Mirza Tahir Ahmad James Tyler Kent
Lac Caninum is prepared from the milk of a female dog. For this very reason, most people scorn it and hate to even touch it. Yet, other medicines like Psorinum and Syphlinium are prepared from much more loathsome and dangerous materials. Dog’s milk converted into homoeopathic form becomes a purely clean remedy. One must not hesitate to use it.
Initially, Dr. Reisig and Dr. Bayards, on proving, found the extreme usefulness of this medicine. After their death, Dr. Dyer pursued their course. After him, Dr. Kent took over the use of this medicine, which he used successfully on a vast array of diseases. Its most prominent feature is mental anguish and mental confusion. The nerves become extremely excitable. It is in the nature of dogs that they jump around imaginary objects and start barking. Probably, that is the background of storywriters’ claims that the dogs can see ghosts and spirits. The above-mentioned doctors did not have any background of this sort of knowledge. However, when the homoeopathic potency was prepared from this milk, it was found on proving that a person given Lac Caninum starts seeing imaginary things (hallucinations) and feels as if those things will jump over him and endanger him. This is in the nature of the dog and through the supply of her milk, the human mind and the nervous system can be made to express certain illnesses. If such ailments already exist, the homoeopathic form of the canine milk has the capability to cure them.
This medicine has significant mental symptoms. It also affects the glands. It takes care of the enlarged glands. When the glands become inflamed, the overlying skin becomes shiny but unattractive and tense. Lac Caninum cures such wounds.
In Lac Caninum, the skin is extremely sensitive, more prominent in women as a result of which they keep their fingers spread apart. If by chance, one finger happens to touch the other, they scream. Even the lightest touch of a cloth is unbearable. This kind of hypersensitivity is also found in Lachesis. Sometimes, these two medicines can be used in the place of the other. Another factor common to both Lachesis and Lac Caninum is that their feelings become very sharp and they are scared of even imaginary things. In spite of these commonalities, there are definite differences between the two. A patient of Lac Caninum cannot be left alone, while the patient of Lachesis likes solitude. The ailments of Lachesis get aggravated after sleep and move from the left to the right.
Mental and psychological symptoms: A prominent feature of Lac Caninum is that while walking the patient feels as if he is floating in the air. He believes that whatever he is saying is a total lie and considers himself to be a liar. One specific symptom of a Lac Caninum patient is that he believes that the nose he has on his face belongs to somebody else, or that his body is not his own, or as if somebody else is talking instead of himself.
Lac Caninum is also useful in the treatment of joint pains. The fleeting muscle pains migrate from one place to another like a quick jump-over. The pains are less in cold weather. A beneficial response to cold is also seen in Ledum and Pulsatilla. Pulsatilla is of a hot nature while Ledum is not. However, joint pains belonging to both respond very well to cold application to the extent that the patient would like to put ice in the water to make it colder and then dip his feet. Joint pains associated with Ledum begin in the lower part of the body and then migrate upwards.
In Lac Caninum, there is extreme sensitivity to light and noise. While reading, vision becomes slightly blurred. Sounds appear to be coming from a far off distance. Nearby sounds also feel as if they are moving away. This condition is specific to Lac Caninum.
Lac Caninum is one of the best remedies for Diphtheria, especially when associated with the pain migrating from one tonsil to the other and then to the first one again and so on. Diphtheria used to be a very common disease and its treatment was also very difficult. But now, preventive vaccination has enabled us to overcome this disease. In third world countries, however the sickness still persists. It is a very dangerous disease, associated with greyish deposits in the throat, which become thicker layer over layer with deposits of more material, so much so that it can block the air passage. There is great difficulty in breathing, while eating and drinking becomes almost impossible. Diphtherinum has been prepared from the toxic matter of Diphtheria. It should first be given in potency 200 and then gradually increased. For further details, please refer to the chapter on Diphtherinum. If Diphtheria is associated with the jumping of the discomfort from one side to the other and then back to the first side again, Lac Caninum would be the most optimal treatment. Sometimes, even if Diphtheria has been cured, the patient is left with permanent paralysis of the muscles for swallowing. Lac Caninum is very useful in the treatment of this condition. In case somebody develops a heart problem after a cold or Diphtheria, Spigelia should be used first. It controls the sickness there and then. Some patients become unable to swallow due to the paralysis at the throat of the muscles for swallowing. In children, a similar condition can develop due to the weakness of the muscles rather than paralysis of the muscles. In this condition, Lac Caninum is very useful. Its beneficial effect however, is only on the paralysed muscles, and not on muscles weakened due to some other condition.
