NUX VOMICA


NUX VOMICA symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Homeopathic Drug Pictures by M.L. Tyler. What are the symptoms of NUX VOMICA? Keynote indications and personality traits of NUX VOMICA…


Introduction

      No household should be without its little homoeopathic medicine chest for common ailments, and no homoeopathic medicine chest should be without Nux. The nursery medicine chest when we were children contained Nux vomica, and the nurses were not far wrong when they dubbed it “temper medicine”.

Hahnemann, writing about Nux vomica, tells us that there are just a few medicines whose symptoms are so similar to those of the common ailments, that they are very frequently found useful. These he terms the Polychrests – drug of many uses.

It is the polycrests that should be at hand for common acute ailments, and pre-eminent among these is “the Nux vomica seed”. He says that formerly it was feared to employ it, because it used to be administered in enormously large doses (a whole grain, or several grains).* *Present-day official medicine gives the dose of Nux tincture as 5 to 15m. But their Nux is standardized to 0.25 per cent, of strychnine, whereas ours is the strongest obtainable. From our “Nux O ” potencies are run up. But that it proves the mildest and most efficacious remedy when administered in the small doses he indicates, where disease-symptoms correspond to those it is capable of producing in healthy human beings.

“From his careful experience of many years” he tells us that Nux is more frequently needed by persons of an anxious, zealous, fiery, hot temperament: or of a malicious, wicked, irascible disposition. (But this does not mean, of course, that Nux may not come in for any ailment, the symptoms agreeing.)

There seem to be remedies, always, to fit abnormal conditions, and that in the most extraordinary way. Nux vomica, as you will see, should be an invaluable remedy in Paraguay, for the times when the natives run amok.

Sir John Weir, in his pamphlet “Present-Day Attitude”, quotes a Dr. Lindsay, of Paraguay, in regard to the powerful effect on the nervous system, in those parts, of the North wind. (It will be remembered that Nux is one of the few remedies worse in dry weather and worse in windy weather.)

Dr. Lindsay says,

“This is a dry, hot wind. It dries up everything it comes across. Its effects on animals of all kinds are most extraordinary.

“All domestic animals-horses, cattle, dogs, fowls, suffer in the same way as man does. Everybody’s nerves are on edge. The most trivial incident, a word in jest, misunderstood, may lead to murder.

“An order native, meeting a younger of a slightly better class, saluted him with, Why, boy, you’ve got to look almost like a man, and got a bullet from the boy and fell dead.

“During the north wind the number of woundings and murders is greater than at any other time. When native dances are allowed during a north wind, we lie listening for the shots or for the footsteps of those running to fetch help for a knifing case.

“Now listen to the provings of Nux Vomica.

Worse dry wind.

Exaggerated sensitiveness and irritability.

Excessive uneasiness.

Moral exaltation and excitability, with extreme sensitiveness to least pain, to least smell, noise or movement.

Insane desire to kill.

Takes everything amiss; readily breaks out into scolding and abuse.

He is hasty. Looks malignantly at anyone who asks him anything, without answering.

It seems as if he would like to strike anyone in the face who speaks a word to him so irritable and uncontrollable is his disposition.

Every harmless word offends. Peevish. Malevolent. Fiery, excited temperament. Ill-humour, vexation and anger, breaking out in acts of violence.

Extravagant and frantic actions.

“Here you have some of the strange symptoms of the materia medica exemplified in a most astonishing manner.”

The following are among the black type mental symptoms of Nux culled from Allen’s Encyclopedia and from Hahnemann : symptoms repeatedly caused by the drug in provings or poisonings, and repeatedly cured thereby in homoeopathic potencies.

Quarrelsome, even to violence.

Extraordinary anxiety. Sadness.

She cannot get over the smallest evil.

Much disposed to scolding crossness.

Much given to reproach others for their faults.

He feels everything too strongly.

Oversensitive to impressions of the senses.

Cannot bear strong odours and bright light.

Cannot bear any noise or speaking.

Music and singing affect him strongly.

Irresolution.

Cannot endure the slightest ailment.

Very hypochondriac, and affected by the slightest thing, after eating.

Dread of literary work at which one must think and employ the ideas.

Nux affects body and soul, and that always in an extreme manner. Not only mind, head, brain, special senses, but the whole of the digestive system, mouth to anus; the whole of the respiratory system; the liver and portal system; the urinary and genital systems. It affects nerves, muscles, skin, sleep. It is a great fever medicine-symptoms agreeing. No wonder that the homoeopaths of what one may call the middle period of Homoeopathy, who indulged in low potencies and got their best results in acute disease, made such great use of Nux. They had the polychrests at their finger tips.

