Application of homoeopathic Principles in of Mental States



The determinative symptoms which distinguish one cases of a certain disease from another or differentiate one drug from another in a certain group, are complex in mental states. We depend, there fore, on a certain group of drugs covering certain disease states, following which we abstract from the diseased state in a particular individual as many determinative symptoms as we can and try to fit them with a drug in the particular group whose pathogenesis closely approximates the symptoms we have abstracted.

Another important concept is the correlation of mental disease with physical illness. This was recognized by homoeopathic therapeutists for some time and they emphasized the metal symptoms produced by the drug more than they did the physical symptoms. Nux vomica, for instance, is beneficial in hypochondriasis, melancholia, out of proportion to dyspepsia, weight being placed on the mental angle. We at Middletown feel that by concentrating on the physical angle in a patient no matter what psychosis he has, we will modify the severity of his mental reactions and in some cases evoke a cure. We therefore search diligently for all physical disturbances, both general and local, and treat any by homoeopathic and other methods.

The Phrase “likes are treated with likes” embodies as aspect of the remedial agent and an aspect of the disease. It is therefore important to know the general action of the medicinal agent, the particular tissues or functions upon which it acts. Nux vomica has an especial affinity for the sensory side of the central nervous system. Alcohol the toxin has a similar affinity; therefore in alcohol cases nux vomica is most often indicated.

As already implied, there is no necessity on the part of the homoeopathic prescriber to make a study of medicines in themselves prior to their application to practice. The pathognomonic effects have been ascertained and recorded. We have but to refer to such a record after we have examined our patient to discover the similimum in his case. The closer we approximate the individual to the drug giving similar pathologic effects in a similar type of healthy individual the more chance we have for cure. Hence, the arrangement of pathogenesis as will be noticed in the form of a schema of disconnected symptoms.

We will now give you a few of the drugs, with emphasis upon their mental manifestations, from which we deduce the type of case in which they are valuable. It is not intended to form any a priori notion of the medicine or to see in its effects any true picture of disease. It simply may be applicable in one type individual with, let us say, manic-depressive and not in another type of individual with the same disease. We will also draw in a few of our own cases as illustrations.

Let us commence with our manic excitements. Talcott stated that out choice commonly lay between three mydriatics: belladonna, hyoscyamus and stramonium. He advocated belladonna in those cases where there was marked hyperemia, sudden explosions of rage and fury, restlessness and destructiveness. Hyoscyamus he gave in those cases that had tendency to expose their person.

We have in mind a case where the patient was given a hypo of hyoscine hydrobromide and who had symptoms.

Butler also recommenced belladonna in intense mental excitement with treatment with great violence and destructiveness against everything within reach. We have used this remedy rather extensively in such cases as described above. More particularly when there is a flushed face, dilated pupils, rapid flow of ideas, emotional instability frequent emotional shifts from an irritable, angry state to one of euphoria and elation. This drug we can verify is certainly the most common one used in manics.

Hyoscyamus is frequently used at Middletown State Hospital. Here the symptoms are restlessness of pressure of ideas and activity, continuous state of elations, obscenity, eroticism and tendency to expose the body.

In the most intense form of excitement we have used Stramonium.

Our findings to the efficacy of these drugs cannot be truly evaluated, due to the introduction of other forms of control of the excitement. We will later introduce statistical data, but in view of such data we can say that out better results are due for one thing to the absence of morphine, hyoscine or any other sedative. We believe the injudicious use of morphine and hypnotics in excitements is injurious. Its supply increases the state of cerebral excitement that already exists. We flood the system with large doses which disturb the normal structures, let along the pathologic structures. It has been shown that 1/4 gr. morphine will produce acidosis lasting one to four hours; a small dose will produce alkalosis.

This would add to the acidosis already existing in cases of excitement. We add fuel to the fire. As in the case of chronic brain disease, an acute organic delirium is a summation of effects. In pure acute delirium either psychogenic or organic, what results is a summation of effects. In our acute psychogenic excitement we have found that those cases that have some organic state, such as heart conditions. are more apart to have an acute organic delirium superimposed upon the functional delirium when hypnotics are administered. The following case is a good example.

H.McC., aged fifty-two, diagnosed mixed manic, third attack, third admission, white male; a lawyer by profession. History of many attacks of rheumatism, rejected during the war for cardiac condition. Three weeks before admission here, he spoke incessantly, was hyperactive, violent. Sedatives were given to quiet him and he came here November 9, 1934, with a mixture of psychogenic and organic features. The latter were disorientation, marked incoherence and confusion, varying levels of consciousness, speech defect, content of occupational character, preservation, all in all an engrafted acute organic delirium.

In two days the entire picture subsided and was replaced by retardation, memory defects, weeps spells, sadness and difficulty in organization of his thoughts. He made the following comments the following week. “If I take something to make me sleep, it is very bad. When I come out of the drug, there is a hazy, uncertain confusion, excitement and bad dreams. Ever since I was a kid, Ive noticed that in every illness when I took a drug to produce sleep, either during during the effect of the drug or after the drug wears off, there is a delirious state.

I havent any such states since Ive been here and youll note I havent asked you what drug you were giving me although all my life either I have been told or I would naturally ask.” He went home recovered the first of this year, having been a fine shape for over a mouth previously, Here the drug given was cactus gran. The symptoms of depression which set in following the excitement together with the sensation of weight on his brain plus frightening spells at night plus the cardiac constricting sensation, fitted this remedy.

It is clear that in these functional cases where there is a physical organic factor, the cerebral cortex is more sensitive to hypnotics. It is the same mechanism that we find in organic brain disease or in chronic toxic infectious processes where the brain is in state of chronic irritation and thereby reacts violently to hypnotics. The following is a good illustration of a chronic toxemia set up by endogenous and exogenous toxins culminating in an acute cerebral excitement upon administration of morphine and hyoscine. In this case the fundamental reactive pattern was a psychoneurotic one.

E.G., white, female, aged fifty-one, married, has three children. Had several illness in her adulthood influenza, pneumonia and appendicitis. In July 1933, she contracted rheumatic fever. She was a neurotic personality who became very impatient with the protracted course of her illness. For two months she received all sorts of treatment from any number of physicians including chiropractors. For two weeks before admission she received an ampoule of hyoscine and morphine daily, and three days before admission here july 2, 1933, she was delirious.

She was brought into the hospital with a typical acute organic delirium. Our summary of the case was as follows. “We have here an intense psychoneurotic reaction caused by a disease process, the latter having been maltreated. Mixed up and superimposed on the type of reactive pattern is an acute delirium prepared by the predisposing factor, that is, endogenous toxins emanating from the arthritic focus; and excited by exogenous toxins, morphine, hyoscine and twenty other varieties of anodynes, sedatives, hypnotics and chologogues, etc.

The delirium cleared up in a few days; the hysterical outbursts and drug craving were satisfied by hypos of sterile water; the rheumatic disease plus the mental signs of apprehension and fears and the hysterical outburst of shrieks of pains called for rhus tox. Patients organismal reaction improved far greater than the arthritic focus, which remained as short of a hysterical conversion symptom, but this ultimately cleared up so that she sat up out if bed within two weeks and was home in a month.”

Murray Bergmann