Converse with spirits: is under influence of spirits; has communications from God; delivers sermons: prophecies.
Animals jump out of the ground sideways: he moves quickly to other side, where others start up and pursue him.
Thinks he is tall: double: lying crosswise: that he was killed, roasted, and being eaten.
Sees more horrifying images at his side, than in front of him: they all occasion terror.
Seemed to see black objects: spoke of black people and black clouds: grasped at air.
Rush of blood to head with furious loquacious delirium.
“A dog is biting him and tearing flesh off his chest”; complains of violent headache: confessing and praying: wants to be killed : to be kissed: accuses his wife of unfaithfulness: will not be touched; takes people for dogs and barks at them.
Is a distinguished person. Threatens to use knife on those about him: to break furniture: to throw himself out of the window.
Thinks he has snakes in him: lizards: worms in his clothes. Religious mania: pious looks: praying: inspired talking: despair of her salvation.
Water, or a mirror, or anything bright excites convulsions.
Screams and howls. Wants to kill people, or himself.
Changeable anticipation of death, and rage’ then laughable gestures: then haughtiness and inconsolableness.
Obscene thoughts and actions. Sought to bite, or to catch flies. Sings and utters obscene things.
Laughing. Makes faces: imitates motions, gestures and voices of different animals.
Suicidal: wants a razor to cut his throat.
Pangs of conscience: thinks he is not honest.
On being reprimanded, pupils dilate immediately.
Child very cross; strikes or bites.
Going down stairs takes two steps for one, and falls.
Alae nasi white, face red.
Taste bitter: all food bitter; all taste lost.
Tongue whitish with fine red dots! In constant motion: swollen; hangs out of mouth.
Averse to fluids: to water, even the sight of it causes spasms.
Violent desire to bite and tear things with his teeth.
Sight of a light, mirror, or water excites horrible convulsions.
Froths at mouth and constant spitting.
Violent thirst with desire for sour drinks.
Great desire for acids. Better for vinegar.
Very violent hiccough. Flow of very salt saliva.
Vomits water, bile, dark-green substance: green bile. As if navel were to be torn out.
Wind in abdomen wakens her: screams, thinking herself full of creeping things.
As if urine could not be passed, for narrowness of urethra.
As if cylindrical body were being pushed through urethra: better after drinking vinegar.
Sexual irritation: hands constantly on genitals.
Nymphomania.
Metrorrhagia with excessive loquacity, singing, prayers, praise.
Shrinking look, when awaking.
Aphonia: aphasia: stammering.
Excessive sense of suffocation.
Hard pressure on cartilages of third and fourth ribs with difficult breathing: unable to inhale enough to breathe without anxiety.
When coughing while sitting, lower extremities are jerked up.
Something turns round in chest.
Diaphragmitis.
As soon as she falls into a doze, profuse sweat breaks out (Conium)
Arms thrown about: thrown upwards.
Beating with one arm, grasping with the other.
Falls over his own feet. Fingers and heels numb.
Falls with full consciousness, bent backward so that heels touch. occiput; suddenly snaps forward again.
Falls in the dark: can walk well in light.
Voluntary muscles do not obey will.
Continual cramp in hands and feet.
Great movability of limbs.
Strange involuntary motions. great agility.
Sensation in joints as if all parts of limbs were completely separated from each other. Arms and legs separated from body: hands and feet loosened in joints.
(And so on convulsions: chorea: hysteria: epilepsy: etc.)
Awakes: does not know where he is: with a solemn air of importance; screaming, frightened, knows no one, shrinks away or jumps out of bed; with staring eyes at one point: assumes a comically majestic appearance.
As if cold water poured down back.
As if sparks of fire rushing from stomach to eyes.
It is important to recognize the exactly opposite conditions produced (and curable) by Stramonium. Cursing and praying (as the boy who gets hauled to his feet in passages and odd corners, where he has fallen to his knees in prayer-one remembers such a case). Desire for light, unable to walk, or to sleep in the dark (like the young man who has to have a night light because he “screams the house down” if it goes out) and yet convulsions renewed by the sight of bright objects. Again, the violent convulsions, with horrible distortions of the face; or only the (characteristic) “disorderly graceful, rhythmical movements in delirium or chorea, utterly unlike the angular jerkings of Hyoscyamus” ( All remembered cases.)