In the head, Nux’s black letter symptoms are:

Intoxication.

Drunken confusion in the head.

Dullness of head after dinner, which recurred twenty-four hours afterwards.

In the morning, drunken, giddy heaviness of the head. Aching pain in the occiput in the morning immediately after rising from bed.

Squeezing headache.

Dullness, headache, felt even before opening the eyes.

Worse moving the eyes.

Morning headache, as if head had been beaten with an axe.

Headache, worse after eating, with nausea and very sour vomiting.

Attacks of vertigo, as it if turned round in the brain, with momentary loss of consciousness.

Drunken confusion of the head.

Here one may note that Nux is (as it should be!) a great medicine for drunkards. Even lay homoeopaths used to know that. An aunt of ours, seeing the misery of a poor family where the father drank, sent some Nux; with the result, a happy family and no drink. And at out-patients in the Hospital, where a poor woman, sometimes, has confessed her trouble-a husband that drank, Nux has been sent, and changed everything. There was one, only the other day, where later, the report was – if the man drank still, he had ceased to be so sullen and impossible, for which she was grateful. (Sulphur, Nux’s complimentary remedy, has also a reputation for persons “gifted for drink” as one poor woman expressed it. One of the residents at Hospital, years ago, used to treat his “drunks”, at Casualty, with Camphor in potency. And Burnett extolled Spiritus glandium Quercus (acorn tincture) as helpful for old drunkards who were paying the penalty).

Nux vomica, in addition to its hypersensitiveness to light, to noise, to odours, affects the organs of sense. The eyes, with smarting, especially the internal and external canthi,”as from salt”. They are watery, and weep.

But the nose, as parts of the respiratory system, is especially affected by Nux. And here is one of the great spheres of action of Nux (in the common cold) where its indications are rather peculiar and very definite. We will again quote the black letter symptoms, running on down the whole respiratory tract.

Profuse discharge of mucus from one nostril, that seems obstructed by dry catarrh.

Frequent discharge from both nostrils, obstructed by dry catarrh.

Fluent coryza in the morning.

Coryza fluent during the day, and stopped at night.

Real coryza, with scraping in the throat, crawling and creeping in the nose, and sneezing.

Catarrh with headache, heat in the face, chilliness, and much mucus in throat.

Sneezing in bed: after rising, sudden fluent coryza.

Throat rough from catarrh. Painful raw and sore, at the palate.

Rawness in throat that provokes cough.

Sore throat. Scraped throat.

Rawness and scraped feeling in larynx. Provokes cough.

Violent cough before rising in the morning, with expectoration of clotted blood, and soreness in chest.

Very early morning cough.

Dry cough, from midnight till daybreak.

Scraping in chest, causing hawking.

Cough which brings on headache as if the skull would burst.

Cough which causes bruised pain in epigastrium.

Asthmatic constrictive tightness transversely through the chest, when walking and going up hill.

Among the feverish symptoms of Nux are :

After drinking, immediately shivering and chilliness.

Hahnemann says,”serious ailments from catching cold are often removed by Nux. Nux has, Chilliness on the slightest movement; on the slightest exposure to open air. Chilled by the slightest draught. Cannot get warm. Great coldness, not removed by the heat of the stove, nor by bed coverings. He cannot get warm. Fever in the afternoon, chilliness and coldness, with blue nails, followed by general heat and burning hands, with thirst, first for water, afterwards for beer.

And now to run down the digestive tract, from mouth to anus, as affected by Nux vomica, giving only the black letter symptoms:

Putrid taste in the morning, but food and drink taste right.

Bitter taste, Putrid taste on coughing.

Repugnance to food. And to the accustomed tobacco and coffee.

Eructation of bitter and sour liquid.

Margaret Lucy Tyler
Margaret Lucy Tyler, 1875 – 1943, was an English homeopath who was a student of James Tyler Kent. She qualified in medicine in 1903 at the age of 44 and served on the staff of the London Homeopathic Hospital until her death forty years later. Margaret Tyler became one of the most influential homeopaths of all time. Margaret Tyler wrote - How Not to Practice Homeopathy, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, Repertorising with Sir John Weir, Pointers to some Hayfever remedies, Pointers to Common Remedies.