VERATRUM ALBUM:Symptoms of insanity at the head of Hahnemann's list
-M.L.Tyler.
-While hellebore.
Introduction:
EVERYBODY knows Veratrum alb. as one of the great remedies of collapse: collapse with icy coldness; with profuse cold sweat, especially on the forehead: with profuse evacuations: with great thirst. But far from everybody knows Veratrum alb. as a notable pain remedy: or in its mental aspects-as Hahnemann knew it and left it for us, and as Hahnemann's most faithful followers have experienced and taught it. It is an old folly to substitute opinions for facts. Hahnemann gave us facts, results of actual experiments carefully conducted, and the experience of one of the most astute observers who ever put pen to paper. But since his day some of the teachers, of Homoeopathy, wise in their own conceits, have crippled knowledge and therefore usefulness, by substituting their opinions for facts. Perhaps the worst of these was Hughes, whose "Pharmaco dynamics" was dubbed by his contemporaries "Homoeopathic milk for Allopathic babes", and who, always ready to go one better than Hahnemann, by his dicta and omissions has robbed us of, or belittled much of Hahnemann's experience. He threw doubt, for instance, on Hahnemann's observation that " a single goes of Drosera 30 is quite sufficient for the homoeopathic cure of epidemic whooping cough according to the indications of symptoms" (which he enumerates): "the cure taking place with certainty in from seven to nine days, under a non-medicinal diet" (See HOMOEOPATHY, Vol. III, p.24). This was not the Homoeopathy of Hughes, who favoured repeated doses of low potency, from which, according to his own showing he got very inferior results: but Hughes was obliged to print a footnote in later editions of his work, to the effect that this observation of Hahnemann had been confirmed by other doctors. And one may say that, recently, one doctor after another has volunteered with great joy results from following Hahnemann's directions in regard to whooping cough. Later writers again, have robbed us of a "lead" to good work, by ignoring Hahnemann's black type Drosera symptoms in regard to bones and joints, as if its true, and indeed only sphere was whooping cough and laryngitis. Thus certain cases of even rheumatoid arthritis, where Drosera might have helped, have been left uncured. Again in regard to Veratrum alb. Hughes, from his lofty assumption of critic is pleased to say that "the marked symptoms of insanity which stand at the head of Hahnemann's list" (of mental symptoms)" were observed upon insane patients taking the drug, and are worse than useless". Imagine that ! worse than useless! in Dr.Hughes's opinion. And in Allen's Encyclopaedia, where one of the "contributors" was Dr. Richard Hughes, a footnote is to the following effect: "All symptoms of the mind and disposition occurring in the first two classes, and all the spasmodic phenomena manifested by the third, have been bracketed, as the does administered were too small to induce them."-HUGHES. Again, Opinion versus Fact! One cannot help wondering how much of Hahnemann has been deleted or slurred by Hughes! One only discovers these things gradually. Hering's Guiding Symptoms has no hint of such follies; and Kent, a far greater teacher and prescriber than Hughes-or so one gathers-realizes the great importance of Veratrum alb. in insanity; as we shall see. Meanwhile, hear Hahnemann on the subject: "It is quite false that patients affected with emotional and mental diseases require and bear enormous doses of medicine, as physicians still imagine. In such cases", he says, "health is often but little affected and the patients are often very robust. the malady has settled in the fine invisible organs of the mental and emotional spheres undiscoverable by anatomy. and, in his experience, "patients suffering from mental and emotional diseases soon regained a healthy state of their mental and emotional organs, i.e. perfect recovery of health and reason, by doses as small as those that suffice for other non-psychical maladies, but only of the appropriate and perfectly homoeopathic medicine". One may say here, by the way, that in the provings of drugs, to ascertain their powers of sick-making, mental and physical, in order to use them to neutralize a like sickness, the