Lycopodium is an antipsoric, anti-syphilitic and anti-sycotic, and its sphere is broad and deep. Though classed among the inert substances, and thought to be useful only for rolling up allopathic pills, Hahnemann brought it into use and developed its power by attenuation.
It is a monument to Hahnemann. It enters deep into the life, and ultimate changes in the soft tissues, blood-vessels, bones, liver, heart, joints. The tissue changes are striking; there is tendency to, necrosis, abscesses, spreading ulcers and great emaciation.
Generalities: There is a predominance of symptoms on the right side of the body, and they are likely to travel from right to left or from above downward, e. g., from head to chest.
The patient emaciates above, especially about the neck, while the lower extremities are fairly well nourished. Externally there is sensitiveness to a warm atmosphere when there are head and spine symptoms. The head symptoms also are worse from the warmth of the bed and from heat, and worse from getting heated by exertion.
The patient is sensitive to cold and there is a marked lack of vital heat, and worse in general from cold and cold air and from cold food and drinks. The pains are ameliorated from warmth except of the head and spine.
Exertion aggravates the Lycopodium patient in general. He becomes puffed and distressed, and dyspnoea is increased by exertion. He cannot climb, he cannot walk fast. The cardiac symptoms are increased as well as the dyspnoea by becoming heated from exertion. The inflamed parts are sometimes relieved from the application of heat. The throat symptoms are generally relieved from the application of heat, from drinking hot tea or warm soup. The stomach pains are often relieved by warm drinks and taking warm things into the stomach. Nervous excitement and prostration are marked.
In the rheumatic pains and other sufferings the Lycopodium patient is ameliorated by motion. He is extremely restless, must keep turning, and if there is inflammation with the aches and pains the patient is better from the warmth of the bed and relieved from motion, and he will keep tossing all night.
He turns and gets into a new place and thinks he can sleep, but the restlessness continues all night. He wants cool air, wants to be in a cool place with head symptoms. It is true that the headache is worse from motion enough to warm the patient up, but not from the motion itself. The headache is worse from lying down and from the warmth of the room, and better in cold air and from motion until he has moved and exercised sufficiently to become heated, when the headache becomes worse. That is quite an important thing to remember concerning Lycopodium, because it may constitute a distinguishing feature.
The head symptoms are worse from warm wraps and warm bed,
The complaints of Lycopodium are likely to be worse at a fixed time, viz., from four till eight o’clock in the evening. An exacerbation comes on in the acute complaints and often in the chronic complaints at this time.
The Lycopodium chill and fever is worse at this time, and in typhoid and scarlet fever the patient is especially worse from 4-8 P.M. In gouty attacks, in rheumatic fevers, in inflammatory conditions, in pneumonia, in acute catarrhs, which are complaints especially calling for Lycopodium, it is always well to think of this remedy when there is a decisive aggravation from 4-8 P.M.
Stomach: The Lycopodium patient is flatulent, distended like a drum, so that he can hardly breathe. The diaphragm is pushed upwards, infringing upon the lung and heart space, so that he has palpitation, faintness and dyspnoea. It is not uncommon to hear a Lycopodium patient say,
“Everything I eat turns into wind.”
After a mere mouthful he becomes flatulent and distended, so that he cannot eat any more. He says a mouthful fills him up to the throat. While the abdomen is distended he is so nervous that he cannot endure any noise. The noise of the crackling of paper, ringing of bells or slamming of doors goes through him and causes fainting, like Antim crud., Borax and Natr. mur.
These general conditions go through all complaints, acute and chronic. There is an excitable stage of the whole sensorium in which everything disturbs. Little things annoy and distress.
The Lycopodium patient cannot eat oysters; they make him sick. Oysters seem to poison the Lycopodium patient, just as onions are a poison to the Thuya patient.
The Oxalic acid patient cannot eat strawberries. If you ever have a patient get sick from eating strawberries, tomatoes or oysters, and you have no homoeopathic remedies at hand, it is a good thing to remember that cheese will digest strawberries or tomatoes or oysters in a few minutes.
