Ammonium muriaticum [Am-m]:
-Jan Scholten
Ammonium muriaticum is a remedy that doesn't get prescribed very often. The first time that I prescribed Am-m was for a woman who always sneezed in her sleep. The result was excellent, but it didn't satisfy me, because I didn't understand what was happening and what was underneath it all. Now, after a lot of study, Am-m has become almost a 'routine' remedy: someone comes with sinusitis maxillaris on the left side, I ask about the relationship with her mother, which proves to be a source of bitterness; add to this a desire for coffee and chocolate, and this rounds off a case of Am-m. In our practice Am-m has now become almost as common as Nat-m.
Concepts
Ammonium Muriaticum
Resentment, grudge Self pity
Anger, hate, criticism Care and nurturing
Closed, held in Mother
Idealism Attention
Disappointment, gloom Self-awareness
Group analysis
The theme according to the group analysis is resentment towards the mother. The have become disappointed and bitter towards their mother. They feel that their mother has abandoned them to their fate. This feel that they have missed something and this makes them sad. But it also makes them angry and bitter.
We can also have the opposite situation, where they had the ideal mother, the mother who was always there with kindness and love. Or, at least, this is how they experienced it. At a certain moment they realise that the situation was not quite so ideal as it first seemed and this creates a feeling of disappointment and resentment.
A variation on this theme might be that they have feelings of resentment, because they aren't being protected and nurtured any more. This looks very like the previous situation, but is not quite the same, because it is not directly linked to the mother. The resentment is more towards the cold hard world as a whole. They feel unloved and unprotected.
Yet another variation might be the case where they have a mother who is very resentful herself. If the mother feels that she has lost out in the world, she might become bitter and cynical herself, losing or suppressing her soft touch in the process. Through this attitude of the mother the same kind of hardness may be passed on to her children, which completes the circle.
A final variation could be that the mother has a grudge towards her children. For instance, they might be very difficult, awkward children who upset her pleasant, peaceful life. Or they may feel that the children ask so much of her time and energy that it becomes impossible to enjoy their own life. Their ambitions and hopes are all disturbed by having the children.
The way that all these feelings, as described above, are expressed is primarily in the form of anger. They are angry, irritable, critical and cynical. They can also be sad, gloomy, withdrawn, bitter and envious.
Thirdly, they might be closed and reserved, with an aversion to company, conversation and consolation. They feel that they are a prey to the hard world and that they have to be very hard themselves as a protective measure.
These various expressions of the basic theme are well represented in the repertory: The unprotected feeling is shown in the rubric 'delusion enemy is under the bed', 'delusion sword is hanging over her head', 'dreams, bitten, being by horse' and 'delusion that he would be murdered'. The anger can be found in the rubrics 'abusive', 'envy', 'hatred', 'revenge' and 'malicious'. The reservedness we find in 'aversion to answer', 'aversion to certain persons' and 'misanthropy'. The sadness is mentioned in 'ailments from grief'.
Case
A woman of 30 comes because of 'cafe au lait' marks on her chest. Her skin is sensitive to the sun and burns easily. She sometimes has a pain in her right ear when she lies on it in her sleep.
Past history: Before the age of 8 she had a lot of lung problems, including pneumonia, for which she was treated with penicillin many times. She used to have a high fever with delirium, seeing balloons in the sky. She was not frightened by this, quite the opposite. She liked it because it gave her a feeling of oneness with her mother. Later on her tonsils were removed and the complaints went away.
She often suffered from tonsillitis.
The pains in her throat were sharp, worse when swallowing and worse just at the back of her mouth and the beginning of her throat. Her tongue used to be patchy red and white. The attacks came and went suddenly. She used to feel cold and she sweated a lot, but she did not have a fever. She felt as if a line was going from one ear to the other.
She also had an inflammation of the uterus twice. This started with a vague pain in her lower abdomen, followed one day later by a flow of blood. She ended up with peritonitis, for which she had to spend ten days in hospital. She was completely 'absent' at the time, feeling it was all happening outside herself.
