Mirza Tahir Ahmad James Tyler Kent
Staphysagria is prepared from the seeds of a plant that resembles the grape vine, bearing violet or blue-coloured flowers. Since ancient times, the fruit of this plant has been used in the treatment of many diseases. Besides being employed in inducing vomiting, it was used externally as local treatment for the itch, killing head lice and on the warts. The homoeopathic form prepared from the plant seeds is called Staphysagria.
Staphysagria is a very important remedy related deeply to the functioning of the nerves. Once the patient is identified, otherwise untreatable diseases can be easily controlled. The Staphysagria patient is of a very sensitive but affable nature. Some sensitive types of patients cannot control their anger and jump onto opponent right away while others can control their anger. Some women of delicate nature, while outraged, become mute and do not say a word. They suppress their anger out of their good nature, but later on develop a headache and severe mental anguish. They remain extremely sad for a few days. The physical illnesses resulting from suppression of their emotions may become permanent. They suffer from periodic bouts of headache and stomachache or similar illnesses, the reflection of their suppressed inner state. Staphysagria is the best treatment for any sickness resulting from suppression of anger, torment and humiliation. Sepia is more effective in the treatment of depression resulting from the ill treatment from near relatives.
Staphysagria patients are of very sensitive nature. A mere light touch on a tiny wound can throw them into a convulsion, which is the natural result of hypersensitivity to nerves.
Their haemorrhoids are also very painful as well as their minor ailments. Being highly strung, they over-react to every little problem. People around them consider them as feigning sickness. These remarks make their condition worse and they start having fainting attacks. Such women must be treated with Staphysagria. Their other symptoms include complete silence, sleeplessness, being tired, and mental depression, lack of comprehension, forgetfulness and frequent urination due to irritability of the bladder. Hearing as well as smell also gets affected. The fingertips are also very sensitive. The patient cannot even tolerate the slightest noise.
Skin signs are also common. Eczema develops on the scalp. It is painfully disturbing but without any boils or pimples. There is a feeling of severe pain. Staphysagria will always be found effective against these symptoms. Sometimes, swellings and lumps form along the nerves (neurofibromas) that are very painful.
In Staphysagria, the ganglia of the nerves are very sensitive and painful to touch and pressure but painless otherwise. This is due to hypersensitivity of the nerves.
In males, Staphysagria is useful in the treatment of prostate problems, such as enlargement of the prostate, causing difficulty in passing urine. Most, but not all prostate patients get better with common remedies. In others, one has to look for other causes. If the patient is of Staphysagria constitution, then certainly, Staphysagria will be useful. Prostate problems must be treated promptly or they can cause infection of the bladder and kidneys. Cancer of the prostate may also develop. Cancer of the prostate is very dangerous and often proves fatal. Silicea CM happens to be surprisingly effective in the treatment of the cancer of the prostate.
In relation to other homoeopathic remedies, Staphysagria has to be used in a proper order, such as Causticum first, then Colocynth and finally Staphysagria. Staphysagria is very useful in the treatment of certain intestinal conditions as well as the pain and discomfort due to the involvement of the small peripheral nerves.
In Staphysagria, the headache usually begins at the back and then spreads all over. Warts too develop on the scalp, especially the dry and tender type, which are sensitive to touch.
In Staphysagria, the patient feels chillness deep inside, with no sign of external quivering. Gelsemium like Staphysagria is also useful in the treatment of internal quivering. In Staphysagria, the women suffer from toothache during menstruation. The teeth become dark and brittle. Staphysagria is also useful in the treatment of sexual diseases of women as well as men. Pain in the leg and backache become worse in the morning and get better on resting at night.
Adjuvants: Causticum, Colocynth
Antidote: Camphor
Potency: 30 to 200
by Mirza Tahir Ahmad
STAPHYSAGRIA
Mind: The mental symptoms are very important, and the impressions made upon the mind and thence upon the body guide to Staphysagria as a remedy.
Excitable, easily aroused to anger, but seldom irascible, that is, easily disturbed and excited, but seldom manifests it.
Suitable in cases where complaints come from pent up wrath, suppressed anger, suppressed feelings. The person becomes speechless from suppressed indignation, anger with indignation. Complaints brought on by these causes; irritable bladder with frequent urging to urinate, lasting many days after suppressed wrath, after insults.
