Kalium iodatum
Potassium iodide · Potassium iodide. · Mineral
Those for whom Kali. iod. is best suited have strong tempers, and know that they can be cruel and difficult for others to cope with, especially their families.
Classic symptoms indicating the Kali. iod. remedy include chronic catarrh, recurring sinusitis, swellings, abscesses, or atrophy of the glands. Symptoms are characteristically long-standing, and tend to be accompanied by great weakness, sensitivity, and soreness that is difficult to pinpoint on the body. There is frequently water retention and swelling, and a desire to move around in the open air.
Kali. iod. is often prescribed for the treatment of discharges that are copious and watery, possibly with chronic allergic rhinitis and pain in the sinuses. It is also prescribed for thick, chronic catarrh, accompanied by an unpleasant smell and susceptibility to nosebleeds.
Key symptoms
- Profuse, watery, acrid coryza with frontal sinus pain
- Violent headache with brain feeling enlarged
- Hard nodes on cranium with severe pain
- Glandular swellings; fibrous tissue infiltration
- Ozaena with perforated nasal septum
- Rheumatism in neck, back, feet worse in cold and wet
- Syphilis in all stages; tertiary nodes
- Facial neuralgia; lancinating pain in upper jaw
- Purpura and haemorrhagic diathesis
- Nose red, swollen; profuse acrid hot thin discharge
Worse (aggravation)
Better (amelioration)

Iodide of Potassium (KALI HYDRIODICUM)
The profuse, watery, acrid coryza that the drug produces serves as a sure guiding symptom, especially when associated with pain in frontal sinus. It acts prominently on fibrous and connective tissues, producing infiltration, œdema, etc. Glandular swellings. Purpura and hæmorrhagic diathesis. Syphilis may be indicated in all stages: 1. In acute form with evening remitting fever, going off in nightly perspiration. 2. Second stage, mucous membranes and skin ulcerations. 3. Tertiary symptoms; nodes. Give material doses. Diffused sensitiveness --(glands, scalp, etc). Rheumatism in neck, back, feet, especially heels and soles; worse, cold and wet. Iodide of Potass in material doses acts in the different forms of Fungoid disease (thrush, ringworm, etc), offer simulating syphilis and bacterial diseases like tuberculosis. Symptoms like loss of weight, spitting of blood, etc. Tea-taster's cough due to inhaling the fungus; a also brings about often favorable reaction in many chronic ailments even when not clearly symptomatically indicated.
Mind
Sad, anxious; harsh temper. Irritable; congestion to head, heat and throbbing.
Head
Pain through sides of head. Violent headache. Cranium swells up in hard lump. Pain intense over eyes and root of nose. Brain feels enlarged. Hard nodes, with severe pain. Facial neuralgia. Lancinating pain in upper jaw.
Nose
Red, swollen. Tip of nose red; profuse, acrid, hot, watery, thin discharge. Ozæna, with perforated septum. Sneezing. Nasal catarrh, involving frontal sinus. Stuffiness and dryness of nose, without discharge. Profuse, cool, greenish, unirritating discharges.
Eyes
Conjunctiva red, injected; profuse lachrymation. Syphilitic iritis. Pustular keratitis and chemosis. Bony tumors of the orbit.
Ear
Noises in ear. Boring pain in ears.
Stomach
Saliva increased. Faintness at epigastrium. Cold food and drink, especially milk, aggravate. Much thirst. Throbbing, painful burning. Flatulence.
Female
Menses late, profuse. During menses uterus feels as if squeezed. Corrosive leucorrhœa, with subacute inflammatory conditions of the womb in young married women. Fibroid tumors, metritis, sub-involution, hypertrophy, 1x or 1 gr crude, 3 times a day.
Respiratory
Violent cough; worse in morning. Pulmonary œdema. Larynx feels raw. Laryngeal œdema. Awakes choking. Expectoration like soap-suds, greenish. Pneumonia, when hepatization commences. Pneumococcic meningitis. Stitching pains through lungs to back. Asthma. Dyspnœa on ascending, with pain in heart. Hydrothorax (Merc sulph). Pleuritic effusion. Cold travels downward to chest.
Extremities
Severe bone-pains. Periosteum thickened, especially tibia; sensitive to touch (Kali b; Asaf). Rheumatism; pains at night and in damp weather. Contraction of joints. Rheumatism of knees with effusion. Pain in small of back and coccyx. Pain in hip, forcing limping. Sciatica; cannot stay in bed; worse at night and lying on affected side. Formication of lower extremities when sitting, better lying down.
Skin
Purple spots; worse on legs. Acne, hydroa. Small boils. Glands enlarged, indurated. Hives. Rough nodules all over, worse any covering; heat of body intense. Fissured anus of infants. Tendency to œdematous swellings, eyelids, mouth, uvula, etc. Acne rosacea.
Modalities
Worse, warm clothing, warm room, at night, damp weather. Better, motion, open air.
Relationship
Antidote: Hepar.
Compare: Iod; Mercur; Sulph; Mezer. Chopheenee, a Hindoo remedy for syphilitic eruptions, ulcerations and bone-pains. Used in tincture.
Dose
Crude drug, in material official dosage, but remember Dr. Meyhoffer's statements in his chronic diseases of organs of respiration: "From the moment the drug produces pathogenetic symptoms, it exaggerates the function of the tissue, exhausts the already diminished vitality, and thence, instead of stimulating the organic cell in the direction of life, impairs or abolishes its power of contraction. We use, as a rule, the first dilution from 6 to 20 drops a day; if after a week no decided progress is visible, one drop of the tincture of Iodine is added to each hundred of the first dilution. In this way, the mucous tubercles, gummy deposits and ulcerations resulting therefrom in the larynx undergo a favorable termination in laryngeal syphilis. " When strictly homeopathically indicated, as in acute respiratory affections to third potency.

