Mirza Tahir Ahmad - James Tyler Kent - William Boericke
Aethusa Cynapium, if truly analogous to the disease complex, works wonders. In allopathy, there is no match for this Homoeopathic remedy. This is the best remedy for wasting disease of the children (marasmus). The child cannot digest milk; he throws up as soon as he drinks milk. The vomiting renders him very weak. He feels hungry, takes milk-feed and immediately vomits again. The constipation is severe. If diarrhoea ensues, the stools are small. Firstly, they are yellowish in colour and then, turn greenish (bilecoloured). There is intense griping in the abdomen. In addition to diarrhoea, there is a tendency to repeated vomiting of clotted milk.
The majority of the children are severely constipated. Diarrhoea is rare. The child is usually drowsy and steadily goes on getting weaker. Once a marasmic child was brought to me who looked terrible. His head was large, his face drawn and shrivelled, and his body was just a bony skeleton. His parents told me that they had tried many medicines but to no avail, since the child was constipated for over a month, and threw up after every milk feed. I gave him Aethusa. Soon his constipation was relieved, he could digest milk and his condition started improving. Within a week, the child became hale and hearty.
Marasmus is also found in Abrotanum. In Abrotanum, the wasting begins in the legs and then spreads upwards towards the chest and neck. In Aethusa, wasting involves the entire body simultaneously. Another sign of Aethusa is that with heat, the sickness migrates towards the head. For a child with some mental deficiency and a tendency to throw up milk immediately after feed, Aethusa is the remedy. Aethusa will cure his mental as well as abdominal problem. With conventional allopathic treatment, if the child is treated for his abdominal problem, he will become mentally ill, even insane. Clearcut symptoms of Aethusa warrant the use of Aethusa alone. In Aethusa Cynapium, the illness comes on with full force followed by mental and physical exhaustion, drowsiness and delirium. The patient is extremely superstitious and hallucinates about cats, dogs and mice. He lacks concentration. He is sad and feels uneasy. The head feels tied up in a vice. There is pain at the back of the head, which radiates down the neck, shoulders and upper back. This pain is relieved by pressure or lying down, as well as after passing stools and wind (flatus). Hairs feel stretched. There is drowsiness, dizziness and palpitation. When dizziness ends, the head starts feeling warm.
The eyes are very sensitive to light. The margins of the eyelids swell. The eyeballs roll around during sleep. The eyes are drawn downwards. Things appear larger than their actual size. The ears ache, with a feeling of discharge of warm fluid with hissing sounds. Thick nasal secretions causes blockage of the nose. The tip of the nose feels sore. An ineffective desire to sneeze is typical of Aethusa. Red marks appear on the face. The jaws hurt and feel stiff. The tongue is dry and feels too long. Burning and blisters of the throat make swallowing difficult. At times, due to difficulty in breathing and feeling suffocated, the patient may not even speak. The chest feels tight.
Aethusa is very useful in diseases of the women. During menstruation, if there is excessive watery bleeding and painful swelling of the breasts, uterine discomfort and sluggish intestinal movements (peristalsis), vomiting soon after eating without nausea, along with some other peculiar symptoms of Aethusa Cynapium, they will all respond to Aethusa.
The symptoms of Aethusa intensify early in the morning, at about 3 to 4 a.m., with cold water and in warm bedding. All the symptoms, except mental, subside in the open air. Aethusa is very good in teething diarrhoea of children. In Aethusa patients, there may also be numbness of the arms and feet, and developing cramp. The elbows are spastic. Fingers and thumbs clench. There is numbness in the hands and the feet. Aethusa is useful in epilepsy too. The limbs feel cold and tight along with frothing from the mouth. The child cannot hold the head up, vomits immediately after milk feed and then demands milk soon after.
Aethusa is considered useful by some homoeopaths for students who get confused and very apprehensive in the examination hall. One dose of Aethusa Cynapium 200 taken on the morning of the exam is found very useful.
Adjuvant: Calcaria Carb.
Potency: 30 to 200
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
AETHUSA CYNAPIUM
Generalities: Before Aethusa was known a certain class of cases of cholera infantum, and vomiting and diarrhea in children, all resulted fatally, because there was no remedy that looked like such serious cases.
Death is stamped on the face from the beginning, and if there are any remedies in the book that save life this is one of them.