"Great indignation about things done by others or by himself; grieves about consequences."
A gentleman comes in contact with one beneath his station and an altercation takes place, an argument which ends in insult, and the gentleman turns his back on the other. He goes home and suffers; he does not speak it out, but controls it and then suffers from it.
He has sleepless nights and many days of fatigue, brain-fag; for days and weeks he cannot add nor subtract, makes mistakes in writing and speaking, has irritability of the bladder, colic, etc.
Loss of memory with a sense of weight between the eyes; it is difficult to say whether this is a feeling in the head or an effort to describe a dullness of mind. Feels as if a ball of wood were in the forehead, or as if the whole cerebrum were made of wood; it feels numb.
It is difficult to state whether it is a condition of the mind or head. Accompanying this sensation of a lump in the forehead is a feeling as if the whole back of the head were hollow; the patient may describe it as a feeling of numbness or a lack of sensation.
"Indifferent, low-spirited, dullness of mind after onanism."
Staph. cures these conditions when they are the result of sexual excitement, masturbation, excesses in venery, allowing the mind to dwell too much on venereal subjects. Thinking on sexual relations. These patients are irritable, easily fatigued, most excitable, and when they have to control their emotions they suffer intensely.
One who is in health can easily put aside a controversy, knowing that he has done what is right, but a Staph. patient when he has to control himself goes all to pieces trembles from head to foot, loses his voice, his ability to work, cannot sleep and a headache follows.
Many a time a man has come into my office with blue lips, trembling hands, pains about the heart and all over, and he thinks he is going to die. He tells a story of an altercation and pent up wrath, and Staph. stops his trembling and quiets him. Without it he would have sleepless nights, brain-fag, prostration and headache. This state belongs especially to those who have indulged in sexual excesses.
Now, the next step. The senses are in this same irritable state, so that the tips of the fingers are sensitive, the ears are sensitive to noise, the tongue is sensitive to tastes and the nun to odors; so sensitive that everything is painfully sensated.
Every little inflamed spot will have in its center sensitive points, little nerve spots; ulcers when touched cause the patient to go all to pieces and a convulsion threatens.
Hoemorrhoidal tumors are so sensitive that they cannot be touched. Little nerve tumors form in the skin, little polypoid growths the size of a wheat grain and denuded of epithelium, covered with moisture, red, inflamed, blue, and a mere touch will throw the patient into convulsions and suffering for days and nights. A hypersensitive nerve growth will come out on the hand or on the back. Sometimes it turns back.
Women: Again, a little wart will come out, especially about the genitals and anus, little caruncular growths about the urethra and vagina, so sensitive that if nipped between the fingers the patient will go into spasms, especially if a woman.
Staph. suits all three of the miasms.
These nervous states run all through the complaints. Look for a case of Staph. where the whole mind and nervous system are in a fret.
The Staph. headache is a numb, dull pain in the occiput and forehead, especially in these nervous constitutions.
"Sensation as of a round ball in the forehead, sitting firmly there even when shaking the, head."
Headaches from vexation and indignation.
Crusty, squamous eruptions on the scalp.
"Painful sensitiveness of the scalp, skin peels off, with itching and smarting, worse in the evening and from getting warm."
The scales are lifted up by a watery exudate and the denuded surface is extremely sensitive to touch.
New growths about the lids and balls of the eyes, extremely painful to the touch. Meibomian tumors (Con., Thuja), in irritable children (Kreos).
Another feature in Staph, is its action on the glands; scrofulous glands; glands of the neck enlarge; enlarged and indurated ovaries and testes; stitching, tearing pains in the glands everywhere. Hardness and chronic induration.
Stitching, tearing pains along the course of the nerves; in the heart, and as in such a nervous patient the mind is likely to be on the heart, the stitching pains in the intercostals are supposed to be in the heart. Stitching pains directly through the chest to the back.
Swelling of the tonsils after the abuse of Mercury. Chronic tonsilitis, tonsils are not large but hard from previous attacks of acute tonsilitis; strumous diathesis; cross and irritable.
"Pains come on after eating."
