Sleep.-The prover goes to sleep late, kept awake by nervous excitement, and the sleep is disturbed by alarming dreams. Subsequently heavy sleep and snoring come on.
Fever.-Chill and heat alternate. The head may be hot and the feet cold, especially at night during an attack of fever. Sweat comes on towards morning, worse from any effort., The hands and feet are damp, but the head is very wet, soaking the pillow.
THERAPEUTICS.
CALCAREA is one of the few medicines which correspond sufficiently closely with a type of patient for the correspondence to be an important guide towards its choice. As is the case with silica the type of patient requiring calcarea is not limited by the pathological designation of the case. It is not necessarily co-extensive with or limited to rickets, tubercle, osteomalacia, anaemia or mental deficiency.
The most striking results are obtained in children, and especially in those of a fat, flabby, pale appearance. Many such have large heads with open fontanelles and are late in acquiring strength of limb for walking. There is typical drenching, sour- smelling perspiration of the head, chiefly at night, when the child`s pillow becomes widely wet with it. In a less degree the neck, axilla, hands and feet sweat, in rickets, tuberculosis or non-specific debility, or from lime starvation (or excess?). Enlarged, indurated glands in the neck further indicate calcarea; they tend to break down, but may become cretaceous.
Another type of countenance is of chalky whiteness, or is yellowish, and though the face is fat and flabby and the abdomen large, the neck and the rest of the body are thin almost to emaciation.
One of the most striking characteristics of a calcarea patient is extreme sensitiveness to cold-cold air, cold water; all draughts are liable to cause discomfort or some attack of disease; the patient`s skin is cold and in places damp, and he even feels the effects of a coming storm. The head, however, may be an exception to the cold feeling, though not to the sensitiveness to cold, open air. Few drugs have a modality so imperious as to be exclusive, but calcarea, in its extreme sensitiveness to cold in almost every sphere, is one of those which have, i.e., a patient who suffers from hot weather, the heat of a fire, &c., would seldom (if fever) require calcarea.
Mind.-The calcarea patient`s mental state may vary with his physical ailment, but it is almost invariably characterized by lowered tone or resistance (see p. 278). Consequently, trying circumstances like worry, vexation, disputations, or fatigue from business pressure (which normally would be borne without serious consequences) result in some ailment-sleeplessness, dyspepsia, inability and unwillingness to apply the mind to the duties of life (in a normally diligent and industrious person). A state of indecision arises, the patient cannot make up his mind -cannot even marshal the facts which should enable him to form a judgment. He consequently loses confidence in himself and fancies that others will notice this and will mistrust him as he mistrust himself. He dwells on one set of ideas which cannot put aside, and every trifle increases his depression. He is easily started by noises, and fears to be left alone because he sees ghosts or alarming objects or visions on shutting his eyes-even if awake.
It is an easy step from such a state of lack of confidence in himself to fearing and believing that his mind will give way– that he will become insane.
Such a patient`s disposition changes towards his friends or employees.
If the difficult environment lasts and he cannot obtain mental rest and suitable treatment, the mental state he fears may actually develop-a cerebral atrophy, so-called softening, may take place.
If this state can be recognized in time calcarea will do a great deal to restore tone and strength.
Sleep.-This remedy will help to give good sleep to calcarea patients who are very likely to be restless-the mind being over- busy until well after midnight, so that the sufferer who needs more sleep gets much less than his normal. His sleep, when it does come, is disturbed by horrible dreams and grinding of the teeth-“night terrors” in children.
Circulation.-Palpitation may further disturb his rest; it is easily induced by exertion or excitement.
Head.-Chronic unilateral headaches, chiefly left-sided, migraine, meningitis, acute and chronic (including the tuberculous variety), and epilepsy, are all conditions for which calcarea may be required., Impetigo of the scalp occurring in rickety or tuberculous children has also benefited by it. The drug has no specific effects on these diseased conditions, and to treat them by routine with this remedy can only lead to a proportion of disappointments.
The head symptoms indicating it are such as it produces (p. 279), irrespective of the name of the malady or diathesis. They may be recapitulated here, even at the risk repetition.
