Woman of 42, sent up by a country doctor, who told her that she would never walk again. She had a fifteen-year’s history of supposed hopeless rheumatoid arthritis. She was wheeled in in a bath chair:-could not feed herself or dress herself without help; could not even pull the sheet up at night. There was rapid improvement after Sepia 30, a dose in December (1915). In February she was walking. In six months the hospital note is, “Hands look normal: walks with a very slight limp.” Seen again, from time to time for “stomach”, for “slight return of rheumatism”, etc. Notes extend over fourteen years, and no return. Here, of course, the bony changes cannot have been great. But such cases show the wide range of Sepia- in Sepia patients! And here let us retell its chief characteristics in the words, this time, of KENT.
“Sepia is suited to tall, slim women with narrow pelvis and lax fibres and muscles. One of the strongest features of the Sepia patient is found in the mind, the state of the affections the remedy seems to abolish the ability to feel natural love, to be affectionate. I know I ought to love my children and my husband, I used to love them, but now I have no feeling on the subject’. The love does not go forth into affection. An absence of all joy, inability to realize things are real: no affection for the delightful things of life: no joy: life has nothing in it for her. Sallowness and jaundice the yellow saddle across nose and down sides of face enormous freckles, great brown patches brown warts. Face sallow and doughy, as if muscles were flabby. You will seldom see Sepia indicated in the face that shows sharp lines of intellect and possesses will. Sepia is rather stupid and dull, thinks slowly and is forgetful or a quick patient:-but the dullness of intellect is the most striking feature. Face generally puffed, often smooth and rounded and marked by an absence of intellectual lines and angles. Anaemic skin becomes wrinkled. Constipation with sensation of lump in rectum. Gnawing hunger, seldom satisfied: eats plentifully, yet feels a gnawing, all-gone, empty, hungry feeling in stomach. When these symptoms are associated with prolapsus, Sepia will almost certainly cure, no matter how bad the prolapsus has been, or what kind of displacement there is. Inner parts as if let down, wants a bandage to hold parts up, or to place a hand or napkin on the parts: a funneling sensation better sitting down and crossing the limbs. When these symptoms group themselves, the gnawing hunger, the constipation, the dragging down, and the mental condition. it is Sepia and Sepia only.”
Sepia comes in for menstrual troubles; leucorrhoea; eruptions, herpetic, and crusty, and weepy, especially on the bends of joints: “induration like some forms of epithelioma.” Kent says “Sepia has cured epithelioma of lips, wings of nose and eyelids.” He says Fear of ghosts, etc. “Never happy unless annoying someone.” Fear: fear of insanity very easily offended. And then the Sepia relief from sleep- even a short sleep: (PHOS.) and relief of most complaints from eating.
And now a few gleanings from Farrington’s masterly article on Sepia (Comparative Materia Medica.)
He tells us that Sepia is a remedy of inestimable value. Acts on the vital forces as well as upon the organic. substances of the body. Soon impresses the circulation, which becomes more and more disturbed. Even as early as the fourth hour day there are flushes of heat and ebullitions which end in sweat and weak feeling. Hand in hand with this orgasm is an erethism of nervous system, with restlessness, anxiety, etc.
Quickly following are relaxation of tissues and nervous weakness. Joints feel weak, as though they would dislocate: the viscera drag-the “goneness”. The prolapsed uterus becomes more and more engorged: the portal stasis augments: liver is heavy and more sluggish: blood vessels full, and limbs feel sore, bruised, tired, heavy. The sphincters, and all structures depending for power on non-striated muscle, are weak, i.e. rectum prolapses; and evacuations of bowels and bladder are tardy and sluggish.
Organic changes are seen in complexion, yellow, earthy: in the secretions, sour, excoriating: in skin, with offensive exhalations, and disposed to eruptions, discoloration, desquamation, ulcers, etc.
Rather violent motion, by improving the circulation, relieves. “The hands are hot and the feet are cold; or as soon as the feet become hot, the hands become cold. This is an excellent indicating symptom for Sepia.”
“A common attendant, clearly expressive of the Sepia case, is the excellent Keynote of Guernsey, `with sense of weight in the anus like a heavy ball.'”
To show how deep-acting Sepia can be, we will retail rather an astonishing memory from early Dispensary days.
She was a gaunt, grey and grey-haired widow with multiple T.B. manifestations, whose husband had died of tuberculosis. One remembers especially the large, highly inflamed prepatellar bursa, for which she would not hear of operation: and three T.B. sinuses in particular, one on the palmar aspect of the right forearm, and one on each side of the middle finger of the right hand, going down to the first and second phalanges. Tuberculinum bov. and Silica, to one’s astonishment, the left the condition I.S.Q.:-as did three weeks at our Eastbourne Convalescent HOme, with good air, cleanliness and dressings.
Then, tardily, the idea came, to “find her remedy, and give her that, and afterwards try to deal with the tubercular manifestations.” Her remedy turned out to be Sepia, which rapidly cured the sinuses, although, being “scrub-lady” in a public house, her hand was apt to be steeped, from morning to night, in dirty water, as she scrubbed floors and washed the pewter pots. The sinuses closed, the finger healed, with all the rest: and the “stuffing” of the prepatellar bursa could be felt breaking up into smaller india-rubber-like masses, before finally disappearing.
It is the worth while to make friends with Sepia! Small wonder that Dr. Gibson Miller should have said, “If he were only allowed one remedy, he would choose SEPIA.”
SEPIA IN MALARIA
IN old cases of suppressed malaria, Sepia brings back the chill, but its most useful sphere is after a bad selection of the remedy and the case becomes confused. Where a remedy has been selected for only a part of the case and changed it a little but the patient gets no better. When the case gets into this kind of a fix, stop right off and give Sepia. It will be seen that the fever, chill and sweat are just as erratic as can be. Natrum mur. is one of the greatest malarial remedies, but it is full of order, like China. Sepia is full of disorder. In cases confused by remedies think of Calcarea, Arsenicum, Sulphur, Sepia and Ipecac. Never give China or Natrum mur. for disorderly cases. KENT.
FARRINGTON tells the history of the introduction of this substance into our Materia Medica. “Hahnemann had a friend, an artist, who became so ill that he was scarcely able to attend to his duties. Despite Hahnemann’s most careful attention he grew no better. One day when in his friend’s studio, Hahnemann observed him using the pigment made from the Sepia, and he noticed also that the brush was frequently, moistened in the artist’s mouth. Immediately the possibility of this being the cause of the illness flashed across Hahnemann’s mind. He suggested the idea to the artist, who declared positively that the Sepia paint was absolutely innocuous. At the physician’s suggestion, however, the moistening of the brush in the mouth was abandoned, and the artist’s obscure illness shortly passed away. Hahnemann then instituted provings with Sepia succus. All the symptoms observed by him have since been confirmed. In 1874, the American Institute of Homoeopathy, acting under the notion that our old remedies should be re-proved, performed this task for Sepia. There were made some twenty-five provings of the drug in from the third to the two hundredth potencies. These were reported at the Meeting of the Association in 1875. They testify to the fact that the provings left us by Hahnemann cannot be improved on.”.
