Boy age12 / Junior high school student / 1st consultation 2016.2.3 /
CC: Autism / Atopic dermatitis
History and Character:
I asked both the patient and his mother to fill out a medical questionnaire. His mother had emailed me the details beforehand. She described in detail a number of psychiatric symptoms that were particularly characteristic of his early childhood.
He was naturally very sensitive. He had many food allergies. Many fears, worse at night. As an infant, he would overreact to the sound of wind or hot water, and would panic, screaming and flailing. When he rode in a car at night, he was afraid that “things would get bigger or smaller.
When he was in the second grade, a friend pushed him and he fell down, chipping his front tooth and becoming unable to communicate. He also felt no pain when he injured his head. However, after the affected area was stapled, he was concerned that his head had become uneven. In the third year of elementary school, he stopped going to school after his homeroom teacher got angry with him.
He panicked in crowds and became depressed. In the fourth grade, he was diagnosed with a wide range of developmental disorders. Shortly after a poor test result at cram school, he developed fungal otitis media and stopped attending school. He began studying for exams and developed a slight fever and headache.
His classmates teased him about his atopic dermatitis and obesity, pointed out that he missed practice for the field day, and then he stopped going to school. He has a habit of biting his nails. He often locked himself in the bathroom for several hours when he was scolded.
The itchiness of his atopic dermatitis makes him irritable, unable to concentrate, and sleepy. He is easily influenced by music. He likes to drink water and prefers salt. He likes to play games and can concentrate for hours. He can play games and do puzzles well. His intellectual level is not low, and at the time of this first visit, he had been accepted into a difficult school.
His ability is very uneven, and there is a big difference between what he can do and what he cannot do. His recent problem is that he refuses to go to school, and his background is that he is autistic (diagnosed with a wide range of developmental disabilities) and tends to be withdrawn, but this is not mentioned in his medical questionnaire.
His main complaints are atopic dermatitis and nail biting. There is no mention of any incidents that might have caused his withdrawal. What is striking is that he emphasized the game’s main character in Kirby’s Dream Land, as “indispensable”
”Kirby’s Dream Land” https://www.kirby.jp
He also seemed to love the main character of the fantasy book, Owl, and explained that he could do things that he could not do in his normal life.
Observation:
On the first visit, he was smiling but seemed a little frightened. At first I spoke with him alone, but he was mostly stammering and unable to speak. In the middle of the consultation, I invited his mother to join us, but he was still unable to speak.
Finally, when I asked him to draw a picture of his physical symptoms, he answered the nature of what he had drawn, as if he were a medium. He was small, overweight, had a quiet voice, and was wearing a green camouflage down.
Case-taking 1st 2016.2.3
H Hello. Tell me about the thing that is troubling you the most. It can be anything.
P Biting my nails. Also, the back of my hands and my elbows get itchy in winter.
H What is your problem when it itches?
P I can’t concentrate because of the scratching.
H What do you mean you can’t concentrate?
P Itchiness and irritability.
H Talk about irritability.
P ・・・・・・・
H When does it happen?
P When it itches all the time. ・・・・・
H What’s the problem with nail biting?
P When I bite my nails, I can’t hold a pen. I won’t be able to study.
H Can’t hold a pen?
P I feel like I’m going to drop it.
H How does it make you feel when you feel like dropping it?
P ・・・・・・・
H Itchy and irritated, right?
P ・・・・・・・
H Let me change the subject a bit. Do you remember when you stopped going to school?
P ・・・・・・・・ (head tilt gesture)
H You had a scary teacher, didn’t you? Do you remember what he said to you?
P ・・・・・・・・
H Can’t remember? I’ll change the subject again. Do you remember when you hit your head? I think it was in the first grade.
P ・・・・・・・・・
(omission) He was silent for the most part. I changed the subject.
H So, about your favourite game characters. Which game do you like?
P “Kirby the star”.
H What do you like about it?
P He’s cute and strong.
H Cute and strong? In what way? That round thing, right?
P Copies the abilities of the enemy. You can use an attack similar to the enemy’s.
H What happens to the enemy?
P They get sucked in and swallowed up.
H What happens to Kirby?
P He transforms and uses an attack similar to the enemy’s.
H Do you remember any great scenes?
P ・・・・・・・・・
(omission) His other favourite game was ‘Splocome’. In teams of friend and foe, they could take turns applying different colours to each other.
H Tell me about the fun of it.
