This valuable drug should have a complete Hahnemannian proving.
This remedy seems to accomplish all that Digitalis does in material doses without the consequential heart poison that the accumulated effects of Digitalis produces.
Digitalis, however, is one of our most effective remedies in certain forms of serious heart disease characterized by a slow, intermittent pulse or a violent palpitation with extreme anguish and anxiety. Cyanosis is also a marked symptom.
Digitalis is a broad remedy covering many other complaints either associated with or outside the heart affections.
It has been clinically applied to amaurosis, angina pectoris, asthma, brights disease, cyanosis, delirium tremens, dropsy, fever, gonorrhea, headache, heart affections, hydrocele, hydrocephalus, impotence, jaundice, lung congestions, lost memory, meningitis, noises in head, paraphimosis, prostate enlargement, ptyalism, spermatorrhea, toothache, urinary disorders and vision disorders.
The remedy picture is summed up into three main features by Clarke as follows: Slow intermittent pulse; enlarged, sore, painful liver; white pasty stools. Along with these is prostration from slight exertion.
The mental condition is anxious, low spirited, tearful, wants to be alone.
Jaundiced appearance is often found in complaints needing this remedy and it is frequently a source of comfort to those suffering from enlarged prostates with painful and difficult urinary complaints.
There are a number of characteristic keynote symptoms that, when present in any given case, will serve as a reliable indication for its selection.
Sudden sensation as if the heart stood still or would stop if the patient moves (Gels. has the opposite feeling, as if the heart would stop beating if she did not keep moving about).
The mere sight or smell of food excites violent nausea with clean tongue (Ipec.). Thirst for water with absence of fever. Deathly sinking at epigastrium. Complaints fro emotional disturbances that are referred to the heart and epigastrium.
Cactus grandiflorus is one of our most effective remedies in the treatment of painful and serious conditions of the heart. Its symptoms are characterized by squeezing, constricting pains especially referred to the heart and chest regions. But these constrictions may be found in many other conditions and parts of the body, such as painful constrictions of the esophagus preventing swallowing or exciting a constant desire to swallow.
Suffocative constriction of the throat with full throbbing carotids, constriction or pulsation in scrobiculus, copious hematemesis; constriction of rectum with sense of great weight and urging to evacuate a great quantity though nothing passes; copious hemorrhages form anus. Constriction of neck of bladder with constant urge to void urine; passes by drops with great burning. Constriction of vagina preventing coitus. Constriction, burning pains, and a sense of weight or pressure in all the parts affected.
Difficult, oppressed breathing with the constricting chest pains associated with dreadful fear and anxiety present some of the important aspects of this remedy.
All the serpent poisons present indications for the many types of heart disease. Perhaps the ones more frequently used are Lachesis and Naja.
To go into the interesting origin and history of Lachesis together with its vast symptomatology is beyond the scope of this paper. I will only touch upon some of its clinical high lights and symptoms and leave the fuller study to those who are interested enough to give the time and make the effort required to obtain a rich amount of useful knowledge for the cure of the sick.
Lachesis is especially useful in women at the climacteric period who suffer with cardiac difficulties associated with flushing of heat sometimes alternating with chills down the back.
Weakness and faintness are common with marked aggravation during and asleep. Also irregular, profuse and painful menstrual periods, generally too frequent and copious. This remedy is predominately a left-sided medicine with some few exceptions. Some of the headaches are worse on the right side and relieved by closing the eyes and from sleep. The pains are pulsating, constricting and burning.
There is a rich array of mental symptoms. Great anguish and unbearable anxiety which is relieved in the open air. Fear and presentiment of death. Distrust, suspicion and jealousy. Mental depression and melancholy, concerned about his illness, sense of persecution, thinks he is hated and despised. Fear of being poisoned. Thinks he is someone else or in the hands of a stronger power or that he is dead and preparations are being made for his funeral. Averse to people. Restless and uneasy.
