Mirza Tahir Ahmad James Tyler Kent
Sabadilla is renowned for the treatment of persistent sneezes. Sneezing may occur in the absence of a nasal cold. Some people are allergic to grass and pollen and contract a violent type of sneezing. After the sneezing is over, the nose does not run, showing that the cause is not a nasal cold but simply the irritation inside the nose. Some homoeopaths use Sabadilla in a very low potency. However I have found it useful in 30 potency. The Sabadilla patient is very sensitive to cold, and starts to shiver even when it is not very cold outside. Every cold object aggravates the symptoms. Most of the symptoms of Sabadilla resemble those of Lachesis, such as the pain shifting from the left to the right and the body feeling very cold.
Lachesis itself is the topmost remedy for hay fever, especially in the spring season. Sabadilla is also most commonly employed in the spring season (flowering season). Some people who have an allergy to the scent of flowers can benefit from Sabadilla. However, when the sneezing is due to allergy in the autumn, it will respond better to Allium Cepa. Lachesis is the chronic of Sabadilla, and Alumina that of Allium Cepa. One must remember to use a fast acting remedy for the treatment of a sudden acute illness. When the acute stage has been brought under control, then the long-acting remedies can be used. If a patient exhibits the symptoms of Sabadilla, he must be treated with Sabadilla. Once the patient becomes apparently cured, Lachesis 1000 (the chronic of Sabadilla) must be given without waiting for the next course of the illness. Lachesis 1000 should then be repeated in fifteen days. Thus the patient can be permanently cured. In case Sabadilla and other quick remedies similar to it, do not offer initial relief, then Lachesis may be used. In some patients, it offers rapid relief. In other words, Lachesis is not only used as a chronic remedy, it may occasionally also be used as a quick remedy. At times, just one dose of Lachesis may stop the sneezing immediately. Sneezing is a common symptom in different remedies, so it is important to take a note of other symptoms as well. Mostly, all of the above remedies (Sabadilla, Lachesis, Allium Cepa) seem to work and do not disappoint the treating physician.
Sabadilla itself has the capability of treat certain chronic illnesses, like chronic nasal catarrh blocking the nasal passages.
It is very strange that some Sabadilla patients believe that a certain part of their body is extraordinarily large compared to the others. I have also seen such patients, who said that their face was badly swollen, while actually, this was not the case. This symptom is typical of Sabadilla. Based on this symptom, if the patient is treated with Sabadilla, then his other symptoms may also be cured. I remember one such woman patient, declared untreatable according to doctors. She insisted that one of her cheeks was badly swollen. When treated with Sabadilla, her other symptoms also disappeared by God’s grace. When an idea gets riveted in the mind, it helps in identification of the disease and the appropriate remedy. A Sabadilla patient comes to believe that his ribs or legs have become bent or his limbs are wasting; he just cannot forget about it.
The presence of certain strange ideas and superstitions helps in arriving at the proper diagnosis rather easily. In Thuja, the patient believes that he is made of glass and naturally brittle. It is said that one such patient used to walk with utmost care, lest he fell down and broke. He was taken to a psychologist. To make the patient believe that his idea was false, the psychologist slapped him on his face, assuming that he would realise his thinking was wrong. However, the patient fell down and died on the spot. God knows best if this story is true or false. If it is true, then the patient must have been a perfect patient of Thuja!
In hay fever, there is a constant irritation inside the throat. The presence of worms inside the intestines produces irritation over or inside the nose, provoking sneezing. No wonder Sabadilla is the useful treatment for intestinal worms. Although Dr. Boericke though did not mention this effect in the chapter on Sabadilla he has mentioned it in his repertory under the heading of remedies for worms. Sabadilla seems to be deadly to worms of the intestines. Persistent itching at the nose, around the lips or at the palate area indicates the presence of worms in the intestines. The projection of the intestinal conditions outwards on the skin is only natural. For example, a stomach upset may show up as blisters in the mouth. Intestinal worms and nasal catarrh can be cured with just one remedy i.e. Sabadilla. Stannum is another good remedy against the intestinal worms, which simply melt away under its effect. The Sabadilla itch is mostly at the palate. Wyethia causes a similar pain at the palate area instead of itching. If the pain at the palate becomes shifted to the back of the throat, provoking a troublesome cough, then Nux Vomica is better. In regard to nasal catarrh Sabadilla behaves like Arsenic, except for the absence of a burning sensation.
There are conditions related to certain homoeopathic remedies, in which the patient feels very hungry while ill. In Sabadilla also, the patient feels very hungry in between sneezing.
In Sabadilla, the patient suffers from dry cough, bellyache and difficulty in breathing. He does not feel thirsty at all. The Stomach feels empty and there is a craving for sweets. The patient feels better on eating hot food, while cold drinks aggravate the symptoms. There is a feeling of heat, burning and something creeping on the skin. The skin becomes extremely dry and begins to split, especially under the toes. Chronic infection around the toenails is yet another symptom of Sabadilla.