Lac Caninum is also related to many diseases of women. There is pain over the uterus and both ovaries. Once the menstrual blood flows freely, most of the gynaecological troubles of the patient get better. In this respect, it is different from Cimicifuga in which as the menstrual bleeding flows freely, the ailments become aggravated. Lac Caninum is useful in the treatment of those ailments that persist throughout the month but disappear at the onset of menstrual bleeding. The throat trouble starts with the onset of the period and disappears at the end of it. This is a typical sign of Lac Caninum that must be kept in mind. In all the systems of medical treatments other than homoeopathy, such symptoms are not given much weight, but are considered imaginary and useless. However, in the field of homoeopathy, these odd symptoms do point to one homoeopathic remedy or another. Therefore, it is necessary to remember them. For example, irritation of the throat, starting before the onset of the periods is a sign of Magnesia Carb. This throat condition will not automatically get better on the cessation of the periods. Instead, it will have to be treated separately. The close relationship of the trouble of the throat and the periods is a special feature of Lac Caninum. In Calcarea Carb, like Cimicifuga, the ailments become worse at the onset of the free flow of the period. However, in Calcarea Carb, the ailment is related to the throat itself. It does not originate from the affliction of internal organs.
In the case of Lac Caninum, the menstrual blood contains big clots as if containing the shreds of the lining of the uterus, like Kreosotum.
Menstruation starts rather early and is plentiful. There is soreness over the mammary glands before menstruation or during lactation. They get inflamed. To stop lactation for any reason, Pulsatilla and Lac Caninum combined, are very useful because in this respect, they are similar to each other.
Potency: 30 or above.
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
LAC CANINUM
History: A beginning in this remedy was made by Dr Nisip and after Reisig it was used by Bayard.
After Bayard's death Dr. Dyer gave me a vial of the 30 th potency, made by Reisig, from which the potencies have mostly been made.
All the milks should be potentized, they are our most excellent remedies, they are animal products and foods of early animal life and therefore correspond to the beginning of our innermost physical nature.
If we had full provings of monkey's, cow's, mate's and human milk they would be of great value. Lac defloratum has done excellent work, and so has this remedy. Lac caninum is in its beginnings yet, although it has made some marvelous cures, but many of its symptoms axe doubtful and it would take a century to confirm them.
Some may think because the milk are only food for the young they are not medicine, but let one who is made sick from milk take it in potentized form and report the result. Provers who dislike milk will become sick from taking it in potencies in a few days, and their symptoms are very numerous.
Generalities: This remedy abounds in nervous symptoms, although it has no doubt tissue changes as well.
It is deep and long acting; the provers felt its symptoms for years after the proving was made.
The mental symptoms are prolonged and distressing. It has cured enlarged glands. It makes ulcers very red, and it has cured such ulcers. Ulcerated areas have a dry, glistening appearance as if coated with epithelium.
It is an important remedy in complaints following badly treated diphtheria, in paralysis and other conditions dating back to diphtheria. The greater number of its symptoms belong to the nervous system. An oversensitive state prevails, a general hyperesthesia of the skin and all parts. In makes women violently hysterical, and causes all sorts of strange and apparently impossible symptoms.
For example, a woman lay in bed for days with the fingers abducted and would go wild if they touched each other. The fingers were not aggravated from hard pressure, but she would scream, if they touched. This state is difficult to cure outside of Lac can. and Lach. Lach, has produced a similar condition. The sensitiveness of the abdomen so that the sheet cannot be permitted to touch the skin belongs to both.
Another strange state is a peculiar vertigo, a condition, when walking, in which she seems to be floating in mid-air, or, when lying, as it she were not on the bed. Other remedies have this. The sensation, as if floating, or not touching the bed, or sinking down, belongs to Lach. The sensation of gliding while walking is strong under Asarum Europaeum.
Alternates sides: The complaints, almost regardless of kind or quality, change sides.
The rheumatism is first found in one ankle and then in the other, and then back again to the original site. If in the knee or hip or shoulder the rheumatism alternates sides. The headaches and neuralgias do the same thing. The ambulating erysipelas first attacks one side, then the other. Inflammation and neuralgia of the ovaries the same alternation is observed. Sore throats affect alternately the sides of the throat or tonsils.
Many cases of this sort have been cured by this remedy. The trouble commenced on the right and went to the left and Lyc. failed, but when it returned to the right the alternation was noticed and the remedy revealed. Only a limited number of remedies have alternating sides.
Mind: One or two provers had many symptoms, and so not all are reliable; but this remedy so intensifies the imagination and senses that it would be easy for them to imagine symptoms, and that itself is suggestive. Full of imaginations and harassing, tormenting thoughts.
Wandering features in the mental sphere, wandering and alternating states. Cannot collect the thoughts. She wants to leave everything as soon as it is commenced, a condition of irresolution common to quite a number of remedies. She is impressed with the idea that all she says is not so, thinks everything she says is a lie, as if there is no reality in the things that be.
In this it is somewhat analogous to Alumina in which the patient feels as if someone else and not himself were saying everything, a lack of consciousness of the reality of things.
Every time a symptom appears she thinks it is a settled disease fear and anxiety that some horrible disease has come upon her, a delusion that she was suppurating and in a loathsome state; infested with makes.