P You put the paint and stuff in a bucket and turn it upside down.
H Will it be one colour?
P No, one colour and one colour and paint each other.
H Do they mix?
P No, they don’t mix, they’re painted on top of each other.
H In order?
P Yes.
H Does the game have music?
P ・・・・・・・・
(omission) He was only able to explain to me what the game was about. But for the rest of the symptoms and the situation he became almost mute. At this point I called his mother who was in another room to sit with him. His mother began to tell me about the incident with his head injury. She showed me the scar on her son’s hairline.
P I went to the hospital, closed my eyes, and I felt the pain, HG+++ (touching the affected area)
H How did you feel, when it hit you?
P I was so surprised. What did it hurt? I looked in the mirror and it was so bumpy, I was so surprised. HG+++ (touches affected area) Well, why?
H Tell me about the bumps.
P ・・・・・・・・
He responded about the bumps, but fell silent again. Next, his mother told me a story about how one of his friends had knocked him over and broken his permanent tooth, and how his old scary teacher had made him angry. He fell silent again.
When the subject of atopic dermatitis came up, his mother said that he relieved his stress by scratching and biting his nails, and that it would be a pity if he stopped. She said he was a child who showed little emotion and never got angry. But once when she held him down and stopped him from biting his nails, he locked himself in the toilet for about four hours.
He always hid in the toilet when he was angry. But by nature, he preferred to play with his friends rather than be alone. He also liked music, preferring orchestral music for games. Listening to it helped him to study better. The same applies to the topic of fungal otitis media, as well as atopic dermatitis and nail biting. He couldn’t concentrate because of the itching, he was tired and sleepy.
H How about at night, by the way? A long time ago, when we were out in the car at night.
M I remember he was making a lot of noise. He said, “Things are getting bigger and smaller. Weeks after he had a high fever from influenza. At home, too. Suddenly.
H What was it like?
P ・・・・・・・・・
M Before he started primary school he had night terrors. Even when he was 2-3 years old, if the wind blew, he was “scared”. Even when he was 2-3 years old, when the wind blew, he was scared. In the old house, when the bamboo rustled around it, he was scared. He was scared when the wind blew in the buildings.
H Not now?
P ・・・・・・・・
H How about at night?
P I’m not scared these days.
(Omission) Now he wasn’t afraid of the night or the wind. Other than that, he spends a lot of time in the toilet. He has a habit of overeating and throwing up. His favourite food is “salmon roe”. He replied that the reason was that it was round and grainy.
Case analysis:
The patient is very sensitive and has an excessive impression of many things. He is easily hurt by trivial things, and becomes autistic and completely withdrawn. He has a low tolerance for challenges such as accidents, events, reprimands, and blame, and his way of coping is to be unresponsive, numb, and isolated. He become mutes, does not go to school or cram school, stays in the bathroom, and does not socialize.
Reactions include atopic dermatitis, nail biting, and infections. He may be buried in a world of games or books, or they may be irritable and unable to concentrate. Many abilities and reactions are highly uneven and extreme, varying greatly with time. He is autistic in reality, but projects himself into the round, cute, strong characters of games and the owl heroes of fantasy stories.
In games, he likes to paint each other with colorful paint. During the consultation, he was almost unable to speak, but when he started to draw the main complaints of itchiness and irritation, he was able to talk about the symptoms in a very qualified, quick and fluent manner.
He is a sensory and right-brained person. The object he drew was a collection of small blue-green stars, which are abundant in the sunny desert, and which do not need water, but swell when they are sucked and shrink when they are not. When they are damaged, they split and multiply. They are hard and have thorns on their surface.
They are usually about 10 centimeters long, diamond-shaped, and poisonous when eaten. The person who eats it is conscious but has no strength in the body, feels dizzy and collapses, and things become distorted, larger or smaller, etc. It is said to return in about an hour.
This seemed to be exactly the nature of peyote and its ingredient mescaline, a desert cactus that contains hallucinogenic substances, especially those that affect vision.He didn’t know about this plant, but it was as accurate as he had read or heard. It was an astounding degree of reproduction.
The descriptions of the visual field abnormalities were consistent with the patient’s early childhood hallucinations. They feel like a global sensation. The most universal elements are strong sensitivity and reaction. The kingdom seems to be plant, subkingdom and source seems to be Cactaceae – Anhalonium, which is also a drug family.
