Belladonna



A strange part of it also is the reactive excitability. The reaction to medicine is so quick and so sudden that I have many times heard a patient say, before I had turned my back away from the bed,

“That medicine has relieved me,” so quick is the reaction.

In many medicines reaction is slowed down, but in Belladonna it is intensified. So it is in Nux vomica and in Zincum. When the case is very acute, but sometimes also when the case is somewhat chronic, this sensibility is marked.

Cuprum is so sensitive all over. It has sensitive warts; it has sensitive skin, sensitive polypi, everything sensitive; and it is so sensitive in its reaction that, when it is needed, partially indicated remedies will not work, because the patient is so oversensitive to everything that everything overacts.

The smallest dose, the mildest dose, the simplest dose overacts and everything aggravates. Odors aggravate; well selected remedies disturb instead of cure.

Cuprum tones down, relieves that sensitivity, and well-selected remedies will then act curatively and long. Cuprum lacks it in that high state of congestion – it is not like Belladonna in that; Cuprum does not have that sensibility along with the active fever and congestion, the throbbing and disturbance of the circulation; but it has it in a chronic state.

Women and children are so sensitive that they get no sympathy and it is not suitable for hysterical ones either, but those that are not able to control themselves perfectly. Such is Cuprum.

We have medicines that are suitable to sensitive people, and especially sensitive women. Sensitive to odors, sensitive to every conceivable influence.

The doctor who will go out and take care of these poor sick little mortals, who understands their nature, perceives their quality, and relieves them of their suffering will command the whole community, in spite of the reputation of all the doctors that are there before him.

He must not be one who measures everybody by his own sensorium he may be a pachyderm, but he will find patients that are sensitive.

Head:This sensitivity is present in most of the Belladonna headaches. There are stabbing pains, throbbing pains, shooting pains, all in connection with congestion.

They are all sensitive to motion, to every jar, to light, even to the winking of the eyes; sensitive to draft. Belladonna will be indicated when the head is rolling – the patient rolling the head because the pain is so severe he cannot keep still, although the motion increases the headache.

A child lies and turns and tosses its head with congestion of the brain, screaming out with the brain cry, a sudden shriek. After awhile it wakes up and commences to toss the head, and every few minutes it shrieks with that brain cry; it is going into a stupor, the neck is drawn back, the face is flushed, it is now becoming pale.

There are times of stupor, and in that stupor the child cries out. In all brain troubles we must be careful about feeding much, or overloading the stomach, because the stomach is very feeble. It will not digest much, but the food should be well selected and light.

Great heaviness of the head. The head feels like a weight, and is drawn back. Sometimes we see the head drawn back from contraction of the muscles of the neck when the membranes of the upper portion of the spine are involved.

Again, we see the Belladonna patient drawing the head back himself, because drawing the head back often ameliorates the violent headaches.

This amelioration is kept up so long as he holds the head back. Aggravated from bending the head forward when sitting, from bending the head forward when standing, or stooping. It feels as if the brain would fall out or push forward.

This in creases the headache so much that it sometimes turns into knife-like, or hammering pains. These are the expressions used.

Sensation of nails and hammers, jagging and tearing; but with all, pressure and throbbing. When rising from a seat these sensations are all intensified. Throbbing pulsation, like hammers hitting the inside of the sore skull, described by patients as if the inside of the skull was one continuous sore and was being pecked by hammers with every pulsation.

Some times it will settle down while sitting still, or while lying; but rising up from a chair will set that hammer going.

“Expansive” is an expression that is often used by the patient, and it was used by the provers. Expansive sensation, as if the head was enlarged; pressure from within out.

All these headaches are relieved by pressure upon the outside. Sudden touch or pressure will aggravate; but pressure that is gradually increased and brought to bear carefully upon the head will ameliorate, like the pressure of a bandage, or a tight-fitting cap.

Again, all of these headaches are brought on by exposure to the cold air; from standing in the cold air with the head uncovered. Sometimes a severe headache will come on from merely having the hair cut. Congestion of the head lasts for days, with throbbing and pulsating; from having the hair cut.

Ear troubles, chest complaints, rheumatic complaints come on from having the hair cut, or from standing in the cool air with the hat off; so sensitive is the head to cold.

It may be said of this remedy that complaints of various parts of the body come through the head and go downwards, Complaints in the lower extremities, rheumatic complaints of the joints, with great redness and swelling, come on from uncovering the head, from exposure of the head, or from getting the head wet, or from being caught in a shower.

There is one complaint which will puzzle you if you ever meet it and you do not know just what I am going to tell you.

The complaints of Belladonna in a general way are ameliorated from rest, and aggravated from motion; but there is a kind of restlessness with tearing pain from the hips down, most troublesome to observe, that keeps the patient walking all of the time.

The instant there is rest the pains come on. They sometimes shoot downwards, they sometimes tear up and down the nerves; and this comes on from exposure of the head, and not from getting the feet wet.

Complaints of Aconit and Pulsatilla come on from getting the feet wet, and these complaints rise upwards, come on through the feet and go upwards and affect the head.

Belladonna complaints come on from exposure of the head and go downwards; sometimes affect the head sometimes the chest sometimes the stomach, sometimes centre in the abdomen, sometimes centre in the uterus and ovaries.

Rhus has complaints from getting wet, but the complaints are in the parts that are wet. If he gets the legs wet he will have rheumatism in the legs.

There is a vast distinction, and this distinction has to be made in almost every prescription you will make. Homoeopathy is a matter of individualization as to how complaints spread. Some complaints begin on the right side of the body and spread to the left.

Some complaints begin in the top of the body and go downwards. That is the way this remedy acts. In some remedies the exposure of the feet to an ice cold draft mill bring on headache (Silicea); but in Bell, the exposure will bring on a headache, or neuralgia of the lower extremities.

Now that pain that comes on from rest is an exception in Belladonna That illustrates again the importance of distinguishing very decidedly between generals and particulars.

Without knowing “Generals” and “Particulars” you will never do accurate prescribing. The lower extremities here are the particulars. The patient and the general condition of the patient are ameliorated by rest; the symptoms of the patient are ameliorated by rest.

All of those symptoms that can be predicted of the patient himself are ameliorated by rest, but the pains of the lower limbs, as described, those neuralgic pains are ameliorated by motion, and come on in rest.

That does not mean that all the pains in the lower extremities are ameliorated by motion, because the pains in rheumatism are invariably ameliorated by rest, and aggravated by motion.

Those tearing pains, from the hips downwards, with no swelling, come on during rest. All remedies are full of freaks, and it is the figuring out of these peculiarities that enables us to do good prescribing.

With all the complaints of Belladonna do not lose sight of the congestion upwards.

“Rush of blood to the head. Cold extremities.”

Cold feet, cold hands; hot head.

Eyes: Inflammatory conditions of the eyes.

“Glistening eyes. Dilated pupils. Flushed face. Intense redness of the inflamed part.”

Inflammation of all the tissues of the eyes, the lids, and all the parts of the eyeball, with most violent pain. Heat, redness, and burning.

These three strong features that run through the remedy will be found in the eye sufferings. Pulsation, tumefaction, lachrymation; intense pains; sufferings all worse from motion, and worse from light.

Most intense photophobia.

“Flashes of light and flickerings before the eyes,”

When reading, lines appear crooked.

“Dimness of vision, or actual blindness.”

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.

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