Horrible sights are presented to the mental vision, nor always makes, and she fears the objects will take form and present themselves to her eyes. This is analogous to Lach., which has the feeling that the atmosphere is full of hovering spirits, although he never sees them.
Imagines he wears someone else's nose. Imagines she is not herself and her properties not her own. Imagines she sees spiders, snakes, vermin. She cannot bear to be alone. In Lach. the patient wants to be alone to indulge the strange fancies, and when alone she feels as if she were floating out of the window and over the grassy plains, but a sound will bring her back to the world again.
This is on the border-land of insanity or delirium.
Although the patient has all these strange feelings, yet she goes around all day about her business, and no one knows them unless she confesses them. Chronic sadness, everything so dark; irritable, ugly, hateful. Full of vertigo, but it is a sensorial symptom, unusually refined; not the vulgar swaying or tossing or feeling as if things were going round. It affects the whole body, as if she were swimming or floating in the air, spirit-like.
Head: The headaches are violent and are mostly frontal, but it has also, occipital headaches.
Headache above the eyes from riding in the cold wind, ameliorated in a warm room. Both the frontal and occipital headaches are aggravated by turning the eyeballs upwards and using the eyes for fine work. Pains in the head during the day, first on one side then on the other, either side being first affected. Pains in the face or eyes, alternating sides, perfectly unbearable, ameliorated going into the open air. The rheumatic symptoms are ameliorated by cold and cold applications, thus classifying it with Puls. and Led. Some headaches are noted as relieved by warmth.
Sensitiveness is marked; sensitive to light and noise. The page is not clear when reading. She sees faces before her in the dark. Old, troubled, distorted, disagreeable faces come to the vision or imagination. Dark, hideous faces she has seen come up, and she is tormented by them. This is not really a symptom of the vision, but a state of the brain.
Sounds seem far off. Paralysis of the throat with diphtheria; fluids return by the nose when drinking. Coryza, with sore throat and sneezing. Stuffed nose; discharge of thick white mucus. Faceache; pain aggravated by exertion, ameliorated by warm applications, but only cold applications relieve the soreness.
Mouth and throat: Putrid mouth is a strong feature.
The mucous membrane and teeth are coated with a fuzzy, shining, silvery substance, somewhat like milk. In the throat there is a felt-like exudation, ashy gray or silvery shiny deposit. It has been used in diphtheria for the class of cases taking alternate sides, and it has also cured paralysis following diphtheria.
The pain in the throat pushes toward the left ear. Pains take alternate sides. The throat is ameliorated by cold or warm drinks, and aggravated by empty swallowing. It is indicated especially in a glazed, shiny, red appearance of the throat like Kali bich.
The diphtheritic membrane is also white like silver. Lac c. has cured most alternating cases, with patches first on the right tonsil, then on the left. Membranous croup. Wherever there is mucous membrane there will be exudate, a gray, fuzzy coating, like that piling up on the tongue.
I once cured with Lac c. a chronic affection in which the whole buccal cavity had a white, exudate without inflammation or ulceration, an apparent infiltration which dipped down everywhere extending under the tongue. It was white and silvery, looking as if a mouthful of carbolic acid had been swallowed, and the mouth was so sensitive that the patient could not swallow anything but milk.
The abdomen is full of distress. Pressive pain in the pelvis; acute pain in left groin. Constant urging to urinate. Irritable bladder.
The female sexual organs furnish a mass of symptoms. Severe pain in the region of the right ovary, ameliorated by the flow of bright red blood, is again somewhat like Lach. These pains take alternate sides.
Zinc. also has pain in the ovaries ameliorated by the flow; she never feels well except when menstruating; hysterical at all other times but well at the menstrual period, is Zinc. Membranous dysmenorrhoea is another example of the exsudative tendency of Lac c. Sore throat beginning and ending with the menstrual period. Mag. carb. has sore throat before the menstrual period and Calc. c. has cured painful throat when menstruating.
Genitals: Escape of gas from the vagina.
The fermentation of mucus and other substances in the bladder causing the escape of gas when urinating is found only under Sars.; the urine flows with a loud noise. It is not uncommon for a child to break wind when urinating, and the urine is passed with a gurgling noise; this is cured by Sars.
Much trouble with the mammae; they feel as if they would suppurate. When a mother has lost her infant and it is necessary to dry up the milk, Lac . c. and Puls. are the best remedies for this purpose, when no symptoms are present. They will do it speedily. The Lac c . patient is imaginative and sensitive to pain and her surroundings, hyperesthesia and touchiness. Puls. will be called for in the Puls. constitution.
Rheumatism with swelling of the lower extremities, especially when it affects the limbs alternately; aggravated by motion and heat, ameliorated by cold. Pains in the limbs as if beaten. Rheumatic swellings of joints.
by James Tyler Kent