Know Your Remedies: Mercurius Solubilis (Merc.)

Common Names: Mercury; quicksilver; Merc sol.

General Information

Mercurius Solubilis (Merc.), comes from highly toxic mercury but is safe to use when prepared as homeopathic potencies. The complaints it treats are associated with offensive discharges – bad breath, pus, sweat, catarrh or smelly urine or stool. Glands swell with infections. and wounds or abscesses fester easily and heal slowly. The person is sensitive to extremes of temperature – hot or cold – catches colds easily, and is sweaty. The tongue, especially with colds, sinus or throat infections, is large, flabby, and indented by the teeth. Symptoms are usually worse at night.

Sore Throat

• Swollen, ulcerated tonsils or throat with swollen cervical glands – quinsy.
• Pain extends into ears on chewing or swallowing.
• Increased saliva, offensive breath, flabby tongue with teeth indents.

Mouth Ulcers

• Shallow, painful ulcers with a bad taste in mouth.
• Increased saliva with metallic taste and offensive breath.

Ear Infections

• Ear infections with stabbing pain, swollen glands and bad breath.
• Offensive or bloody ear discharge.

Dental Problems

• Bad taste in mouth with increased saliva with offensive breath.
• Spongy, receding gums that bleed easily – gingivitis or gum abscesses.
• Gray teeth.

Mumps

• Swollen, painful salivary glands with profuse sweating.
• Increased saliva with offensive breath.

Skin Complaints

• Furuncles, boils, and pimples that leave deep scars.
• Shallow ulcers with proud flesh.
• Excessive perspiration with excoriation.
• Moist eczema.

Vaginal and Genital Complaints

• Thrush with itching, burning, and ulcers.
• Offensive, green discharge.
• Phimosis or swelling of foreskin.

For Pets

• Gingivitis or gum infections with bad breath.
• Ulcers on mucous membranes of mouth, eyes, nose or genitals.
• Offensive discharges from wounds or inflammations – slow to heal.

Where do I find it?

Mercurius Solubilis (Merc.) is available from our online store as a single remedy, and as part of the following Complexes (combination remedies): Common Cold – Thick; Earache; Gum Abscess; Mouth Ulcer; Receding Gums; Sinus Pain; Sore Throat; Toothache.

Important

While above self-limiting or acute complaints are suitable for home treatment also contact your healthcare provider during emergency situations or if symptoms worsen or fail to improve. Chronic or persistent complaints, which may or may not be mentioned above, require a different treatment and dosage protocol so are best managed by a qualified homeopath for good results.

Dosage Instructions (suitable for babies to adults)

For the home treatment of acute and self-limiting complaints take one pill or five drops of the remedy every 1 minute to 4 hours (1 minute for intense or emergency symptoms (plus seek emergency help), 4 hours for milder ones). Once an improvement is noticed, stop dosing and repeat the remedy only if symptoms return. If there is no improvement at all by three doses, choose a different remedy or seek professional guidance.

Note: Chronic symptoms or complaints require a course of professional treatment by a qualified homeopath to manage the changes in potencies and remedies may be required.

More Information

Guidelines on which potency to use

From Past Masters

Homeopathy is a 200-year system of medicine. Early medical homeopaths recorded initial provings, remedy relationships, and their early experiences with each remedy in great detail.

These writings were then shared with others to advance homeopathic knowledge and practice.

Today, these same writings give a fascinating insight into the symptoms and clinical conditions for which each remedy was used.

The following extract, with minor editing, is one example.

Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E. B. Nash M.D.

Mercurius Solubilis (Merc.)

Swollen, flabby tongue, taking imprint of the teeth; gums also swollen, spongy or bleeding; breath very offensive.

Sweats day and night without relief in many complaints.

Creeping chilliness in the beginning of a cold, or threatened suppuration.

Sliminess of mucous membranes.

Moist tongue, with intense thirst.

Glandular swellings, cold, inclined to suppurate; ulcers with lardaceous base.

Modalities: < at night in warmth of bed, while sweating, lying on right side.

Bone diseases; pains worse at night.

Dysentery: stools slimy, bloody, colic, fainting; great tenesmus during and after, followed by chilliness, and a “cannot finish sensation.” The more blood and pain the better indicated.

Affects lower lobe of right lung; stitches through to back (Chel., Kali c.).

Intense thirst, although the tongue looks moist and the saliva is profuse.

In low potencies, hastens suppuration; in high, aborts suppuration, as in quinsy.

