And then the other thing you get pretty constantly with Thuja children is their strange susceptibility to onions. They are very liable to get a gastric upset, an attack of diarrhoea, from onions, cooked or in any form you like. And there is one other common Thuja symptom, although you dont meet it in the young children you meet it in the adolescent, and that is they are liable to get acute digestive upsets from tea.
Then, of course, if you get a vaccination history it is a great help to you.
I think that more or less covers the general outline of Thuja. It is a little difficult to disentangle the acutely pathological patient from just the average Thuja in individual.
Well, the next drug that comes into that crowd is Silica, of course, but we have dealt with it already. It is again chilly, of course.
Well, to get back to the warm-blooded drugs, I think the next common one is BROMINE.
I think Bromine is one of the drugs which is very frequently missed. I know I missed it for years after I started practising Homoeopathy and was astonished when I did discover it to realize how many patients I should have given Bromine to and hadnt done it. I think the common Bromine type of patient is usually over- fat. The majority of the cases I have seen have been in fair- skinned, fair-haired people, and the majority of them have been friendly, cheerful, fairly happy types.
And then you begin to get your contradictions. You have got your fairly cheerful, happy, friendly type, and yet they are very easily put out, and if they are upset they very commonly flush up, and if you get them to explain what happens they say they get a feeling of heat and tension in their heads.
Then the next thing about them is that they are very liable to become nervous, anxious, very often frightened, in the evening very much about the Pulsatilla time. They dont like to walk home in the dark, they are very liable to have the impression that somebody is following them and they get scared very much like the symptom that Pulsatilla gives you they look not unlike Pulsatilla, and you will occasionally get patches of depression in the Bromine patient which again are not unlike the Pulsatilla. But I think in Bromine you are much more likely to come across more placid depression, much more a melancholy outlook than the acute tearfulness of the Pulsatilla.
Then the next thing that I have come to associate with the Bromine patient is in that rather fat, fair type they tend to run to crops of boils, either acne about the face or over the shoulders, in fact I dont think I have ever prescribed Bromine for an adolescent who hadnt some acne spots about.
Then you get more of the symptoms which again are very like pulsatilla. They are very sensitive to heat, they are uncomfortable in the sun, they are definitely uncomfortable in a hot room. They are definitely better for motion, and they are better for exercise. They are better in the open air. And then you get your first contradiction; the typical Bromine patient is very much better after food, whereas the typical Pulsatilla patient is heavy after a meal. Then you get another contradiction; in spit of the fact that they are better in the open air, they are sensitive to draughts.
Then I think the majority of the Bromine cases I have seen have been of two types, either the chronic catarrh of the upper passages, or the typical acute hay fevers.
And if you take the catarrhal type first you will get either the child with the chronic hypertrophy of the tonsils, and they are not the types who run to recurring quinsies, it is the enlarged fibrotic tonsil, very often with pretty general enlargement of the submaxillary glands, which again tend to be hard, they dont tend to break down. And with the chronic tonsils they are very liable to get acute attacks of catarrhal extension to any of the sinuses, and I think in Bromine more commonly you get the frontal sinuses involved, rather than the antrums, and with the involvement of the frontal sinuses you get the patients complaining of intense pain, fullness, feeling of swelling at the root, of the nose.
The nose feels choked up, and what discharge there is is a thick, yellow, purulent discharge, and if they make violent efforts to clear the nose it is liable to be bloodstained. Then there is another point about that type of case, which is that you are very apt to get what they used to describe to us as a strumous upper lip, in other words a thickened, rather inflamed, reddened upper lip. Well, that is I think the commonest type of case that you will come across requiring Bromine.
You will occasionally get one of these tonsil children getting attacks of very intense croup. And the feeling, the sensation, they get is a sensation of tickling in the larynx; they have a very violent croupy cough, which goes on almost to suffocation, and which is relieved by cold drinks. And they very often complain of a feeling of pressure, or constriction, of the throat, and the larynx in these Bromine cases is usually very sensitive to touch. And associated with that, you very often get in fact you get it independently of their croupy attacks, you get it in children with hypertrophied tonsils quite apart from laryngeal infection you get the typical Bromine hoarse voice.
Then the other thing that you quite frequently require Bromine for is the typical hay fever in this type of child. You have got the fact, warm-blooded child, with rather hypertrophied tonsils, who gets an attack of hay fever coming on some time usually about June, it is usually rather later in the Bromine child than it is in many of the others. You get many of them starting in the middle of May; Bromine does not usually start till June. And there is one outstanding characteristic of the Bromine hay fever, and that is that they have got such an extreme hyperaesthesia of their mucous membranes that any dust, no matter what it is, will set up an acute attack during the irritant period.
I remember one small boy who had a typical Bromine hay fever, and if he went into the room in which they were dusting during the day it would set up a violent attack right away, quite apart from any exposure to irritant out of doors; and incidentally a few doses of Bromine hay fevers is that you are liable to get asthmatic attacks with it. And the asthmatic attacks that they get are fairly typical. They are liable to get very sudden spasmodic attacks with a sensation of extreme constriction of the chest, and in the attacks there is liable to be extreme difficulty in swallowing. And the other point about them is that even though their apparent hay fever doesnt entirely subside at the sea their asthma entirely goes.
Well, I think that is the commonest type of Bromine child, and, as I say, it is one that I used to miss a lot.
There is another in which I found Bromine very useful, and that is the same type of child, the fat, tonsillar child, again sensitive to heat, with a definitely sluggish tendency; but, in addition, they tend to get generalized rheumatic pains, sort of muscular rheumatism. And with that they are very liable to get cardiac affections.
It is much more likely to be a poorly acting cardiac muscle then a definite valvular lesion in Bromine, but I have seen several cases now in which there was definite cardiac hypertrophy in that type of child who have improved very much indeed on Bromine, and the constant in all these cases has again been that feeling of constriction in the chest, feeling of tightness or constriction over the heart. And the other constant has been that that feeling of constriction has been very liable to develop when they have been facing any wind at all; you can tack that on to the sensitiveness to draughts; but it has been particularly noticeable in these Bromine hearts.
“In the mentally deficient type of Thuja child have you found the type of delusions that you get in adults.
Not as a rule; I have merely noticed the music sensitiveness as the marked characteristic. There is one thing about the Thuja kids, even the mentally defectives, they are astonishingly conscientious. There is one other Thuja symptom I have often come across that I didnt mention; they are very often sensitive to motion, they are car-sick, very often. I remember one little boy who was certainly backward, and he used to come up to see me from the country, and always was sick on the way up until he got his Thuja.
I want to try to finish these hot-blooded drugs to-day, and you reminded me that I had not taken up Fluoric acid, but I think I will go on with Iodine first because it is such a useful contrast to Bromine and has so many of the same reactions, and I think Fluoric acid follows Iodine better than coming immediately after Bromine.
The majority of the IODINE children I have seen have been dark haired and rather dark skinned children, and the first thing that always strikes me about them is their intense restlessness. You get a dark haired, very thin child brought in to see you and you will find he is never still at all, moving about the room, wandering about, fidgeting, restless; it is one of the first things you notice.
