Kent's cases 48: Ulcer on the leg-Pulsatilla. Pulsatilla

Mrs. W., age seventy-three, writes:
"The first breaking out of the ulcer she felt a
smarting and stinging pain in her left ankle; there was a little elevation the
size of a pea; the next day it broke and discharged a thin, bloody pus;
around it was a purplish red color.
 

The sore kept extending, also the discolored
surface; then came a thick, yellow discharge of pus. The ulcer is now
somewhat larger than a silver dollar.
The surface of the ulcer looks like a sponge and
very red, covered with yellow, lumpy matter; the outside is almost on a
level with the sore, I should say flat. The cloth that comes off (with mutton
tallow) is slightly offensive; the ulcer I can scarcely smell; it burns, stings,
and smarts; sometimes has a jerking sensation through the heel.
She pulls her skirts up to cool the limb, which is
better in the cool air. The warmer it is the worse it smarts and burns.
Sometimes she describes the pain as something like splinters. From the
knee down the leg sweats so that the hose is constantly wet.
The well one is not so. As she gets up in the
morning the foot swells until it is full and pains her very much; about three
or four P. M. she gets easier and can lie down with some comfort. When
she elevates the foot it feels much better, and does not swell so, and she is
quiet free from pain."
She has also some rheumatic symptoms that I
suppose you want to know. There is great soreness from the shoulder to the
elbow, and also in the cords of the neck.
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If she fans herself or uses her arms she has great
pains in these parts. The upper arm aches with a grumbling, burning pain,
she cannot put her arms back; both sides are alike.
She can hold her hands over her head, but cannot
reach out for anything.
The fingers are swelled and in the morning; the
left hand is worse than the right. She often holds on to one arm, then the
other; when she turns in bed she has to f old the arms and then work herself
over. She is thirsty and feverish in the afternoon.
Puls. cm one dose, was immediately mailed to the
patient, who lives nearly three hundred miles from this city.
Several watery stools followed, and all her
symptoms were made worse, but she has many times taken a homoeopathic
remedy, and she remarked to her daughter that she was now going to
recover again.
This leg ulcer is an old relic of barbarism with
her, as she had had it cured several times allopathically.
Some years ago I healed it with Sulph. very high,
but it had to come again.
The ulcer and the concomitants all departed in
due time, and she is a picture of health now. The ulcer has been healed a
year now, and she has not taken a dose of medicine since the Puls.
mentioned. I am informed that at the end of six weeks the ulcer was healed.
When compelled to prescribe on a letter written
by a lay woman, many things are wanting, but in the above we have the
picture as given - no more and no less.
The remedy was sent and the patient, after all her
family had settled down to this as her last sickness, made a good recovery.
This is not the exception, but the rule after such prescription. If experience
is appealed to or theory or cures, the inductive method must give us safest
practice.
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