Lilium Tigrinum


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


So far as proved Lilium Tigrinum has shown itself adapted to the complaints of women.

It is especially suited to hysterical women, who suffer from uterine troubles, cardiac troubles and various nervous manifestations; suitable to a woman who is extremely irritable, full of fanciful notions, insanity, religious melancholy and imaginations, with cardiac affections and prolapsus.

These conditions often alternate; when the mental symptoms are most marked the physical symptoms are relieved. The “dragging down” that is associated with prolapsus seems to be a dragging down from the region of the stomach, and even sometimes from the throat.

A bearing down, as if all the interior organs were dragging down. With this state of extreme relaxation there is great fidgetiness and most marked of all, palpitation. She can lie only on the back, and is aggravated from lying on either side. From every emotion the heart flutters, and is irregular and excitable. These mental symptoms and heart symptoms and uterine symptoms often rotate or alternate, and constitute the principal features.

Mind: She can hardly speak a decent word to anybody. She will snap even when spoken to kindly. She is so irritable that her friends cannot pacify her. Even consolation aggravates. When spoken to she is irritable. She lies awake nights, and is tormented either by fanatical religious ideas, or a religious melancholy, and seems inclined to dwell upon insane, ideas concerning religion and modes of life unreasonable, illogical and fanciful.

Has wrong ideas concerning everything. Receives wrong impressions and everything is inverted. It is impossible to please her. Now these states are present with a state of irritability of the sexual organs, nymphomania; violent sexual excitement associated with spasms, with palpitation, with sweats, with periods of exhaustion. She sits alone and broods over imaginary troubles, and when spoken to is crabbed.

“Ideas not clear; they become more so if she exercises her will.”

“Makes mistakes in writing, in speaking, cannot apply the mind steadily; tormented about her salvation.”

The patient tries to describe an indescribable feeling by saying she has a “crazy feeling” in the head, as if the ideas scattered, and the more she attempts to think rationally the more irrational she becomes. The more she attempts to think of something the less likely she is to recall it. When putting the mind upon something else it comes back again. This remedy has all kinds of symptoms from sexual excesses in overwrought and nervous women, from sexual excitement, causing confusion of mind with palpitation.

It says in the text:

“Listless, inert, yet does not want to sit still.”

This patient will sit still and brood and think over the past, and when spoken to will jump up and run hastily and excitedly and slam the door without any cause; when spoken to kindly by members of the family, or a friend, it seems that she will go wild. A patient once under an aggravation from this remedy said to me:

“I was spoken to to-day in a street car, and I was so mad I wanted to fling something at his head.”

She was thinking over something about herself, and did not want to be disturbed. It is a violent state of temper, a violent state of irritability, a loss of balance. She says:

“It seems as if I must fly when spoken to or disturbed.”

When coming in contact with her friends she has these feelings. The contact seems to arouse her out of a state of lassitude and quietness. Strange things occur in this remedy. The sensations described in the text are so vague and so varied that you can see that it is an effort on the part of the provers to describe what they feel. The sensations are numerous and indescribable.

This patient very commonly is a warm-blooded patient.

She is like the Pulsatilla patient; warm-blooded, wants a cool room, likes to walk in the open air, except at times when the prolapsus is aggravated by walking. The head is generally relieved by moving about in the open air, > when walking in the open air. The headache and most of the complaints are relieved from cold, or from a cool room, and aggravated from a warm room. The dyspnoea comes on in a warm room. The patient suffocates in a crowded room, in the theatre, in church, like Apis, Iodine, Kali i., Lycopodium and Pulsatilla

Head: A crazy feeling comes up from the back of the head to the top of the head.

What that is only one that feels it can describe. It is described sometimes as a tingling, or an electric sensation. A slight tingling comes up the back of the head and goes to the top, and is associated with vertigo. When you come to sift that thought it really brings nothing to mind. Very often you have to get those things clinically, and think about them to get at the idea.

The pains in the forehead are very marked, and they are associated with great disturbance of vision, a loss of vision, the room looks dark, or the eyes are unable to focus. Nervous disturbance of vision, photophobia, twitching of the lids, jerking about the eyeballs, and inflammation of the mucous membrane of the eyes, of the lids and balls, conjunctivitis. Very often with the complaints of the head the eyes are turned in, a convergent strabismus, or there is threatened syncope, with the pain in the forehead.

By all these things mentioned it may be known what an over-sensitive, extremely nervous, hysterical person the Lilium tig. patient must be. These things are commonly associated with patients who are extremely nervous, who have fluttering of the heart, who have pain down the spine, and more or less prolapsus, with a great sense of dragging down. When one condition is present, the other is commonly absent; they alternate, or they may exist all together.

“Wild feeling in the head, as tho’ she would go crazy, with pain in the right iliac region.”

These provers seemed to like the expression, “crazy feeling in the head, as if she would go crazy”.

That crazy feeling is a confusion of mind, as if the mind were quite unable to concentrate itself. That is what is interpreted by this crazy feeling the patients have. It is sometimes like a vertigo, as if things were going round, or as if she would lose her mind. Then it comes again as a terrible, tearing headache, described as a crazy headache in the forehead. Headache in which there is confusion of the mind, or as if the mind would go crazy.

Abdomen: The abdomen, stool, urinary and sexual organs, furnish us a field for the use of this medicine.

The whole abdominal viscera seem to be dragging down from the stomach. The patient wants to hold up the abdomen, pendulous abdomen. It seems as if the pelvic organs would protrude. The patient must lie down, wants to wear a T bandage. Wants to grasp the abdomen from the sides and lift up for support. It is a sensation of weakness or bearing down in the pelvis as if everything were coming into the world through the vagina.

This remedy has a very urgent diarrhoea, driving out of bed in the morning; he must make great baste. You may get this confused with Sulphur, because Lilium tigrinum has great heat in the head, emptiness in the stomach, and great burning of the palms and soles. It has also a dysentery that you will hardly be able to distinguish from Mercurius cor., so marked is the tenesmus, mucus and blood.

The stool is merely mucus mingled with blood, and the tenesmus is as great and the burning in the anus as marked as in Mercurius cor. It is especially suited for those attacks of dysentery that come on as an occasional chronic manifestation in nervous patients such as I have described. Now, do not think that because this patient is nervous that she is weak, or liliputian, or lean; for it is especially suitable for those with full veins; apparently plethoric, full blooded, fleshy, rotund women who are very nervous, and especially at the change of life.

Recurrent dysenteric attacks with every cold in those who suffer from pelvic and abdominal relaxation, mental irritability as described, palpitation and fluttering of the heart, with nervous constitutions. You do not see Mercurius cor. in such a picture. If it were a dysentery alone I would not be able to tell which it was.

All of these dysenteric manifestations have been left out of the Guiding Symptoms, yet I have seen them verified over and over. Again, it has a most inveterate and troublesome constipation.

It has also a tenesmus of the bladder and rectum. Teasing to urinate, as well as urging to stool. Sit a long time with much urging, and after long straining no stool.

Frequent urging, with a sensation as if a ball were in the rectum. When the fundus of the uterus is turned back to the rectum it gives a sensation as if the rectum were full of faeces; it brings on urging to stool and the patient will sit and strain, and the tenesmus of the bladder and rectum is unbearable. Constant urging to stool, and no stool in the rectum. You will be astonished to know that the remedy that is indicated with such symptoms will relieve the patient of all distress in a short time.

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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