• Watery, transparent, sticky, honey-like fluid discharge
• Morning sickness during menses
• Hears better when in a noise, when riding a carriage
• Sensation of a cobweb on the face; tries hard to brush it off

Source: Mineral kingdom (amorphous carbon)
Synonyms: Black lead, Plumbago
Prover: Dr. Hahnemann
Duration of Action: 40 to 50 days
Miasmatic Background: Psora
Temperament: Melancholic and irritable
Diathesis: Tubercular
Thermal Relationship: Chilly patient

Introduction and History: It is a great antipsoric, polychrest remedy, which is known to the world since a very long time. It is a deep acting, constitutional women’s remedy having a respectable place among the all important polychrest remedies. The first idea of using it as a drug was of S. Swinhold. But in homeopathy it was introduced by Dr Hahnemann.

Description: It is a blackish-gray, soft, lustrous solid, which is composed of hexagonal crystalline scales. Next to diamond, it is the purest form of mineral carbon that occurs in nature.

Preparation: Triturations are prepared from the finest English drawing pencils lead.

Constitution and Physiognomy: It is best suited to women, especially stout, fat, fair and flabby, at the climacteric age having habitual constipation with a history of delayed menstruation. Unhealthy skin, anaemic face, brittle nails, split hair, timid and taking cold very easily.

Ailments From: Suppression of skin eruptions, overlifting, grief and vexation, extremes of cold and heat, bathing, indigestion of diet, suppression of foot sweat, fear, masturbation and sexual excesses.

Seat of Action (Pharmacodynamics): Mind, skin, sex organs, mucous membranes, nails, folds, behind ears, orifices, nutrition, gastrointestinal tract, glands, angles, flexors, respiratory system, etc.

Physio-pathological Changes (Pathology)

1. It acts especially on the skin producing various types of skin eruptions with oozing of a watery, transparent, sticky fluid.
2. It acts on the mucous membrane of the digestive system causing chronic constipation and diarrhoea.
3. It acts on the female genital organs producing excessive menstruation and leucorrhoea.
4. Acts upon the sexual organs, more especially on the ovaries and testes.
5. Exerts a general influence on nutrition and upon the skin producing a very scabby eruption.
6. Acts on the respiratory system producing respiratory complaints.

Characteristic Mental Symptoms (Psychology)

1. Changeable mood, sad, with thoughts of death and a weeping disposition.
2. Very timid, tendency to be frightened, dread of work, hates work.
3. ill-humoured, fretful, irritable, great anxiety, much inclined to grief.
4. Very forgetful, cannot remember recent events, but can remember past events.
5. Full of fear in the morning, child is impertinent, laughs at reprimands.
6. Excessive consciousness, hesitates, timid, unable to decide anything.
7. Very sad and despondent, music makes her weep, thinks of nothing but death.
8. Sensation of a cobweb over the forehead and face; always tries to brush it off.
9. Fidgety while sitting at work, thoughts of many things at night, which prevent sleep.
10. Feels drunk when rising from bed in the morning.
11. Dullness of head with attacks of dizziness.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms

Unhealthy skin: Skin is very unhealthy, eruptions behind the ears, between various folds of the body, from which a watery, transparent, sticky fluid oozes. Every injury suppurates.

Menses: Menses are very scanty, late, pale and irregular with violent colic. Menses are delayed from getting feet wet.

Nails: Nails are very brittle, deformed, crumbling, painful, sore, thick and crippled, as if ulcerated.

Offensiveness: All discharges from the body are very offensive. Foul belching, acrid and offensive; stool brownish, undigested and intolerably offensive.

Morning sickness: Morning sickness during menstruation with great prostration and weakness.

Constipation: Very chronic constipation, stools are very difficult, hard, knotty, large, with lumps; smarting sore pain in anus after stools.

Cracks or fissures: Cracks or fissures at the ends of fingers, nipples, anus, between toes, labial commissures, bleeding, skin dry, inclined to crack.

Aversion: Aversion to meat, fish, salt, cooked food, sweets; decided aversion to coition in both sexes.

Cold: Takes cold very easily; sensitive to draught of air.

Hearing: Patient hears very well in noise, when riding in a car, carriage or when there is a loud sound.

Diarrhoea: Diarrhoea is very common; stool fluid, mixed with undigested particles, brownish and very offensive.

Leucorrhoea: Gushing type of leucorrhoea, very acrid, excoriating, white, profuse. Leucorrhoea before and after menses.

Eczema: Eczema of lids; lids are red and margins are covered with crusts and scales; eruption is moist and fissured.

Alternation: Symptoms appears alternately for example, skin symptoms alternate with digestive symptoms, habitual erysipelas often alternate with tottery eruptions, laughing and weeping alternate with each other.

Flatulence: Abdomen full, distended from accumulation of gases; flatulence, everything eaten seems to turn into gas. Abdomen distended with dropsy.

Pain: Rumbling, burning, cramping and griping pains in abdomen due to collection of gases. Burning in a round spot on the vertex.

Lumpishness: Lumpy stools coated with mucous; sensation of a lump in the stomach. Sensation of a lump in the throat. Worse empty swallowing in sore throat.

Erysipelas: Phlegmonous erysipelas, with stinging and burning pains, starting from the right side and going to the left side.

Oversensitiveness: Patient is oversensitive, cannot tolerate the smell of flowers. Music causes weeping; senses abnormally acute.

