Then the next of our Nervy drugs is Ignatia. I think it is unfortunate that Ignatia has been distorted as it has been in the homoeopathic textbooks, because it has come to be looked on as the hysterical female. Well, I think using it like that you are missing a great deal of the value that you can get from Ignatia in other cases which are not hysterical females at all.
If you have a child with a highly developed nervous system, a highly strung, sensitive, bright, precocious child, who is doing very well in school and who is being pushed-be it a boy or a girl and their nervous system is getting overtaxed, you are very liable to get Ignatia indications.
Then first indication you will get is the child will begin to develop headaches, and it is a sort of nervous, third head, coming on at the the end of the day, coming on after a period of stress.
The next thing is that they begin to become slightly shaky-their writing is not so good as it was, their finer movements begin to suffer.
And the next thing you will spot about them is a rather strained expression. And that strained expression is one of the key notes that lead me to Ignatia in the non-hysterical type more than anything else. It may anything from a mere tension of the muscles to definite grimaces when the child is speaking, and it may go on from that to anything-facial chorea, generalized chorea, difficulty in speaking, difficulty in articulation.
Then the next thing that you will get is the story from the parents that the child is becoming unduly excitable-is is either up in the air, or down in the dumps. And another thing is that the poor youngster has become incredibly hyperaesthetic to noise; if the kid is attempting to do home work after school any noise nearly drives it crazy; it is liable to blow up into a rage and then relapse into tears. And then after any stress of that kind you will find the child quite incapable of working, its brain simply will not function, cant take it in, cant remember, and cant think.
In these school children coming home with their headaches you get very definite indications for Ignatia in the peculiar modality of their headaches. They come home with a congestive headache, and the odd thing about it is that it is relieved by hot applications.
Then if their nerves begin to get frayed these kids get scared. They have probably been up against the stress of examinations, they lose their nerve altogether, and they are in constant dread of something unpleasant going to happen, and they may get to the stage where they are scared of doing anything on their own initiative-they may be even scared of going out alone.
Then, as you would expect with a child in that state, you get all sorts of digestive upsets, and you get the typical Ignatia hysterical stomach developing, that is to say the child who is upset by the simplest food and can digest the most indigestible stuff. I am sure time and again you have had the story in outpatients; the mother says the child cant digest the simplest, plainest food, and is quite right on the toughest old cheese. And the queer thing about it is that it is true.
You get exactly the same kind of disturbances when the the Ignatia child gets a bad throat, and acute inflamed throat, and the only relief the child gets is from taking something solid, something to press on it, and the pressure relieves it for the time being.
Then with that over-stressed child, of course they get all sorts of disturbances. If they are in any confined place, particularly if there are a lot of people about, they get nervous, distressed, choky, and they are liable to faint. But it all keys in with the general picture of nervous stress.
Then, as you would expect in a child of that type, who has been very bright, clever, successful who is now rather going to bits, they are awfully apt to blame themselves for it; it is very often a child of poorer parents, who is doing quite well on scholarships, and now cant do as well as it used to; it often starts to reproach itself, thinks that the failure is due to lack of effort on its own part. gets thoroughly depressed, almost melancholic.
Then there is one other thing that you sometimes come across in the Ignatia children, which you can link up with the choreic tendency, and that is that they are very liable to get troublesome. irritating. spasmodic coughs. These coughs always come on at inconvenient times, and once they start coughing they go on, and on, and on. That is the one type of Ignatia cough in that stressed child. The other type that they get is a very definite, acute laryngitis, with a liability to laryngeal spasm.
Then, as you would expect with their choreic history, you are very liable to get rheumatic pains in these children, you may even get an acute rheumatism; and most of the rheumatic pains are better having definite firm pressure.
The last of these drugs is Zinc. and you tack it one to Ignatia because of the choreic tendency.
The typical Zinc, child is very nervous, sensitive excitable kind of kind. But it is quite easy to distinguish them from Ignatia children. The Ignatia child to begin with is a very bright, quick reacting child ! whereas the typical Zinc. child has a slow reaction time.
When you get the Ignatia children tired out they may not be able to take things in, they have difficulty in learning, difficulty in remembering, but the Zinc. children are slow of grasping what you are saying, slow in answering. and they are much more docile, less unstable than the Ignatia children.
As a rule you will meet the Zinc, child about the same age, possibly a shade older, and you will very often get a history of delayed development, a delayed puberty very often gives you indications for the Zinc. child.
The impression you get of the child is that it is tired. tired mentally and tired physically-just generally weary. And in spite of that, they are restless, twitchy, fidgety. And one of the almost constant things that I have come across in the Zinc. children is that when they are tired they get a very persistent, aching pain in the lower cervical region, very often with burning pains going right down the back. And another thing that you often meet with in these Zinc. kids, particularly in the very fidgety ones, is that they are liable to get cramp in bed at night, and it is much more likely to be in the hamstring muscles than in their feet.
Then another thing about them is that they are very sensitive to cold; they are always chilly, and they are very liable to get inflamed eyes from exposure to cold. I have seen several of these Zinc. children with definite thickening of the margins of the lids, a chronic blepharitis, and a chronic conjuctivitis; and with their inflamed eyes they develop the most intense photophobia.
They another thing about them is that they are intensely sensitive to noise, they are as sensitive as the Ignatia kids, but one thing that worries them out of all proportion is talking, and I have quite frequently had the statement from the parents of a Zinc. child that if the child is attempting to do any work and there is anyone talking in the room it is very much worse than the noise of other children playing, people talking drive them nearly distracted. Incidentally it is completely exhausted by people talking to them; it is very often a definite lead for Zinc.
Then another well-marked indication for Zinc is where you have a history of a well-marked, generalized skin eruption in childhood, early childhood, and a chorea developing about adolescence, always think of the possibility of it being a Zinc.
Then there are just two points that I want to mention. One is that many of these Zinc. children develop an acute hunger about eleven oclock in the morning. The other point is that you will very often get a statement from the parents that these children simply bold their food-either food or drink.
He wrote a number of books: Children's Types, Digestive Drugs, Pneumonias
Douglas Borland died November 29, 1960.