The other point is that all these CINA children appear to develop an irritation of the nose, it is red, itchy, and they pick at it – and that is quite apart from getting thread worms or anything of the kind. A yawning child picking its nose always indicates the possibility of its needing CINA.
Magnesia Carbonica. [Mag-c]
MAGNESIA CARBONICA and CINA are the two most commonly indicated drugs for diarrhoeic attacks accompanied by peculiarly white stools. In addition MAGNESIA CARB. is an interesting drug in children.
The ordinary MAGNESIA CARB. child is a sensitive, nervous type and as a rule they come for treatment either as very young children or at about ten years of age.
The most outstanding feature of the MAGNESIA CARB. children is their lack of stamina. Some of them are quite well nourished but they all have very poor muscular power. In an ordinary healthy child the muscles are quite firm, but the MAGNESIA CARB child has soft, flabby muscles, and any physical exertion tires him out.
There is exactly the same sort of mental reaction. The older child at school gets mentally tired out and comes home with a severe neuralgic headache. The pains are violent, they may be in any part of the head, and tend to come on at night.
They are accompanied by very marked sleeplessness, the child cannot get to sleep at all, and a strange feature is that they are better if the child is up and moving about.
MAGNESIA CARB. children always have very definite likes and dislikes in food. They have a marked craving for meat, and anything with a meaty taste. And they have a complete aversion to vegetables of any kind. In small children there is an intolerance of milk; they get sour vomiting, and pasty, pale, undigested stools, which are usually white and soft putty-like.
If the digestive disturbance goes further, there are watery stools which are usually excoriating. The type of child is very liable in an acute enteritis to develop an attack of bronchitis or definite broncho-pneumonia.
In their bronchial attacks the MAGNESIA CARB. children tend to get stringy sputum, which is very difficult to expel. It is not unlike the KALI BICH. sputum in appearance, but they have great difficulty in expectorating it at all.
MAGNESIA CARB children tend to have a very dry skin. In small children it is particularly noticeable, they get a dry almost scaly, skin, and a peculiar dry, almost coppery-coloured, scaly eruption of the scalp, almost as if it has been pained on to the scalp.
The adolescent MAGNESIA CARB. children are always dead-beat in the morning, even after a good night’s sleep. It is an effort to get them off to school.
Another useful pointer to MAGNESIA CARB. children is that they are very easily startled by any unexpected touch, and in spite of this very inert type of skin, after taking any hot food or drink they flush up and sweat about the head and face.
These children are all sensitive to cold, and yet they are rather better in the open air. They are usually aggravated by changes in the weather.
Ignatia. [Ign]
The next of the nervy drugs is IGNATIA. It is unfortunate that IGNATIA has been distorted in the homoeopathic text-books and has come to be looked on as the hysterical female. Using it in that way misses a great deal of the value which can be had from IGNATIA in other cases which are not hysterical females at all.
A child with a highly developed nervous system; a highly strung, sensitive, bright, precocious child, doing very well at school and being pushed- be it a boy or a girl-and the nervous system is getting over-taxed, will often present IGNATIA indications.
The first indication is that the child is beginning to develop headaches, a nervous, tired headache coming on at the end of the day, after a period of stress.
Then they begin to become slightly shaky their writing is not so good as it was, their finer movements begin to suffer.
The next pointer is a rather strained expression, and this is a major keynote to IGNATIA in the non-hysterical type. It may be anything from a mere tension of the muscles to definite grimaces when the child is speaking, and it may go on from that to facial chorea, generalised chorea, difficulty in speaking, difficulty in articulation.
The child is becoming unduly excitable-either up in the air, or down in the dumps, and is incredibly hyperaesthetic to noise. If the child is attempting to do homework after school any noise nearly drives it crazy; it is liable to fly into a rage and then lapse into tears.
After any stress of that kind the child is quite incapable of working, its brain will not function, it cannot take anything in, cannot remember, and cannot think.
There are definite indications for IGNATIA in the peculiar modality of the headaches. The children come home from school with a congestive headache, which, strangely, is relieved by hot applications.
If their nerves begin to get frayed these children become scared. They may have been up against the stress of examinations, they lose their nerve altogether, and are in constant dread of something unpleasant going to happen, and they may become scared of doing anything on their own initiative-even scared of going out alone.
They get all kinds of digestive upsets, and the typical IGNATIA hysterical stomach develops, that is to say the child is upset by the simplest food but can digest the most indigestible meal.
Exactly the same kind of contrariness appears when the IGNATIA child gets a bad throat, an acute inflamed throat, and the only relief is from taking something solid, something to press on it, and the pressure relieves it for the time being.
These overstressed children get all sorts of disturbances. If they are in any confined place, particularly if there are a lot of people about, they get nervous, distressed, choky, and they are quite liable to faint. But it all keys in with the general picture of nervous stress.
As would be expected in a child of that type, who has been very bright, clever, successful, and is now rather going to bits, she is very apt to blame herself for it.
It is very often a child of poorer parents, who is doing quite well on scholarships, and now cannot do as well as she did. She starts to reproach herself, thinks that the failure is due to lack of effort on her own part, gets thoroughly depressed and almost melancholic.
Linked with the choreic tendency is liability to get troublesome, irritating spasmodic coughs, which come on at inconvenient times, and once started go on, and on, and on. That is one type of IGNATIA cough in the stressed child. The other type is very definite, acute laryngitis, with a tendency to laryngeal spasm.
They are very liable to get rheumatic pains, and may even get acute rheumatism; and most of the rheumatic pains are better from definite firm pressure.
Zincum [Zinc]
The last of these drugs is ZINCUM and one adds it to IGNATIA because of the choreic tendency.
The typical ZINCUM child is very nervous, sensitive and excitable. They are easily distinguished from the IGNATIA children. The IGNATIA child, to begin with, is a very bright, quick reacting child, whereas the typical ZINCUM child has a reaction time.
When IGNATIA children are tired out they may not be able to take things in, they have difficulty in learning, difficulty in remembering, but the ZINCUM children are slow of grasping what is said, slow in answering, and they are much more docile, less unstable than the IGNATIA children.
The ZINCUM child will come for treatment at about the same age, possibily a little older, and will present a history of delayed development. Delayed puberty very often gives the indication for the ZINCUM child.
The impression is that they are tired, mentally and physically generally weary. And yet they are restless, twitchy, fidgety. When they are tired they get a very persistent, aching pain in the lower cervical region, very often with burning pains going right down the back.
Another feature of these ZINCUM children, particularly the very fidgety ones, is that they are liable to get cramp in bed at night, more often in the hamstring muscles than in the feet.
They are very sensitive to cold, and are always chilly. They get inflamed eyes from exposure to cold. These ZINCUM children have definite thickening of the margins of the lids, chronic blepharitis, and chronic conjunctivitis, and they develop intense photophobia.
They are acutely sensitive to noise, as sensitive as the IGNATIA children, but talking worries them excessively, and if the child is attempting to do work and anyone is talking in the room it upsets them more than the noise of other children playing.
Also in adults, who are completely exhausted by people talking to them, it is very often a definite lead for ZINCUM
Another strong indication for ZINCUM is a history of a well marked, generalised skin eruption in early childhood, and a chorea developing about adolescence.
Many of these ZINCUM children develop an acute hunger about 11 a.m. and they simply bolt their food and their drink.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.
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