He moves about in his sleep. Sleeplessness from ebullition of blood.
He starts up in affright in his sleep.
At night he wakes up frightened and confused, not knowing where he is, and cannot rightly collect himself. Chattering in his sleep.
Yawning.
Chilly feeling with trembling, which recurs after some minutes, with little heat thereafter and no sweat.
External warmth is intolerable to him, the veins are distended.
Anxious heat as if hot water were thrown over him, with cold forehead.
Palpitation of the heart with great anxiety so that he must throw off the clothes.
Hypochondriacal moroseness: takes everything in bad part.
Everything disgusts, is repugnant to him. Breaks out into weeping.
Fretful: irresolute: trembling anxiety, relieved by motion.
Morose: ill-humoured: discontented: fretful.
Mothers come to hospital, “cannot think what is the matter with the child: it is so grizzly lately”. Pulsatilla generally cures.
Among other peculiar and characteristic symptoms of Pulsatilla that must be noticed, are the following. We will run through Kent’s great lecture, quoting.
“The Pulsatilla patient is an interesting one, found in any household where there are plenty of young girls. She is tearful, plethoric, and generally has little credit for being sick from her appearance : yet she is most nervous, fidgety, changeable, easily led and easily persuaded. While mild, gentle and tearful, yet she is remarkably irritable–extremely touchy– feels slighted; sensible to every social influence. Melancholia, sadness, weeping, despair, religious despair, fanatical; full of notions and whims; imaginative: extremely excitable. She imagines the company of the opposite sex a dangerous thing to cultivate. These imagination belong to eating as well as to thinking. They imagine that milk is not good to drink, so will not take it. That certain articles of diet are not good for the human race. Aversion to marriage is a strong symptom. Religious freaks misuses and misapplies the Scriptures to his own detriment, thinks he is in a wonderfully sanctimonious state of mind, or that he has sinned away his day of grace. Tearful, sad and despondent, ameliorated walking in the open air, especially when it is crisp, cool, fresh and bright.
“Aggravations from fats and from rich foods–worse for fat, pork, greasy things, cakes, pastry and rich things. The Pulsatilla stomach is slow to digest.
“Can’t breathe in a warm room; wants the windows open; chokes and suffocates in a warm bed at night.”
Kent contrasts the Chamomilla and the Pulsatilla child (with pains in ears). “In Chamomilla you have a snapping and snarling child, never pleased, scolds the nurse and mother, ameliorated by walking about. The irritability decides for Chamomilla. You can detect a pitiful cry from a snarling cry. Both are ameliorated by motion, by being carried. Both want this and that and are never satisfied; they want amusement. But the Pulsatilla child when not amused has a pitiful cry, and the Chamomilla child a snarling cry. You will want to caress the one and spank the other.”
“Pulsatilla is one of our sheet anchors in old catarrhs with loss of smell, thick yellow discharge, and amelioration, in the open air; in the nervous, timid, yielding, with stuffing up of the nose at night and copious flow in the morning.
“Pulsatilla has wandering pains, rheumatism goes from joint to joint, jumps around here and there; neuralgic pains fly from place to place; inflammations go from gland to gland.”
Here is the characteristic changeableness of Pulsatilla, carried from the mental to the physical sphere. But Kent says that Pulsatilla, “though it jumps around, does not (like some drugs) change to a new class of disease, so that the allopathic physician can say, as of the Abrotanum patient, `This is a new disease to-day.'”
With Pulsatilla, as said, digestion is slow. And Kent says: “A striking feature here is, he never wants water. Dry mouth, but seldom thirsty. Craves ice cream, pastries, things which make him sick.”
A picture of Pulsatilla that one has gradually evolved is:
Not hungry.
Not thirsty.
Not constipated.
Weepy: can’t tell symptoms for tears.
Changeable; and will laugh the next moment.
Very responsive to sympathy.
Like “Phosphorus”, fears:–alone–in the dark–in the twilight–in the evening. (Pulsatilla is worse in the evening.)
Great fear of insanity.
Imaginative: jealous; suspicious.
Chilly, yet worse for heat.
Craves open air.
Craves movement, if in pain, mental or physical.
Pulsatilla is a great medicine for measles: for chilblains where they are unbearable when hot (Agaricus, when cold).
The classical description of Pulsatilla is, “sandy hair, blue eyes, pale face, easily moved to laughter or to tears; affectionate, mild, timid, gentle, yielding disposition, inclined to be fleshy”. But cases wholly atypical may, by their symptoms, demand, and be cured by Pulsatilla.
