HOMOEOPATHY AND NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY


Before us we have insufficiency of heart and kidneys with consequences. We also see vagus disturbances, which often are caused by hereditary deficiencies. The patient is hyposthenic-nervo-sympathicotonic, vagotonic, carbonitrogenic, lymphatic, psoric and hydrogenoid.


Chelidonium majus is a functional remedy for both sexes and all ages with liver involvement most prominent; dusky yellow skin. Patient is either lively or depressed; sleepy; confused dreams. Pain and stiffness of joints. Hands and feet icy cold. Backache, especially in region of lower inner tip of right scapula. Spasm of eyelids, pharynx and larynx.

The liver is enlarged and sensitive to pressure, deficient in action, which accounts for severe liver crises or only subicteric discoloration of skin; kidney tension with foamy dark yellowish tongue showing impression of teeth; craving for milk or acids; nausea and vomiting; aversion to meat; sensation of constricting hoop around abdomen with bloating. Headache on right side with staggering vertigo worse from coughing, blowing of nose and stooping. Stools hard and in balls, white or clay colored. Constipation may alternate with diarrhoea. Often reflex cough is found which is hollow and spasmodic, with difficult breathing. Constant pain in right lower chest causes superficial breathing. Patient thinks his breath smells of fecal matter.

The skin is yellowish and itches; often there are small nodules in the skin which suppurate when scratched open. Intense itching of eyelids with sensation as if eyelids were not large enough to cover eyes. Itching of sexual organs– glans, scrotum, vulva– and anus and rectum.

All complaints are worse from motion, change of weather, at 4 oclock a.m. and p.m., better from pressure, and for a short time after meals.

In short, the entire picture is dominated by liver dysfunction. Bile secretion is diminished. The patient is of bilious-nervous temperament, liver defective; patient is vago-sympathicotonic.

Conium. Here we find functional disturbances threatening to run into constitutional ailments. Patient is of spare stature, rigid fibre, looks sickly, pale with puffed face. Lips are dry and peel. The skin is moist and inclines to suppurating pustules. Patient is depressed, surly, flares up easily; he scorns the world, but fears being alone. All excitement is followed by depression which makes all mental work impossible. Sleep is deep and long. When patient turns over in bed, or even turns head to left, vertigo appears. Vertigo with stupefying headache, nausea and vomiting of phlegm.

Intense bruised pain in joints and in spine. Stiffness in neck, between shoulders and in lumbar region worse from rising. Pain in coccyx. All pains are aggravated nights and from rest, often paired with trembling, formication, muscle cramps, hands perspiration and cold feet. Which pains let up, patient is weak and exhausted, forcing him to lie down. Looking at all symptoms we get the impression of ascending paralysis, which begins in lower extremities and ascends to respiratory muscles, tongue and eyelids. Hearing is superacute, eyes are sensitive to light. We find intense photophobia which is warranted by the inflammatory condition.

The entire gastrointestinal tract is involved. The gums are swollen and bleed; pain in tongue; bitter taste. The gums are petite, averse to bread, but craves stimulants like coffee, acids and salty things. After meals patient is tormented by pyrosis, eructation and bloating. Nausea and vomiting of phlegm, the color of burned coffee. Liver region sensitive to touch. Flatus cold and very offensive. Feces hard. Constipation generally, but at times diarrhoea (while asleep) of extremely offensive odor. Urine red, comes with difficulty; flow often interrupted.

Mucous membranes of respiratory organs dry; hoarseness, even aphonia. Patient coughs continually on account of tickling in larynx. The least exertion causes difficult breathing. Hard goitre.

Both sexes are sterile, caused either by previous excesses, or too long abstinence. Frequent pollutions. Menses delayed and diminished; stopped when hands have been dipped in cold water. During menstruations breasts are enlarged and may show sensitive hardening, especially the right. Testicles and ovaries are swollen and painful. Skin is moist, itching; itching of anus, vulva and vagina. Moist, suppurating pustules and chronic blackish ulcers. Stinking perspiration. Lymph glands enlarged and hard.

Aggravation of all symptoms when patient turns over in bed, and before and during menstruation, and following long abstinence. Motion and darkness relieve.