* * * * *

As in Antimonium crudum, so in Mercurius, the leading characteristic is found in the mouth, or, I might rather say, characteristics, for the gums are swollen, spongy, sometimes bleeding; the tongue is also swollen, flabby, taking the imprint of the teeth (Arsenicum, Chelidonium, Podophyllum, Rhus tox. and Stramonium), generally moist, yet with intense thirst; the whole mouth is moist with salivation which is soapy or stringy, and the odor from the mouth is very offensive; you can smell it all over the room. No remedy has this condition of mouth in any degree equal to Mercury.

It is found in very many complaints, and if anything corroborative of the truth of “similia,” etc., were desired the curative power of Mercury, when indicated by these symptoms, ought to be satisfactory.

Many a time have I given great relief to my patient, and great credit to Homeopathy, by brilliant cures of that painful affection, quinsy, guided by these symptoms. Of course, in addition to the above symptoms the tonsils were greatly swollen and often apparently on the verge of suppuration. Right here let me warn against giving Mercurius too low, for if you do, it will hasten suppuration instead of aborting it.

If anyone is skeptical as to the efficiency of the very high potencies, I invite him to a test in just such a case. Give a single dose, dry upon the tongue, or if you must seem to do more, dissolve a powder in four tablespoonfuls of water and give in half-hourly doses. Then Wait. I have done in many times and am convinced. If the patient has that other strong characteristic of Mercurius, viz., profuse perspiration, without relief of the suffering, success is doubly sure. (Sweat relieves, Arsenicum, Natrum mur., Psorinum.)

I wish right here, as perhaps the most appropriate place, to disclaim being an exclusive high-potentist. The questions of dose is, and I believe must remain, an open one as long as different degrees of susceptibility are found in different diseases and persons. I have experimented along the whole line and know that both the high and the low are efficacious in certain cases. The preponderance of evidence, however, is greatly in favour of the high and the highest. This is my opinion. You may differ, and are welcome to do so.

The fever symptoms of Mercurius are notable, especially in the sweats.

The chill also is peculiar as I have observed it. It is not a shaking chill, but is simply creeping chilliness. Often when this creeping chilliness is felt it is the first symptom of a cold that has been taken, and, if left alone, the coryza, sore throat, bronchitis of even pneumonia may follow; but, if taken early, a dose of Mercurius may prevent all such troubles.

The chilliness is felt most generally in the evening and increases into the night if not removed by Mercury. It also alternates with flashes of heat; first chilly, then hot, then chilly, etc., like Arsenicum. It is often felt in single parts. Then again it is felt in abscesses and is the harbinger of pus formation.

If pus has already formed, especially much of it, the only thing Mercury can do is to hasten its discharge; but if little or none is actually formed a dose of Mercury high will often check the formation and a profuse sweat often follows with a subsidence of the swelling and a rapid cure of the disease.

Now the sweats. They are very profuse and do not relieve like the sweats of inflammatory diseases generally do, but no the contrary the complaints increase with the sweat. (Tilia.).

In what diseases is this condition found? It may be found in almost every disease: In sore throat, bronchitis, pneumonia, pleuritis, peritonitis, abscesses, rheumatism, etc., to the end of a long list. In short in any disease in which this profuse and persistent sweating without relief is present Mercurius is the first remedy to be thought of.

Worse at night, and especially in the warmth of the bed, is another strong characteristic of Mercurius. (Ledum pal.) There is a long list of remedies that have aggravations at night, but not so many from warmth of the bed. I have cured many skin diseases of various names guided by this modality.

The glands and bones also come strongly under the influence of this remedy. The glandular swellings are cold, inclined to suppurate, having these chilly creepings aforementioned. These with the bone-pains in the exostoses and caries are all aggravated at night in the warmth of the bed.

The mucous membranes are everywhere affected; the discharges from them are at first thin and excoriating, even from the catarrh of the nose to the diarrheic, or dysenteric, discharges. Afterwards they become thicker or more bland, like the Pulsatilla discharges. Where are worse at night also, even the leucorrhœa.

Hahnemann ranked Mercury (first) for syphilis, as he did Sulphur for psora and Thuja for sycosis, and no doubt justly so, for Mercury in its various forms symptomologically covers more cases of that disease than any other remedy but it must be remembered that Mercury is no more a panacea for syphilis than is Sulphur for psora or Thuja for sycosis, else there would be no truth in similia similibus.

The case in hand must simulate Mercury, or that remedy is not “in it,” but some other remedy is. Experience abundantly corroborates this and proves the truth of the law, Similia Similibus Curantur.