mental symptoms are best elicited by provings with the higher potencies. But Hahnemann knew what he was talking about in the matter of insanity. He describes (Lesser Writings) how (having been for several years much occupied with the treatment of diseases of the most tedious and desperate character, including hypochondriasis and insanity in particular) with the assistance of the reigning duke he established a convalescent asylum for patients affected with such disorders, in Georgenthal, near Gotha. Here he treated and cured, "the Privy Secretary of the Chancery, one Klockenbring of Hanover: a man who, when in health, "attracted the admiration of Germany by his practical talents for business and his profound sagacity, as also by his knowledge of ancient and modern lore and his acquirements in various branches of science". "His almost superhuman labours in the department of state police, for which he had a great talent, his constant sedentary life, combined with a too nutritious diet" had gradually deranged him: "possibly also his copious indulgence n strong contributed". Anyway, the last straw was some horrible lampoon which completed his mental catastrophe. Hahnemann describes in detail his wild maniacal condition; now quoting from different authors in different languages; now throwing himself, in an agony of sobbing at the feet of his amazed attendants; now hacking and tearing to pieces his attire and his bed; now running about naked, bellowing: demanding food or drinks were spilt and fouled. At first Hahnemann merely watched him, while the treated him and causing him to be treated with the greatest kindness and consideration, so earning his confidence. Then gradually, with remedies-no doubt at all, Veratrum among them, the big man's reason was gradually restored-indeed so perfectly restored that a governmental post-but less arduous, was found for him. And, out of his experience, this is what Hahnemann has to tell us in regard to Veratrum alb. "Physicians have no notion of the power possessed by this drug to promote a cure of almost one-third of the insane in lunatic asylums (at all events as a homoeopathic intermediate remedy) because they know not the peculiar kind of insanity in which to employ it, nor the dose in which it should be administered in order to be efficacious and yet not injurious." In his treatment of mental patients Hahnemann entirely departed from the treatment customary at that time, which was brutal in the extreme. His absolutely new methods, he has describes. "I never allow any insane person to be punished by blows of other painful bodily chastisement, because there can be no punishment for involuntary actions, and because these patients are always made worse and not better by such rough treatment. He (Klockenbring) used often to show me with tears the remains of the marks of the ropes which his former guardians had employed in order to restrain him. The physician in charge of such unhappy people must indeed have at his command and attitude which inspires respect but also creates confidence; he will never feel insulted by them, because a being that cannot reason in incapable of insulting anyone. Their outbreaks for unreasonable anger only arouse his sympathy foe their pitiful state, and call forth his charity to relieve their sad condition." And again, in the Organon, he deals with the treatment of mental aberration. Raving madness to be met by calm fearlessness and firmness: plaintive melancholy soothed by silent compassion by gesture and expression: silly loquacity listened to in silence, with attention; incident behaviour and obscene languages treated with indifference: destruction and injury of objects prevented by placing them out of reach, without reproaching the patient: corporal punishment or torture to be absolutely avoided. Even the administration of medicines need not require coercion: the smallness of the dose, and the tastelessness of homeopathic medicines allows them to be mixed with the patient's drink, obviating any kind of compulsion, and not exciting his suspicion. He adds, "there is nothing that embitters the insane and augments their diseases so much as expressions of contempt, and ill- disguised deception. Physician and attendants should always treat such patients as if they regard them rational beings".