She is usually very active, but can become tired quite suddenly.
General characteristics:
Physique: tall and thin; blonde.
Temperature: cold, with cold fingertips; during puberty she disliked the sun because she missed a sense of being protected and enclosed.
she likes fresh air, seaside and mountains.
Perspiration: minimal.
Time: (<) winter Desires: coffee(2), chocolate(3), fish (2), sweet, salt, cabbage. Aversion: meat, sour (2), milk; coffee makes her restless. Menses: copious; before the menses she feels bloated, has swollen breasts and feels irritable and emotional. Sleep: on the left side. Mind: She is a very closed person, and doesn't express her irritation easily either. She has the attitude of wait and see. She talks slowly and thoughtfully. She is quick thinking and can perceive situations fast and accurately. She has an analytical mind and has to take care not to get lost in details. She is very critical. When she walks through the town she is always silently criticising everything: 'This isn't right, that should be changed' etc. She is frightened of narrow spaces, in planes and in lifts. Dreams: she dreams about big buildings or tunnels from which she is trying to escape. She also dreams about the sea, where the waves get bigger and bigger and threaten to drown her. Relationships: Up until 2 years ago she had many boyfriends, but nothing serious. It was all rather superficial and childish. Work: She has a nice job as a graphic designer. Analysis Once you know the theme of Am-m, it is not difficult to recognise it in this case. She lived in an ideal world with her mother until she was 8. She is very resentful towards her mother, very critical and reserved. The success of Am-m in this case has taught me a lot about the remedy. This is how I came to prescribe it: I recognised the bitterness and the resentment from my previous experience of Am-c. But Am-c did not fit this case very well, because we don't see the fight with the world and the hardness. Instead we see an attitude of 'poor me', which belongs to the Muriaticums. And so I was led to the combination Am-m. Reaction At first she received carc 1M, which gave no reaction. After the first dose of Am-m 1M she felt better in general. The menses were better too. In the beginning she had a reaction in the form of sore throat and swollen glands in her neck. Three weeks later she had this again: it suddenly started within an hour. She felt very suffocated on two occasions, just as she used to in the past. But she felt stronger inside, more able to relax and let it happen, instead of resisting it. Because of her throat complaints I repeated the Am-m after one month. To this she reacted by vomiting bile the whole night. That was a turning point for her; she decided 'I don't want this anymore'. She felt as if she had to force some things out of her body and mind. After that she felt weak for quite a while, but at the same time she knew that it was the beginning of her recovery. She subsequently developed bronchitis, with a violent, dry cough. It was very deep seated, but she was confident that it would clear up sooner or later, something which she had never felt in the past. Finally her complaints started to clear. The brown spots had disappeared completely after 3 months. There were also some very deep mental changes. Her critical and cynical attitude made way for feelings of softness. She became more gentle to herself and to others. She also started to have more trust in her body, even expressing this verbally at one time. After a few months she started to receive comments from other people that she had become so much softer and kinder. Picture of Ammonium muriaticum Essence: resentment towards the mother because they miss a feeling of security. Mind: They have a grudge against their mother, because they feel that she has treated them badly and unfairly. They have lost their sense of security, their sense of being cared for. Their picture of the world, which was so ideal and gentle, has been distorted. The original situation can be one where the mother is hard and cynical. Or one where their mother demands a lot of them before she will give them her love. She herself may be disillusioned and disappointed. Or it may be a case where the mother tries to fulfil her own frustrated ambitions through her children. This makes her so hard that her caring and gentle nature is pushed aside completely. The Am-m state can also be created when the mother is not necessarily hard and uncaring, but when someone simply has an exaggerated and ideal picture in his mind of how a mother should be. The real mother will just not be able to live up to this ideal. This can be the start of an Am-m state, with anger and resentment, where they know everything better and are very surly and difficult in general. Most typical is their critical attitude, not even the smallest