The patient has a feeling of something being stuck in the throat, which he keeps trying to swallow. This is a chronic type of complaint which becomes worse in the cold. The tongue feels as though it is burning.
In Sabadilla, the children tend to suffer from diarrhoea. The abdomen feels as if it is being cut with a knife. Periods are delayed in women, and there is stabbing sensation in the ovaries. The uterus tends to sag downwards, as in many other homoeopathic remedies.
Adjuvant: Sepia
Antidotes: Pulsatilla, Lycopodium, Conium, Lachesis
Potency: 30
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
SABADILLA
Generals: The Sabadilla patient is a shivering patient, sensitive to the cold air, a cold room, cold food.
He wants to be well wrapped up; wants hot drinks to warm up his stomach. He is subject to catarrhal conditions, and in these he wants hot air. The catarrhal conditions of the throat require hot drinks and food. Warm things are grateful to him. It is difficult to swallow cold things; they increase the pain and difficulty in swallowing.
We often study remedies by contrast. This remedy travels from left to right, and at once a good prescriber connects it with Lachesis. The soreness, pain and inflarnmatory conditions of the throat commence on the left side and spread to the right in both Sabadilla and Lachesis. But warm things aggravate the pain in Lachesis; they cause a spasmodic condition, with a sensation of choking, and therefore he wants cold things, which relieve; they are swallowed more easily and ameliorate the pain in the throat. Sabadilla on the other hand is relieved by heat, either outside or inside.
Nose: Catarrhal condition of the nose, with constant sneezing; sensation of great rawness in the nose; burning; stuffing up of the nose.
Discharge at first of thin mums and later thick mucus. It has all the appearance of a coryza. The coryza is ameliorated from inhaling hot air. He sits before an open grate or register, with the head close to it, inhaling the hot air. Especially useful when the catarrhal state of the nose is prolonged; a prolonged coryza, which does not yield to ordinary remedies; a lingering coryza, and the discharge is exaggerated by the odor of flowers. Even thinking of the odor of flowers makes him sneeze and increases the flow from the nose. So thinking of various things aggravates his complaints.
Many hay fever patients are sensitive to the odor of flowers, to the, odor of the hay field, to dying vegetable matter; so oversensitive to the odor of fruit are some that apples have to be removed from the house. Inhalation of odors that are beautiful, as that of the lavender, some hay fever patients cannot tolerate; such things may bring on an attack out of the season. Now Sabadilla is of this sort oversensitive to surroundings, to odors; these increase the catarrhal state of the throat and posterior nares.
Sneezing and a flow of mucus from the nose; goes on even to ulceration. Periodical attacks; a rose cold in June; in autumn about August 20 as a hay fever. Hay fever is often an easy thing to palliate with short acting remedies; they will cut short an attack in a few days. But the cure requires years, and the patient must be treated in the interim and according to his symptoms. When the hay fever symptoms are present he has no others; one group is manifested at one time, and another group at another time. But the patient is sick and all the symptoms must be gathered together and the case treated accordingly.
Mind: Many of the annoyances of this individual seem to be imaginary.
His mind is filled with strange things. Imaginations concerning persons or himself are strange. Imagines the body is withering, that the limbs are crooked, that the chin is elongated, and larger on one side than the other. She feels that this is so and believes it even in spite of her vision. It is a sensation which she believes, a delusion, an insanity.
"Erroneous impressions as to the state of his body."
"Imagines himself sick; imagines parts shrunken; that she is pregnant when she is merely swollen from flatus; that she has some horrible throat disease that will end fatally."
The imaginations are groundless; nothing is visible, and the suffering is greater than if there was something to be seen. These patients often get no sympathy; they should really have a remedy. Thuja has erroneous impressions as to the state of the body; thinks she is made of glass; the idea is not that of transparency, but rather of brittleness fears that she would break in pieces.
There are but a few remedies which have fixed ideas; these ideas may be concerning religion, politics, clothing, things of the family and life. I once had an insane patient who would get out of the street, ear if anyone entered who wore a certain color, because she had a fixed idea that this was of evil import to her.
The Pulsatilla mental state in a man is that a woman would be a detriment to his soul; it is a delusion, a fixed idea. Iodine is full of fixed ideas. Anacardium has a fixed idea that a devil is sitting on one shoulder talking into his ear, while an angel sits on the other shoulder talking into the other ear, and he halts between the two and says nothing.
"Delirium during intermittents."
"Mental exertion aggravates the headache and produces sleep."
A sleepiness comes on from thinking, meditating, reading. While meditating in a chair he falls asleep like Nux moschata and Phosphoric acid.
Head: Dizziness; vertigo.
He wakens up at night with vertigo. Vertigo, in the open air; under all sorts of circumstances. Full of headaches. Headaches on one side of the head. The meditation which drives him to sleep brings on headache.