BLACK LETTERS SYMPTOMS
(Hahnemann, Allen, and Hering). Persistent raging. Inconsolable over a fancied misfortune, runs about the room howling and screaming, looking upon the ground; or sits brooding in a corner, wailing and weeping in an inconsolable manner. Taciturnity. Crossness, when cause given. Attacks of pain with delirium, driving to madness. Mania with desire to cut and tear everything, especially clothes; with lewdness and lascivious talk: religious or amorous. Delusions of grandeur. Cold sweat on forehead with anguish and fear of death. Despair of salvation with suppressed catamenia. His consciousness is as if in a dream. Flat-pressing headache, vertex: which became throbbing when moving. Sensation of a lump of ice in vertex. Cold sweat on forehead. Pale face: sunken: with anxious expression. He became pale in the face with frequent stools. He cannot speak. Saliva runs incessantly out of mouth like waterbrash. Tasteless saliva want of taste in mouth. Taste and coolness in mouth, as from peppermint. Pungent peppermint taste in throat: sensation of heat rises into the mouth. Thirst for coldest drinks. Craves ice: fruit. Violent hunger. Excessive thirst during perspiration. Great thirst with hunger. Great nausea before vomiting. Violent vomiting of slimy, acid liquid, with food. Forcible, excessive vomiting. Vomiting and diarrhoea as many as ten times, with pale sunken face, covered with cold sweat. Vomiting if green mucus. Gastric catarrh, great weakness: cold, sudden sinking. Colic, as if intestines twisted into a knot. Cold feeling in abdomen. Colic with burning, as if intestines twisted into a knot, with cold sweat. Cutting pains: flatulent colic, which attacks the lower bowels here and there and the whole abdomen: the longer the flatus is retained, the more difficult it is to be expelled. Diarrhoea with profuse perspiration. Frequent and violent diarrhoea: very profuse and painful. Excessive evacuations: copious evacuations. Constipation on account of the hardness and size of the evacuation. Cholera morbus: worse at night: cold sweat on forehead; vomiting and purging at the same time, after fruits: profuse brownish discharge: thirst: cramps: prostration: cold sweats: great weakness after stool. Asiatic cholera violent evacuation upwards and downwards: icy coldness of body: cramps in calves: vomiting with constant desire for cold drinks: face colourless or bluish: blue margins round eyes: deathly anguish in features: cold tongue and breath: great oppressive anguish in chest, with desire to escape from bed: violent colic, especially about umbilicus, as if abdomen would be torn open: sensitive to contact: drawing and cramps, fingers: wrinkled skin in palms: retention of urine. Palpitation of heart with great anxiety and quickened audible respiration. Excessive anxiety that takes away the breath. Spasmodic construction of larynx with contracted pupils. Suffocative attacks of construction in larynx. Deep hollow cough in three or four shocks. Seems in danger of suffocation, the respiration is so restricted. Cold breath (in cholera). Hands icy cold, blue. Blue nails. Rheumatic pain, felt when moving. Very great difficulty of walking, like paralysis, first right then left hip-joint. Pain under knee, as if bone had been broken and not quite firm. Heavy pain of legs, as from fatigue. Prostration and weakness of the whole body: extreme weakness. Syncope. Yawning. Paralytic sinking of strength. Whole body and face pale. Chill and shivering with frequent stools. Febrile chill with coldness and thirst. Creeping coldness through whole body. Cold skin. Creeping coldness over head, especially vertex. "Lump of ice" sensation, vertex. Face cold, collapsed. Coldness back: extremities cold. Great coldness of hands. Cold sweat. Cold sweat on forehead. Profuse perspiration on forehead with the evacuation. Cold perspiration over whole body. Typhoid forms of fever when vital forces sink: cold sweat: coma. Vomiting and watery diarrhoea: bluish face: pointed nose: wrinkled skin. Internal chill ran through him from head to toes of feet with thirst. Hahnemann gives also, heat and redness of face. Among the peculiar sensations of Verat. alb. we find: As if pregnant, or in throes of childbirth. As if he had a bad conscience and had committed a crime. As if a lump of ice on vertex. As if tongue too heavy. As if peppermint-coolness-in mouth and throat. As if something alive were rising from stomach into throat. As if knives cutting bowels: hot coals in abdomen : pinching as with pincers in abdomen: intestines twisted into a knot. Cold water running through veins. Bones pressed or broken. As if a heavy stone