Lachesis


James Tyler Kent describes the symptoms of the homeopathic medicine Lachesis in great detail and compares it with other homeopathy remedies. …


Lachesis is a frequently indicated remedy, and one that you will need to study much in order to know how to use. Lachesis seems to fit the whole human race, for the race is pretty well filled up with snake as to disposition and character and this venom only causes to appear that which is in man.

Generals: We will first give a survey or the general symptoms, those which characterize the remedy and are of greatest importance, and the circumstances under which the symptoms appear, are brought out or are aggravated.

One who is a constitutional Lachesis patient will find himself suffering from an aggravation of his symptoms in the Spring, when he goes out from the cold weather into the milder weather, and especially is that so if it mild and rainy, or cloudy weather. Or if he goes from a cold into a warmer climate the symptoms of Lachesis will come out. The warm south winds excite the Lachesis symptoms.

The symptoms of Lachesis are worse on entering sleep. He may have felt nothing of his symptoms when awake, but when sleep comes on they are aroused, and they gradually increase as the sleep is prolonged, so that a very long sleep will aggravate all the state and condition of a Lachesis patient, and when awakening from sleep he looks back on that sleep with sorrow.

The sleep has been disturbed by attacks of suffocation and by awful dreams, and now, after having slept a long time, he arouses with dreadful headaches, with palpitation, with melancholy, with sorrows from head to foot. His body is full of suffering and his mind sees no brightness in anything.

There is a cloudy state, sadness, melancholy, insane notions, whims, jealousy and suspicion. When taking a warm bath, or applying warm water to places that are inflamed, his mental symptoms are aggravated. After a warm bath or after getting warmed up, or, if he becomes chilled from being out on a cold day and then goes into a warm room, the symptoms come on. After going into a warm bath, palpitation comes on; it seems as if his head would burst, his feet become cold, and he is shocked all over, pulsation all over, or feeble heart. Fainting in a warm bath. Girls sometimes faint when going into a warm bath. The patient may be cold and chilly yet the warm room increases or brings out the symptoms.

The general aspect of the patient and the localities will point some times to Lachesis. Upon the face there is an appearance of anxiety, of unrest and distress. The face is spotted or purple and the eyes are engorged. The eyes look suspicious. If there is an inflamed spot, it is purple. If there is an inflamed gland, and Lachesis is full of inflammation of the glands and cellular tissues, there is a purple or mottled appearance.

If there is an ulceration the ulceration bleeds black blood, which soon coagulates and looks like charred straw. From the wounds there is much bleeding. Small wounds bleed much like Phosphorus and Kreosote. A prick of a pin will ooze great drops of blood. Ulcers eat in, have false granulations, are putrid, bleed easily, and the blood is black, and all round the ulceration there is a purple, mottled appearance, looking as if about to become gangrenous.

Often gangrene does come; gangrene of parts that have been injured. Sloughing with great offensiveness. The parts turn black and slough. The veins become varicose. These are found upon the limbs, having the appearance of the varicose veins that come after gestation. Enlargement of the veins is a prominent condition of Lachesis.

From the slightest exertion of the mind or from the slightest emotion the extremities become cold, the heart becomes very feeble, the skin is covered with sweat and the head is hot. Warmth does not seem to relieve the coldness of the feet and hands; they are so cold. They may be wrapped up in flannels and still they remain cold, but suffocation is brought on. He cannot breathe and wants the windows open. It is weakness of the heart; sometimes so weak that it can hardly be heard or felt, and the pulse is feeble and intermittent. At other times there is audible palpitation of the heart.

As we go over the symptoms of the text we will notice something singular about the complaints, that is, their tendency to affect the left side, or to, begin on the left and extend to the right. The paralysis begins by gradually appearing weakness upon the left side. Which extends to the right side. It has a strong affinity for the ovaries, and in this it will be found that the left ovary is affected first. So, in inflammation of the ovaries, the left will be affected first, and later the right.

The inflammation begins on the left side of the throat and gradually goes to the right. The left side of the head is commonly most affected. The left eye becomes painful and the pain extends to the right. The left side of the back of the head, in the occipital headache, will be more affected than the right. This does not always follow, and if the reverse is true it does not contra-indicate Lachesis, but such is the common feature of it. Left upper and right lower has been observed.

In many symptoms of Lachesis, there is morning aggravation. This is the well-known Lachesis aggravation after sleep; the patient will sleep into the aggravation. In the milder symptoms this aggravation is mild and is not felt until after the patient wakes up from a long sleep, but if the aggravation is one that is of considerable violence, the patient may feel it immediately on going to sleep, and it arouses him; for instance, the heart symptoms. As soon as he goes into a sleep he rouses up with palpitation, with dyspnoea, with suffocation, with exhaustion, with vertigo, with pain in the back of the head, and many other circulatory disturbances.

Mind: The next most important thing to be studied is the mental state. Nothing stands out more boldly than the self-consciousness, the self conceit, the envy, the hatred, the revenge and the cruelty of the man. These things, of course, are matters of self-consciousness, an improper love of self. Confusion of the mind to insanity.

All sorts of impulsive insanity. The mind is tired. The patient puts on an appearance like the maudlin of a drunkard, talks with thick lips and thick tongue, blunders and stumbles, only partly finishing words; the face is purple and the head is hot.

There is choking and the collar is uneasy about the neck; and the more uneasiness about the neck, the more choking, the more confusion of mind and the more appearance of intoxication. You will see if you talk with one who is intoxicated with whiskey symptoms like Lachesis, he stumbles through, hardly realizing what he says, half finishing his sentences and his words, leaving his “g’s” off, all the present participles; he stumbles and blunders, he mutters, and tells you first one thing and then another.

These symptoms are increased under the circumstances mentioned in the Spring; in the warm weather following a cold spell; in rainy weather; after a warm bath; after sleep.

The mental state is large. Jealousy without any reason. Unwarranted jealousy and suspicion. Many times this medicine has cured suspicion in girls, when they were simply suspicious of their girl friends. She never sees a whispered conversation going on but they are talking about her, to her detriment.

Suspects that they are contriving to injure her, and she will resort to any scheme to see if they were not talking of her to her detriment. A woman imagines that her friends, husband, and children are trying to damage her; that her friends are going to put her in an insane asylum.

Apprehension of the future. Thinks she is going to have heart disease, and is going insane; and that people are contriving to put her in an insane asylum. Imagine her relatives are trying to poison her and she refuses to eat. She thinks sometimes that it is only a dream and she can hardly say whether she dreamed it or whether she thinks it. She thinks she is dead, or dreams that she is dead, and in the dream preparations are being made to lay her out, or that she is about to die.

Thinks she is somebody else, and in the hands of a stronger power. She thinks she is under superhuman control. She is compelled to do things by spirits. She hears a command, partly in her dream, that she must carry out. Sometimes it takes the form of voices in which she is commanded to steal, to murder, or to confess things she never did, and she has no peace of mind until she makes a confession of something she has never done.

The torture is something violent until she confesses that which she has not done. Imagines she is pursued. Imagines that she has stolen something, or that somebody thinks she has stolen something, and fears the law. She hears voices and warnings, and in the night she dreams about it. The state of torture is something dreadful, and it then goes into a delirium with muttering. The delirium is carried on like one muttering when drunk. This state increases until unconsciousness comes on and the patient enters into a coma from which he cannot be aroused. The patient also goes through periods of violence and violent delirium.

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.