Subkingdom and source seem to correspond to Cactaceae – Anhalonium among the drugs, because of the thematic groups of growing/smaller sensations, withdrawal and strong autism, extremes, versatility, and bumps, as well as the rich set of psychological symptoms and detailed description of the source material.
Image of “Death Star” by the Pt. Image of Peyote
Here I would like to refer to Rajan Sankaran’s book “An Insight into Plants”.
The Cactaceae (Cactus family) is said to have two sensory extremes at its core: “Contraction” and “Expansion”. It absorbs water and expands violently, then shrinks back to its original size.
Cactaceae:
Sensation
Constricted / Made smaller / Shrunken / Contracted / Bound, Trapped, Pressed, Downtrodden / Oppressed / Weighed down / Clutched
Passive reaction
Shrunken
Active reactions
Expansion / Becoming bigger, boundless and released
Compensation
Not affected by contraction and oppression
The remedy, Anhalonium lewinii is made from a cactus whose original name is Mescal button or Peyote. This corresponds to Cancer miasm, which is a feeling of “contraction under restraint and must be completely controlled”.
Anhalonium has these rubrics: “pain as if crushed”, “severely constrained and contracted, need to expand and occupy all space”, “squeezing”, “things seem bigger”, “things seem smaller”, “things become alternately bigger and smaller”, “delusions of expansion”, “delusions of things expanding and contracting Delusions of expanding,” “delusions of shrinking,” “delusions of becoming smaller,” “a sense of working beyond one’s limits or else losing one’s existence” ,”delusions of world separation,” “loss of individual bonds”, “isolation, a sense of abandonment” and “concentrated effort”.
This boy was too irritable to have a normal social life. After several incidents, he became autistic and refused to go to school. However, his parents expected a lot from him, and he studied hard for his exams. He had just passed the entrance exam to a difficult school. That is exactly what he did, he “worked hard beyond his limits”.
It may be a contraction to go into the closed space of the bathroom. Or maybe inside that space, he could expand into the whole space, just as the protagonist’s sense of versatility is usually compensated by playing games or reading. He can be said to be Cancer miasmatic.
I would also like to refer to an excerpt from Massimo Mangialavori’s book.
Common name: Peyote Buttons, Mescal Buttons, etc.
Scientific name: Lophophora williamsii, etc.
Etymology: In Latin, Lophophora means “turf-bearer”.
Homeopathic remedy name: Anhalonium lewinii.
Characteristics of the remedies: In the repertoire, the mental area is significantly more common, while the physical symptoms are more common in the areas of head, headache, eyes, vision, face, mouth, and sleep. Brain symptoms are characteristic. They are periodic in “nervousness” and have visual aura.
The pain is initially congestive, and the patient does not like to have his head touched. Toxicologically, the eyes and eyesight are susceptible. The area of vision is the most characteristic. Without psychiatric symptoms, symptoms in the area of vision alone cannot explain such things as “objects becoming smaller but infinite,” “deformation of objects,” “distortion of dimensions,” and “radiating and splitting in two”.
The handwriting also becomes smaller or larger. In these cases, there is irritation of the trigeminal nerve which is extremely painful. In the paralytic response, there is a theme of flight/escape from real pain. In the realm of sleep, there is the theme of escape, sleeping during the day because sleeping at night makes one prey to hallucinations.
In general, there are symptoms that are common to homeopathic drug remedies. Painlessness and crushing pain. A sense of internal coldness and dryness (like a desert). A sense of deep loneliness. “Better in the dark” and “worse in the light” also suggest escape. Another symptom of drugs is a sense of heightened beauty and physical power.
One well-known synesthesia is that of the auditory domain. We feel colors as sounds and sounds as colors. There is also numbness. Numbness or anhedonia of the tongue is in the mouth region. It has to do with what we eat and the pleasure of eating. Cannot taste food. Alternation between nausea and appetite. Anorexia and overeating. Voice is obstructed. The limbs are clumsy and there is a sense of being lost. Skin is cold, malnourished, and dry. Like the appetite, the skin may be too much or too little, too sensitive, numb or insensible.
The mental area has many of the most shocking symptoms. Difficulty adapting to the environment. The feeling of no ego structure. The feeling of having two egos. Interpersonal phobia. A deep sense of loneliness. Indifference to environment and self. Can also be translated as a lack of a sense of morality. The sensation of being moved by music is a characteristic of other drugs and Anh, as well as countless other hallucinations.