What does this long description teach? Primarily we find disturbed sensibility and motility, beginning in the lower extremities as muscle spasms and formication. Paralytic symptoms appear, which gradually ascend along the spinal core: ascending myelitis and paraplegia with psychic disturbances.

All lymph and endocrine glands show pathology; functional and organic symptoms. The prostate gland is congestively enlarged and hardened, followed by bladder symptoms. Generative glands become pathologic. Ovaries and testicles are swollen, which causes impotence and pollutions with congestive swelling of breasts which harden during menstruation; thyroid enlargement. Liver dysfunction produces digestive disturbances. Urine secretion lessened. The partial function of the liver and kidneys is compensated by stinking perspiration; moist, itching pus pustules, and fetid flatus and stools.

SUMMARY:

We have here ascending spinal degeneration; diseased lymph and endocrine glands which are enlarged. Conium is the great remedy for poliomyelitis. The patient is a vago- sympathicotonic of lymphatic-sanguinic-nervous temperament (carbonitrogenic). His glands retard their action more and more; cancer can also be expected.

Helonias dioica is a constitutional remedy, suitable for worn out, exhausted women of thin face and sharp facial lines. Heavy work has depleted their nerves. These women are always tired and depressed, seem destined to melancholia, yet diversions chase away all their black thoughts. As soon as such patients get away from thinking of their troubles new physical and soul strength seem to flow through them. But alas, this does not last long. Patient is basically exhausted as to her nerves, irritable, easily despondent; the least rebuke bowls her over. Her sleep is poor because she is so debilitated that she cannot find refreshing sleep.

All pains are burning,intense, sharp, and the lower extremities “go to sleep” if patient does not keep moving. Pain in forehead and temples associated with uterine and ovarian diseases. The headache is relieved when her attention is diverted. Pain in back and lumbar region from touch and motion; these are her weak parts, demanding support; there and in thighs she feels heat and burning, as if two hot water bottles were placed there. Digestion is slow and deranged. Loss of appetite with better taste; stomach feels full, not relieved by eructation. Stools are soft. Before evacuation she has sensation of fullness in left side of abdomen.

Most prominent is a feeling of heaviness and discomfort in abdomen. She is conscious of having a womb, which causes sexual neurasthenia bolstered up by drawing pains from least motion, lifting and housework, and often accompanied by urinary difficulties, heat while urinating; albuminuria. Menses profuse and too soon, not permitting recovery between. This, paired with leucorrhoea, exhausts her completely; flour looks like albumen or clabbered milk, and that presupposes ulceration at neck of uterus.

Breasts are swollen and painful, even sensitive to touch of clothes.

All troubles mentioned are aggravated by touch and motion, but better from diversion.

This remedy picture we recognize as lessened sympathicus tension and general asthenia with more functional than organic digestive trouble. We also find endocrine dysfunction. The pituitary body acts insufficiently, which causes weak muscles and relaxed supporting tissue of uterus and ovaries. Also the adrenals are sluggish, hence patient is weak, exhausted, has no resistance. On the other hand, the uterus and ovaries are superactive with early and profuse menses which again reacts on the patients mind.

SUMMARY:

Lessened tension of sympathicus combined with deficient pituitary force and secondary dysfunction of uterus and ovaries. The patient is a lymphatic-nervous-hypovago- sympathicotonic. She inclines to abdominal ptosis and has insufficiently in the adrenal function.

Kali bichromicum. Through its base it becomes a constitutional remedy and through its acid a functional agent. It is suitable for people of florid appearance which incline to obesity and who suffer from syphilitic or psoric catarrhs which alternate with gastrointestinal ailments or rheumatism. The face is red or pimply. The facial bones, especially the orbital cavities, are sensitive to touch. Children are usually fat and chubby cheeked, of short neck, sensitive larynx, constantly threatened with quinsy.

These patients are surly, indifferent, lazy, and try to avoid work. Their memory is short. They feel tired and sleepy, hence are lying down much of the time, but are aggravated by sleeping. They are very sensitive to cold, which causes wandering pains in small spots, coming and leaving quickly, either lumbar pains over kidneys extending into coccyx, urging to urinate, or pains in joints– shoulders, wrists and fingers, cracking in joints, contractures of arm. Sciatica in left leg and pain in both heels, tendo Achilles and tibiae. All these pains come and go in alternation with organic gastrointestinal ailments.

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