were tied to feet and knees. As if she would have to fly away. Veratrum, then has mania, insanity, delirium, all of great violence. KENT condenses these far more tellingly than one can hope to do, so we will quote. He says: "The mental symptoms are marked by violence and destructiveness: he wants to destroy, to tear something; he tears the clothes from his body. Always wants to be busy, to carry on his daily work. A cooper who was suffering from the Veratrum insanity would pile up chairs on top of one another: when asked what he was doing, he replied that he was piling up staves. When not occupied with this he was tearing his clothes, or praying"(Stram.) "for hours on his knees, and so loud that he could be heard blocks away. Excited state of religious frenzy: believes he is the risen Christ: screams and screeches until he is blue in the face: head cold as ice, cold sweat, reaches out and exhorts to repentance. "Exhorts to repent, preaches, howls, sings obscene songs, exposes the person" (Hyos.) "Fear and the effects of fear: fear of death and of being damned: imagines the world is on fire. "Mania with desire to cut and tear everything especially the clothes puerperal mania and convulsions with violent cerebral congestion; bluish and bloated face; protruding eyes; wild shrieks, with disposition to bite and tear. Alternate states of brooding, screaming and screeching. A few such remedies would empty our insane asylums, especially of recent cases. Insanity is curable if there are so incurable results of disease." Kent says again, "Veratrum is a remedy that would keep many women out of the insane asylum, especially those with uterine trouble. During menses, cold as death, lips blue, extremities cold and blue dreadful pains, sinking sensations,mania to kiss everybody"(Crocus);"hysteria with a coldness at the menstrual period, copious sweat, vomiting and diarrhoea. " Kent remembers a farmer, one summer, who had a strange sensation when he drank water, as if it ran down the outside and did not go down the oesophagus-so marked that he requested his friends to see if it did not run down the outside. Veratrum 2m cured him. "No remedy has produced that sensation, but I figured it out by analogy," says Kent. Verat. has also a sensation of cold water running in the veins. In regard to the symptoms," head feels as if packed in ice; as if ice lay on the vertex," one remembers a hospital patient, a sturdy, elderly women, full of common sense and cheery to the last degree, who developed terrific pains in the head, and was admitted, almost insane with the suffering. Face distorted with its anguish. Remedy after remedy failed to touch her, till one day it turned out that she had a sensation of a block of ice lying on vertex: this suggested Veratrum, as did the symptom,"attacks of pain with delirium, driving to madness"-it was almost as bad as that! and Veratrum quickly changed the picture,and her old self re-emerged. One will never forget Veratrum for terrific, unbearable pains in the head that change the face, almost induce insanity. with that icy sensation on vertex. And in regard to PAIN, Hahnemann says,"Paroxysms of pains, similar to those the white hellebore root can itself produce, and which always brought the patient for a short time into a sort of delirium and mania, often yielded to the smallest dose of the above solution"(the quadrillion of a grain of the root). The cry for Veratrum then, consists of excessive coldness; excessive cold sweat; extreme thirst; extreme violence of evacuations; extreme copiousness of vomiting, purging and sweat; collapse; paralytic weakness and loss of powder: with violence of reactions to pain and mania. The remedies that probably come nearest to it are Arsenicum and Carbo veg. But Arsenicum has extreme anxiety and restlessness, "the Veratrum patient is quiet". and Carbo veg. lacks the profuseness of evacuations and sweat. The excessive evacuations also distinguish it from Camphor and Cuprum (in cholera). Homoeopathy scored its laurels in CHOLERA, with its three principle remedies designated by Hahnemann, who had never seen the disease, but had studied its symptoms and wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to help. Early stages, with collapse, coldness and sudden prostration, Camphor: with excessive cramps not only in abdomen, but in, and beginning in, fingers and toes, Cuprum: with excessive cold sweat, and excessive vomiting alb.(See HOMOEOPATHY, Vol.1,126; Vol.111,338). Variously named American white hellebore: American green hellebore: Poke weed. (Veratrum alb. is a different plant of different symptoms and uses: it grows in Europe and Asia).