One recalls several striking instances of the rapid curative action of Stramonium. Two cases, scribbled into the margin of Allen’s Encyclopedia, at the time, come up opportunely. (I) A big strong Scotchman, years ago, when influenza, after many years absence, came back to mightily stampede the doctors, and to claim a large number of victims including one of the princes, went down with a bad attack of the prevailing epidemic. He had a very high temperature, frightful pain, “right in the hair of my heed”, as he afterward expressed it; with delirium, and vomiting of green matter. But the “strange, rare and peculiar” symptom here was, that he said that the glass of water his wife brought him was black,. and that her face was black. This black vision suggested Stramonium and he was cured in a few hours by Stramonium 30. (No.2), long forgotten but scribbled in below, at the same time, reads: “Alice” (a housemaid). “Bad pain all day across head, but right inside it, cured by one dose of Stramonium
A third a more recent Hospital case, already given, must be retold here where it belongs. It was an amazing case…..
A woman of 33 was brought into L.H.H. on January 17th, 1930. The old school doctor who sent her in had been treating her for the last 14 days for pyelitis and frequent heart attacks, with a temperature of 104:-and the previous year for “mitral incompetence and albuminuria.”
On admission there was much pus and blood in urine; some lumbar pain, and difficulty in urination. She appeared to be very ill; but on admission there was nothing abnormal found in the lungs.
Next day, she was restless and delirious towards evening, with morbid fears, and a temperature of 104.8, respiration 24.
On the third day temperature 104-104.8, respiration now 44. She had developed a very rapid double pneumonia. Skin flushed, hot dry. Delirium. Thirst. And at night restlessness with twitchings of face and hands. Temperature 104. Respiration 34-48 (in spite of Phosphorus30, which she had been having at six-hourly intervals). And she had only passed II oz. of urine in twenty-four hours.
On the fourth day, pretty twitchings of face: hands twitched:-a peculiar “angelic” smile in delirium. She was conscious when roused. It was observed that the temperature was always at its highest at NOON (” as now 104.6″)
The case was reconsidered having regard to its unusual and characteristic symptoms.
For fever at noon, there is only one drug in italics.-Stramonium The graceful spasms and twitching of face-“facial muscles constantly play in delirium”-again Stramonium
Then the character of the delirium, lacking the violence of Belladonna together with the fever, the dry hot skin, and the suppressed urine, again suggested Stramonium So at noon on the fourth day of admission- the second day of the pneumonia, she was given Stramonium, 1M., three doses, four-hourly.
The results was dramatic! viz., a quieter night; no twitching; no delirium. Quite sensible. Temperature coming down Next day it rose once more, but at 8 p.m., not noon, and only to 103.8-a degree lower; when she got three more doses of Stramonium 10 M., After which, with one more small rise it dropped,-to remain sub- normal for some days.
A day later, as she was weak and drowsy, and “looked toxic ” she was given three doses of Arnica 200; after which she needed no more medicine.
Stramonium was given on the second day of the double pneumonia and she was sub-normal three days later.
By February 18th she was walking about the ward; and was discharged a fortnight later, “Lungs normal, heart normal, urine normal. Quite well.”
The interest in this case was its great severity (the doctor who sent her in believed her to be dying of pyelitis and heart trouble before the double pneumonia supervened), and the unusual drug for pyelitis and double pneumonia. This case shows the curative remedy was found on a very few, but characteristic symptoms not of pneumonia, or pyelitis, but of that individual patient exhibiting those disease those disease-conditions.
Here Hahnemann’s “totality of Characteristic Symptoms.” suggested a remedy to which the patient undoubtedly owed her life.
And with this we may quit Stramonium. A marvellous drug. rightly applied-they all are!-yet only worthy of twenty-one short lines in Hale White’s Materia Medica, the text book for students of medicine.
Things are moving at last: and one wonders how long it will be before medical students are allowed to take their course of Materia Medica with us! We have no desire to run a medical school: all the rest can better taught elsewhere, with appliances and first-class teachers: but-Materia Medica! Good Lord! NO wonder so many doctors have “lost their faith in medicine.” * * * * *