Skin: The skin ulcerates. There are painful ulcer, sloughing ulcers beneath the skin, abscesses beneath the skin, cellular troubles. The chronic ulcerations are indolent with false granulations, painful, burning, stinging and smarting, often relieved by applying cooling things and aggravated by warm poultices. It is somewhat a general in Lycopodium that warm poultices and warmth ameliorates; warm applications ameliorate the pain in the knee, the suppurating condition and the gouty troubles. in an unusually warm bed, and in a warm room hives come out.
The hives come out either in nodules or in long and irregular stripes, especially in the heat, and itch violently. Lycopodium has eruptions upon the skin, with violent itching. Vesicles and scaly eruptions, moist eruptions and dry eruptions, furfuraceous eruptions, eruptions about the lips, behind the ears, under the wings of the nose and upon the genitals; fissured eruptions, bleeding fissures like salt rheum upon the hands.
The skin becomes thick and indurated. The sites of old boils and pustules become indurated and form nodules that remain a long time. The skin looks unhealthy, and it will slough easily; wounds refuse to heal. Surface wounds suppurate as if they had contained splinters, and this suppuration burrows along under the skin. Ulcers bleed and form great quantities of thick, yellow, offensive, green pus. Chancres and cancroids often find their similimum in Lycopodium.
The Lycopodium state when deciphered shows feebleness throughout. A very low state of the arteries and veins, poor tone and poor circulation. Numbness in spots. Emaciation of single members. Deadness of the fingers and toes. Staggering and inability to make use of the limbs. Clumsiness and awkwardness of the limbs. Trembling of the limbs.
Mind: The mental symptoms of Lycopodium are numerous.
He is tired. He has a tired state of the mind, a chronic fatigue, forgetfulness, aversion to undertaking anything new, aversion to appearing in any new role, aversion to his own work. Dreads lest something will happen, lest he will forget something. A continually increasing dread of appearing in public comes on, yet a horror, at times, of solitude.
Often in professional men, like lawyers and ministers, who have to appear in public, there is a feeling of incompetence, a feeling of inability to undertake his task, although he has been accustomed to it for many years.
A lawyer cannot think of appearing in court; he procrastinates, he delays until he is obliged to appear, because he has a fear that he will stumble that he will make mistakes, that he will forget, and yet when he undertakes it he goes through with ease and comfort. This is a striking feature also of Silicea. No medicines have this fear so marked as these two.
Lycopodium also has a religious insanity, which has a mild and simple beginning, a matter of melancholy. This religious melancholy grows greater and greater until he sits and broods. He has very often aversion to company, and yet he dreads solitude.
“Dread of men and dread of solitude; irritability and melancholy.”
This dread of men is not always a state of dread in women. It is a dread of people, and when that is fully carried out in the Lycopodium patient you see that she dreads the presence of new persons, or the coming in of friends or visitors she wants to be only with those that are constantly surrounding her does not want to be entirely alone; wants to feel that there is somebody else in the house, but does not want company; does not want to be talked to, or forced to do anything; does not want to make any exertion, yet at times when forced to do so she is relieved.
“Taciturnity, desires to be alone.”
Now, let us follow that out a little further. The taciturnity is because the patient does not want to talk, wants to keep silent, yet, as I have said already, very glad to feel there is somebody else in the house and that she is not alone. She is perfectly willing to remain in a little room by herself, so that she is practically alone, yet not in solitude. If there were two adjacent rooms in the house you would commonly find the Lycopodium patient go into one and stay there, but very glad to have somebody in the other.
The Lycopodium patient often weeps in the act of receiving a friend or meeting an acquaintance. An unusual sadness with weeping comes over this patient on receiving a gift. At the slightest joy she weeps, hence we see that the Lycopodium patient is a very nervous, sensitive, emotional patient. Here it is:
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.
Comments are closed.