In regard to the occipital headache of Cocculus, Farrington has some interesting contributions. “Some years ago there was an epidemic of spotted fever in the city. During that epidemic many children, died, especially in its earlier days. After a while there was discovered a symptom characteristic of the epidemic, and that was intense headache in the occipital region, and in the nape of the neck. Children in a stupor would manifest it by turning the head back, so as to relieve the tension on the membranes of the brain; others who were conscious would put their hands to the back of the head; while still others complained of pain in the back of the head, as if the part were alternately opening and closing. That symptom was under Cocculus. There were very few fatal cases after Cocculus was used. Occipital headaches are hard to cure.
This is NASH’s little summary of Cocculus:
Weakness of cervical muscles, can hardly hold the head up. Weakness in small of back, as if paralysed: gives out when walking; can hardly stand, walk, or talk.
Hands and feet get numb; asleep
General sense of weakness; or weak, hollow, gone feeling in head, stomach, abdomen, etc. Worse by loss of sleep or night watching.
Great distension with flatulent colic; wind or menstrual colic; crampy pains; inclined to hernia.
Modalities; (<) sitting up, moving, riding in carriage or boat, smoking, talking, eating, drinking, night watching:-(>) when lying quiet.
To epitomize KENT, who is, as usual, the most illuminating of all:-“Cocculus slows down all the activities of body and mind, producing a sort of paralytic weakness.”
Behind time in all its actions.
All the nervous impressions are slow in reaching the centres.
As (he says) if you pinch the patient on the great toe, he waits a minute and then says “Oh”, instead of saying it at once.
Answers slowly, after apparent meditation.
Weak: tired.
First this slowness and then a sort of visible paralytic condition, and then complete paralysis-local or general.
But there are causes:-Nursing: night nursing: worn out by anxiety, worry and loss of sleep.
Cocculus, he says, from the time of Hahnemann to the present time has been a remedy for complaints from nursing; not professional nursing, for Cocculus needs the combination of vexation, anxiety, and prolonged loss of sleep. At the end of it, prostrated in body and mind, cannot sleep, has congestive headaches, nausea, vomiting and vertigo. That is how a Cocculus case begins.
The instant Cocculus gets into a wagon to ride, sick headache, nausea, vertigo come on.
Cocculus cannot endure motion: worse talking, motion, motion of eyes, riding.
Wants plenty of time to turn the head cautiously to see things. Wants plenty of time to move; wants plenty of time to think; wants plenty of time to do everything. Is slowed down: inactive.
Then the incoordination, the numbness. He says it has been used with good effect in locomotor ataxia.
In regard to the STIFFNESS of Cocculus. Kent makes this clear and rememberable. “Such a strong symptom, and quite peculiar to Cocculus-as to some nerve diseases. Limbs straightened out and held there for a little while can only be flexed with great pain. Persons prostrated with anxiety will lie down on the back, straighten out the limbs, and can only get up with great difficulty. The doctor comes, discovers what is the matter, bends the limbs and she screams; but is relieved after the bending, and can get up and move about.” Kent says, “You cannot find that anywhere else. It is entirely without inflammation: a sort of paralytic stiffness, a paralysis of the tired body and mind. A man will stretch out his leg on a chair and he cannot flex it till he reaches down with his hands to assist. Now with all this slowing down of the thoughts and activities, the patient remains extremely sensitive to suffering and to pain.”
Spasms like electric shocks: convulsions after loss of sleep. Tetanus, chorea, attacks of paralytic weakness with pain. Paralysis, eyes, face, muscles, limbs-everywhere. Kent gives a case of paralysis of both limbs after diphtheria in a little girl, which was considered hopeless; but one of the big old men, looking through the case, gave Cocculus cm and “it was not many days before the child began to move the legs and the condition was perfectly cleared up”, “and I have never ceased to wonder at it”, says Kent.
