Minutus

Dear Friends,
Some people seem to have problem treating acute diseases. But treating
acute diseases should be the easiest thing to do. I had posted two articles
a few months back on this subject. Apart from the instructions given there
there is something else we need to have and that is a working knowledge of
materia medica as well as repertory. Taking an acute case is much simpler
than taking a chronic case as we only have to deal with changes that have
come about in the past few hours or days. The patient is usually quite
aware of these changes and a detailed past history is unnecessary. Even the
mental state can be easily understood by simply observing the patient. When
treating acute diseases there are certain things which we consciously look
for and these very symptoms and states we should concentrate on when reading
the materia medica. I usually like to give the example of the nine pointed
star. There are usually nine things we need to know to be able to prescribe
in an acute diseases these are:
1. Aggravation
2. Amelioration
3. Cause
4. Concommittant symptoms: These may include mental, general or particular
concomittants.
5. Location including extension
6. Sensation.
7. Character
8. Time
9. Mode of onset

When prescribing if we have the above information we can easily prescribe so
while studying a remedy we should keep the above points in mind. Keeping
these let us study a few acute remedies to see how they would look. Let us
take the example of Rhus t.
1. The aggravation would be from rest or lying down and cold even
uncovering.
2. Amelioration from motion and from warmth.
3. Cause might include getting wet or exposure to cold damp and foggy
weather or muscle strain.
4. Concomittant symptoms: Restlessness, triangular red tip of tongue,
thirst etc.
5. Location: Muscles, tendon, skin.
6. Sensation: Not very specific but may have pains as if sprained or
bruised.
7. Character: Eruptions are usually vesicular.
8. Time: Some symptoms are aggravated at night or early morning but these
have more to do with rest rather than actual time. The skin symptoms may
be aggravated at night.
9. Mode of onset: Usually twelve to thrity six hours after exposure or
after strenous excercise.

Remedy 2: Bryonia:
1. Aggravation: Motion, touch.
2. Amelioration: Rest, pressure.
3. Cause: Not very important some symptoms come after exposure to heat
others after dry cold air.
4. Concommitant symptoms: Great irritability, does not want to be di4.
Concommitant symptoms: Great irritability, does not want to be diita4.
Concommitant symptoms: Great irritability, does not 4. Concommitant
symptoms: Great irritability, 4. Concommitant symptoms: Great
irritability, does not wa4. Concommitant symptom4. Concommitant symptoms:
Great i4. Concommitant symptoms: Great irritability, does not want to be
diitant symptoms: Gre4. Co4. Concommitant symptoms: Great irritability,
does not want to be diitant symptoms: Great 4.4. Concommitant s4.
Concommitant sJarring, any sudden movement; cold; light; noise.
2. Amelioration: Light covering, bending backwards, rest in bed.
3. Cause: Hair cut, washing head, drafts, exposure to sun.
4. Concomitant symptoms: Dry hot mouth usually without thirst, in high
fevers may have wild delirium.
5. Location: Skin, mucous membranes (throat etc) head, right side.
6. Sensation: Burning, throbbing pains, violent pains. Pains come suddenly
and disappear suddenly.
7. Character: Redness of parts affected. Heat of parts affected.
8. Time: Some symptoms are aggravated in the afetrnoon at 3.00 pm.
9. Mode of onset: Very quick usually within a few minutes or hours of
exposure.

Not all medicines may have all the nine characteristics but almost all the
commonly used short acting remedies have most of the symptoms. Again you
may not find all the nine symptoms in a patient but the more you find the
more sure you can be of your prescription. A five pointed star looks as
good as a nine pointed star but a three pointed star is simply a triangle.
Among the concomitant symptoms characterising the remedy are the most
important. Cause is very important in individualistic and sporadic diseases
but has no value in epidemic diseases.

Kepping the above in mind let us lok at some remedies for coryza:

Ars alb
Agravation: Cold, midnight.
Amelioration: Warmth
Cause: Exposure to cold or after drinking ice cold drinks.
Concomittant symptoms: Obstruction of the nose, mental and physical
restlessness, prostration. Chilliness, there may be thirst for small
quantities at short intervals. Wants people around him.
Location: More right sided
Sensation: There may be burning feeling in the nose.
Character: The discharge is watery and acrid. Frequent sneezing.
Time: Usually midnight aggravation sometimes mid-day too.
Mode of onset: Quite violent.
All-c
Aggravation: Inside the house, warm room.
Amelioration: Open air.
Cause: Could be due to getting wet though not marked.
Concomitant symptom: Acute laryngitis, the patient has to hold the throat
while coughing. The nose and upper lip become red.
Location: Mostly left sided.
Sensation: Burning of nose.
Character: Acrid discharges from the nose bland from the eyes. Watery
fluent discharges.
Time: Evening.
Mode of onset: Rapid onset.