Themes: Flight from Reality, Aboidance and Sense of Isolation / Problems of Personality Structure / The Sense of Omnipotence / Altered Sensory Perception: Visual and Auditory / Altered Sensory Perception: Hyperesthesia / Analgesia / Altered Sensory Perception: Sense of Time and Space / Altered Sensory Perception：Coldness /Hyperactivity / Apathy / Creativity
As a result, I have chosen the following remedy:
Kingdom: Plants
Subkingdom: Cactaceae
Miasm: Cancer
Source: Anhalonium lewinii (Mescal button, Peyote)
Level: Level 5
Rx: Anh1M
2016.3.25
Rx: Anhalonium 1M
Progress report from his mother
Follow ups
2016.4.6
According to the progress report, I had ordered a repeat dose. The patient’s mother seemed to be too busy, so I suggested that we use Skype. The entrance ceremony of a difficult junior high school was the day before this return visit. The patient was able to talk more than the first visit. However, his younger brother was acting up in the next room, and he was feeling the effects of his father and grandmother’s presence at home.
According to the patient, he did not mind going to school. He was relieved to have one friend who would talk to him. His atopic dermatitis had gone away, reappeared, and by this day was almost gone. The affected areas had moved from the backs of his elbows to the backs of his hands, which had turned into scabs.
When I asked him how severe it was on a scale of one to ten, he said 1-2/10. There was no itching at all. His habit of biting his nails had changed to biting only a few, and the frequency had decreased. He answered that the degree of this was 6-7/10. Instead of these main complaints, headaches had developed. When his head hurt, he wanted to go home as soon as possible. It was worse when he looked down. I asked him about the nature of his headache.
H Tell me a little more about your headache. What does it feel like?
P It feels like I’m being pushed as hard as it can.
H Talk about it.
P The whole area is being pushed. HG+++++ (hands pushing hard from both sides of the head).
But he couldn’t talk any more. General condition was good. Good appetite, sleep, etc. Next, I asked him about the character he drew.
H (showing the picture). Do you remember this? This is a drawing of your itchiness and frustration, compared to a game character. His name is “Death Star”. What’s going on with this now? Let me know.
P ・・・・・・・・
H Big? Small? Disappeared? Whatever it is.
P HG +++++ (scratching his head with both hands). My head is itchy. It moved to my head.
H So it moved to your head. If the former one was 10, how much?
P About 8/10.
H What about irritability and inability to concentrate?
P Better. I can study.
His “Death Star” had moved to his head and was getting smaller. But then his mother spoke up. The patient’s attitude toward his friend had angered his father, who choked, jointed and beated him. The next day, the patient developed a hyperventilation attack. He had bruises all over his body.
H This is terrible. What happened to you?
P I was grabbed.
H How did it feel?
P Irritated.
H Tell me about the hyperventilation.
P I hurt all over, HG+++++.
H I hurt all over. And.
P Very irritated.
H Talk about frustration.
P Killing.
H The energy! What was it like?
P It was there, but now I can control it.
H What if you can’t control it?
P A brawl.
H What do you do?
P Kick him in the stomach.
H And then what?
P Punch him.
H What happens to the person?
P He gets upset.
H And then what?
P He gets seriously injured.
H What happens to the body?
P Battered.
H Tell me about the bruising.
P Bruised and red. He feel like his opponent has lost the will to fight. ・・・・
H Before, if something happened, you’d go to the bathroom. How about now?
P More like hide in the closet.
H How much?
P Just a little bit. A few minutes.
H How would you feel if you saw your father right now?
P If I did it now, I’d be so angry I’d fight back.
The patient is now able to talk normally. Instead of hiding in the bathroom for long periods of time, he began to think about fighting back if he was attacked. In his fantasies, he was strong and could “beat up” his opponents. He was able to get up in the morning. And his family started getting a dog, which he took care of.
Rx: WW
2016.4.27
Rx: Anh1M
(By the progress report from his mother)
2016.5.31
Only an email re-check by his mother because she said the patient was too busy and tired. He was able to go to school, but was starting to get tired after being assigned a new tutor and starting club activities. It must be very hard life. He had been a stay-at-home boy until he went to middle school.
He was beginning to lose his love and interest in his dog and family. One day he complained of pain all over his body. He started saying that his legs hurt. When he went to physical therapy, they pointed out that his body was congested. He used to be kind and always silent, but he started to argue loudly with his mother. He sometimes developed a slight fever and began to miss school.