matter escaping their criticism. They are gloomy and sad because of their lost happiness, 'paradise lost'. They are disappointed and bitter, envious of those who are still happy. They may look indifferent and apathetic, but this is usually only on the outside. Deep inside they feel an enormous resentment. They are also closed and reserved. They look like Nat-m. in this respect and they both have a lot of sadness. But Nat-m does not have so much hate and criticism. They are more inclined to withdraw because they don't like people. They have an aversion to company, conversation and consolation. Because of their difficulty in making contact with other people, they may stay single. Am-m. feels unprotected and vulnerable in a hard world. They feel that there is very little gentleness and love left in this world. If they do happen to come across some expression of this love they are very quick to kill it with their criticism. Not many people can stand this cynicism for very long and people soon give up trying to be kind to them. This keeps the vicious circle going. The Ammonium muriaticums become hard and they feel that they have to be in order to protect themselves against the hardness of other people. They can't stand injustice, especially not towards children. But on the other hand they don't like whining children either: this also touches their core theme. Dreams: about a big building where they get lost and from where they can't escape. Or about a huge wave which threatens to drown them. General characteristics: Location: left. Physique: tall and thin. Temperature: cold, (<) cold, (<) outside. Time: (<) 3 am. Desires: coffee(2), chocolate (3), sweet, sour, tobacco. Aversion: meat. (>) eating. (<) potatoes, alcohol. (<) fasting. Menses: painful and swollen breasts before menses. Physical: (<) bathing. (>) lying down, (<) stretching.
Complaints:
The pains are burning and biting.
The discharges are acrid, watery and yellow, smelling of ammonia.
Sinusitis maxillaris left (3). Colds.
Lung complaints, emphysema. Sneezing during sleep. Stomach complaints.
Sciatica(3). Inflammations of the joints with contractures.
The skin and mucous membranes can become very red, burning and swollen.
Skin: 'cafe au lait' patches.
DD: Ammoniums, Carc, Caust, Muriaticums, Nit-ac, Nitricums.
Ammonium muriaticum is a remedy that doesn't get prescribed very often. The first time that I prescribed Am-m was for a woman who always sneezed in her sleep. The result was excellent, but it didn't satisfy me, because I didn't understand what was happening and what was underneath it all. Now, after a lot of study, Am-m has become almost a 'routine' remedy: someone comes with sinusitis maxillaris on the left side, I ask about the relationship with her mother, which proves to be a source of bitterness; add to this a desire for coffee and chocolate, and this rounds off a case of Am-m. In our practice Am-m has now become almost as common as Nat-m.
Concepts
Ammonium Muriaticum
Resentment, grudge Self pity
Anger, hate, criticism Care and nurturing
Closed, held in Mother
Idealism Attention
Disappointment, gloom Self-awareness
Group analysis
The theme according to the group analysis is resentment towards the mother. The have become disappointed and bitter towards their mother. They feel that their mother has abandoned them to their fate. This feel that they have missed something and this makes them sad. But it also makes them angry and bitter.
We can also have the opposite situation, where they had the ideal mother, the mother who was always there with kindness and love. Or, at least, this is how they experienced it. At a certain moment they realise that the situation was not quite so ideal as it first seemed and this creates a feeling of disappointment and resentment.
A variation on this theme might be that they have feelings of resentment, because they aren't being protected and nurtured any more. This looks very like the previous situation, but is not quite the same, because it is not directly linked to the mother. The resentment is more towards the cold hard world as a whole. They feel unloved and unprotected.
Yet another variation might be the case where they have a mother who is very resentful herself. If the mother feels that she has lost out in the world, she might become bitter and cynical herself, losing or suppressing her soft touch in the process. Through this attitude of the mother the same kind of hardness may be passed on to her children, which completes the circle.
A final variation could be that the mother has a grudge towards her children. For instance, they might be very difficult, awkward children who upset her pleasant, peaceful life. Or they may feel that the children ask so much of her time and energy that it becomes impossible to enjoy their own life. Their ambitions and hopes are all disturbed by having the children.