Hardness and indurations: Hard cicatrices remaining after mammary abscess, retarding flow of milk; cancer of breast; from old scars and repeated abscesses.

Moist gluey skin: Skin dry, rough, breaks easily and exudes a gluey moisture. Eczema and herpes oozing a gelatinous fluid, which is watery, transparent, thick, honey-like, clear and sticky.

Sensation: Sensation as if uterus would press out of the vagina.

Debility: Great prostration and weakness; sexual debility from sexual over abuse, reluctance for intercourse.

Rush of blood: Rush of blood to head with distention and flatulence of abdomen or rush of blood to head with a flushed face.

Gastralgia: Intolerable gastric pains better by drinking hot milk or by eating.

Desires: Great desire for hot milk as it relieves gastric complaints and constipation.

Important Characteristic Features

Skin diseases: It is a great remedy for all sorts of skin diseases. The symptoms calling for it are very clear; there is a moist scabby eruption on the scalp, face and bends of joints, between fingers and behind the ears. The corners of the mouth and eyes crack, bleed and ooze a gluey, thick, tenacious discharge. Fissured eczema. Great itching always accompanies the eruptions. The skin may be dry and horny. The hair is dry and falls out. Skin eruptions with a tendency to malignancy for example, pimples, keloids, fibromas, eczema, acne, cancer of breast, hard and painful cicatrices. Erysipelas beginning in the face and spreading to other parts.

There is itching of the skin all over the body with or without eruptions. Every little injury suppurates. Fissures and cracks at the end of fingers, on nipples, labial commissures and vulva. Cancer of breast from old scars; repeated abscesses. The nails are brittle, crumbling and deformed; painful and sore, followed by burning and oozing with the typical sticky, fluid discharge. Suppression of skin eruptions causes diarrhoea.

Skin complaints are aggravated by the warmth of bed at night, during change of weather, before and during menstruation. Skin complaints are better by darkness, wrapping up and from open air.

Leucorrhoea: It is very good medicine for leucorrhoea associated with pains in the lower abdomen and weakness of the back in pale young girls. Leucorrhoea is seen before and after menses. It is profuse, very thin, white, mucoid, occurring in gushes, day and night; menses are late, delayed, scanty and pale. Leucorrhoea is very acrid and excoriating. It is more profuse in the morning when rising – this especially indicates Graphites. The patient is very weak and debilitated, fat, chilly and constipated.

Menses: It is very useful when the menses are suppressed, delayed or scanty, accompanied with obstinate constipation and indurated ovaries. There are violent colicky pain during menses. Also, morning sickness at the time of menstruation. Blood is too pale and the menses may be delayed from getting feet wet. The patient is fat, chilly and constipated. Leucorrhoea maybe present before or after menses. The patient is very weak and debilitated. Swelling and pain in the right ovarian region, during and before menses.

Constipation: Graphites is one of the best remedies for constipation. The patient sometimes goes days without a stool. Stool is covered with shreds of mucous and accompanied with great pain when passing, owing to the fissures. These fissures as well as haemorrhoids burn, smart and itch intolerably. Great Soreness and aching in the anus after passing stool is an indication of its use. Sometimes there is an ineffectual urging. Mucous coated stools and extreme soreness of the anus. It is very well adapted to women who suffer from a neglected tendency of promptly attending to nature’s call. There may be dryness of mucous membranes of the rectum, with fissures of the anus. Piles protrude while passing stools, associated with burning pain, cracks and fissures. Constipation is better by drinking hot milk. There is a sharp, smarting, sore pain in the anus after stools.

General Modalities

Aggravation: Cold draft, bathing, music, wet feet, light, empty swallowing, warmth, during and after menses, rich food, uncovering, cold drinks, physical exertion, before midnight.

Amelioration: Hot milk, open air, eructation, eating after, wrapping up.

Remedy Relationships

Complementary: Caust, Hep, Ars, Lyc, Ferr.

Follows well: Sil, Nat-s, Sulph, Calc, Sep.

Compare: Lyc, Puls.

Comparison

Offensive sweat of feet: Alum, Am-m, Graph, Psor, Sanic, Sil.

Slightest injury suppurates: Hep, Merc, Phyt.

Ailments from suppressed foot sweat: Cup, Graph, Psor, Sil.

Leucorrhoea 10 days after menses: Borx, Bov, Con.

Sensation of a cobweb on the face: Bar-c, Borx, Brom, Graph.

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

Dosage

1. In specific conditions 6c to 30c.
2. In constitutional indications high potencies, 200c and above.
3. Locally as an ointment of 3x for cracks and skin diseases.

Repetition: Single dose of high potency is enough to be repeated when the symptoms call for it.

Therapeutic Value: Abdominal disorders, Acne, Anaemia, Barber’s itch, Breast cancer; Catarrh, Chlorosis, Colic, Constipation, Cracks, Dropsy, Ear affections, Eczema, Erysipelas, Eye affections, Fissures, Headache, Induration of the ovaries, Leucorrhoea, Lumpy goitre, Menstrual disorders, Piles, Skin affections, Styes, Urinary disorders, Whooping cough.

Note

1. In young women for obesity it is used after Calcarea carbonica.
2. In case of leucorrhoea, it is useful after Sepia.
3. In skin diseases, it is often used after Sulphur.