Rx: Anhalonium 1M
(By the mail follow up report from his mother)
2016.8.17
This was my first face-to-face consultation since my first visit. So far, the remedy had been repeated three times. He used to travel an hour by train to his junior high school, carrying a heavy load on his back. Occasionally he complained of congestion, prickling pain in his legs, and slight fever. His refusal to go to school and his autism had returned. His atopy had healed.
On this day, he was able to communicate better than before. He was taller, tanner, and more mature. He smiled and petted my dog. He had been urged by his parents to get dental work done. They pointed out that he was farsighted and he began wearing glasses.
He had a sinus infection and was seeing an ENT. The headache was completely gone, and nasal obstruction appeared instead. The fungal middle ear infection was gone. He told me that the most uncomfortable and tiring part was being pushed to “squish” on the crowded train to school. But he had been up all night studying.
A prickling, tingling pain began to appear in his earthen feet. “Death Star” became smaller, about the size of a plastic bottle lid, he said. They stayed small and increased in number when he went to school, decreased when he went to the beach, and decreased when he had fun playing games and air guns with others. He doesn’t want to be alone, he told me. I changed the C potency to LM potency.
Rx: Anhalonium LM7
(By the progress report from his mother)
2016.10.5
According to his mother, after switching to LM Potency, he stopped going to school. I instructed her to discontinue accordingly. His parents really wanted him to attend his current school. So, the family moved to their parents’ house and his mother drove him to the school. His mother was too busy. He got out of control and his father held him down, she said. This time it was a Skype consultation with him.
H What’s the worst part?
P My dad came out and I said…I want to die….
H I want to die, what do you hate?
P I don’t want to study, so I play video games, and he says, “I won’t let you play video games”. I was so angry, “Why not?”
H What happened with the anger?
P I went into a rage, saying that if I couldn’t play games for the rest of my life, if I had to study, I’d rather die.
H And then?
P I was pinned down and went into a rage. My anger escalated, and I said, “I’m going to die!”
H What happened?
P I climbed up on a chair and showed him the rope on the pillar.
H That was in your father’s presence?
P Yes. He put wrestling techniques on me and held me down.
H How did it feel?
P Humiliated. HG+++ (scratching his body)
H Tell me about the humiliation.
P I tried to get out of my head, but I couldn’t.
H What was it like?
P It’s like being tied up.
H Tell me about being tied up.
P I was getting tired… I kept resisting.
Being constricted, being held down, being squeezed – these are the sensations he hates the most. And then he went rigid – he couldn’t move. He had been having suicide attempts since he was in elementary school, but his mother knew about it. He replied, “I don’t think about dying anymore”.
He told me that he liked to draw, that he drew characters for games. He then went to get his sketchbook and showed me his detailed drawings. He said he wanted to draw more difficult pictures. I asked him what he didn’t like about school. He said that the level was too high and there was too much to do. He told me that he wanted to stay home and study on his own. I asked him about “Death Star”. He replied that the game was taken away from him and that it was increasing. He said it would decrease if he played the game.
Rx: Anhalonium 1M
This was the last day of his therapy. His parents felt that the therapy was not working because his truancy had returned. I felt that the Law of Healing was working, and he was starting to communicate, express his feelings, and have human expressions.
Because of his abilities, his parents’ expectations were too high. His father’s physical domination also backfired on him. He was thought to be a Plants person, but clearly his environment was unsuitable. As Hahnemann states in his aphorism, the maintenance factor is very important in healing. At that time, I could not convince his family about it.
In today’s Japan, there is a huge emphasis on education. And the non-conformists tend to be regarded as losers. I saw signs of healing in him, but the process was interrupted. A few years passed and I called his mother. She told me that he had quit the school. He went to a school that he was free to attend. His mother told me that she had quit taking care of the children and had started working.
This was a case several years ago, when I had a patient draw a picture on my own initiative. I carried out a case study and analysis using the Sensation Method, as it was called then. I also automatically calculated the potency of the remedy according to the patient’s level.
By the way, homeopathic methods are evolving year by year, and Dr. Rajan Sankaran and his colleagues have refined the Sensation Method by incorporating it into the WISE (Witnessing the Inner Song Experience) process, including the use of abstract doodling during case-taking. The recent development of Dr. Bhatia’s Online Posology Software may also be helpful in determining the potency of such sensitive cases.