Does not wish to attend to business but wants to be off somewhere all the time. Indolence, with dislike an unfitness for any labor either mental or physical. A state of ecstasy and exaltation inducing tears. Desires to mediate and to compose intellectual works. Frantic loquacity with elevated language. Extreme sensitiveness to impressions and great irritability. Mistakes in speaking and writing. Weakness of memory, extreme forgetfulness. Timidity of character with variableness and indecision. Confusion as to time. Imbecility and loss of every mental faculty Nocturnal delirium with much talking or with murmuring. Dementia and loss of consciousness.
Heart symptoms are palpitation with fainting and anxiety, sometimes, excited by cramp like pains, with cough and suffocation. Feels as if heart hung by a thread and every heart beat would tear it off; irregularity of beats, constriction in region of the heart.
Spasm in the heart (with aneurism of right carotid and disagreeable pulsation in the ears). As if the heart were too large for its containing cavity. Stitches in region of heart with shortness of breath. Fainting fits and cold sweats. Faint feeling about the heart, with heat running up spine and flushing of the face. Faintings, giddiness and palpitation constantly recurring. Lying on left side aggravates the heart pain.
Naja, the cobra venom, presents many of the general features of the other snake poisons but it has some distinct differences in modality and action belonging to its own pathogenesis.
This remedy affects profoundly the medulla oblongata and cerebellum and the whole nervous system.
Its cardiac symptoms are those of depression and uneasiness about the heart. Fluttering and palpitation of heart. Audible palpitation of heart. Pulse slow and irregular in rhythm and force, weak and thready, scarcely perceptible of rapid and full, rate one hundred and twenty. Some beats tolerably full and strong, afterwards thirty-two, irregular in rhythm and force, some of the beats full and bounding. One striking modality: Great relief of pain and breathing lying on the right side.
General modalities are extreme sensitiveness to cold. Languor, fatigue and torpor. Organs feel as if drawn together, especially the ovary and heart. Depression of both mental and physical powers. Symptoms worse from stimulants, relieved walking in open air. Swelling of body, local inflammations. Appearance as if intoxicated. Convulsive movement of mouth and limbs, rolling about as if weak and faint.
Moaned, grasped his throat, tossed his head from side to side and moved his arms and legs uneasily. Unnatural quiet, with groans and complaints of slight pain in the bitten arm. Sensation of wasting away. Swooning fits. Loss of sense of feeling.
Suicidal insanity, irresolute, melancholia. Insanity, suddenly cut his own head in two with an ax. Loss of consciousness, speechless, comatose.
Clinically, this remedy has been used for angina pectoris, asthma, dyspnoea, hay fever, headache, heart affections, spasmodic stricture of the oesophagus, ovarian affections, plague, spinal irritation, sore throat.
This remedy cured a well-developed case of breast cancer, diagnosis confirmed by biopsy.
Cenchris contortrix. This remedy has been somewhat overlooked and neglected by homoeopaths, perhaps because of its incomplete proving. But it competes in value in heart complaints with Lachesis, its nearest analogue.
Clarke gives us some nice points of distinction between these two remedies. Lachesis affects t6he left ovary more than the right; Cenchris the right more. Cenchris has difficult, empty swallowing, with easy swallowing of solids and liquids, Lachesis can swallow solids, not liquids. Both remedies have extreme sensitiveness to tight clothing around neck and waist.
With lost memory there is lethargy. Anxiety; feels she will die suddenly. Alternating moods. Dreamy, absent minded: took the wrong car without realizing where she was going. Suspicious, thins her husband is going to put her in an insane asylum every day from three to eight P.M. for ten days, yet she knew it was a delusion.
The dreams of Cenchris are vivid and horrible, can not be shaken off during waking hours. Often they are lascivious.
There is a feeling as if the whole body was enlarged, especially the heart feels if it were distended to fill the whole chest. At 3 p.m. sensation of fluttering followed by feeling that the heart fell down into abdomen then pulse became feeble, with heat lasting until after midnight.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.