The heart as an organ of expression of emotions also causes many functional or subjective symptoms. A syndrome of symptoms such as sensation as if the heart were squeezed, oppression, anxiety, palpitations and repeated sighing has been called phrenocardia and was found particularly as a consequence of unhappy love affairs. This state corresponds exactly to the picture of Ignatia. Sighing respiration, however, is also often the first sign of cardiac failure, and we find it as a symptom in the proving of Digitalis which is also characterized by extreme anxiety and fear, and fearful dreams.
It was found (Eichenberger) that in cardiac patients a definite increase in anxiety dreams appeared as the first sign of cardiac decompensation. The mental symptoms in cardiac cases may arrive at a state of a real psychosis, characterized by delusions, anxiety, restlessness with definite anatomical findings in the brain, probably caused by an oxygen deficiency; all these mental symptoms are also produced by Digitalis.
Everywhere we notice the influence of the mental state on the bodily condition and of the bodily condition on the mental state. The homoeopathic remedy mirrors both mental and physical conditions and gives a true reflection of the integration of both, which characterized all processes of life and disease.
Very considerable is also the influence of emotions on the gastro-intestinal tract. The first classical observation of the influence of fear and anger on the secretion of the stomach was made by Beaumont. Recent experiments by means of hypnotic suggestion showed that the emotions of fear, fright, worry and joy had an immediate influence on gastric secretions as well as on gastric tonus and motility.
Gastric secretion was increased or checked, sometimes the secretion was completely inhibited, so that even injection of histamine could not produce any reaction. Gastric peristalsis could be stopped by hypnotic suggestions of worry and anxiety and the following changes in the mucosal outline, as demonstrated by X-rays, gave the same picture as a gastritis. Recent research in the field of the genesis of stomach ulcer leads more and more to the belief of the psychogenic origin of ulcer.
It was found that peptic ulcer cases are characterized by overcompensatory aggressivity, hyperactivity and excitability, qualities which give rise to emotions known to cause hyper- motility and hypersecretion of the stomach. It is interesting to note that the homoeopathic remedies frequently indicated in stomach ulcer as Anacardium, Nux vomica, Natrum mur., Nitric acid, Arsenicum represent in their picture exactly the mentioned mental type. Gastric tonus changes according to emotions and by X-ray examination of the stomach of manic-depressive mental cases the position of the viscera was found two inches higher in the manic than in the depressive phase.
Schindler considers ptosis, combined with acidity and atonic constipation, the gastro- intestinal correlate of depression. This brings to my mind the case of a young lady who came to see me for stomach troubles from which she had suffered for a year, loss of appetite, gastric pains–feeling of heaviness; she was in a state of great depression and said: “Doctor, I cry all day long.” Suspecting a psychological background, but without intruding, I gave Ignatia. Two weeks later she entered the office smiling : Doctor, what have you done with me, now I laugh the whole day !”
The stomach complaints had disappeared together with the depression. An after-anamnesis revealed that the beginning of the stomach- troubles coincided with an unhappy love-affair. Ignatia cured the whole condition definitely.
The emotional effect on the bile secretion could be studied under hypnotic suggestion. Anger inhibits the bile secretion entirely, and this experiment justifies an old clinical experience. On the other hand, chronic jaundice produces a state of great mental irritability, and repeated icteric attacks are often accompanied by fits of anger and rage.
The homoeopathic use of anger-remedies such as Chamomilla, Bryonia, Colocynthis, Nux vomica in bilious attacks shows how Homoeopathy has made practical use of clinical observations which are now confirmed also by experiment. Whereas all these recent findings are of a more or less theoretical interest, as school medicine cannot make practical use of it, Homoeopathy offers the therapeutic link, combining the mental and physical influences of drugs in treating the whole person as the only existing clinical reality !.
How much different physical or mental etiology of a case may influence the choice of the right remedy–and therefore the cure –may be shown by the following case:.
A 40-years old patient was rushed into my office with an acute attack of neuralgia of both brachial plexuses. It was the most distressing picture of a pain I have ever seen. The patient was rolling on the couch crying that ten gall-stone colics–he had suffered from gall-stones before-are better than this agonizing pain. The patient had caught a cold while sweating under his arms. One dose of Belladonna 200 finished immediately the attack, after Aconite had failed.
However, on pressure, a certain sensitivity of the nerve branches remained. Weeks later the patient again was brought to my office with a new similar attack and even more horrible pains. Although the symptoms at this time were exactly the same, Belladonna failed utterly. In despair–the pain was so strong that the patient, a World War Veteran, was crying–I gave a morphine injection which began to have an effect after half an hour, and the patient was taken home.
Some hours later, I was called to his house, the horrible pain had recurred as I had anticipated. The hard-pressed doctors brain works faster, and after having elicited that this attack had coincided with a suppressed fit to anger, I gave a dose of Chamomilla. Within 5 minutes the pain was gone and did not recur any more.
Less studied than the influence of the mind on the body, is the interesting influence of the sick body on the mind. I refer in this connection to the morosity and ill humor, often accompanying disease of the hypochondrium, so typical, that hypochondria became a name for this characteristic disposition. We have already mentioned the disposition in cardiac cases and in icteric patients.
Typical for the pneumonia delirium is a psycho- metric restlessness with the patient grasping for feathers and picking at the bed clothes, similar to the delirium found in persons saved from asphyxiation, both pictures due to lack of oxygen; they are covered by remedies like Hyoscyamus and Lycopodium. Typical for Grippe was found an anxious-depressive disposition, ranging from irritability to apathy and stupor, and this is very well in accordance with the “angry-apathetic” Flu- remedies, such as Bryonia, Gelsemium, Eupatorium. Measles are characterized in their initial stage by a crying disposition and the tearful Pulsatilla is in fact one of the most successful remedies in this disease.
It would need a separate lecture to point out the relationship between the mental types in our remedies and the psychological types worked out by modern psychology and psycho-pathology. A few words should be said about the queer mental symptoms in Homoeopathy, which were so often derided that sometimes the advice was given to throw them out of our materia medica.
If we learn about such symptoms as: “listening to music causes distress on one side of the body”, or “he feels a half-sided amorousness with the wish to caress all things with the hand of this side”, symptoms actually found in cases of thalamic lesions, or, if we go over the numerous queerest “as if” symptoms in the provings made by Beringer at the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic with Meskalin, then we may realize that these queer mental symptoms of our provings may represent a good deal of useful clinical reality.
The sensation of a split of the personality is a well- known fact in psycho-pathology and it appears in a number of our drug pictures too. MacAdam could show that this sensation appeared in the most various forms in the dreams of grippe- patients and he derived from these dreams the hint for a successful prescription of Baptisia.
Par. 212 and 213 of the Organon draw attention to the fact that drugs are capable of altering the disposition and that no homoeopathic cure–i.e. a cure conforming to nature–can be achieved without choosing a remedy which covers as closely as possible, both the physical and the mental symptoms. In a foot- note thereto concerning the adaptation of remedies such as Aconite, Nux vomica, Pulsatilla, Ignatia to the mental state, Hahnemann draws the first outline of a new psychopharmacology which could become the therapeutic key for a future psycho- somatic medicine.
Cannon states : “In modern life infection have diminished and nervous strains have increased”, and “the medical profession has not recognized in a practical way the recent shift in the etiology of disease”, i.e. the rising etiological importance of emotional causes. If we are to treat patients rationally, considering the etiology, we have to keep in mind this most important fact. Von Bergmann says: Psychic phenomena often give us the earlier, because subtler, finer clinical signs.”
