A 12 year old female patient presents with complaints of intermittent allergic rhinitis, nasal congestion, sore throat and boils on her nose since childhood. The complaints are persistent and have been worsening for the last month. She took allopathic medication without benefits so she decided to go for homeopathic treatment.
Doctor: Tell me about your hobbies.
Patient: Singing, dancing swimming… and most importantly spending time with my friends.
Doctor: Tell me more about these hobbies.
Patient: (Sits quietly for long time…)
{I repeated the question for three to four times… but she was reluctant to answer as being a shy, so I changed the question}.
Doctor: Tell me what makes you angry?
Patient: Whenever someone acts like boss, presents himself like No.1 or shows me attitude then I get angry.
Doctor: Hmmm…tell me more about it.
Patient: There is a girl in my class, she behaves like this. She overreacts and she is full of overacting.
(Suddenly she starts talking with full of energy as if I have touched a very sensitive issue… so will be there with her… and see where it leads us.)
Doctor: Okay. Tell me more about her.
Patient: She will bring new clothes, new toys and will try to show off, and try to put me down. She uses all her toys to take away all my friends. You know she has a younger brother, and she thinks that she is the only one with younger brother. You know what? We do not share our secrets with her.
Doctor: Why?
Patient: Because she will tell everyone; and our secrets will get spread. I get very afraid when our secrets gets spread.
Doctor: Tell me more about it.
Patient: Then whole world will know our secret, society where we live will be ashamed of ourselves, they will not allow us to meet.
Doctor: What do you mean by us?
Patient: Us means me and my close friends, they will not allow us to meet and finally we will be separated.
(Here we can see the “Friend” area is coming up a lot. First in hobby, then female friend will take away her friend and third in relation to secret. So it’s becoming an important part/ focus of her life. Let’s just be with it.)
Doctor: Tell me more about it.
Patient: I do not want to get separated from my friends; you don’t get close friends in this world easily. We are so close and attached to each other.
(Slowly different set of words like separate, close, attached are coming in to focus with the main focus of “Friends”)
Doctor: Tell me about being close and attached.
Patient: It’s like a bond of friendship. We are so attached to each other. Suppose there are two close friends, and they hold hands of each other. So the third person comes and he separates them by taking one of them away. Like they have been bonded with this strong knot and the third person separates them by cutting that knot (Does hand gesture like cutting something with scissors).
(Now here hand gestures are matching with the words she is speaking; that means she is at the sensation level).
Doctor: Can you explain that gesture?
Patient: It means to separate some things that have firmly attached to each other. To separate two entities that have attached to each other emotionally or physically as if they are not two separate things but just one.
(Here we are getting two opposite sensations of being together and separate, indicative of plant family)
Doctor: Hmm
Patient: I have two best friends and all three of us are now separated. We don’t want to get separated; but we are now and I feel so sad about it. I want to be one with them, bonded with them again.
Doctor: Tell about this sad feeling.
Patient: Whenever I am with them I feel happy and now I am feeling sad as we are separated.
Doctor: Hmm
Patient: If my friend is crying then I too cry with her.
Doctor: More about it.
Patient: It’s just like a daughter who goes away after getting married. I feel angry, bad and I cry. I don’t know what to do?
Doctor: What do you mean by don’t know what to do?
Patient: I don’t know how to bring us together again. So I am just waiting to see us together.
End of the case.
Understanding the case:
Kingdom: Plant Kingdom.
As we saw in this case we are getting two opposite sets of sensations- Attached / Detached; which gives us a clue to plant kingdom.
Family: Malvales.
Here we got the sensation of being attached and detached, joined and then separated, which gives us a clear cut indication towards the family of Malvales.
Miasm: Sycotic.
Patient is accepting and anticipating the situation of being separated from her friends, suggestive of sycotic miasm.
Potency: 200
As patient is in touch with her emotional level, the potency we will use is 200.
The remedy that belongs to the sycotic miasm of malvales family is:
Tilia Europaea.
Patient was given Tilia Europaea 200 single dose.
Materia Medica:
If we see mind section of Concise Materia Medica of Dr.S.R.Phatak it says.
MIND: Love-sick, Dread of society.
Both points are the main focus of our patient.
Follow-up:
Within a week she felt 80% relief from the allergic rhinitis, nasal congestion, sore throat and boils. The rest of the issues resolved totally within a month. She is with us for the last six months and the intermittency of the complaints decreased drastically. Now her female friend does not bother her much. Shyness decreased.
At each follow up she is so eager to leave as early as possible, and the only reason is that her friends are waiting for her to play.
The case only required repetition of the doses two times in the interim period of six months. She is still under treatment.
