Morose and ill-content.
Discontent with the whole world; everything is a constraint; with inclination to weep.
Sad and morose, she sits alone, without speaking, and cannot resist sleep; then, inconsolable weeping, especially when spoken to.
Silence and involuntary weeping, even after being addressed in the most friendly manner, so that she is angry at herself for it.
Disposition to weep, and weeping after receiving a mild reproof.
Ill-humored, and disposed to weep; often obliged to weep involuntarily, which relieves her.
Disposition to weep, and melancholy; worse in her chamber, better in the open air.
Sad and morose the first morning; the next, indescribably happy, especially in the open air, so that she could have embraced everything, and made merry over the saddest objects.
Very lachrymose, and easily touched by causes quite too trivial.
Very earnest and silent the first day; the next day, everything presents itself to her in a ridiculous aspect.
Chilliness and shuddering; mingled with fugitive heat, with ill-humored taciturnity in the open air; later, pleasant warmth throughout whole body, with return of cheerfulness.
Great cheerfulness, so that she could dance, a half hour after weeping.
Great cheerfulness for two days; everything seems joyous, she could laugh at the saddest object; third day, great melancholy in the morning and evening, with weeping, even over joyous or ridiculous objects, and also when spoken to.
Involuntary disposition to whistle and sing.
Very fretful and irritable, even at things and words that are quite innocent, so that she could sometimes strike at herself and her friends.
No remedy gives us so striking a picture of the hysteric perversion of the disposition as Platina. The depression and anxiety which often increase in intensity, even up to actual apprehension of death, so that, as I have sometimes experienced at the bedside, patients make every provision and arrangement for the disposition of their affairs after death, are characteristic indications of hysteria as well as of the Platina disease. Platina, however, is most especially appropriate in that form of hysteria in which the disposition to weep, and the fear of death, which is thought to be at hand, accompany all the other morbid phenomena. I remember a case in which a mother was compelled, on account of debility, to wean her child earlier than she had wished to do so. Several days after I was called to her, and on entering the chamber found her friends wringing their hands as they surrounded her bed; for the patient, who never ceased weeping, spoke amid anxiety and apprehension, of nothing but her death, and how fearful it was to have to die so young. She had already made all testamentary arrangements. The most careful investigation could discover nothing morbid in the mammae, which were still distended with milk, but not hard; even the pulse had not varied from its normal condition. My exhortation to dismiss these thoughts of death, for which there existed, I assured my patient, not the slightest ground, was gently rejected, as was also at first the medicine I ordered for her; and she told me with tears, that she had merely sent for me that she might see me once again before her death. Finally, I succeeded in getting her to take a grain of the third trituration of Platina. When I saw the patient again in the evening, the fear of death and the weeping had vanished, and the depression which still remained yielded the following day to her accustomed cheerfulness. She became healthy, and remained so.
Moreover, we find in the just enumerated moral symptoms of Platina, the alternations of cheerfulness and sadness, of laughing and weeping, which are peculiar to hysteria, just as, generally in nature, exaltation so often follows depression or alternates with it.
The same condition of depression we observe, too, in the perceptive faculty, as is shown by the following symptoms:
Illusion of fancy upon entering the room after a walk of one hour, as if everything around her were very small, and everybody inferior to her, both in regard to body and mind, and as if she herself were tall and elevated; the room appears gloomy and disagreeable to her, accompanied with slight anguish, sad and vexed mood, vertigo, and uncomfortable feeling in the midst of a society that she was generally fond of; all this passes off in the open air when the sun shines. Looking down contemptuously and pitifully upon people, whom at other times she respects, against her will, in paroxysms. During her contemptuous turns she is suddenly attacked with canine hunger, and eats in a greedy, hasty, manner; when the regular meal-time arrived she had lost all her appetite. Proud feeling. Cold, absent, indifferent in company of friends; she only answers when she must, and is only half conscious of what she says; after having answered, she reflects whether her answer had been suitable; she is constantly absent without knowing where her thoughts are roaming. She imagines she does not belong to her family; after a short absence all things appear changed to her; absence of mind; she listens to conversations around her, but after they are terminated she has forgotten what she heard. Great absence of mind; she hears not what is said to her, even when addressed with great emphasis. Not disposed to intellectual labor; dull, stretching sensation, as of a board before the forehead, passing attacks of vertigo in quick succession, in the evening when standing, as if she would lose her consciousness; violent vertigo, she dares not move her eyes; more in day-time than at night; generally when she is attacked with palpitation of the heart.
The characteristic features of these Platina illusions is the proud exaltation of one’s self above other persons, who are regarded as contemptible. This circumstance also has its origin in a depressed moral activity, as is shown by the related symptoms, “the chamber seems gloomy and unpleasant,” “anxious apprehension,” “ill-humor, vertigo, and discomfort,” etc., and the “alleviation in the open air.” Hence, too, Stapf and Gross recommended Platina as “a very welcome specific remedy for a not infrequent kind of melancholy.”
The sleep, too, gives a clear indication of disturbance in the psychic nervous system. In this relation we are to consider the following symptoms:
Excessive weakness and drowsiness in the evening; falls asleep after midnight, with tearing in the ball of the toe; she wakes in the night in a sort of stupor, and is unable to collect her senses; wakes about midnight; ideas which she is unable to repel crowding upon her mind, no sleep until morning; anxious dreams, and gloomy thoughts, and sad visions when waking suddenly; anxious, confused dreams of war and bloodshed. She dreams of fires, wants to go there, but cannot get ready, with her preparations of toilet, etc. He wakes in the morning with a peevish and anxious mood as if he had suffered injury during his sleep.
I might continue to describe hysteria in the words of the Platina symptoms; for many more alterations of functions induced by this remedy might easily be made to contribute to the completion of the picture. I shall mention, however, in this relation, only the digestive disturbances, the spasmodic affections, and the pains induced by Platina. But I fear to lead, by this course, to the erroneous supposition that all the other phenomena of Platina belong also to hysteria, and thus to the false conclusion that Platina is only and exclusively a remedy for hysteria; whereas, on the one hand, not every form of hysteria finds its remedy in Platina, and on the other, Platina is a remedy for several other morbid conditions, not only of women, but also of men. To guard against this error, I must forbear to cite further the Platina symptoms resembling hysteria, but would not wish to deter others from studying and estimating their relations and correspondence. First, however, I must call attention to a few other symptoms of Platina, nearly related to hysteria, less important than those already cited, but still characteristic. It not unfrequently happens in hysteria, that a feeling of indescribable anxiety, with respiratory embarrassment, or a spasmodic constriction of the oesophagus, is experienced. This condition, generally denominated “hysteric asthma,” is depicted in the following symptoms of Platina:
Sudden arrest of breathing in the throat, as takes place when walking against the wind. Oppressed breathing, with warm rising from the pit of the stomach to the pit of the throat; she has to take deep breath; accompanied with a hoarse voice, going off again with the oppression. Impeded respiration from weakness of the chest; deep breathing, as if a load were oppressing the chest; frequent deep breathing without oppression of the chest; asthma, as if laced too tightly, with heavy, slow breathing.
Another trouble frequently attendant on hysteria is the so-called clavus hystericus, a peculiar, tense, pressing, squeezing headache, appearing in paroxysms, and confined to a small spot.
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.