CLINICAL EXPERIENCES WITH NATRUM MURIATICUM



Hitler took a fancy to a member of his party or army general and, if they were often seen together, it was soon rumored that this mans life was in danger. He needed a dose of Natrum mur. very high. The patient may be very generous but does not pay his bills. The government official who squanders the taxpayers money with a fascinating simile needs this remedy. A lady loads her girl friend with kindness but very soon attacks her with kitchen knives. Tremendous ambition may alternate with a terrific inferiority complex, hurry and industry with indolence and procrastination. He wants to please but at other times offends people with his brusqueness.

Sometimes the mere idea of an emotion arouses the contrasting emotion. He cannot cry at a funeral, he even laughs when everybody else is sad, and his eyes are dry. On the other hand he may be sad and quarrelsome at a party when everybody else is cheerful and smiling. There may be exceptions to this kind of behavior. Sometimes the pendulum does not swing to the opposite side but swings still further in the same direction. At a party where everybody laughs, a boy wants to laugh most.

At a funeral where everybody weeps, he wants to weep most; in a quarrel where one person shouts, he shouts more. If someone tells a joke, he adds to it and wants to tell a still bigger joke. Among humble people he wants to be the humblest; if someone is kind, he is still kinder; if a girl loves him, he loves her more and could sacrifice himself for her. The books say that consolation aggravates and makes angry. It does sometimes, but just as often it is soothing and craved by the patient exactly as in Pulsatilla. Consolation makes him feel better is therefore not a symptoms counter-indicating Natrum mur.

Some Natrum mur. cases, when starting a job, cannot stop until it is finished, e.g. if painting a house, they would not stop at nightfall but continue late into the night or paint all night. They are given to excesses in work and sport, drinking and eating, smoking and amusements. It is natural for normal people to desire things they like. But in the kleptomaniac this desire is exaggerated to such a degree that it wipes out all caution and self-control, it therefore belongs to this remedy.

In mythomania the patients imagination is so lively that its subject becomes real to him. The desire for possession may grow further and lead to robbery, juvenile delinquency and the worst kinds of crimes. Yet this same individual that has a violent temper and dangerous instincts may at other times be mild mannered, sympathetic and even charming. A boy may be as good as gold when handled with love and kindness, but throws himself on the floor and kicks and screams when antagonized.

Fear and anxiety partake of the same excessiveness. A girl wakes up panicky and cant tell why. She is afraid of birds, worms, and other small animals. She cant relax, sucks her thumb or bites her nails. A grown up man is afraid of underground, cannot go into a mine, tunnel, cave, telephone booth or clothes closet. When left alone in a room, the door must be wide open.

To shut it would simply terrify him. When swimming he would be afraid of diving, thinking that it would smother him. Others are afraid of wide open spaces but there is no fear if a fence or wall or a tree is somewhere near on which their eyes find a support. Mostly they are afraid of the dark, some of a dark room, others would not venture going on the street at night. One of my patients was deathly afraid to look up at the stars on a clear night. An old man could handle big troubles with ease, but little matters upset him beyond measure.

There is also excessiveness in anger and hatred, but only sometimes. Point blank statements that these patients ar hateful, vindictive, dangerous, formidable, quarrelsome, are only half true. A number of them are the very opposite. They are amiable, considerate, kind, generous, great philanthropists, liberal, jovial, jesting, in short the nicest specimens of humanity. The time is past when I am afraid to give Natrum mur. to a sweet modest lady or to a decent mild-mannered man. Intellectual faculties may show similar abnormalities, that is they may be either over-developed or not developed enough.

The memory may be so phenomenal that an individual remembers telephone numbers of all his friends for ten years back, or he may be a cretin, idiot, mongoloid. Many inventive geniuses, creative artists such as painters, composers, poets, musicians are Natrum mur. cases. The atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, is likely to be one of them. His face with its puffy form, as we saw it in pictures in magazines, confirms this diagnosis. A poetess and musician, suffering from gout, found that she could not write poetry as she could previously after her gout had improved under a dose of Natrum mur. CM. Van Gogh could have been cured with Natrum mur. His painting talents may have been a Natrum mur. symptom.

Besides he was a refined sympathetic soul, but with his friend Gauguin he quarreled so violently that he threw dishes at him. Moments of sublime artistic inspiration alternated with spells of darkest depression so that one day he cut off one of his ears. His sadness later reached such a proportion that he committed suicide. Richard Wagner was luckier, he found a good homoeopath who cured him. Voltaire would have had a greater opinion of his immortality if he had had a dose of Natrum mur.

He said that he would have gladly given his immortality for a good digestion. Cezanne would work hard for a period of time, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he would throw away his brush and he unable to make a stroke for weeks. Examples of this kind could be multiplied if we had more time. In short, it may be said that increased creativeness, artistic and other, and increased intellectuality coexist with decreased rationality or other short-comings in the mental development.

Alteration and excess in one direction or another are found also in physical symptoms. Ignorance of this fact has caused many failures in prescribing. Everywhere in the physical sphere there is excess of function or lack of it, one form or its opposite, one disturbed condition or its opposite. They are alternating with each other or replacing each other. Oversensitiveness or loss of sensation, drowsiness or sleeplessness, restlessness or aversion to motion, thirst or thirstlessness, craving or aversion for one and the same food article, growing too fast or too slowly, body temperature too high or too low, chilliness or intolerance for heat, well one day, sick the next, are symptoms belonging to this remedy and encountered in one and the same individual at different times in alternation or singly.

Twenty years ago I took Natrum mur. for a cold infection and immediately started to prove the drug. Of the symptoms that I developed the one which particularly impressed itself on my memory was the effect of cold baths. The cold bath felt like balmy oil on my skin. The colder it was, the more soothing it felt. This experience, together with Kents assertion that Natrum mur. is warm blooded, have been false guides in my prescribing for many years. Further experience gradually taught me that, at the level of vitality we find in our Natrum mur. cases at present, very few enjoy cold bathing.

The majority bathe lukewarm and some bathe hot and would be shocked by a cold bath. This remedy, I have gradually become convinced, is not contra- indicated if the patient bathes hot. In a Natrum mur, family of three generations the oldest generation usually likes cool bathing, the middle likes it lukewarm and the youngest likes it mostly hot. The oldest has the best vitality, its symptoms are sthenic, it likes cold temperatures; the second has less vitality, prefers therefore somewhat warmer temperatures; the third suffers from asthenia and is sensitive to cold.

The partial discrepancy between this observation and the voluntary homoeopathic provings is easily explained by the fact that the voluntary provers had good vitality and reached with sthenic symptoms just as the older generations in a family. I also feel obliged to emphasize that Natrum mur. is not warm blooded though he may dislike hot air, hot baths, hot sun. His vitality is always diminished. This makes him often chilly, yet his aversion to heat is only an effect of the sensitiveness of his vascular system to temperature changes, and while he is sensitive to heat, he is just as sensitive to cold. he feels better in winter only if he is warmly dressed or heavily covered in bed.

Nor is it true that emaciation proceeds from above downward. This symptom, as well as every other general symptom, proceeds either from above downward or from below upward. This applies to emaciation, obesity, dehydration, overhydration, perspiration, dryness, atrophy, itching, venectasiae, paraesthesiae, pains, etc.

The particulars of this remedy are of great prescriptive importance as they are, though local, so often an expression of the functional deviations affecting the whole system.

F K Bellokossy