The way that all these feelings, as described above, are expressed is primarily in the form of anger. They are angry, irritable, critical and cynical. They can also be sad, gloomy, withdrawn, bitter and envious.
Thirdly, they might be closed and reserved, with an aversion to company, conversation and consolation. They feel that they are a prey to the hard world and that they have to be very hard themselves as a protective measure.
These various expressions of the basic theme are well represented in the repertory: The unprotected feeling is shown in the rubric 'delusion enemy is under the bed', 'delusion sword is hanging over her head', 'dreams, bitten, being by horse' and 'delusion that he would be murdered'. The anger can be found in the rubrics 'abusive', 'envy', 'hatred', 'revenge' and 'malicious'. The reservedness we find in 'aversion to answer', 'aversion to certain persons' and 'misanthropy'. The sadness is mentioned in 'ailments from grief'.
Case
A woman of 30 comes because of 'cafe au lait' marks on her chest. Her skin is sensitive to the sun and burns easily. She sometimes has a pain in her right ear when she lies on it in her sleep.
Past history: Before the age of 8 she had a lot of lung problems, including pneumonia, for which she was treated with penicillin many times. She used to have a high fever with delirium, seeing balloons in the sky. She was not frightened by this, quite the opposite. She liked it because it gave her a feeling of oneness with her mother. Later on her tonsils were removed and the complaints went away.
She often suffered from tonsillitis.
The pains in her throat were sharp, worse when swallowing and worse just at the back of her mouth and the beginning of her throat. Her tongue used to be patchy red and white. The attacks came and went suddenly. She used to feel cold and she sweated a lot, but she did not have a fever. She felt as if a line was going from one ear to the other.
She also had an inflammation of the uterus twice. This started with a vague pain in her lower abdomen, followed one day later by a flow of blood. She ended up with peritonitis, for which she had to spend ten days in hospital. She was completely 'absent' at the time, feeling it was all happening outside herself.
She is usually very active, but can become tired quite suddenly.
General characteristics:
Physique: tall and thin; blonde.
Temperature: cold, with cold fingertips; during puberty she disliked the sun because she missed a sense of being protected and enclosed.
she likes fresh air, seaside and mountains.
Perspiration: minimal.
Time: (<) winter Desires: coffee(2), chocolate(3), fish (2), sweet, salt, cabbage. Aversion: meat, sour (2), milk; coffee makes her restless. Menses: copious; before the menses she feels bloated, has swollen breasts and feels irritable and emotional. Sleep: on the left side. Mind: She is a very closed person, and doesn't express her irritation easily either. She has the attitude of wait and see. She talks slowly and thoughtfully. She is quick thinking and can perceive situations fast and accurately. She has an analytical mind and has to take care not to get lost in details. She is very critical. When she walks through the town she is always silently criticising everything: 'This isn't right, that should be changed' etc. She is frightened of narrow spaces, in planes and in lifts. Dreams: she dreams about big buildings or tunnels from which she is trying to escape. She also dreams about the sea, where the waves get bigger and bigger and threaten to drown her. Relationships: Up until 2 years ago she had many boyfriends, but nothing serious. It was all rather superficial and childish. Work: She has a nice job as a graphic designer. Analysis Once you know the theme of Am-m, it is not difficult to recognise it in this case. She lived in an ideal world with her mother until she was 8. She is very resentful towards her mother, very critical and reserved. The success of Am-m in this case has taught me a lot about the remedy. This is how I came to prescribe it: I recognised the bitterness and the resentment from my previous experience of Am-c. But Am-c did not fit this case very well, because we don't see the fight with the world and the hardness. Instead we see an attitude of 'poor me', which belongs to the Muriaticums. And so I was led to the combination Am-m. Reaction At first she received carc 1M, which gave no reaction. After the first dose of Am-m 1M she felt better in general. The menses were better too. In the beginning she had a reaction in the form of sore throat and swollen glands in her neck. Three weeks later she had this again: it suddenly started within an hour. She felt very suffocated on two occasions, just as she used to in