It applies to the cases that come on very suddenly in hot weather in infancy, with extreme prostration.
The mother does not suspect the child is sick until she takes it from the crib; only a few hours before it was well; but when cholera infantum is prevalent in hot weather, this little one fills its stomach with milk and almost before it has had time to coagulate or form into curds the milk comes up partly in curds and partly liquid, and accompanying the vomiting there is a thin, yellow greenish, slimy stool.
The child has the appearance as if it were dying, pale Hippocratic face, there is a whitish-blue pallor around the lips, the eyes are sunken and there is a sunken condition around the nose. The mother is astonished and sends for the doctor hurriedly. The child sinks into an exhausted sleep.
It wakes up and again fills the stomach with milk which comes up again in a few minutes, partly in curd and partly liquid, and again there is the awful exhaustion, deathly appearance and prolonged sleep.
Without Aethusa, in two or three days the undertaker gets that child. That is pretty nearly the whole story of Aethusa.
It has delirium, it has excitement, it has mental disturbances of various kinds, but they are acute and accompany the brain troubles.
A certain class of infants come down sick in the hot weather, in the hot nights, and they get brain trouble, and from that time the stomach quits business, the bowels become relaxed, and everything put into the stomach either comes up or goes right through.
This occurs especially in those infants that have been fed as the ordinary everyday mother feeds her baby and how is that?
Every time it cries she puts it to the breast or feeds it. Well, now; let us think a bit. Every doctor ought to think a little, once in a while. Now meditate a trifle as to whether that is a wise or foolish thing to do.
It takes about two hours or two hours and a half for the ordinary baby's stomach to transact good wholesome business in digesting the milk taken, and it ought to have a rest of half an hour or so, and when we get up to three hours and the baby cries then it is probably hungry and will be glad to take some more and digest it.
Any shorter interval of feeding than that is bad practice, it would be just the same thing if the child should take half teacupful of milk and let it partly digest, and in a little while take little more, and then later add a little more.
It commences to spit up its food and it is sour, and the very first spell of hot weather that comes brings on head trouble. Only the toughest children will stand this bad method.
I have watched these children and seen them stand it until the summer. The doctor must put his foot down, and put it down violently, and make them see he means it.
The old woman comes in and says:
"That doctor does not know anything" and the baby must be fed.
Now Aethusa suits improperly fed babies. It is at the head of the list of medicines for that condition; that is, when digestion has absolutely ceased from brain trouble.
Stomach and digestion: So far as busy doctors have discovered the call for this remedy, it has been mostly among babies, but adults sometimes take on an Aethusa state, when digestion has absolutely ceased from brain trouble and from excitement.
It has cured dyspepsia from constant feeding, in those nibblers, those hungry fellows who are always eating, always nibbling, always taking crackers in their pockets until there comes a time when the stomach ceases to act.
It also suits cases of indigestion from head troubles, with hot head, vomiting, exhaustion, sweat and long sleep.
Convulsions: Aethusa has convulsions in children.
Sometimes the brain trouble does not affect the stomach, but the child goes into convulsions, with clammy hands, deathly countenance, and the sweat, exhaustion and sleep.
"Convulsions, great weakness and prostration, with sleepiness. Dosing of the child after vomiting and after stool, with convulsions."
In the Aethusa patient there is much in the face and aspect to indicate a remedy; so much can be seen and comes within the observation, and so little questioning is necessary, that a sort of snap-shot prescribing can be done, but it is not to be recommended.
A busy physician, one who really and truly studies his Materia Medica, learned the principles, will in time do a great deal of what seems to be snap-shot prescribing, but he really does not do so, because he puts together many things that outsiders would not think of.
Aethusa then shows itself upon the surface, whereas in many remedies there is nothing seen upon the surface because they manifest themselves in any or deeper sensations.
Let me lay a case before you to illustrate this. For instance, take a robust looking fellow, who declares himself fairly well, out to lunch with you.
You have noticed for some time that his nose is all the time peeling off at once there is a star.
He never talks about his health.
Pretty soon, while lunching, the door slams and he jumps. That is the second point. Then he tells you how much he eats, how well it affects him, how good he feels after eating, and you have noticed yourself that he eats a good deal.