-While hellebore.
Introduction:
EVERYBODY knows Veratrum alb. as one of the great remedies of collapse: collapse with icy coldness; with profuse cold sweat, especially on the forehead: with profuse evacuations: with great thirst. But far from everybody knows Veratrum alb. as a notable pain remedy: or in its mental aspects-as Hahnemann knew it and left it for us, and as Hahnemann's most faithful followers have experienced and taught it. It is an old folly to substitute opinions for facts. Hahnemann gave us facts, results of actual experiments carefully conducted, and the experience of one of the most astute observers who ever put pen to paper. But since his day some of the teachers, of Homoeopathy, wise in their own conceits, have crippled knowledge and therefore usefulness, by substituting their opinions for facts. Perhaps the worst of these was Hughes, whose "Pharmaco dynamics" was dubbed by his contemporaries "Homoeopathic milk for Allopathic babes", and who, always ready to go one better than Hahnemann, by his dicta and omissions has robbed us of, or belittled much of Hahnemann's experience. He threw doubt, for instance, on Hahnemann's observation that " a single goes of Drosera 30 is quite sufficient for the homoeopathic cure of epidemic whooping cough according to the indications of symptoms" (which he enumerates): "the cure taking place with certainty in from seven to nine days, under a non-medicinal diet" (See HOMOEOPATHY, Vol. III, p.24). This was not the Homoeopathy of Hughes, who favoured repeated doses of low potency, from which, according to his own showing he got very inferior results: but Hughes was obliged to print a footnote in later editions of his work, to the effect that this observation of Hahnemann had been confirmed by other doctors. And one may say that, recently, one doctor after another has volunteered with great joy results from following Hahnemann's directions in regard to whooping cough. Later writers again, have robbed us of a "lead" to good work, by ignoring Hahnemann's black type Drosera symptoms in regard to bones and joints, as if its true, and indeed only sphere was whooping cough and laryngitis. Thus certain cases of even rheumatoid arthritis, where Drosera might have helped, have been left uncured. Again in regard to Veratrum alb. Hughes, from his lofty assumption of critic is pleased to say that "the marked symptoms of insanity which stand at the head of Hahnemann's list" (of mental symptoms)" were observed upon insane patients taking the drug, and are worse than useless". Imagine that ! worse than useless! in Dr.Hughes's opinion. And in Allen's Encyclopaedia, where one of the "contributors" was Dr. Richard Hughes, a footnote is to the following effect: "All symptoms of the mind and disposition occurring in the first two classes, and all the spasmodic phenomena manifested by the third, have been bracketed, as the does administered were too small to induce them."-HUGHES. Again, Opinion versus Fact! One cannot help wondering how much of Hahnemann has been deleted or slurred by Hughes! One only discovers these things gradually. Hering's Guiding Symptoms has no hint of such follies; and Kent, a far greater teacher and prescriber than Hughes-or so one gathers-realizes the great importance of Veratrum alb. in insanity; as we shall see. Meanwhile, hear Hahnemann on the subject: "It is quite false that patients affected with emotional and mental diseases require and bear enormous doses of medicine, as physicians still imagine. In such cases", he says, "health is often but little affected and the patients are often very robust. the malady has settled in the fine invisible organs of the mental and emotional spheres undiscoverable by anatomy. and, in his experience, "patients suffering from mental and emotional diseases soon regained a healthy state of their mental and emotional organs, i.e. perfect recovery of health and reason, by doses as small as those that suffice for other non-psychical maladies, but only of the appropriate and perfectly homoeopathic medicine". One may say here, by the way, that in the provings of drugs, to ascertain their powers of sick-making, mental and physical, in order to use them to neutralize a like sickness, the mental symptoms are best elicited by