One other things sometimes is a help about Sulphur kids, and that is that they are frightfully pleased with their possessions; the Sulphur childs toys are the best that could be, and the Sulphur childs family is the best there ever was, and the Sulphur childs motor car is the last word in motors which is sometimes quite a useful tip.
There is another tip about the Sulphur kids which I have sometimes found useful, and that is that they have an astonishing money sense; quite a small child has a very definite sense of values. .
“For severe aggravation of Sulphur is there any one drug to antidote it?”.
I think the most common antidote drug for Sulphur is Belladonna, but it depends entirely what the condition is.
“Is Sulphur often indicated for urticaria in children?”.
Not nearly so often indicated as it is used. But it is very commonly indicated in urticaria in children, particularly if associated with digestive upset.
“What is the best potency for children?”.
Children respond awfully well to any potency, and most Sulphur children respond perfectly well to a 30 or 2000.
“Is Pulsatilla lethargic?”.
Yes, the heavy Pulsatilla is. The heavy Pulsatilla child is the child who is liable to go on to Sulphur. The finer Pulsatilla child is much more liable to become chilly and go on to Silica or Phosphorus.
“Can you mask symptoms with a homoeopathic drug?”.
Yes, you can. For example, where you have got a case that has been exposed to cold and comes down with pretty indefinite symptoms, you dont know what is developing, you can quieten it down with Aconite but they dont clear, and you know you have only modified it and you wonder what is going to happen in the next twenty-four hours. If you push in a dose of Sulphur the child is well next day.
Often you are liable to get mild bronchitis developing, and it is jolly difficult to prescribe for if you have modified it with your Aconite and left it there, and you have got very little indication for anything else.
NO. 5.
WELL, I think we cleared Sulphur out of the way last week, and we get back to our Pulsatilla type of drugs. And, although the majority of these that I am looking at are hot-blooded drugs, there is one other that you have got always to associate with Pulsatilla, and that is THUJA, although it is chilly in its reactions.
I think it is a little difficult to give you a mental picture of the typical Thuja child, although I can remember lots of them coming up to out-patients, and I think the real reason why it is so difficult to get a picture of them is that in the majority of outstanding Thuja cases there has bene an element of mental deficiency.
I have seen quite a lot of Thuja patients, Thuja children, where there has been mental deficiency, some merely backward, some actually deficient; I have seen quite lot in whom there is an obvious pituitary disfunction, and I think that tends to colour ones idea of Thuja. But you will get Thuja children who are not mentally defective, and who have not got a pituitary disfunction, and that type of child is very like a Pulsatilla child in reaction.
I think the outstanding characteristic of the Thuja child is the fact that it is sensitive, sensitive to people, it is responsive to any kindness, it is conscientious in what it does, and it is easily upset emotionally. And there your first strong indication Thuja indication comes in: the Thuja children have a peculiar sensitiveness to music.
It is one of the things that one commonly associates with the mentally defective child, I think; certainly 80 per cent. of the mentally defective children that I have had to do with have been abnormally sensitive to music; I mean much more sensitive than the average child and even in the normal child with Thuja indications you will get this emotional sensitiveness to music. They are affected by it; they may even weep from it.
Then, associated with that emotional disturbance, you do meet Thuja kids who have a sadness, a depression, which is very like a Pulsatilla depression, that is to say they are sad, they are easily upset, and if upset they weep very much as a Pulsatilla child does.
Then there is another symptom which always makes me think of the Thuja child, and that is a strange contradiction that you often come across with a perfectly lively, active child, apparently keenly interested, and yet they have a strange hesitation in speaking, very often a difficulty in finding the words they want, or a difficulty in saying them.
And very often that difficult in speaking gives you the impression that the child is slow mentally, when it isnt really slow, it is really hunting for words. And you may get that going on a little farther and you get some of these Thuja children who have a definite disinclination to talk, they are rather silent, and they appear to be rather heavy.
Then, as far as appearance goes, I think the majority of the Thuja children are rather under than above the average height, many of them are definitely small and rather finely built. I think I have seen as many fair-haired as dark-haired Thuja children, and it seems to apply equally well to either type.
There is one thing that is pretty definite about them, and that is that they appear to get wakened up, alive, the more active they are. If they are made to sit about they get dull, heavy, apt to get depressed, but any activity seems to brighten them up mentally.
Then, another common feature that you meet with in many of these Thuja children is a very faulty development of the teeth. You get rather irregular dentition, and you get very early decay. The enamel of the teeth is definitely faulty in places.
Then, all these Thuja children are sensitive to cold, and yet they are mostly better in the open air. They are very sensitive to damp, and they are liable to be much worse in the mornings. Then I have never seen a Thuja child that didnt perspire on exertion, and even when they are not exerting themselves they mostly have a rather greasy skin. I think probably the greasy skin of the
Thuja child is more commonly noticed, at least I have noticed it more commonly, in the dark-haired type than in the fair; I have seen quite a lot of fair-haired Thuja children who had a rather fine skin, and very often a downy growth on the skin, particularly on the back.
Then the next thing is that these Thuja children dont stand up to mental stress well. They are very liable to get a typical acute neuralgic headache under stress, from getting over-tired or over-excited, and the point about the neuralgic headache in the Thuja child is that it very often picks out definite areas which are extremely painful and very often extremely sensitive.
And with that you can always tack on the other symptom, which is that the Thuja kids are very liable to get chronic catarrhs; they get a thick, purulent, yellowish-green nasal discharge; they are liable to get crusts in the nose; they may get bleeding. They are liable to get a chronic otitis media, and with their otitis media they are very liable to run to a mastoid, again with the very severe and localized pain, and tenderness over the mastoid; if they are old enough they will tell you it feels as if something were being bored into the mastoid region.
Then another common feature in these Thuja children is that they have a poor digestion. You know the typical picture of the pituitary child with the almost pendulous abdomen well, that is the extreme case, but you get all degrees up to that, and these Thuja kids are very, very liable to run a chronically irritated caecum, you very often find a full, boggy caecum in the right iliac fossa, and with that you usually get a history or recurring attacks of diarrhoea, and the Thuja diarrhoea is fairly characteristic . It consists of pale, greasy, almost fatty stools, and they are always passed with a good deal of flatus. And the diarrhoea attacks are accompanied by a lot of gurgling in the abdomen.
Then, of course, as you would expect, these Thuja kids in a great many instances will give you a history of having had crops of warts, or they may actually have them when you see them. The point about the Thuja warts is that they are soft, and they bleed very easily on handling; if they are knocked they are liable to have their surface broken and bleed.
Then you remember the point that is always made in the Materia Medica about the Thuja patient sweating on the uncovered parts. Well, that is perfectly true. I remember seeing a girl of round about twelve years of age, and she was stripped to be overhauled, and the sweat simply poured off her when her clothes were taken off; and she wasnt sweating at all when covered up: so you do occasionally come across that odd symptom of sweating when uncovering, although mostly the Thuja children are chilly and are shivery when they are uncovered.
As a matter of fact that particular case was rather interesting because she was one of these rare bony deposits in the muscles in quite a young child, and she did very well on Thuja. We had her in here for some time just before the war, and the first thing that put us on to the possibility of Thuja was that odd sweating when uncovered.