the past. But she felt stronger inside, more able to relax and let it happen, instead of resisting it. Because of her throat complaints I repeated the Am-m after one month. To this she reacted by vomiting bile the whole night. That was a turning point for her; she decided 'I don't want this anymore'. She felt as if she had to force some things out of her body and mind. After that she felt weak for quite a while, but at the same time she knew that it was the beginning of her recovery. She subsequently developed bronchitis, with a violent, dry cough. It was very deep seated, but she was confident that it would clear up sooner or later, something which she had never felt in the past. Finally her complaints started to clear. The brown spots had disappeared completely after 3 months. There were also some very deep mental changes. Her critical and cynical attitude made way for feelings of softness. She became more gentle to herself and to others. She also started to have more trust in her body, even expressing this verbally at one time. After a few months she started to receive comments from other people that she had become so much softer and kinder. Picture of Ammonium muriaticum Essence: resentment towards the mother because they miss a feeling of security. Mind: They have a grudge against their mother, because they feel that she has treated them badly and unfairly. They have lost their sense of security, their sense of being cared for. Their picture of the world, which was so ideal and gentle, has been distorted. The original situation can be one where the mother is hard and cynical. Or one where their mother demands a lot of them before she will give them her love. She herself may be disillusioned and disappointed. Or it may be a case where the mother tries to fulfil her own frustrated ambitions through her children. This makes her so hard that her caring and gentle nature is pushed aside completely. The Am-m state can also be created when the mother is not necessarily hard and uncaring, but when someone simply has an exaggerated and ideal picture in his mind of how a mother should be. The real mother will just not be able to live up to this ideal. This can be the start of an Am-m state, with anger and resentment, where they know everything better and are very surly and difficult in general. Most typical is their critical attitude, not even the smallest matter escaping their criticism. They are gloomy and sad because of their lost happiness, 'paradise lost'. They are disappointed and bitter, envious of those who are still happy. They may look indifferent and apathetic, but this is usually only on the outside. Deep inside they feel an enormous resentment. They are also closed and reserved. They look like Nat-m. in this respect and they both have a lot of sadness. But Nat-m does not have so much hate and criticism. They are more inclined to withdraw because they don't like people. They have an aversion to company, conversation and consolation. Because of their difficulty in making contact with other people, they may stay single. Am-m. feels unprotected and vulnerable in a hard world. They feel that there is very little gentleness and love left in this world. If they do happen to come across some expression of this love they are very quick to kill it with their criticism. Not many people can stand this cynicism for very long and people soon give up trying to be kind to them. This keeps the vicious circle going. The Ammonium muriaticums become hard and they feel that they have to be in order to protect themselves against the hardness of other people. They can't stand injustice, especially not towards children. But on the other hand they don't like whining children either: this also touches their core theme. Dreams: about a big building where they get lost and from where they can't escape. Or about a huge wave which threatens to drown them. General characteristics: Location: left. Physique: tall and thin. Temperature: cold, (<) cold, (<) outside. Time: (<) 3 am. Desires: coffee(2), chocolate (3), sweet, sour, tobacco. Aversion: meat. (>) eating. (<) potatoes, alcohol. (<) fasting. Menses: painful and swollen breasts before menses. Physical: (<) bathing. (>) lying down, (<) stretching.
Complaints:
The pains are burning and biting.
The discharges are acrid, watery and yellow, smelling of ammonia.
Sinusitis maxillaris left (3). Colds.
Lung complaints, emphysema. Sneezing during sleep. Stomach complaints.
Sciatica(3). Inflammations of the joints with contractures.
The skin and mucous membranes can become very red, burning and swollen.
Skin: 'cafe au lait' patches.
DD: Ammoniums, Carc, Caust, Muriaticums, Nit-ac, Nitricums.
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