MENTAL SYMPTOMS

MENTAL SYMPTOMS

William Boericke, M.D.

In certain drugs the mental symptoms lead and determine almost absolutely, like Aconite, Ignatia, Cannabis Indica; in others, although important and characteristic, yet they are associated with and expressive of a physical state that is more indicative of the remedy. Thus, our great liver remedies like Chelidonium, Podophyllum, or uterine remedies like Lilium, Sepia etc., have their mental state secondary to the physical lesion, whereas the mania of Hyoscyamus, the anxiety of Aconite, the mental and emotional instability of Ignatia, are less dependent on recognized physical lesions.

Where mental states and emotions are evident primary causes or contributing factors to the production or continuance of diseased conditions , Homoeopathy offers much useful aid, thus: Remember the adaptability of Coffee, Aconite and Opium to the ill effects of different emotional disturbances, especially Gelsemium to the effect of fear. Ignatia and Phosphoric Acid to the effect of grief, etc.

From the standpoint of the general practitioner , merely as illustration, let me review a few remedies, whose mind symptoms have been verified. Passing over the well known anxious, restless, agonized Aconite with its fears and forebodings, whose mental state dominates and characterizes every other symptom-group;  the wild, restless, violent, noisy Belladonna; the terror-stricken Stramonium; the zealous, lewd, lascivious, silly, agitated Hyoscyamus; the oversensitive, snappish, uncivil, irritable, angry Chamomilla; the gentle, timid, yielding, weeping Pulsatilla, with not much reserve force and then fretful, morose and easily put out of sorts. Let me call to your rememberance two or three remedies of special wide range of mental application for cases presenting themselves to the general practitioner.

Anacardium is of great value in many conditions associated with profound melancholy, hypochondriasis, hypersensitiveness and irritability. This hypochondriacal state is associated with gastric disturbance , constipation and hemorrhoids. It follows and often displaces Nux, which has similar irritability, but where eating aggravates, whereas under Anacardium eating always temporarily relieves. This is a sure guiding symptom. Anacardium has fixed ideas, hallucinations, a weakening of the moral fibre, with tendency to curse and swear, to explosive profanity, laughing at serious things, want of moral and religious sentiments, takes everything in bad parts and becomes violent. He always carries a chip on his shoulder. He is the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde of the materia medica, because he brings to his conscious perception the two natures found in each of us, the two wills, one urging on to do things that the other forbids. Contrary mental indications at the same time; now he will – now he won't. The loss of memory, the difficulty in collecting the thoughts, the mental depression with the angry sensitiveness breaking out in swearing and violence, are the guiding mental symptoms.

Aurum is the remedy for melancholy due to congestion, especially when there occurs with it the suicidal tendency. The patient is afraid of the slightest noise. Sorrow and depression with desire for solitude, fear that he has lost the love and esteem of others, with great grief and weeping; religious anxiety, with longing for death and constant prayer. Burnett calls attention to its successful employment for pining boys who are low-spirited, lifeless, have weak memory, poor testicular development. In syphilitic patients with this mental depression, suicidal thoughts accompanying violent pain in the head, worse at night, with symptoms of exostosis of cranial bones. The homoeopathic treatment of syphilis is at best a dreary desert, but Aurum in these conditions is a living oasis, offering brilliant and speedy help in this special line. We all know that despondency and satiety of life is frequently radically cured by the crude drug in bountiful dosage, as coin of the realm; it is equally certain that the homoeopathic attenuation will do its appointed work when indicated.

As a representative of the animal kingdom our well-proven Lachesis easily takes precedence. It is particularly serviceable in the mental depressions which occurs sometimes at the climacteric period. The patient is very loquacious and jumps from one subject to another in conversation. Hasty speech. The patient is nervous, sensitive, emotional, easily moved to tears, insanely jealous and depressed, especially sad in the morning, when all the symptoms of Lachesis are worse.

Restless and uneasy, does not desire to attend to business, wants to be off somewhere all the time– thinks there are robbers in the house and tries to escape, and fears being poisoned. Patient is always awakened by distress. I think it is the general experience of the school that the best results are obtained from these remedies by the use of a dosage attenuated.