provings with the higher potencies. But Hahnemann knew what he was talking about in the matter of insanity. He describes (Lesser Writings) how (having been for several years much occupied with the treatment of diseases of the most tedious and desperate character, including hypochondriasis and insanity in particular) with the assistance of the reigning duke he established a convalescent asylum for patients affected with such disorders, in Georgenthal, near Gotha. Here he treated and cured, "the Privy Secretary of the Chancery, one Klockenbring of Hanover: a man who, when in health, "attracted the admiration of Germany by his practical talents for business and his profound sagacity, as also by his knowledge of ancient and modern lore and his acquirements in various branches of science". "His almost superhuman labours in the department of state police, for which he had a great talent, his constant sedentary life, combined with a too nutritious diet" had gradually deranged him: "possibly also his copious indulgence n strong contributed". Anyway, the last straw was some horrible lampoon which completed his mental catastrophe. Hahnemann describes in detail his wild maniacal condition; now quoting from different authors in different languages; now throwing himself, in an agony of sobbing at the feet of his amazed attendants; now hacking and tearing to pieces his attire and his bed; now running about naked, bellowing: demanding food or drinks were spilt and fouled. At first Hahnemann merely watched him, while the treated him and causing him to be treated with the greatest kindness and consideration, so earning his confidence. Then gradually, with remedies-no doubt at all, Veratrum among them, the big man's reason was gradually restored-indeed so perfectly restored that a governmental post-but less arduous, was found for him. And, out of his experience, this is what Hahnemann has to tell us in regard to Veratrum alb. "Physicians have no notion of the power possessed by this drug to promote a cure of almost one-third of the insane in lunatic asylums (at all events as a homoeopathic intermediate remedy) because they know not the peculiar kind of insanity in which to employ it, nor the dose in which it should be administered in order to be efficacious and yet not injurious." In his treatment of mental patients Hahnemann entirely departed from the treatment customary at that time, which was brutal in the extreme. His absolutely new methods, he has describes. "I never allow any insane person to be punished by blows of other painful bodily chastisement, because there can be no punishment for involuntary actions, and because these patients are always made worse and not better by such rough treatment. He (Klockenbring) used often to show me with tears the remains of the marks of the ropes which his former guardians had employed in order to restrain him. The physician in charge of such unhappy people must indeed have at his command and attitude which inspires respect but also creates confidence; he will never feel insulted by them, because a being that cannot reason in incapable of insulting anyone. Their outbreaks for unreasonable anger only arouse his sympathy foe their pitiful state, and call forth his charity to relieve their sad condition." And again, in the Organon, he deals with the treatment of mental aberration. Raving madness to be met by calm fearlessness and firmness: plaintive melancholy soothed by silent compassion by gesture and expression: silly loquacity listened to in silence, with attention; incident behaviour and obscene languages treated with indifference: destruction and injury of objects prevented by placing them out of reach, without reproaching the patient: corporal punishment or torture to be absolutely avoided. Even the administration of medicines need not require coercion: the smallness of the dose, and the tastelessness of homeopathic medicines allows them to be mixed with the patient's drink, obviating any kind of compulsion, and not exciting his suspicion. He adds, "there is nothing that embitters the insane and augments their diseases so much as expressions of contempt, and ill- disguised deception. Physician and attendants should always treat such patients as if they regard them rational beings".
