Head-The most characteristic headache for which sanguinaria is indicated is a periodical “sick headache”. It comes on every seventh day, the patient wakes up in the morning with it, it starts in the occiput, travels upwards over the vertex and settles over the right eye and in the right temple, it gets worse as the day goes on and lasts till evening, till it culminates in vomiting of bile, smile, bitter substances and food, which gives relief, as does also passing flatus upwards and downwards. It is aggravated by light and movement, and is better from lying down. The pain is throbbing or as if the head would burst. The attack is often preceded by scanty urinary secretion, and goes off with the passing of large quantities of colourless, aqueous urine.
Another headache is one with nausea and chilliness, followed by flushes of heat, which extend from the head to the stomach; it may be caused by over-eating or improper food. Or the headache may come in paroxysms of throbbing or lancinating pains through “the brain”. Or it may be a dull, frontal headache, mainly right-sided, which is better in the open air, but worse from motion and stooping. There is also an afternoon headache in the occiput and nape and a rheumatic headache in the occiput and nape and a rheumatic headache, with pain running up the posterior auricular region. Any of these may be accompanied by nausea or vomiting. They often occur about the time of the climacteric, with hot flushes, noises in the ears, toothache, a burning or faint feeling in the stomach and shivering, or they may be associated with profuse menses, the pain is then of a bursting character and the face red and hot. These headaches must not be too sharply relegated to water tight compartments, the main points about them are that they are usually right- sided, of a congestive, full or bursting character, that they settle chiefly over the eyes and in the temples, require the patient to lie down and be quiet and have gastric symptoms as concomitants.
Sexual-Sanguinaria is useful for climacteric disorders, especially flushes of heat associated with menorrhagia and leucorrhoea; also for metrorrhagia from uterine polypi.
It is a remedy for neuralgia of the face, which has its seat in the jaws and extends to the eyes and ears and down the neck, the patient ” kneels down and presses the head against the floor for relief,” or, in other words, it is better from hard pressure. It is a remedy for eruptions on the face of young women with scanty menses.
This remedy has been serviceable in hepatic disorders, in ulcer of the stomach, in catarrhal diarrhoea following the sanguinaria coryza described above; in earache, toothache and many other complaints, when the indications for the drug are present. It has gained some reputation in tumours of the breast, and is a medicine to be thought of in comparison with ferrum for rheumatism of the deltoid, especially when it is in the right shoulder, is worse at night, and the patient cannot raise the arm to the head, although he can swing it freely to and fro.
Nitrate of sanguinaria has been used for the nasal and laryngeal troubles for which sanguinaria is indicated, and with equal, or, as some claim, with greater success.
LEADING INDICATIONS.
(1) “Bilious, sick headaches,” usually right-sided.
(2) Neuralgic headaches settling over right eye and in right temple. Periodical headaches, every seventh day.
(3) Dry cough, worse lying down, better sitting up and passing flatus.
(4) Menorrhagia with headache and stomach symptoms.
(5) Circumscribed redness of cheeks’ pneumonia, phthisis.
(6) Offensiveness and acridity of discharges; vomit, stool, menses, sputum, offensive flatus and breath.
(7) Nausea, unrelieved by vomiting.
(8) Fulness and tenderness behind the angles of the jaws.
(9) Deltoid rheumatism.
(10) Right-sided symptoms;moving right to left.
(11) Periodically.
(12) Gastro-intestinal symptoms accompany other complaints; headache with nausea and vomiting, coryza, followed by diarrhoea, cough, with vomiting and diarrhoea, menorrhagia, with nausea and vomiting.
(13) Recurrence or aggravation of complaints at the climacteric.
(14) Streams of heat flow from one part of the body top another.
(15) Pains leave tender spots behind them.
AGGRAVATION:
From touch, jar, lying down (cough), lying on the right side, motion and exercise, swallowing, eating, cold room (cough), at night, sunrise to sunset (headache), cold and damp, right side.
AMELIORATION;
From hard pressure (neuralgia of the face), lying on left side, sitting up and passing flatus (cough), passing flatus (headache), eructations (mind), vomiting (headache), rest in a dark room (headache).
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,