(Here, and in other of the aspects of Cocculus, one is reminded again and again of Gelsemium. Both paralyse the eyelids and the throat, producing ptosis and paresis of deglutition; the limbs: and both may help and cure paralysis after diphtheria. One may compare also with Plumbum which, as Nash has pointed out, has hyperaesthesia with loss of power:-a brilliant and fertile hint, as one has experienced; notably in a case of Landry’s disease, “ascending paralysis”, where the condition caused great anxiety as it progressed, and the hyperaesthesia was such that the hospital nurse had to give up taking the pulse. Rare doses of Plumbum in high potency sent her back to useful war-work. It was the sort of case that one does not forget. But Cocculus has spasticity with loss of power, and should be useful in spastic paraplegias.)
Kent says further: In the extreme Cocculus state, there is the appearance of imbecility, the mind seems almost a blank, He looks into space, and slowly turning the eyes towards the questioner answers with difficulty. Prostration and nervous exhaustion accompany most of the complaints of Cocculus.
Then, as to the vertigo and nausea: A Cocculus case cannot look out of the car window, cannot look down from the boat and see water moving, without nausea immediately. Headaches and nausea, with giddiness and gastric symptoms. Cannot accommodate the eyes to moving objects. Headache as if the skull would burst, or like a great valve opening and shutting (or, as we have heard, mysterious feeling as if the head were hollow and empty) prostration and nervous exhaustion accompany most of the complaints of Cocculus. You go to the bedside and ask the nurse, “What have you been feeding the patient?” and the patient gags. The thought of food makes the patient gag. The nurse will say, every time she mentions food the patient gags. The thought of food or the smell of food in the other room or the kitchen will nauseate the patient. (Colchicum:-but also Arsenicum and Sepia)
Kent also draws attention to: Sensation as though a worm were crawling in stomach:-(“Something alive inside” reminds one of Thuja and Crocus) and Kent ends with “Slightest loss of sleep tells on him.”
Working through Cocculus, as mirrored in the experience of different prescribers, is extremely interesting and instructive, and one remembers with regret cases where Cocculus might have been useful. As a matter of fact one’s most frequent experience with Cocculus has been helping persons worn out with prolonged night nursing and loss of sleep: where
“Glamis hath murdered sleep and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
(i.e. those which Cocculus most notably causes and cures)
THOUGHTS are fixed on a single disagreeable subject: absorbed in thought and notices nothing about her.
Sits in deep reverie.
Ill effects of anger and grief.
Sudden extreme anxiety.
Easily startled.
Time passes too quickly.
Stupid in the HEAD.
Cloudiness of the head, chiefly after eating and drinking.
Vertigo as if intoxicated, with dullness in forehead: as if a board across head: on rising from lying: had to lie down again.
Vertigo: as if intoxicated: with confusion: with nausea: things whirl from right to left.
With flushed, hot face and head: then palpitation.
Headache as if eyes would be torn out.
Headache with nausea and inclination to vomit.
Sick headache from riding in carriage, boat, train, cars, etc.
Seasickness.
Dimness of SIGHT
Dryness of oesophagus.
Loss of appetite with metallic taste.
Unusual NAUSEA and inclination to vomit, while riding in a wagon.
Extreme aversion to food, caused even by the smell of food, although with hunger.
Frequent empty eructations.
When he becomes cold, or catches cold, there is inclination to vomit, causing a copious flow of saliva.
Inclination to vomit in connection with headache, and a pain as if bruised in the bowels.
Violent spasm in the STOMACH, clutching in the stomach.
Spasm in the stomach: squeezing in the stomach.
Griping in epigastrium, taking away the breath.
Thirst especially for beer.
Great distension of the ABDOMEN.
Flatulent colic about midnight; awakened by incessant accumulation of flatulence, which distended the abdomen, causing oppressive pain here and there; some was passed without remarkable relief, whilst new flatus constantly collected for several hours; he was obliged to lie on one side for relief.
Painful inclination to a hernia, especially after rising from sitting.
Watery urine.
Itching in scrotum
MENSTRUATION seven days, too early, with distension of abdomen and cutting, contracting pains in abdomen on every motion and every breath, together with contraction of rectum.
