The CAUSTICUM type of child is definitely more sensitive than LYCOPODIUM types. They are not sensitive to pain but are particularly sensitive to any emotional disturbance. Often these children will cry because they think you are hurting another child. It is idea of pain which affects them rather than the actual pain to themselves, and they often stand pain quite well, but cannot bear to see another child crying.
They have much the same sort of clumsiness as the CALCAREA children; are rather unhandy, and are liable to strain muscles, whereas the CALCAREA children sprain ankles. They are inclined to suffer from rheumatism and liable to get acute muscular rheumatism, particularly from exposure. These CAUSTICUM children often suffer from acute torticollis or an acute facial palsy after exposure to an icy wind.
Associated with this tendency to torticollis and facial palsy, the CAUSTICUM children get very definite growing pains which are usually accompanied by stiffness in or about the joints – a feeling as if their joints were tight. And linking up with the rheumatic tendency, the CAUSTICUM child when overworked or nervously distressed, is very likely to develop choreic symptoms, and the outstanding feature of the CAUSTICUM chorea is that jerking persists during sleep.
The main distinguishing feature between the CAUSTICUM children and the LYCOPODIUM type is that CAUSTICUM children have a definite aversion for sweets whereas the LYCOPODIUM children desire them.
Two other points would confirm the CAUSTICUM diagnosis. The first is that the rheumatic troubles of the CAUSTICUM child are very much better in damp weather; and the second is that a CAUSTICUM child with any digestive upset tends to develop acute thirst after meals.
Two additional points which are sometimes useful-CAUSTICUM children often develop endless warts; they also have a very marked tendency to nocturnal enuresis.
Family History of Tuberculosis.
Wherever there is definite family history of tuberculosis no matter which drug is indicated, the child will at some time be helped by a dose of TUBERCULINUM and my practice is to give one dose about once in twelve months. An article in an American journal recommended giving two doses of 1 m, two of 10 m, two of 50 m, and two of Cm, on four successive days. It was maintained that this gave better results and can produce a practical immunity to tuberculosis in a child of tuberculous parents.
There is another point in which the treatment of children appears to differ from that of ordinary practice and it applies particularly to the treatment of the CALCAREA CARBONICA type of child. Time can be lost by following the rule of never repeating the medicine so long as improvement is maintained.
Originally I would give one dose of CALC CARB. 10 m and, providing the child went ahead slowly but steadily with no lessening in its improvement, I could find no reason to repeat the medicine for six months or more.
But the average young child, free from acute illness, will tend to improve even if it has no medicine at all, and the constitutional drug ought to increase the rate of that improvement. I therefore started repeating CALC CARB. at much more frequent intervals whenever the child was not jumping ahead, and in many of these CALC CARB. cases improvement can be speeded up by more frequent repetition of the medicine.
It is a quite different matter in the case of an adult.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.