*Excerpts from – Some Emergencies of General Practice, D M Borland*
If you go to a patient who is suffering from violent earache, acute stabbing pains in the ear, and tenderness over the mastoid region, when you first look at it from the homeopathic standpoint you are completely lost. After a little experience you find that cases are very satisfactory, you get your relief astonishingly quickly, and often a case which you expect would require incision of the membrane within the next few hours quickly subside and the patient is comfortable when you go back in the evening. That is the sort of thing you should be able to do in these acute conditions.
In cases of acute otitis with violent pains all round the mastoid region there are three or four drugs I want to consider.
Supposing you take the case which has come on very suddenly, with a history of the patient having been out in a very cold north-east wind, he is intensely restless, the pains are very violent, usually burning in character. He is irritable, a bit scared, with all the signs of a rising temperature, and extreme tenderness to touch. With that history after a few doses of ACONITE the acute inflammatory process which is just starting will have entirely disappeared. That is the type that one hopes for, and which one sees very often in winter.
You will get another case- usually in children- where there is not the same definite history of chill, although that may be present, but where the pain is even more intense and where the patient is practically beside himself with pain, will not stay still, is as cross and as irritable as can be, again with extreme tenderness, and you get the impression that nothing that the friends do satisfies him. You give him a few doses of Chamomilla and again the whole inflammatory process will rapidly subside.
The next case has gone a little further; there is much more tenderness over the mastoid region, possibly a little bulging, and the ear begins to look a little more prominent on the affected side. The external ear is very red, often much redder than on the opposite side. There are very acute stabbing pains running into the ear, the condition is a little comforted by hot applications, and the patient is extremely sorry for himself, miserable, wanting to be comforted, probably a little tearful, but without the irritability of chamomilla, and CAPSICUM almost always clears it up.
Collection By
Dr R S Mann
If you go to a patient who is suffering from violent earache, acute stabbing pains in the ear, and tenderness over the mastoid region, when you first look at it from the homeopathic standpoint you are completely lost. After a little experience you find that cases are very satisfactory, you get your relief astonishingly quickly, and often a case which you expect would require incision of the membrane within the next few hours quickly subside and the patient is comfortable when you go back in the evening. That is the sort of thing you should be able to do in these acute conditions.
In cases of acute otitis with violent pains all round the mastoid region there are three or four drugs I want to consider.
Supposing you take the case which has come on very suddenly, with a history of the patient having been out in a very cold north-east wind, he is intensely restless, the pains are very violent, usually burning in character. He is irritable, a bit scared, with all the signs of a rising temperature, and extreme tenderness to touch. With that history after a few doses of ACONITE the acute inflammatory process which is just starting will have entirely disappeared. That is the type that one hopes for, and which one sees very often in winter.
You will get another case- usually in children- where there is not the same definite history of chill, although that may be present, but where the pain is even more intense and where the patient is practically beside himself with pain, will not stay still, is as cross and as irritable as can be, again with extreme tenderness, and you get the impression that nothing that the friends do satisfies him. You give him a few doses of Chamomilla and again the whole inflammatory process will rapidly subside.
The next case has gone a little further; there is much more tenderness over the mastoid region, possibly a little bulging, and the ear begins to look a little more prominent on the affected side. The external ear is very red, often much redder than on the opposite side. There are very acute stabbing pains running into the ear, the condition is a little comforted by hot applications, and the patient is extremely sorry for himself, miserable, wanting to be comforted, probably a little tearful, but without the irritability of chamomilla, and CAPSICUM almost always clears it up.
Collection By
Dr R S Mann