First of all there is the extreme sensitiveness to cold draughts, the patient feels as if a blast of cold air were blowing on or through the head. The head itself feels cold and may be cold to the touch, the patient instinctively wrapping it up (as with silica). Mixed with this general coldness there may be burning in a small spots or spots, ex.gr., on the vertex. Next, there is profuse, sour perspiration, which is a guide. The pains in the head are throbbing and constrictive, and they are not seldom periodic recurring every seven or fourteen days. THe area is frontal, extending down the nose; or unilateral. Aggravation is caused by bright light, movement, talking, noise and cold; amelioration by heat, such as very hot bathing, by lying down and by darkness.
The headache are caused by draughts, arrest of perspiration or of nasal discharge, and by overfatigue or mental exertion, and they are likely to begin in the morning and get worse as day advances, often ending with vomiting.
Eyes.-Calcarea has been extensively prescribed (with good results) for ophthalmia, keratitis and corneal ulcers and even opacities and cataract, all occurring in ill-nourished subjects, “strumous,” rickety, syphilitic, or ill-and under fed. Redness of the conjunctiva and sticking of lids in the morning with definite depressed and creeping ulceration of the cornea may be present. The objective signs are accompanied by photophobia, even to ordinary daylight, and very great pain in bright sun or artificial light. All the signs and symptoms are worse in cold, damp weather and from reading, writing and fixing the gaze on any object. The muscles of accommodation are weak, causing dimness, and the extrinsic muscles are unbalanced of images from the perpendicular.
Opacities will only be affected if the general health has notably improved-apparently sometimes as an after-thought.
Ears.-The aural conditions curable by calcarea acknowledge causation similar to those of the eye. Pain (“earache”) may be due to arrest of discharge from exposure or astringent applications. Polypi from otorrhoea are amenable to this remedy.
Nose and Throat.-The same is true of these areas. In the nose there may be a thick, yellow discharge, mixed with thick, black crust from oozing of blood; nasal polypi also may be cured by it. The throat is patchy red, or it may have small ulcers on the fauces, associated with a dry, choky feeling.
Digestive System.-Calcarea helps much in difficult and delayed dentition, especially if associated with other symptoms of rickets. Acid dyspepsia (hyperchlorhydria) in adults and children, if pronounced, frequently requires calcarea. In the former it is often associated with constipated, hard, white motions, and in the latter with diarrhoea; the stools contain undigested, sour coagula of milk, and excoriate the skin round the anus.
Milk and meat are disliked and disagree; eggs are liked and are well digested.
The abdomen is liable to be distended and the epigastrium bulged out, probably from gaseous distension of the stomach. If the patient (especially a child) is thin enough, hard lumps (calcareous mesenteric glands) may be felt. For tuberculous peritonitis of the “dry ” variety calcarea is a prime remedy : but the phosphate may be more beneficial than the carbonate in some emaciated subjects. Worms of any temperate zone kind may flourish in the unhealthy intestines of calcarea patients, and they may frequently be as it were starved out by restoring a healthy state of the mucosa and so rendering the environment unsuitable for these parasites.
Though there seems to little indication in the pathogenesy of calcarea for its use to relieve pain in biliary and renal calculi, its efficacy is so thoroughly vouched for by some of the early practitioners of homoeopathy that it must again be placed on record.
Hughes (loc. cit.) praised it from experience in his own person-a strong plea in its favour; he even says its use may dispense with “hot baths and chloroform.”
Sexual System.-Weakness in both sexes is notable with exhaustion and perspiration post-coitum, and sleeplessness in women and heavy sleep in men. Orchitis, especially tuberculous, may benefit by calcarea. In women menstruation recurs early, is profuse, bright, too long-lasting, and may easily be brought back (after the period has stopped) by excitement (good or bad news); emotions (fear) or exertion.
Edwin Awdas Neatby founded the Missionary School of Homeopathy and the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1903, and run by the British Homeopathic Association. He died in East Grinstead, Sussex, on the 1st December 1933. Edwin Awdas Neatby wrote The place of operation in the treatment of uterine fibroids, Modern developments in medicine, Pleural effusions in children, Manual of Homoeo Therapeutics,