Burnett adds a footnote, “To the uninitiated I may explain that in the homoeopathic `little books’ it is stated under Conium that it is good for the complaints of old woman.” One may add that it is also stigmatized as being good for old bachelors and old maids!
But the above exemplifies one of the reasons for not telling patients what you are prescribing. The knowing ones among them, i.e. the possessors of “the little” homoeopathic books, look up the medicines, and criticize your prescriptions, approving or disapproving from that dangerous thing, a little knowledge: or they come to wrong, even at times disastrous, conclusions, deduced from what they can find in regard to the uses of the remedy:-or, having found benefit from what you have given, they proceed to abuse it, not realizing that, not only “what a drug can cause, it can cure,” but also that “what a drug can cure, it can also cause.” The remedy is not everything in Homoeopathy, but the manner of prescribing it. * * *
Here is a resume of NASH’S contribution to our clinical knowledge of Conium. His epitome is that of all the writers on homoeopathic Materia Medica. Viz.:-
Vertigo: (<) turning head, or looking around sideways, or turning in bed.
Swelling and induration of glands, after contusions or bruises.
Cancerous and scrofulous persons with enlarged glands.
Urine flows, stops and flows again intermittently; prostatic or uterine affections.
Breasts sore, hard and painful during menses.
He calls it one of the so-called SPINAL remedies (Cocculus).
He says, It should be a remedy for locomotor ataxia. Its strongest characteristic is its peculiar vertigo. I once treated a case of what seemed to be locomotor ataxia with this remedy.
The patient had been slowly losing the use of his limbs; could not stand in the dark. In the street he would make his wife walk either ahead of him, or behind him, for looking at her sideways or in the least turning his head or eyes would cause him to stagger or fall. Conium cured him. It would always aggravate at first, then he would greatly improve when it was discontinued.
In regard to the EYE symptoms of Conium, NASH points out that the peculiar, prominent and uncommon symptom is, photophobia intense, out of all proportion to the objective signs of inflammation in the eye.
In its SCIRRHUS affections, he points out, the pains of Conium are burning, stinging, or darting (Apis).
“Sweats day or night as soon as one sleeps, or even when closing the eyes, is a characteristic found under no other remedy that I know of (reverse of Sambucus).” Lippe he says, once made a splendid cure of a complete one-sided paralysis in a man eighty years of age with this remedy, guided thereto by this symptom. “I think it would be difficult to give a correct pathological explanation of such a symptom: but there is a reason, and whether we can give it or not we can cure it if we have a corresponding one approving under a remedy:-where a cure is at all possible.”
Conium and Phosphorus are remedies that come remedy to mind for simple vertigo (when not due to subluxation of atlas, and so amenable to a wee, persuasive twist). One has so often worked out a case of vertigo in the Repertory, when one of these two has come through. But, of course, there are a great number of other remedies which, in an equally marked degree, cause-and cure- vertigo.
Of thesis two, Phosphorus has vertigo looking upwards; looking downwards; in the open air; after eating; in the evening.
Conium when turning; when turning head or eyes; when looking to the side; when lying. Is better when quite still with eyes closed. Conium, as we have seen, cannot watch moving objects-from paresis of accommodation.
But, talking of giddiness, there is a remedy of what one may call “transparent vertigo.” This is a personal experience, as is its cure by Cyclamen. On walking and looking ahead, or on sitting up or rising in the morning one sees the objects one looks at whirling unsteadily. flickering away to one side-the right side- while all the time, through the moving whirl, one sees them standing stolidly and immovably. Twice, at different periods, one has had bouts of this: when a dose of Cyclamen has promptly finished the unpleasant experience.
Another disagreeable personal experience of vertigo was a proving of Ceanothus:-after taking a few doses of the O. On lying down on the left side, nothing happened: but on turning over on to the right side, the most alarming vertigo was experienced; everything rushing and turning over and over to the right, while one grasped the sides of the bed, in the effort to maintain one’s position. This recurred, in a less degree, the next night, then was experienced never again. But it was horribly unpleasant-even alarming. It taught one that vertigo can be horrible. I do not think that vertigo is especially noticed as a symptom of Ceanothus: but it should be! Personal experiences are what most impress one, and are best remembered:-therefore Hahnemann says, “The physician should make himself the infallible and undeceptive subject of his own observations.”