BLACK LETTERS SYMPTOMS
(Hahnemann, Allen, and Hering). Persistent raging. Inconsolable over a fancied misfortune, runs about the room howling and screaming, looking upon the ground; or sits brooding in a corner, wailing and weeping in an inconsolable manner. Taciturnity. Crossness, when cause given. Attacks of pain with delirium, driving to madness. Mania with desire to cut and tear everything, especially clothes; with lewdness and lascivious talk: religious or amorous. Delusions of grandeur. Cold sweat on forehead with anguish and fear of death. Despair of salvation with suppressed catamenia. His consciousness is as if in a dream. Flat-pressing headache, vertex: which became throbbing when moving. Sensation of a lump of ice in vertex. Cold sweat on forehead. Pale face: sunken: with anxious expression. He became pale in the face with frequent stools. He cannot speak. Saliva runs incessantly out of mouth like waterbrash. Tasteless saliva want of taste in mouth. Taste and coolness in mouth, as from peppermint. Pungent peppermint taste in throat: sensation of heat rises into the mouth. Thirst for coldest drinks. Craves ice: fruit. Violent hunger. Excessive thirst during perspiration. Great thirst with hunger. Great nausea before vomiting. Violent vomiting of slimy, acid liquid, with food. Forcible, excessive vomiting. Vomiting and diarrhoea as many as ten times, with pale sunken face, covered with cold sweat. Vomiting if green mucus. Gastric catarrh, great weakness: cold, sudden sinking. Colic, as if intestines twisted into a knot. Cold feeling in abdomen. Colic with burning, as if intestines twisted into a knot, with cold sweat. Cutting pains: flatulent colic, which attacks the lower bowels here and there and the whole abdomen: the longer the flatus is retained, the more difficult it is to be expelled. Diarrhoea with profuse perspiration. Frequent and violent diarrhoea: very profuse and painful. Excessive evacuations: copious evacuations. Constipation on account of the hardness and size of the evacuation. Cholera morbus: worse at night: cold sweat on forehead; vomiting and purging at the same time, after fruits: profuse brownish discharge: thirst: cramps: prostration: cold sweats: great weakness after stool. Asiatic cholera violent evacuation upwards and downwards: icy coldness of body: cramps in calves: vomiting with constant desire for cold drinks: face colourless or bluish: blue margins round eyes: deathly anguish in features: cold tongue and breath: great oppressive anguish in chest, with desire to escape from bed: violent colic, especially about umbilicus, as if abdomen would be torn open: sensitive to contact: drawing and cramps, fingers: wrinkled skin in palms: retention of urine. Palpitation of heart with great anxiety and quickened audible respiration. Excessive anxiety that takes away the breath. Spasmodic construction of larynx with contracted pupils. Suffocative attacks of construction in larynx. Deep hollow cough in three or four shocks. Seems in danger of suffocation, the respiration is so restricted. Cold breath (in cholera). Hands icy cold, blue. Blue nails. Rheumatic pain, felt when moving. Very great difficulty of walking, like paralysis, first right then left hip-joint. Pain under knee, as if bone had been broken and not quite firm. Heavy pain of legs, as from fatigue. Prostration and weakness of the whole body: extreme weakness. Syncope. Yawning. Paralytic sinking of strength. Whole body and face pale. Chill and shivering with frequent stools. Febrile chill with coldness and thirst. Creeping coldness through whole body. Cold skin. Creeping coldness over head, especially vertex. "Lump of ice" sensation, vertex. Face cold, collapsed. Coldness back: extremities cold. Great coldness of hands. Cold sweat. Cold sweat on forehead. Profuse perspiration on forehead with the evacuation. Cold perspiration over whole body. Typhoid forms of fever when vital forces sink: cold sweat: coma. Vomiting and watery diarrhoea: bluish face: pointed nose: wrinkled skin. Internal chill ran through him from head to toes of feet with thirst. Hahnemann gives also, heat and redness of face. Among the peculiar sensations of Verat. alb. we find: As if pregnant, or in throes of childbirth. As if he had a bad conscience and had committed a crime. As if a lump of ice on vertex. As if tongue too heavy. As if peppermint-coolness-in mouth and throat. As if something alive were rising from stomach into throat. As if knives cutting bowels: hot coals in abdomen : pinching as with pincers in abdomen: intestines twisted into a knot. Cold water running through veins. Bones pressed or broken. As if a heavy stone were tied to feet and knees. As if she would have