PULSATILLA. [Puls]
These are the “warm-blooded” drugs starting with PULSATILLA which is the most commonly indicated drug in children of this type.
PULSATILLA children are very typical. There are two main types. One is the very small, fine type, with a fine skin, fine hair, unstable circulation, liable to flush up from any emotion very often going pale afterwards; definitely shy, sensitive; always affectionate very easy to handle, and always very responsive.
The other PULSATILLA type, is much fatter with definitely more colour, usually rather darker hair, a little more sluggish in reaction, a little more tendency to weep than to be bright and gay as the smaller, finer type, craving for attention without much response to it, always asking for a little more.
If you get one picture clear you are apt to forget the other. The factor common to both types is their temperature reaction, all PULSATILLA children are sensitive to heat, they flag in hot weather lose their liveliness, lose their sparkle and energy.
They hang about, become either tearful or irritable, and are likely to get digestive upsets. But they are much more liable to be upset a sudden change to cold in a hot spell-that is to say they often get an attack of acute sickness or diarrhoea from being chilled in hot weather.
They tend to get cystitis, or to get earache. Sudden chilling during hot weather causes their troubles. Whilst generally they flag in hot weather, their acute conditions are much more liable to be brought on by chilling. In the same way they are upset by taking ice-cream in hot weather, this factor is quite as common as the ordinary PULSATILLA aggravation from too rich food.
Something one misses a case because of the odd reactions in a feverish attack. The PULSATILLA children get acute colds in the head, acute coryza, and with this they are shivery, and very chilly. With the coryza, there is a certain amount of gastric catarrh, a feeling of nausea, and they may actually vomit.
But, in spite of their chilliness, their sense of blockage in the head is better in the open air and worse in a stuffy room. A PULSATILLA cold always has a bland discharge.
There is sometimes an apparent contradiction they are very apt to get conjunctivitis, and in the PULSATILLA conjunctivitis the eyes are very sensitive to any cold draught, and water profusely in the open air. There is usually marked photophobia with itching of the eyelids, and PULSATILLA children are apt to get styes, affecting the lower rather than the upper lid.
A point that is sometimes a help in PULSATILLA earaches, which are very intense and usually brought on from exposure to cold, is a very violent pain, which spreads all over the side of the face as well as into the throat.
If the condition has gone a little further, there is feeling as of something bursting out of the ear, as if something were pressing right through the ear drum. Another thing is amelioration from cold-their earaches are better from cold applications.
PULSATILLA children are very often tired, edgy and sleepy during the day, and they become more lively as the day goes on, they are liable to get the PULSATILLA nervousness about sunset the ordinary sunset aggravation of PULSATILLA.
They become very lively towards bedtime, are slow in going to sleep, and once asleep tend to get nightmares, night terrors usually some kind of strife dreams-not necessarily being chased by the black dog of PULSATILLA-but always something worrying, terrifying. Most of these PULSATILLA children are afraid of the dark, afraid of being left alone, as one would expect in the shy nervous type of child.
One thing that will almost always produce a night terror in these children is listening to ghost stories in the dark before going to bed; you can be sure that will give a PULSATILLA child a nightmare.
Another useful pointer is that these children are very liable to become giddy from looking up at anything high. The only other drug that I know in which this is so marked is ARGENTUM NITRICUM which has an aggravation from looking down, but it has also an aggravation from looking up, but this is very much more marked in PULSATILLA.
The PULSATILLA child often lies with the hands above the head and this is a useful pointer, although it is by no means constant.
Kali Sulphuricum. [Kali-s]
When considering the hot-blooded child of PULSATILLA type, the next thing to consider is whether it is PULSATILLA or KALI- SULPHURICUM. Kent says that KALI SULPH. is merely an intensified PULSATILLA. I do not think it is.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.