THUJA OCCIDENTALIS.
FROM THE LECTURES OF PROF. J.T. KENT.
(From The Homoeopathic Recorder)
The general appearance of the Thuja subject, if he has a characteristic picture, is that of a waxy, shiny face; it looks as if it had been smeared over with grease, and is often transparent; he is a sickly-looking individual, and looks as if entering upon some cachexia. This is often the case in the sycotic constitution and the cancerous cachexia; they are weakly, cachectic, yellowish, and often very pallid.
The perspiration is peculiar; it is sweetish in odour and smells like honey, sometimes like garlic, strong and pungent. A pungent odour emanates from the genitals; a sweetish, honey- like odour is characteristic of the sweat from the genitals; it is subjective. The odour is also like burnt horn, burnt feathers or burnt sponge. These peculiar strong odours, are particularly present when there are fig warts upon the genitals, such as Thuja cures.
The skin looks unhealthy everywhere about the body, and there is a copious sweat on first going to sleep, like Arsenic. If you had only the waxiness such as Arsenic and Thuja produce with the sweat on first going to sleep, you might prescribe Arsenic. Arsenic is often the acute and Thuja the chronic. Arsenic is a chronic remedy in the psoric and syphilitic miasms.
A peculiar asthmatic condition is found in sycosis in which Arsenic appears to be indicated for the symptoms, but it only relieves, it does not control the predisposition. It acts like Aconite in acute diseases and only ameliorates for a moment. Asthmatic and many other sycotic conditions seems to call for Arsenic, but it will do nothing but palliate. The constitution is not reached by Arsenic; it lacks depth of action in this direction.
In syphilis and psora Arsenic acts a long time and eradicates the complaints when similar to them, but it is not similar to sycosis. Arsenic does not go to the bottom of the trouble, but Thuja or Natrum sulph. will take up and finish the work begun by Ars.; they are both complimentary to Ars. in sycosis. Natrum sulph and Thuja bring back the primitive manifestation that has been suppressed for years, and those remedies are, therefore, called anti-sycotic.
Now, the tendency of the Thuja patient is to throw out wart- like excrescences, which are soft and pulpy and very sensitive; they burn, itch and bleed easily when touched or rubbed by the clothing. Horny excrescences form on the hands and split open, form upon a pedicle and crack around the base.
Cauliflower excrescences found in the vagina and upon the cervix-uteri, about the anus, and like Nitric acid, about the labia majora and mucous membranes generally. Horny excrescences form upon the skin. Warts of a brownish colour, especially form upon the abdomen. Great brown spots, like liver spots, form upon the abdomen.
Zona around the chest, herpes labialis and preputialis, herpetic eruptions anywhere like Sepia Zona is a herpetic formation; great vesicular patches come out all over, called “shingles”; here we should compare Thuja, Rhus, Graph., Kali hydr., and Mezereum. The condition is attended with a great suffering from neuralgic pains. In cases that are sycotic, Thuja is especially a grand remedy.
A class of cases will come to you where warts have been caused to disappear by calomel , which makes them shrivel up and fall off; such is the old school treatment . It is sometimes a dangerous thing to know that calomel will do this. A patient comes to you with erratic symptoms; you study for hours and days over these symptoms and see very little order in them; you then realize that the leading features have been left out if you are well read in your materia medica. Some scoundrel has used Nitric acid, calomel or something else, and has driven the fig warts away.
These condylomata could not come without having some constitutional basis; these warts have a cause; and that cause seems to be less able to make the patient sick if he has the warts. He feels better when he has the warts. Strange to say, when these warts have been suppressed, we get a lot of little symptoms of Nitric acid, Thuja, Mercurius and Staphysagria, without the leading features of those remedies.
Thuja leads all medicines for symptoms arising from suppressed warts.
Thuja is pre-eminently a strong medicine when you have a trace of animal poisoning in the history, as snake bite, smallpox and vaccination.
Boenninghausen actually treated of vaccination as leaving a sycotic taint in the body, but it was a knowledge of the symptoms that led him to think so, we find now, that it has a distinct individuality of its own, we also recognize that peculiar poison which is the cause of sycotic gonorrhoea.
There are probably several varieties of urethral discharge, but there is one that is sycotic, and when that has been suppressed, it has produced a miasm with soreness and lameness particularly through the back, loins and sciatic nerves, also in the knee and ankle joints.
Sometimes it affects the upper extremities, but it is usually confined to the lower. There is most violent aggravation when keeping still, like Rhus, Great aching that increases so long as he keeps still. He is very often compelled to keep the bed, and then he constantly moves and turns. Rhus is of no more value here than cold water, because Rhus does not have the nature of the disease.
It will not bring back the discharge, and cannot control the disease satisfactorily. It cannot bring relief in a few hours.
Often the patient says, “Doctor, you surely must have given me morphia.” It may have been any one of the anti-sycotics, Iodine, Kali hydr., Natrum sulph., or Thuja, but Rhus always fails.
In typhoid fever, you will make your patient comfortable in one hour with the appropriate homoeopathic remedy, and yet fools go about town saying, “We dont let our patients suffer; we give them morphia.” They call us fools, when the truth of the matter is they are fools because they dont know how to use high potencies.
Thuja enters into this particular sphere and takes hold of a particular case where sycosis is the underlying miasm. At times when the discharge has been suppressed, orchitis comes on and then more than likely, Pulsatilla will be the remedy.
Thuja affects the lest testicle with intense squeezing pain.
As we go on farther in the study of Thuja, we see that it has a profound action upon the glands, stitching, tearing pains in the glands, the pains are as if the gland was being torn in pieces. That may be true of glands in general, but one particular gland, the ovary, is more affected than any other, especially the left.
A violent pain in the left ovary coming on at the time of the menstruation and continuing during the flow, extending down the thighs, but at times in every direction, increasing as the flow comes on; stinging, rending, tearing burning, bursting pains as if the parts were being torn out; crying aloud; hysteria; this is a very strong Thuja group. It has the opposite of Zinc, Lachesis, and others, for in these, relief comes with the flow.
Many women suffer from grumbling pains in the ovaries all the time; they have a sense of the organ which they should not feel; pain from taking cold or in change of weather; the increase of the pain in the left ovary is the first sign; sometimes the pain is so severe that the right one suffers apparently from sympathy. Now, where the ovaries have been affected for some time, we get mental symptoms, a most violent irritability, jealousy, quarrel-someness, hatefulness.
This irritability is likely to be shown towards individuals about the house, toward the husband and the mother; she is yet able to control herself among strangers, and the doctor may not be able to find out anything about it, because she has in her nature a disposition to deceive. She wants to be alone and takes upon herself fixed ideas; that she is pregnant, or that an animal is in her bowels she feels the motion of a childs arm, thinks she is followed or that someone is walking beside her, thinks that soul and body are separated, etc.
These are fixed ideas and there is no use in trying to reason them out of her. It is impossible to convince her that the things imagined are not facts. It seems to her that she is very delicate, that she is made of glass and that she will break. The idea is that she will break, and not that she is transparent. Associated with this condition, we have violent, intense, tearing headaches, tearing in the eye,ameliorated by heat. The pains in the eyeball are better from heat and the rest are better in the cool open air.
Pain localized in small spots. A nail driven in the head, side of head and forehead, like Ignatia and Anacardium. These pains are intensified into tearing pains, and affect the eyeball, making it so sore that it can hardly be touched. The head pains are worse from heat and worse from lying down; worse in a warm room and better in the open air.
Rheumatic and head symptoms are worse in damp air; they are worse from acids and also from stimulants.
Calcutta