to fly away. Veratrum, then has mania, insanity, delirium, all of great violence. KENT condenses these far more tellingly than one can hope to do, so we will quote. He says: "The mental symptoms are marked by violence and destructiveness: he wants to destroy, to tear something; he tears the clothes from his body. Always wants to be busy, to carry on his daily work. A cooper who was suffering from the Veratrum insanity would pile up chairs on top of one another: when asked what he was doing, he replied that he was piling up staves. When not occupied with this he was tearing his clothes, or praying"(Stram.) "for hours on his knees, and so loud that he could be heard blocks away. Excited state of religious frenzy: believes he is the risen Christ: screams and screeches until he is blue in the face: head cold as ice, cold sweat, reaches out and exhorts to repentance. "Exhorts to repent, preaches, howls, sings obscene songs, exposes the person" (Hyos.) "Fear and the effects of fear: fear of death and of being damned: imagines the world is on fire. "Mania with desire to cut and tear everything especially the clothes puerperal mania and convulsions with violent cerebral congestion; bluish and bloated face; protruding eyes; wild shrieks, with disposition to bite and tear. Alternate states of brooding, screaming and screeching. A few such remedies would empty our insane asylums, especially of recent cases. Insanity is curable if there are so incurable results of disease." Kent says again, "Veratrum is a remedy that would keep many women out of the insane asylum, especially those with uterine trouble. During menses, cold as death, lips blue, extremities cold and blue dreadful pains, sinking sensations,mania to kiss everybody"(Crocus);"hysteria with a coldness at the menstrual period, copious sweat, vomiting and diarrhoea. " Kent remembers a farmer, one summer, who had a strange sensation when he drank water, as if it ran down the outside and did not go down the oesophagus-so marked that he requested his friends to see if it did not run down the outside. Veratrum 2m cured him. "No remedy has produced that sensation, but I figured it out by analogy," says Kent. Verat. has also a sensation of cold water running in the veins. In regard to the symptoms," head feels as if packed in ice; as if ice lay on the vertex," one remembers a hospital patient, a sturdy, elderly women, full of common sense and cheery to the last degree, who developed terrific pains in the head, and was admitted, almost insane with the suffering. Face distorted with its anguish. Remedy after remedy failed to touch her, till one day it turned out that she had a sensation of a block of ice lying on vertex: this suggested Veratrum, as did the symptom,"attacks of pain with delirium, driving to madness"-it was almost as bad as that! and Veratrum quickly changed the picture,and her old self re-emerged. One will never forget Veratrum for terrific, unbearable pains in the head that change the face, almost induce insanity. with that icy sensation on vertex. And in regard to PAIN, Hahnemann says,"Paroxysms of pains, similar to those the white hellebore root can itself produce, and which always brought the patient for a short time into a sort of delirium and mania, often yielded to the smallest dose of the above solution"(the quadrillion of a grain of the root). The cry for Veratrum then, consists of excessive coldness; excessive cold sweat; extreme thirst; extreme violence of evacuations; extreme copiousness of vomiting, purging and sweat; collapse; paralytic weakness and loss of powder: with violence of reactions to pain and mania. The remedies that probably come nearest to it are Arsenicum and Carbo veg. But Arsenicum has extreme anxiety and restlessness, "the Veratrum patient is quiet". and Carbo veg. lacks the profuseness of evacuations and sweat. The excessive evacuations also distinguish it from Camphor and Cuprum (in cholera). Homoeopathy scored its laurels in CHOLERA, with its three principle remedies designated by Hahnemann, who had never seen the disease, but had studied its symptoms and wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to help. Early stages, with collapse, coldness and sudden prostration, Camphor: with excessive cramps not only in abdomen, but in, and beginning in, fingers and toes, Cuprum: with excessive cold sweat, and excessive vomiting alb.(See HOMOEOPATHY, Vol.1,126; Vol.111,338). Variously named American white hellebore: American green hellebore: Poke weed. (Veratrum alb. is a different plant of different symptoms and uses: it grows in Europe and Asia).
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PLEASE WRITE YOUR SYMPTOMS HERE TO GET SUGGESTION.