You have not said one word about his health to him. You have not asked him to tell you any symptoms. Finally you shove the pitcher of milk over to him, and he says:
"Oh, I can't drink milk; if I take milk it gives me diarrhoea; I never think of taking it."
Who could not prescribe for that fellow without taking him into the office?
Who would think of anything but Natrum carb. for such a case?
Sometimes you can find out the whole story by getting a stubborn patient to go and dine with you.
by James Tyler Kent
AETHUSA CYNAPIUM (Fool's Parsley)
The characteristic symptoms relate mainly to the brain and nervous system, connected with gastro-intestinal disturbance. Anguish, crying, and expression of uneasiness and discontent, lead to this remedy most frequently in disease in children, during dentition, summer complaint, when, with the diarrhœa, there is marked inability to digest milk, and poor circulation. Symptoms set in with violence.
Mind.--Restless, anxious, crying. Sees rats, cats, dogs, etc. Unconscious, delirious. Inability to think, to fix the attention. Brain fag. Idiocy may alternate with furor and irritability.
Head.--Feels bound up, or in a vise. Occipital pain extending down spine; better lying down and by pressure. Head symptoms relieved by expelling flatus (Sanguin) and by stool. Hair feels pulled. Vertigo with drowsiness, with palpitation; head hot after vertigo ceases.
Eyes.--Photophobia; swelling of Meibomian glands. Rolling of eyes on falling asleep. Eyes drawn downward; pupils dilated.
Ears.--Feel obstructed. Sense of something hot from ears. Hissing sound.
Nose.--Stopped up with much thick mucus. Herpetic eruption on tip of nose. Frequent ineffectual desire to sneeze.
Face.--Puffed, red-spotted, collapsed. Expression anxious, full of pain; linea nasalis marked.
Mouth.--Dry. Aphthæ. Tongue seems too long. Burning and pustules in throat, with difficult swallowing.
Stomach.--Intolerance of milk; vomiting as soon as swallowed or in large curds. Hungry after vomiting. Regurgitation of food about an hour after eating. Violent vomiting of a white frothy matter. Nausea at sight of food. Painful contraction of stomach. Vomiting, with sweat and great weakness, accompanied by anguish and distress, followed by sleepiness. Stomach feels turned upside down, with burning feeling up to the chest. Tearing pains in the stomach extending to œsophagus.
Abdomen.--Cold, internal and external, with aching pain in bowels. Colic, followed by vomiting, vertigo, and weakness. Tense, inflated, and sensitive. Bubbling sensation around navel.
Stool.--Undigested, thin, greenish, preceded by colic, with tenesmus, and followed by exhaustion and drowsiness. Cholera infantum; child cold, clammy, stupid, with staring eyes and dilated pupils. Obstinate constipation; feels as if all bowel action is lost. Choleraic affections in old age.
Urinary.--Cutting pain in bladder, with frequent urging. Pain in kidneys.
Female.--Lancinating pains in sexual organs. Pimples; itching when warm. Menses watery. Swelling of mammary glands, with lancinating pains.
Respiratory.--Difficult, oppressed, anxious respiration; crampy constriction. Sufferings render patient speechless.
Heart.--Violent palpitation, with vertigo, headache and restlessness. Pulse rapid, hard and small.
Back and Extremities.--Want of power to stand up or hold head up. Back feels as if in a vise. Aching in small of back. Weakness of lower extremities. Fingers and thumbs clenched. Numbness of hands and feet. Violent spasms. Squinting of eyes downward.
Skin.--Excoriation of thighs in walking. Easy perspiration. Surface of body cold and covered with clammy sweat. Lymphatic glands swollen. Itching eruption around joints. Skin of hands dry and shrunken. Ecchymosis. Anasarca.
Fever.--Great heat; no thirst. Profuse, cold sweat. Must be covered during sweat.
Sleep.--Disturbed by violent startings; cold perspiration. Dozing after vomiting or stool. Child is so exhausted, it falls asleep at once.
Modalities.--Worse, 3 to 4 am, and evenings; warmth, summer. Better in open air and company.
Compare: Athamantha (confused head, vertigo better lying down, bitter taste and saliva. Hands and feet icy cold); Antimon; Calc; Ars; Cicuta. Complementary: Calc.
Dose.--Third to thirtieth potency.
by William Boericke