder, etc.

Sweat: Profuse perspiration, cold sweat, exhausting night sweats. Sweat may be putrid or sour.

Sluggishness: Patient is mentally as well as physically sluggish, weak digestion.

Coldness: Body is very cold to touch; cold surface, particularly below the knees up to the feet. Copious cold sweat, cold tongue, cold breath; fingertips are icy cold.

Flatulence: Weak digestion, simplest food disagrees, excessive accumulation of gas in the stomach and intestines; sensation as if stomach would burst, eructation gives temporary relief.

Burning: Burning pains, burning heat in some internal part. Itching and burning of skin, burning in gangrene, burning in head, lungs, sides of chest, etc.

Putridity: Discharges of the body are putrid; cadaverous smelling stools, foetid sputa.

Desires: Craving for whisky, brandy or things which make the patient sick; desire for coffee.

Ulceration: Tendency for ulceration, humid gangrene in cachetic persons; great foulness of secretions. Ulceration everywhere which does not heal.

Soreness: Soreness and rawness in throat when coughing; acrid, corrosive moisture from rectum; leucorrhoea milky, greenish-yellow and excoriating.

Blueness: Blueness of skin due to stagnation of blood in the capillaries. Desire to be fanned constantly, symptoms of imperfect oxidation.

Hoarseness: Loss of voice, hoarseness, aggravated in the evening, from warm wet weather.

Stools: Frequent, involuntary, cadaverous smelling stools, soft but voided with difficulty followed by burning.

Life saving: It is a life saving drug in the last stages of diseases, with copious cold sweat, cold breath, cold tongue, voice lost.

Important Characteristic Features

Cholera: A very good remedy for cholera, especially in the last stages (in the collapse stage of cholera). Symptoms are caused by loss of vital fluids. There is vomiting and involuntary, cadaverous smelling diarrhoea. Prostration is so great that the patient lies quiet, too weak to move, has a cold body, thread-like rapid pulse and cold breath. Eyes and cheeks are sunken with an earthy complexion; face looks hippocratic; blueness and coldness of the skin due to deficient capillary circulation and loss of vital power. Great desire for fanning constantly and from a very close distance. Cold sweat on the forehead with coldness of the entire body. Lips may be bluish and the patient conscious or unconscious. At this stage, Carb-V is the only medicine which can save the life of the patient.

Piles: Carb-v is for itching heamorrhoids and for painful diarrhoea of old people. Ars. and Carb-v have bluish, protruding piles; both have burning in the epigastrium; both have anxiety, and both are suitable for bad effects of ice cream and ice water in hot weather. Difference – Carb-v is torpid, Ars is always irritable.

Menses and leucorrhoea: Menses too early and too profuse. Blood pale or thick, corrosive and acrid smelling. Itching, burning and Soreness of the parts. Menses are too frequent, preceeded by spasmodic colic, and attended by violent headache and colic. Abundant leucorrhoea, mostly in the morning. Debility from nursing. Suppression of milk. Vaginal fistula and burning pains. Brown, foul smelling lochia.

Pneumonia: Carb-v is very efficacious in desperate cases of pneumonia, and comes in quite naturally after Ant-t has failed to assist the patient to
clear his lungs of the great quantities of loosened mucous, when cyanosis and paralysis threaten from weakness.

General Modalities

Aggravation: Morning, evening, fatty food, warmth, night, open air, from cold, butter, milk, alcohol, coffee, reading aloud, during eating, etc.

Amelioration: Sitting up, fresh air, from eructation, cold application, from fanning.

Remedy Relationships

Complementary: Dros, Kali-c, Phos.

Follows well: Ars, Acon, Chin, Kali-c, Lyc, Nux-v, Puls, Sep, Sulph, Verat.

Inimical: Carb-an, Kreos.

Antidotes: Ars, Camph, Coff, Lach, Ferr.

Antidotal to: Camph, Ars, Lach, Coff.

Comparison

For the bad effects of exhausting diseases, whether in young or old: Chin, Carb-v, Phos, Psor.

Effects of typhoid: Carb-v, Psor.

Aggravations from getting overheated: Carb-v, Ant-c.

Haemorrhage from any broken down condition of mucous membranes: Carb-V, Cinch, Phos.

Awakens often from cold limbs and suffers from cold knees at night: Apis, Carb-v.

Potency: 3x, 6x, 12x, 30, 200, 1000.

Carbo Veg Dosage

1. Low triturations in intestinal disorders.
2. Mid potencies in specific conditions.
3. High and highest potencies in constitutional and miasmatic conditions.

Repetition

1. Low and mid potencies are to be repeated.
2. High and highest potencies are given in single doses.

Therapeutic Value: Acidity, Angina pectoris, Aphonia, Asthma, Bronchitis, Cholera, Constipation, Cough, Debility, Disorders of pregnancy, Dysentery, Dyspepsia, Emphysema, Epistaxis, Eructation, Fevers, Flatulence, Gangrene, Headache, Heart affections, Measles, Mumps, Orchitis, Otorrhoea, Skin affections, Stomach disorders, etc.

Note

1. Carbo vegetabilis is a life saving drug and is the homeopathic last aid for the last stage in fatal diseases.
2. A dose of Carbo vegetabilis every 8 days facilitates the action of Lycopodium.