While on the topic of Coryza I will mention some of the most commonly
remedies used in the area I practice. I have not used all the nine points
in all the medicines only the differentiating symptoms but you can use the
above table for almost all the remedies mentioned here by consulting your
materia medica.
Bets regards
Elham

PS: The italics are symptoms that need to be there before you can
prescribe.
PPS: I think this is the last article on acute diseases. Maybe sometime in
future I will write about treating chronic diseases.

Coryza

Ars Alb: Fluent coryza with frequent sneezing the discharge is copious and
watery and burns the nose. Obstruction of nose and restlessness and
sleeplessness. The right side is usually more affected than the left. The
patient feels cold and wants heat. Thirst for small quantities of water.
There is one point of caution many times when Ars. Alb. stops the coryza a
severe cough follows. The same holds true with All-cepa. In cases where
patients have tendency for asthma or recurrent bronchitis it is better to
avoid these two remedies. Ars-iod would be a better choice in these cases.

Ars-iod: Similar to arsenic (Thin, watery, excoriating discharges) but the
patient does not feel so cold. Fluent coryza with severe pain in the
maxillary sinuses. The upper lip becomes red as in All-c, the discharge
feels hot, this is a symptom of iod and is seen in Kali-iod as well as
iodium also.

All-cepa: Acrid watery discharge from the nose, it feels as if a tap has
been opened. The nose and the upper lip become red from the discharge.
There may be no lachrymation or if there is lachrymation it will be bland.
The cold may be accompanied with a cough in which case the patient feels
terrible pains in the larynx when coughing. Has to hold the throat when
coughing. The cold is usually left sided and the patient feels better in
the open air and worse inside the house and in the evening.

Carbo veg: This remedy is at times indicated in coryza. This is indicated
mostly in cases where the coryza comes on after the patient has been chilled
after being oveheated. In winters a patient wears a lot of clothing and
then enters someone's house where it is warm. He does not take out his
extra clothes as he has to leave soon. He breaks out into a sweat and then
he again goes out into the cold air. Or a person has been walking in the
sun and then he enters an air conditioned building. This brings on the
carbo-veg coryza. The patient has great itching around the nose. There is
ineffectual desire to sneeze. The patient feels he will become better if he
sneezes. There may be accompanying laryngitis and aphonia. The coryza may
be better in the open air and worse in a warm room.

euphrasia: This remedy is indicated when the full force of the coryza seems
to be settled in the eyes. Great flow of tears with coryza. The tears are
acrid and burn the eyes. The nasal discharge is bland. The coryza is worse
at night when lying down. The cough is better at night when lying down.
Coryza in windy weather.

Gelsemium: Coryza usually in warm weather. There is no thirst and a severe
headache accompanieds the coryza. There is chillines and the patient wants
to just quietly lie down without being disturbed. Dullness. The symptoms
have a slow mode of onset.

Kali -bi This medicine comes in later. The discharges have become thick
and stringy. Great accumulation of ropy mucous. There is pressure at the
root of nose and there may be pain in the temples in spots.

Kali-iod: Watery discharges, coryza usually accompanied with pain in the
frontal sinuses. The discharge may look like that of Arsenic. There may be
burning inside the nostrils. Sometimes the discharge may feel cold but this
is an exception usually the discharge is acrid and hot.

Merc: The most important symtom indicating merc. is profuse salivation.
Coryza accompanied with chilliness and perspiration. Thirst is increased.

Nat-mur: Coryza with pains involving the sinuses. Profuse watery
discharges, the discharges are clear like water or albuminous like white of
egg. Sore nose specially the left wing. Loss of smell and taste. There
may be fever blisters with the cold. There may be alternate discharge and
feeling of dryness.

Nux-vom: Great chilliness with the coryza. There is fluent discharge
during the day time and dryness of nose at night. Even though there is
great chilliness the coryza may become better in cold or open air.

Puls: Coryza with a dry mouth and no thirst. There is usually bitter tase
in the mouth. The discharges are watery in the beginning but become
yellowish or greenish and bland. The patient feels better in the open air.
There may be loss of smell or taste accompanying the coryza.

Dulc: This remedy is sometimes indicated specially when the days are hot
and the nights are cold. Again when the coryza appears in cold wet weather
or from getting wet. Like Euphrasis this remedy too seems to affect the
eyes acutely during coryza. The coryza is worse in the cold and in open air
and better by warmth and in a warm room.

Rhus -t: Coryza after getting wet in rain. There will be severe bodyache
and restlessness. Coryza ameliorated by walking. A triangular red tip of
tongue is usually indicative of this rtemedy in acute diseases.

At 11:35 AM 6/6/2004 +0530, you wrote:
Dear colleague and student,

Thank you for your excellent dissertation on acute diseases. There does
seem to be a bit of confusion about acute diseases in general. First of
all, there are the one-sided constitutionalist who don't believe in acute
disease and give the one remedy for all situations all the time. There are
also those who somehow think acute treatment always disrupts the case or
suppresses the disease. Some of these people go so far as suggest
allopathic treatment for these conditions rather than use an acute
intercurrent. There are homeopaths who would rather send the patient for
antibiotics than treat a severe sore throat or ear ache with an acute
remedy. I can not understand this for the life of me? Why use heavy
suppressive chemical medicines instead of safe and effective homoeopathic
remedies? What would Hahnemann say about this type of "half-homoeopathy"?
After all he taught about the danger of allopathic suppression some think
an acute remedies are more dangerous???? That is simply foolish!