I believe the more systematic study of the mental and nervous symptoms of our materia medica, especially as they express and interpret the temperamental side of the action of our remedies, will do most for the practical working capacity of our special method of drug study and it's application in disease.

*Condensed from Pacific Coast Journal of Homoeopathy. March 1912
*Similia Similibus Curentur, June, 1981, Journal of the American Institute of Homoeopathy.

Some Interesting Cases by Baillie Brown

 “Some Interesting Cases” were published in “The Homeopathic Recorder”

Vol. XXV Lancaster, Pa., February, 1910 No. 2. (Page 57)

Edited By Dr. Ravinder S. Mann

Some Interesting Cases

By Baillie Brown, A. B., M. D.

And first let me say that I consider HOMOEOPATHY a gift of 

GOD to sick and suffering humanity and our law of cure a 

DIVINE LAW. We are prone to speak of Similia similibus 

curantur as “Hahnemann's law,” forgetting that this wonderful 

Homeopathic Law of cure is only after all GOD’S Law which 

Samuel Hahnemann was graciously permitted to discover. 

Case 1

Miss R , a Russian Jewess, was brought to my office 

by her intended husband and a Jewish Rabbi with the following 

interesting history. One afternoon some 5 or 6 months previous, 

while walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with her intended hus- 

band, she suddenly stopped and clapping her hands to her head 

declared that “his mother had struck her over the head with a 

wooden club.” The intended husband remonstrated and tried to 

show her that they were quite alone, but she kept reiterating that 

“his mother had struck her with the wooden club.” She was 

brought to her home and physician after physician was summoned, 

but all failed in disabusing her mind of the peculiar hallucination 

or in any way improving her health, which continually kept grow- 

ing worse, until finally their little savings were all used up, after 

which she was taken to the various city dispensaries, but in every 

instance without any improvement or amelioration of her condi- 

tion either mentally or physically. The family physician was 

again consulted and on his advice the papers were all made out 

for a commitment to an institution. Before taking her away at 

the final request of the Rabbi she was brought to my office “to 

see if Homeopathy might be able to do anything” in her case. 

On being led into my office I noticed the following: she immedi- 

ately sank into a chair and was in but a few moments asleep — her 

hair was disheveled ; shaking her I asked through the Rabbi, who 

acted as interpreter, if her mouth was dry and if her tongue seem- 

ed to stick to the roof of her mouth and she nodded assent. On 

turning to consult my Hering’s Condensed Materia Medica and 

while the intended husband, and Rabbi, were looking over the 

volumes on my library shelves she slipped from the office and was 

gone. The two men hastily picking up their hats hurried out of 

my office and caught her almost a block away, and pulling and 

dragging finally brought her back into my office. She then began 

to cry. She looked thin and frail and her face wore an expres- 

sion of much suffering. I was informed that it was next to im- 

possible to get her to partake of food in any form of any kind. 

I had noticed as the men led her into my office a staggering gait. 

But I thought I saw enough to pick as her remedy Nux moschata. 

Accordingly I made up three (3) powders of Nux moschata in 

the 1000th potency B. and T., one of which I placed on her tongue 

in my office, and giving the other two powders to her intended 

husband, ordered that one powder should be placed on her tongue 

in just 72 hours and the other on the third day following. The 

following is the report of the Rabbi : “Miss R seemed to grad- 

ually improve from the moment you put the powder on her tongue. 

Indeed she seemed so much improved in 72 hours that we thought 

it hardly necessary to give her the second powder, but decided 

to obey your instructions, which on doing she clapped her hands 

to her head and declared that something had snapped on the in- 

side.” Immediately she was her old self again — declared she had 

never had such silly hallucinations as her friends informed she 

had been suffering from for seven months — began to eat — and in 

two weeks gained seven pounds — in three months was happily 

married and is at last accounts perfectly well and happy. 