This remedy is an antipsoric and antisyphilitic. It has been used very extensively by the old school as an antisyphilitic, but in the very large doses which they used it became to a great extent allopathic to the disease, because of the tremendous effect it produced upon the economy, and implanted its own miasm, and thereby in a measure it suppressed many cases of syphilis.
The medicines that are the most powerful substances are really those that sustain in homoeopathic relation to the disease in general, and of these the very smallest dose often cure when similar. When the remedy is not similar enough to cure in such a form the increasing of the dose does not make it homoeopathic. There is an idea in vogue that increasing the dose makes the remedy similar. That is going away from principle. If the remedy is not similar there is no form of dose that can make it similar.

Potassium Iodide. Kali hydriodicum. KI. Solution. Trituration.
Clinical
Actinomycosis. Aneurism. Anhidrosis. Bright's disease. Bubo. Bunions. Cancer. Caries. Cold. Condylomata. Consumption. Cough. Croup. Debility. Dropsy. Ears, otalgia; tinnitus. Emaciation. Erythema nodosum. Eyes, affections of; cysts on lids of. Fibroma. Glandular swellings. Gonorrhœa. Gout. Gumma. Hæmorrhages. Hay fever. Housemaid's knee. Influenza. Intra-menstrual hæmorrhage. Joints, affections of. Laryngitis. Liver, diseases of. Locomotor ataxy. Lumbago. Lungs, hepatisation of; œdema of. Menstruation, disorders of. Neuralgia. Nodes. Noises in ears. Nystagmus. Odour of body, abnormal. Œdema glottidis. Pancreatitis. Paralysis. Pleurisy. Prostate, affections of. Rheumatism. Rickets. Rupia. Sciatica. Scrofula. Small-pox. Spine, Pott's curvature of. Spleen. Syphilis. Tic-douloureux. Tongue, neuralgia of. Tumours. Ulcers. Wens.

Respiratory Organs
Stitching pain through sternum to back or deep in chest, < when walking.
Respiratory Organs
Cough with copious expectoration of greenish matter, and tearing out pain in sternum, exhausting night sweats.
Heart and Pulse
Weak heart, with horrible smothering feeling.
Bones
Chronic periosteal rheumatism, nocturnal bone pains drive to despair (syphilitic or mercurial, or both).
Causes and Modalities
Mercurial, syphilitic,and scrofulous troubles of glands, bones, or chronic rheumatism.
Constitution and Temperament
Scrofulous patients, especially if syphilis or mercurialization is super-added.
Kali nitricum
(see nitrum)
Anus and Stool
Diarrhoea from eating veal.

- Especially adapted to scrofulous persons, who have been thoroughly saturated with mercury, to mercurial and syphilitic affections in general, and affections of glands and bones.

Phatak's chapter on Kalium iodatum is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.