Then, in regard to sweat-even that common symptom, when qualified, can be most useful in pointing to a remedy that may turn out to have the other characteristics symptoms of a patient, and be therefore curative.
“Sweats the moment the eyes are closed: or at once if he sleeps, day or night.” As we have seen, Conium has this. But for sweats on closing the eyes, KENT gives also, in lesser type, Bryonia and Lachesis (and in still lesser type, Calcarea, Carb. an. and Thuja).
Sweat on uncovered parts: no sweat on covered parts: a most curious and inexplicable symptom, which has led to the successful use of Thuja:- as we have seen, and as has been reported in cases.
Profuse sweat on affected parts, ANT. TART. (compare Ambra, Mercurius, Rhus, etc., for “sweat on affected parts”)
Sweat of Painful parts (Kali carb.)
Sweat only while awake, SAMBUCUS. The only competitor here is Sepia, in lowest type. (Sepia being one of the sweating remedies, and especially a remedy of offensive sweat, and offensive axillary sweat.)
Lachesis sweats with palpitation.
“Cold sweat while eating: anxiety and cold sweat while eating,” MERC. only is given.
Profuse sweat from music, Tarent.
“On making any motion, sweat disappears and heat comes on,” Lycopodium
Sweat that attracts files, Caladium One has observed this with horror in some poor old alms-house people, where it was impossible to keep the flies off the face!
Then there are the one-sided sweats:-the sweats of single parts, front, back, upper, or lower parts of body. And the sweats that stain different colours:-or bloody sweats )especially LACH. and NUX MOS.).
But perhaps the most useful of all these “sweat-peculiarities” are the head-sweating during sleep, soaking the pillow of CALC. and SILICA: often priceless symptoms in treating babes and small children.
One of the paralytic effects of Conium is, “cannot expectorate: swallows sputum.”.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Inability to sustain any mental effort.
Hypochondriasis and hysteria from suppression of or too free indulgence in sexual instinct, with low-spiritedness, anxiety and sadness.
Want of MEMORY.
Excessive difficulty to recollect things; to comprehend that which one reads.
HEADACHE as if head were too full and would burst.
Sick headache with inability to urinate. Great giddiness, worse lying, when everything seems to go round.
VERTIGO as if turning in a circle.
Intoxication when taking the least liquor.
Accumulation of EAR-WAX; blood red, or like decayed paper, with pus or mucus.
Weakness of SIGHT: amaurosis.
Objects look red, rainbow-coloured, striped; confused spots.
Weakness and dazzling of eyes, with giddiness and debility of whole body, especially muscles of arms and legs, so that when I attempted to walk I was apt to stagger like a person who had drunk too much strong liquor.
Aversion to light without inflammation of eyes.
Burning in eyes.
Ulcers on cornea, right to left.
Could scarcely raise lids, they seemed pressed down with a heavy weight.
Intermittent flow of URINE with cutting after micturition.
Some sexual symptoms. Bad effects from suppressed desire, or excessive indulgence.
Shrivelling of mammae, without sexual desire.
Dry spot in larynx, where there is crawling and almost constant irritation to a dry COUGH.
Cough, almost only when first lying down, during day or evening: obliged to sit up and cough it out, then had rest.
Powerful spasmodic paroxysms of cough, excited by itching and tickling in chest and throat, or by a dry spot in larynx, worse at night or lying down. Greatly fatiguing patient.
Lying down and taking a deep breath causes cough.
Stitches as with needles in left MAMMA.
Hardness of right breast, with painfulness to touch and nightly stitches in it.
Pain in mammae, which often swell and become hard.
Hard, scirrhus-like tumours (breast).
Indurated and swollen cervical GLANDS in scrofulous children.
Tremulous weakness and palpitation after every stool.
Paroxysms of hysteria and hypochondriasis from abstinence from sexual intercourse.