When I first came to Asia I was not used to seeing severe acute miasms
like typhoid, meningitis, cholera, etc I had to learn fast due to time and
circumstances. A child was on vacation with the his mother when they began
to vomit very heavily up to the point were it was almost projectile. The
intense reverse peristalsis, and a few other symptoms, reminded me of Nux
Vomica 200C, which immediately stopped the vomiting. I was not sure of the
cause of this condition as their were many possibilities. It is very hard
to diagnose many acute diseases in the first 24 hours. The next day the
child began to have a very hot, dry fever, with very dry lips and a heavy
thirst for large drafts of water at long intervals. The did not want to
moved and wish to be left along. The looks as if they could go into
delirium. The eyes had that glassy look that comes along with serious acute
miasms. Now I got very suspicious about the nature of the disease and its
cause. It reminded of the look of patient's with various types of continued
fevers, etc..

At this point, I knew I was treated a rather serious acute miasm. I
gave the child a single dose of Bryonia 200C and the fever reduce greatly
and the child looked much better and sleep well. The next day the child
look droopy, drowsy, dull and again had some heat but this time was not
thirstily at all. It upper eyelids where incredibly droopy. They just did
not want to move and were all "floppy". All these symptoms reminded me of
typhoid but it usually takes many days to develop symptoms in these stages.
I gave a single dose of Gelsemium 200C and again the child improved
greatly. By the next day the child was up and playing as was convalescent.
I was greatly relieved. They quickly progressed on to full recovery.

I checked the neighborhood of the child was staying in and found that a
person who drank the same water source in the hospital with serious case of
typhoid. This person was in the hospital on intravenous antibiotics for
three weeks and was very weak afterwards. They had the look of being very
ill even when the allopathic declared them cured. They did not request
homoeopathic treatment. My patient went through all three stages of typhoid
in 3 days and was up and playing on the 4th day. They now seem
exceptionally vigorous as if the immune system and vitality had benefited
from the whole experience.

Since that experience I have seen such things many times. Acute disease
are dramatic and so are their cures. Although I used three remedies in
three days I am not sure I could have done any better? If this was
zigzagging - it was done with honors. Sometimes, one does have to "tack"
back and forth a bit in order to move a sailboat against the wind. Was
there one remedy that would have cure this serious acute miasm in one day?
God only knows. Normally, thyroid takes weeks to reach cessation, often
goes into complications, and some patient never really recover.

While on the subject of typhoid I have another story. A patient was
referred by the allopathic doctors at a charitable hospital. She was
suffering from bad digestion, diarrhea alternating with constipation,
weakness, dizziness, etc. They told her that she was suffering from the
affects of the typhoid and it would be best to see a homoeopath! Although
there was ample symptoms on which to prescribe I decided to test the idea
of giving a nosode of typhoid on the symptom "never well since typhoid".
I wanted to objectively test this method.

Many of her symptoms were reminiscent of the affects of typhoid I had
seen before and hence should be similar to symptoms a nosode might
remove In a funny way, the fact that 1000s of person suffered from typhoid
symptoms and its sequel is a gigantic natural proving of the nosode. I gave
the patient Typhoidinum LM 0/1. This remedy in infrequent doses caused a
great improvement in her symptoms and she went on to complete cure. There
has been no relapse of any of the symptoms.

Lastly, I would like to take up the subject of homoeo-prophylaxis In
general, one can use a group anamnesis (group case) to find the genus
epidemicus remedies for an acute miasm like typhoid. Boenninghausen give an
excellent example to a group anamnesis of typhoid in his Lesser Writings.
The group anamnesis will provide a smaller group of remedies that should be
effective in both the treatment and prevention of the targeted acute miasm.
Baptisia has a reputation for having the ability to prevent typhoid.
Boericke wrote "Baptisia in low dilutions produces a form of anti-bodies to
the Bac. typhosus, viz., the agglutinins". Typhoidinum should also be
effective.

This shows three methods that are used in the treatment of acute miasms.
First of all, here are the symptomatic remedies, like Nux-v., Bry., Gels.
Then there are remedies that are known for the "never-well-since-syndrome"
like Typhoidinum. Lastly, there are remedies that can prevent the entire
situation before it starts like Baptisia or Typhoid nosode. This is how
effective the prevention and treatment of acute diseases and their sequels
can be with homoeopathic remedies. Although those in the west don't see
thyroid (at least not often), the cure of such a dangerous acute miasms by
homoeopathic remedies shows the potential of the acute intercurrent remedies.

Sincerely, David Little
---------------
"It is the life-force which cures diseases because a dead man needs no more
medicines."

Samuel Hahnemann

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