Shiny, smooth, beautiful, polished.Kali-bi has many of the typical Kali characteristics as described in the relevant chapter. But what is the characteristic part of this remedy that doesn’t belong to the Kali element? In the first place there is the very strong focus on family life. Although this aspect is common to all Kali's, it is much stronger in Kali-bi. They live for their family, they have to have the perfect little family. One might mocking-ly call them typical bourgeois people, with their nice house, shiny car and children doing very nicely at university.
Vithoulkas (1991 c, page 94) uses the phrase ’apple polisher’. The polishing aspect is indeed very typical. Everything has to look nice.
Chromium is also used in industrial processes to apply a nice, shiny outer surface to other materials. There was a time that cars used to get a
Chromium surface layer of paint: those were the days of shi-ning images.
Chromium is thus a metal of glossiness and shine, a bright surface, nicely polished.
Slimy, tough, stickyAnother side of this remedy is the slimy part, literally as well as figuratively. A ‘slimy’ person is one who always wants to present his good side, who continually wants to please others. This aspect has also been nicely described by Vithoulkas: the mucus in the nose and sinuses is tough and stringy, their character is also tough and stringy: they stick to you with their endless explanations. The stringiness is a great keynote of Kali-bi.
General characteristicsThere are two more key symptoms of Kali-bi, which are separate from the Kali-influence. One is that the pains are often changing place. And the other is that the pains are equally often only concentrated in one point.