Then there is one other thing that I got into the habit of looking for in children when I was thinking of giving them Natrum mur., and that was that they have a very marked tendency to develop hang-nails, splits up the side of the nails which were horribly sensitive, very painful, and very difficult to heal. It is a little point, but it is quite useful sometimes in practice.
By the way, there is another distinguishing point which is sometimes helpful in trying to pick out these children, and that is the appearance of the skin. In the Baryta carb.-typical Baryta carb. children-they have usually got very little colour, they are sallow, rather earthy looking. In the Borax kids there is very often considerably more colour in the cheeks, the skin in a little more yellow, not quite so earthy looking and a shade more inelastic, thick and greasy.
In the Natrum mur. kids the probability is that they are a little darker still, they flush a little more easily, they perspire a little more easily, and again you have got a slight exaggeration of the greasy appearance.
Well. whenever you begin to think of skins the next thing you run on to as possibility is SEPIA, which has the same kind of sallow greasy skin, and Sepia is a drug which is far too much neglected in the treatment of kids. I was looking after kids for four of five years before it dawned on me that many of the kids who ought to have had Sepia werent getting it.
I think the thing that is outstanding in the Sepia children is their negative attitude to everything. The kids tend to be depressed, moody, indolent, disinclined for work, not even interested in their play. If you attempt to push them they are liable to sulk or weep. They are usually nervy kids, scared of being alone, very often afraid of the dark; and yet they dislike being handled.
They very often have a definite dislike of going to parties, and they give you a thing which you sometimes confuse with Baryta carb., and that is a dislike of playing with other children. It is the sort of thing that later develops into the typical Sepia dislike of meeting its friends, and you often confuse it with the Baryta carb. dislike of people altogether, but mostly it is pure indolence in the Sepia kid, and once they get to a party they are perfectly happy.
Then the next thing about them is that practically all these Sepia children, though so lazy and indolent, are definitely greedy, and if I get a definitely greedy child nowadays I always consider the possibility of Sepia. Then another thing that you will commonly be told by the parents is that these Sepia children, although they loathe to go to a party, when they do get there if they start dancing they wake up at once and are as happy as sand boys; it is astonishing the effect of dancing on these Sepia kids.
I remember one, the heaviest dullest child I had seen for a long time, and I saw it at a party dancing and she was an entirely different being, she had suddenly come alive. It is quite a useful tip if you get it from the parents.
Then there is another odd symptom that one comes across every now and then in children which is a definite Sepia lead, and that is that these slow developing Sepia kids very often develop the habit of head-nodding; I cant explain why; but whenever you get a head-nodding child think of the possibility of Sepia for it, dont dash off to one of the typical chorea drugs at once.
Then various other points which are pretty common in the Sepia children are that you practically always get constipation, and associated with the constipation you practically always get a tendency to enuresis. And there you have one thing which is very constant in children, and that is that the enuresis takes place early in the night; as a rule if these Sepia children are lifted about 10 p.m. they remain dry the rest of the night; it is in their first sleep that they lose control.
Then, as the kids get older, in that sort of sallow, dull, greedy, locked-up child, you are very liable to get a history that they are developing fainting attacks,and these fainting attacks are induced by standing, or really taking up any fixed position in a close atmosphere-standing in school, standing in church, kneeling in church-the Sepia child is very often liable to faint.
Then, all these Sepia kids, of course-like very Sepia patient- are sensitive to cold; and in children they are particularly sensitive to weather changes, and the typical Sepia child will develop a cold from change in the weather apparently without any contact with infection.
Then there is another thing that is a useful lead towards Sepia in children, and that is that they are upset by milk very often; they get a digestive upset and you put them on milk diet and the Sepia child will be certain to be constipated.
The, associated with their s allow, greasy skin Sepia children usually tend to sweat pretty profusely, and they are very liable to develop very itchy skins without much sign of an eruption, and without much comfort from scratching.
There is one other drug I want to tack on there before we finish, because it comes in after Sepia better than anywhere else that I know, and that is where you meet with this sallow, dispirited, sluggish type of child-where you meet with that depressed, negative attitude you have always got to consider the possibility of Gold or one of the Gold salts. The typical Gold child is always an undeveloped child.
It isnt so much a question of undersize and underweight as it simply doesnt grow up. The typical Gold child of 5 years of age is probably about the level of 3. The majority of cases in which I have seen Gold indicated have been in boys, and in the majority of these cases there has been some failure of development- an undescended testicle, a very poorly developed-an undescended testicle, a very poorly developed scrotum-something which made you feel that child was slow in developing of developing satisfactorily; again the sort of thing one thinks of Baryta carb. for.
Next thing, the Gold child always gives the impression of being lifeless. They are always low spirited, rather miserable, lifeless, and for a boy they are absolutely lacking in to; they have no initiative at all, and they give you the impression of finding everything a frightful effort. Then you always get the report from school that they are backward, and that they have very, very poor memories. One of the odd things about them is that, in spite of this dull, depressed, miserable, lifeless sort of creature the thing that they do respond to is contradiction; you think he is a kid with no go in him, and he makes some statement and is contradicted and he flies into an absolute rage; it is the thing that does stir them up.
Then, another thing that is constant, and is rather surprising in the type of child as they give the impression of being sluggish, is that they have a weird hyperaesthesia to pain; they are terrified of it and horribly sensitive to it. And, in spite of their sluggishness, they are very sensitive to noise and they have a very acute sense of taste and smell.
They are very liable to get very persistent, very troublesome catarrh; they have very definitely infected hypertrophied tonsils, and always practically with a lot of offensive secretion struck in the tonsillar crypts. They get hypertrophied adenoids, again with a very offensive nasal discharge. And with the tonsils and adenoids they are very liable to get attacks of acute otitis with perforation of the drum, and very often a stinking, purulent ear discharge.
Another thing about them is that if they are forced to exert themselves they very easily get out of breath, and they may get suffocative attacks where they have acute difficulty in breathing, without any obvious physical cause.
Another odd characteristic of the Gold child is that they are frightfully sensitive to any disappointment; they will grieve over it for days, quite out of all proportion to the normal childs reaction. And associated with that you can always tack on the other typical Gold symptom, which is that the parents will often tell you that the child sobs in his sleep, without waking up and apparently without having been distressed the night before.
NO.3.
I THINK last week when we finished up we had just run through Aurum met. with its usual depressed outlook, and there is another drug which has got a very definitely sluggish condition which is sometimes a little like Aurum and that is CARBO VEG., although you have got an entirely different cause for it. In Carbo veg. kids the thing that strikes you about them is that they are definitely sluggish, but it is more a physical sluggishness than a mental and results from physical stagnation not from any lack of brain capacity.
They are slow in thinking; they are dull mentally; they have a slow reaction time; and they are lacking in go of any kind. They are very easily discouraged, rather dispirited and miserable sort of kids, and if they are pushed they become peevish, but it is a futile sort of peevishness without much bite about it. Then, associated with that general mental sluggishness, there is always sluggishness of circulation. They are very often heavy, sallow complexioned children, and they always tend to have bluish extremities, bluish fingers, bluish toes, and the extremities are always cold.