Case 2

Mrs. D, a colored woman aged 40 years, mother of 

four children, had been taken to the local hospital during my sum- 

mer vacation and delivered of a dead fetus. They kept her a 

week or so and then sent her home in an ambulance, telling her 

“she would probably never be a well woman again, as her womb 

HAD GROWED TO HER BACKBONE.” She suffered in 

agony until she heard that I had returned from my vacation, when 

she immediately sent for me to come and see her. Before I had 

time to ask her any questions or examine her or even to find a 

chair to sit down on, she burst out with, “O Doctor, It is so miser- 

able — It is so thirsty — It  burns so here (pointing in the neighbor- 

hood of McBurney's point) — It is so restless and O Doctor, I just 

can’t bear them hours of one, two, three to come — cause them is my 

worstest hours.” It is needless to say that in a jiffy I had ordered 

a glass of water and a teaspoon, into which glass I dropped a few 

drops of Arsenic 30. The next day she sent me her blessing and 

a dollar, and said she was able to do her own washing in the 

next morning. The third teaspoonful of Arsenic 30 had in only 

nine hours effected a happy cure. 

Case 3

Mr. C , a young Russian Hebrew, was brought to 

my office by the same Rabbi as in Case 1. The Rabbi informed 

me that “he was tormented with a peculiar hallucination, viz., 

that every time he looked in a looking glass he failed to recognize 

himself but saw the form and visage of another man.” Like the 

woman with the issue of blood in the N. T. Scriptures he had 

spent all his living upon physicians, neither yet had he been healed 

of any. Before proceeding to question him further I thought I 

detected the smell of musk about him, and found sure enough 

that he was in the habit of carrying a little vial of musk essence 

in the pocket, which he occasionally touched with his tongue. I 

took the vial of musk from him, throwing it into my waste-paper 

basket, gave him a good lecture on the enormity of “musk tasting” 

and prepared him a tiny vial of pellets medicated with Moschus 

30, ordering two pellets to be taken occasionally, with the result 

that in a few days his “peculiar” hallucination completely disap- 

peared and he improved wonderfully in health the following 

month. 

Case 4

The little six-year-old daughter of very poor but re- 

spectable parents. Was called in the 

morning to see the child, which the messenger informed me was 

“very sick.” But being a very busy day I was unable to get to 

the little patient until late in the afternoon. On reaching the bed- 

side I beheld a very sick child indeed, tossing about from place to 

place on the parents' bed, continually demanding “a drink, mama.” 

On inserting my two thermometers into the little one's rectum I 

found a temperature of 106. On examination of the right lung 

I discovered consolidation over two-thirds (lower). She was 

constantly scolding “the naughty pains around her heart. It was 

informed by the mother that they thought she would die” right 

after dinner (1 P. M.)." The symptoms pointed so unmistak- 

ably to Arsenicum, although I recalled that Nash in “How to 

Take the Case” speaks of Arsenicum as specially called for in 

“Upper Right chest troubles” that I decided then and there to 

give Arsenicum in the 1000th potency, one dose from my buggy 

satchel on her tongue, and warning the mother to give absolutely 

nothing else in the shape of medicine I left, promising to call the 

next morning. The next morning I made my call at about ten 

A. M. and found the little miss playing on the floor with her dolly 

and contentedly munching a crust of dry bread. The tempera- 

ture, taken in the rectum, was normal and THE CONSOLI- 

DATED LUNG QUITE CLEAR. I asked the mother to mi- 

nutely describe what happened after I gave the medicine the after- 

noon before (between 4 and 5 P. M.). She said baby seemed to 

get much worse and the fever higher until about 11 P. M., when 

she called for the “pottie” and from that until 2 A. M. the mother 

was kept busy emptying pot after pot of slimy stools. At 4 A. M. 

the child fell into a peaceful and refreshing slumber and awoke at 

9 A. M., evidently feeling as well as ever. 

I INFORMED A BROTHER NEW YORK HOMOEOPATHIC 

PRACTITIONER OF THE MARVELOUS ACTION OF THE INDICATED 

REMEDY IN THIS CASE AND LOOKING ON ME WITH 

A LOOK OF PITY HE RESPONDED, “FOR GOD'S SAKE. 

DOC, DON’T REPEAT THAT PIPE DREAM TO ANYONE 

ELSE.” 

-88 Bowers Street, Jersey City, N. J., January 26th, 1910.