Chamomilla. child:

By Douglas M. Borland, M.B.,
The symptoms of CHAMOMILLA are almost identical to those of ARSENICUM and yet they are entirely different drugs, and entirely different children. First there is hyperaesthesia, over- sensitiveness to noise, pain, people; there is exactly the same hyperaesthesia in CHAMOMILLA. There is the restlessness of ARSENICUM, moving from one person to another, never still; and exactly the same in CHAMOMILLA, the child goes from one person to another and is never completely still never at peace. And yet the two types are different. In CHAMOMILLA there is extreme hyperaesthesia, the CHAMOMILLA pains are more intense probably than any other pains from which patients suffer; but the reaction is entirely different from that in ARSENICUM. CHAMOMILLA cases have an absolute frenzy of rage; they resent it; they resent having it; and they are furious that the doctor has not cleared it off at once. A CHAMOMILLA child is liable to strike out at you because it is hyperaesthetic. There is intense restlessness in the CHAMOMILLA child, it goes from one person to another, and each time it is dissatisfied with the person it goes to, and as it leaves them it is quite liable to strike at them. It is quite different from the soothing that the ARSENICUM child gets from each one. The CHAMOMILLA child who is over-sensitive to noise, does not get the nightmare the same night, the child is wrought up into a perfect frenzy, liable to scream and stamp when disturbed. It is quite a different reaction. In the ARSENICUM case the child is restless, always moving about whilst the CHAMOMILLA child is better from motion, but particularly better from being carried about-it is passive motion. Jogging about an ARSENICUM child will probably terrify it. Jog about a CHAMOMILLA child and it will probably stop screaming and begin to crow. You stop and it wants you to go on, and if you do not it will pull your hair. The reactions are entirely different although the symptoms in the Materia Medica are almost the same. The CHAMOMILLA child is never still, it is never satisfied with any thing it is doing. But it is not a question of passing form one occupation to another. It is a question of getting tired of one thing and throwing it away. It never puts away its toy in a cupboard, it just tosses it down, and picks up something else; if told to put the first toy in the the cupboard it is liable to yell. Another constant factor about the CHAMOMILLA children is that they get more excitable as the day goes on, more irritable, more difficult to manage, and they are liable to be particularly trouble-some about 9 p.m. The CHAMOMILLA child often is quite impossible after it is put to bed until about midnight, then it appears to wear itself out and falls asleep. All these children who get into a fury tend to get flushed with red faces and hot heads, but the CHAMOMILLA child tends to get flushed on one side of the face, it is flushed generally but one side will be redder than the other. CHAMOMILLA is almost universal for the teething child, but it is a mistake to give CHAMOMILLA to any teething child, the indications for it are quite definite. A teething child who needs CHAMOMILLA tends to get much more fractious at night and to have very swollen, inflamed, tender gums, and they tend to be one- sided with a marked flush on that side of the face. The tender gums are made much worse by any application of heat and they are very much better from cold applications. They are much worse in a hot room, and the attack is liable to subside about midnight. It is worth noting that the toothache pains of CHAMOMILLA have entirely different modalities from the other pains. CHAMOMILLA children are subject to attacks of acute colic possibly because their parents give in to them; they see something they want and scream until they get it, and that evening they go down with acute abdominal colic-mostly the fault of the parents. These attacks of colic are accompanied by a lot of wind and very much relieved by hot applications. With these attacks of colic they are liable to get bouts of diarrhoea, with the typical green CHAMOMILLA diarrhoea stool. A CHAMOMILLA child with colic and diarrhoea gives the best illustration of CHAMOMILLA irritability they scream the place down. It is painful, fairly acute colic, and the child makes it very clear that it is in pain. Another contrast between CHAMOMILLA and ARSENICUM children, is that CHAMOMILLA children are usually hot-blooded. They have very hot heads, very often hot and sweaty, and they are liable to have burning hot feet which they push out of bed at night. CHAMOMILLA children are ungoverned children, and they have mostly been allowed to get out of hand, but in addition the CHAMOMILLA child in a tantrum of temper can get into such a state that it gets blue in the face starts careful convulsions from pure rage. So one has to be a little careful about the handling of the true CHAMOMILLA child. One typical CHAMOMILLA child, about three years of age, when in a rage was liable to beat her head against the wall, merely because it distressed her mother. One night about 10 p.m. after she had been quite impossible for the previous hour and her mother had left her to scream, she had gone into a convulsion. She was practically unconscious, dusky in the face, and twitching all over. So one has to be careful about the wholesome neglect of the CHAMOMILLA child. Quite a number of CHAMOMILLA babies, teething and with acutely inflamed gums, develop convulsions, and this indicates an explosive nervous system in the CHAMOMILLA child which should be watched. Teething children do well on a low potency. A few doses usually stop the disturbance, CHAMOMILLA 12 to 30, two hourly, in the average case, but in a violent attack repeat every half-hour until they quieten down. CHAMOMILLA is also useful for acute otitis in children. It is an extremely painful condition, and in most cases the child does not want to be touched,and is intensely irritable, very often screaming with pain. If the trouble has been brought on form exposure to cold CHAMOMILLA is one of the greatest standbys in the small child, particularly if the one-sided flush is present. CHAMOMILLA has cleared more acute otitis in small children than any other single drug. And it clears up clears up without any puncture of the drum. But the child must have the CHAMOMILLA make-up as well as the otitis, or CHAMOMILLA will not work. the nervous system has to be all on the fret, and the child has to be irritable and touchy. The PULSATILLA child develops otitis media from the same cause exposure to cold - has the one-sided flush - but it is a PULSATILLA child, not a CHAMOMILLA one, and CHAMOMILLA will not do it any good. These are the two commonest drugs for acute otitis in children.