Headache in school girls. Feeble children, who have to be taken from school because of headache, come home with strange imaginations concerning school and themselves. Headache stupefying and associated with coryza; in the frontal sinuses, above the eyes.
Fullness, bursting, stupefying, aggravated by jarring, sneezing, walking. Stupefying headaches with coryza. Often gets up with it in the morning, increases during the forenoon. Head covered with a cold sweat. Many of the symptoms are closely related to Veratrum, especially in the cold sweat on the forehead with complaints.
Hay fever when there is spasmodic sneezing, fluent coryza; nostrils stuffed up; inspirations through nose labored; snoring; itching in the nose; profuse bleeding from the nose; bright red blood comes from the posterior nares and is expectorated; very sensitive to the smell of garlic; coryza with severe frontal pains and redness of eyelids; violent sneezing; copious watery discharge from the nose.
A peculiar kind of itching coming on in some hay fevers is an itching in the roof of the mouth, on the soft palate, and for relief the patient must draw the tongue back and forth over the soft palate, with this coryza, sneezing, etc. Wyethia will cut the attack short.
When the itching extends to the larynx and trachea, with great irritability and sensitive to cold: Nux vomica.
When the discharge burns a red streak over the upper lip and about the wings of the nose, with sneezing and profuse, watery nasal discharge: Arsenicum.
Copious acrid lachrymation, and copious bland flow from the nose with sneezing: Euphrasia.
Copious, bland, watery discharge from the eyes and copious, acrid, watery discharge from the nose: Allium cepa.
But these are not the constitutional remedies; they do not cure, but only palliate during the severe attacks. These symptoms are the outcome of the psoric constitution, and this constitution must be treated by antipsorics. Sometimes the hay fever is so severe that it seems to be the only manifestation of psora in the patient, but if it is restrained or stopped up by bad treatment he is not well during the whole year.
If let alone he has good health during the rest of the year. Many a time the hay fever goes through the whole winter and only by constitutional up building can it be mitigated. But with constitutional treatment each yearly attack is lighter, and at the end of treatment he is able to live in his own climate unaffected.
He must not go to the mountains to mitigate it. If to any place, he should go where the affection would be worse, so that all its manifestations would be apparent. The hay fever will only be cured if the patient is curable, but if not, if his constitution is so broken down that he is incurable, his hay fever will not be cured.
The most striking place of attack is the mucous membrane of the nose, throat, trachea and larynx. Violent acute inflammation of the mucous membrane of these parts.
Stomach: Great thirst for hot drinks.
The appetite is singular; it is commonly seen in pregnant women. She says she is never hungry; never wants anything to eat, and often there is an aversion to food; but when, from a matter of reason, she concludes to eat, and she takes a mouthful, it tastes good, it recalls the appetite, and she makes a good meal. At other times not only a loss of appetite, but a disgust and loathing of food.
"Disgust for all food, for meat, for sour things, for coffee, for garlic."
"Morbid hunger or loathing for food."
A routine remedy in pin worms, seat worms, all sorts of worms stomach and tape worms. A careful prescriber never thinks of prescribing for worms. He takes all the symptoms of the patient and these guide him to the remedy. I remember one time in a lady's house seeing a dog drag his hinder parts over the carpet as if to scratch the anus. She said:
"Doctor, can't you give the dog a remedy?"
I put a dose of Sabadilla in its mouth. Some time afterwards she asked me:
"Doctor, what did you give the dog that medicine for?"
I inquired why she asked.
"Why," she said, "in a few days it passed an awful lot of worms."
Sabadilla and Sinapis nigra are well adapted to cases in which pin worms are present. Often a remedy restores the patient to order in general and then all his particular parts are set in order.
Female sexual organs.
"Nymphomania from ascarides."
"Cutting pains, as from knives, in ovary."
"Menses too late, with painful bearing down a few days previous; decreased, How by fits and. starts, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; blood bright red."
Hysterical patients; a patient with a strangely unbalanced mind, accompanied by various nervous manifestations.
"Twitchings, convulsive tremblings, or catalepsy from worms."
It is true that worms will not prosper in a perfectly healthy stomach, intestine or rectum. They can only thrive in the unhealthy. Many a time I have had a patient bring me a tape-worm in a bottle after I had put them on an antipsoric, even when I did not suspect its existence.
Turn the economy into order and the parasites go. The same applies to germs. They only exist as a result of disease. They have never been known to exist without the disease having first existed. If you ignore the worm, but select the remedy on the totality of the symptoms, the patient will be restored to health, and, so far as the worm is concerned, go without a symptom.
The worm becomes smaller, shrivels and finally departs. It is rarely the case for the worm to disappear inside of six weeks after the remedy. If, on the other hand, you eject the worm by violent means, the patient may go for years with troublesome symptoms, and you do not know why you fail to cure him.
Prescribe for the patient first. No results of disease should be removed until proper constitutional treatment has been resorted to, and be sure that it is proper.
by James Tyler Kent