The Staph. patient has much difficulty in the bowels. Subject to chronic diarrhoea and to constipation. Colic, twitching, tearing pains in the abdomen. Diarrhoea from cold water, from eating, from indignation, anger, with flatulence of a terribly offensive odor like spoiled eggs.
"Chronic diarrhoea or dysentery of weakly, sickly children after anger; after being punished, after emotions." (Coloc. and Cham.)
Staph. and Coloc. resemble each other. In both, eating and drinking cause griping and stool, both have colic as if stones were squeezing; Staph. in the intestines, head and testes; Coloc. in the intestines and ovaries; both are worse from anger. Caust., CoIoc. and Staph. follow each other like Sulph., Calc. and Lyc.
It often happens that nervous women soon after marriage are attacked with frequent and painful urging to urinate which becomes extremely troublesome and may last many days. Staph, is very comforting to the young wife.
Urinary and Genitals: Great teasing and tearing all night long bloody urine; involuntary discharge of urine, acrid and corroding, with burning, worse from motion.
Profuse discharge of pale urine with burning and urging. Burning during and after urination.
Staph. has cured enlarged prostate with frequent urging to urinate, especially in old men; continued teasing with dribbling.
''Frequent urging to urinate, with a scanty discharge in thin stream or discharge of urine in drops; may be followed by a sensation as if the bladder were not fully emptied."
The most distressing symptom of the male genitals is excitability, but there is also impotence, great weakness of the sexual organs; the sexual desire is greatly increased but there is impotence.
Useful in the results of secret vice, long practiced.
"Seminal emissions followed by great chagrin and mortification, prostration, dyspnoea.
Effects of onanism or sexual excesses; loss of memory, hypochondriasis, taciturnity, face sunken, abashed look, nocturnal emissions, backache, weak legs, relaxed organs, deficiency of vital heat and tendency to take cold, deep sunken, red, and lusterless eyes, hair falls out; loss of prostatic fluid and impairment of sexual desire; dull and contusive pains in the testicles, voluptuous itching of the scrotum, atrophy of the testicles."
Think of the extremely nervous patient.
Dry, sensitive warts about the genitals, from sycosis or from the abuse of Mercury, which cause a tendency to warty growths. Moist red, offensive warts belong to Thuja.
The testes dwindle as well as become inflamed and swollen; genitals waste away.
Sensation as if there were worms crawling over him. Crawling, etc., in the female external genitals, Coff., Plat., Petrol., Apis, Tarent. hisp, the latter has. While outer parts feel as if insects were biting. and crawling, better from heat or cold.
In the female there is violent sexual excitement, nymphomania with extreme mental and physical impressions; mind has been dwelling too much on sexual subjects.
"Very sharp, shooting pains in the ovary, which is exquisitely sore to touch; pains extend along crural regions and thighs.
Menses irregular, late and profuse, sometimes wanting; first of pale blood, then dark and clotted.
Scorbutic diathesis, vegetations of the vagina; stinging, itching of the vulva."
Miscellaneous: Stitching in the region of the heart; trembling of the body with nervous excitement is an excellent indication for Staph.
Effects from loss of blood, shock, from surgical operations, injuries from sharp instruments, incised wounds. Stinging, etc., in surgical wounds, cuts; colic after lithotomy, urging to stool, qualmishness, worse from drinking.
Tetter on the hands, itches and burns in the evening after scratching; numbness in the tips of the fingers; arthritic nodosities on the fingers.
I remember a patient suffering from gouty nodosities; he had lived a life of peculiar continence, dwelling on his vices, broken down in body. Staph. brought out an eruption on his legs as high up as the knees that looked like a pair of trousers.
One continuous coat of crusts which lasted a year before it dwindled, but he was greatly improved in his body and his enlarged joints gradually improved. The eruption was yellow, crusty, tough, leathery, and, when lifted up by the moisture beneath, it had to be cut off like a bandage; he was practically crippled; new crops came out on the parts clipped off. It was with difficulty that be walked, for the crusts cut him.
Bone troubles, exostoses, inflammation of the periosteum.
Acute articular rheumatism of fast or debilitated men, with shifting pains. Mercurial bone diseases. ulcers, caries, injuries caused by sharp, cutting instruments. Nightly bone pains. (Asa f., Merc., Sil.)
by James Tyler Kent