Children respond splendidly to the homoeopathic remedy. And children’s work is most fascinating: usually less complicated: the indications for the remedy are generally more clear; and the results more rapid of attainment.
Children are in the acute stage of life, rapidly growing and developing. The cell-life that clothes and binds them to earth is in a marvellous state of activity. They are hypersensitive to influences that normally exercise less power later on. They are subject to diseases that seldom attack adults. Besides which, with them, labelled diseases do not always run the same course as with their elders. For instance, what we call rheumatism–acute rheumatism–is a very different proposition, with widely different symptoms and outcome, in children and in “grown-ups”.
The condition of high fever–profuse, sour sweating–tender, inflamed, painful joint or joints has very little in common with the, often trivial, “growing pains”–the scarcely elevated temperature, probably unnoticed till a thermometer is put into the mouth–the no sweat of the child;–where the heart is the subject of grave attack, and where extreme care and most skilful prescribing are essential if the condition is not to go on to a life-sentence of disability and suffering–to a dreary vista of cardiac break-downs, each one more damaging than the last.
Well, first–as elsewhere–one has to settle whether the ailment is acute or chronic; and, if the former, whether it occurs in a healthy or a diseased child. For a healthy child may be sick unto death, whereas a diseased child may be a museum of pathology and yet not “ill”. In the latter case, treatment may have to be modified, or rather supplemented, in order to cover the whole case. A pneumonia in a child with T.B. glands or a T.B. glands or a T.B. family history, will probably not clear up till you give a dose of Tuberculinum bov. And it is pathetic to find how often one has to come to Lueticum to make headway with the acutely sick hospital children.
In Homoeopathy the essentials,–i.e. the symptoms so easy to get in the child, and so all-important, if marked, for a successful prescription, are, briefly,
(1) Disposition; or, more important still, change of dis- position due to illness.
(2) Fears: habitual, or, more important, new to the child.
(3) Sensitiveness. One remembers a wee boy in our Children’s Ward wandering about, just the right height to use the brass shields at the foot of endowed cots as a mirror (his head and face were covered thickly with an eruption). He used to wail, “The children make such a noise” the rattle of spoons on plates was, to him, torture. Such a symptom, in a child of his age, would be important, and must be considered when piecing together his disease-picture to be matched with the drug-disease-picture of a remedy.
(4) Food Cravings And Loathings.
(5) The Grosser Pathological Symptoms, when qualified by something that makes them rare and peculiar, and therefore diagnostic as regards the choice of the remedy.
Disposition. There is a broad distinction between the “child you want to spank” and the child you instinctively comfort and caress: and here one is at once shifted onto one or other of a totally different class of remedies. Natrum mur. and Sepia children are not amenable to sympathy. Pulsatilla children are weepy, but engaging little mites that claim attention and love. Then there is the heavy, lethargic, rather dull Calcarea type: the restless, suspicious, anxious Arsenicum type: the defiant, obstinate, passionate, sensitive, irritable Nux type: while Chamomilla demands a thing only to hurl it away, and cannot be placated… and so on. Whatever the disease, these things must be taken into consideration, if the prescription is to be successful.
Then fears. One little child will wander alone in the dusk through extensive school buildings where her parents are care- takers: another, put to play in the garden, hugs the window, and wants to be assured that his mother is on the other side of the glass, within call. Fears of the dark–of wind–of thunder–of strangers–of falling–of a bath.
The third useful point in determining a remedy for a child, is appetite:– cravings and aversions. One child craves fat, and will gnaw raw suet: another hates and is nauseated by the least morsel of fat which has to be carefully cut off its meat ( Sulph. has both of these). You must put the salt on a high shelf, out of reach of some children ( Nat. mur., Phosphorus, etc.) while the next will steal sugar, and cries for “sweeties”. Some children will eat earth, chalk, and crunch slate-pencils ( Alumina). Some cannot be made to swallow meat.
This wee girl is greedy–always hungry–“will eat anything”; while her delicate little brother can hardly be induced to eat enough, so it would seem, to keep body and soul together.
There is the untruthful child; the shy child, in terror of strangers, a bit difficult for a doctor. But–children are very susceptible to flattery. Tell a child that it is opening its mouth splendidly,–“now, just a little wider” and you may see its throat. The same in breathing, when you want to listen to a chest. Or you may establish relations by expressing interest or admiration for a bracelet, buttons, scraps of embroidery: or, when nothing helps, “Ta-ta” will abruptly suspend the sobs.
“With children, lunatics, and liars you have to observe for yourself”:–and you have to “keep your eyes skinned” where children are concerned. There is the child that always kicks the clothes off; that never will be covered at night ( Sulph.): that is found with its feet on the pillow and the bedclothes on the floor. There is the infant of only a few weeks that will wriggle over to lie on its face, till the mother is in terror lest it suffocate. But it may be kept right side up by a dose of Medorrh.–one has seen that.
The “dirty-nosed child”, with nostrils always running, and red, and sore, is easy to prescribe for ( Sulph., Kali iod.). The puny boys that won’t grow or thrive (often Sanicula).
Then the diseased,–or the children with heritage of poor resistance to tubercle–they are some of the joys of prescribing: children of eight years, who have never, in all their lives, been without bandages about their necks; with glands, sinuses and scars left by cuttings, and scrapings, and aspirations:–how they respond to Homoeopathy to Tuberculinum– Silica– Calcarea– Drosera– Sulphur, according to their make-up and the symptoms they present. It is to Homoeopathy alone that these tuberculous gland and bone cases respond so magnificently and it is here especially that the homoeopathic physician tastes triumph.
