Viewed through proving: Mercury, fevers and a challenge

Well, back to what appears to be a favourite subject for me – composite fever symptoms, meaning symptoms where you get combinations of heat, cold, shivering, perspiration, chills, shuddering – all in different patterns.  We looked at Boenninghausen’s use of Sambucus, in a case where there was dry heat while asleep, alternating with perspiration when awake.

Boenninghausen and Treatment of Composite Fevers

Composite fevers are situations where there are all kinds of combinations of heat, cold, shivering, shuddering, perspiration – with each remedy ringing its own characteristic changes on what pattern it will produce.  Each pattern is so individual in each case of sickness, or where epidemic looms, that these composite fever patterns can often unlock cases, point directly to the best prescription and achieve cure.  It is essential in such cases to get very specific information about what comes first and what comes after – is it heat first then chill? Chill, then heat, then perspiration?

Here are some of the composite fever rubrics that appear in the Therapeutic Pocketbook.  Click on the image to see the rubrics more clearly.  The first number appearing after each rubric is the symptom number in the P&W, and the second number is the number of remedies in that rubric.