Introduction
THIS is another of Hahnemann’s Polycrests– drugs of many uses–which has its place (for paramount utility in acute and violent conditions) in every homoeopathic medicine chest, however diminutive:-One of those medicines, “without which, we might indeed shut up shop”
Violence runs through Belladonna, violence and suddenness. We associate Belladonna in our minds with sudden violence– violent, pain, violent headache, violent throbbings, violent delirium, violent mania, violent starts and twitchings, violent convulsions.
Belladonna is a remedy of sudden, acute conditions, like Aconite yet very unlike Aconite in its symptoms. Roughly speaking, Aconite is turmoil in circulation; Belladonna turmoil in brain; in the same way that Chamomilla provokes and cures ailments associated with turmoil in temper.
The cardinal symptoms of inflammation, as we are taught, are heat, redness, swelling, and pain. And all these Belladonna has in a violent degree; therefore Belladonna is palliative to inflammations in general, and will modify them, if it does no more; but it is curative only where the rest of the symptoms agree. For instance, in inflammations of lung and pleura, its disease picture, as we have shown, is easily distinguishable from that of Bryonia, Phosphorus, and other remedies. It is the “totality of the characteristic symptoms” that have to be taken into account if sudden and striking cures are to result. Sudden cures in pneumonia?–in herpes? How can you suddenly cure a pneumonia with consolidation?–a herpes with wide vesicular eruption? With the right medicine, early, the pneumonia should have been aborted, should not have gone on to consolidation. But even so, the sudden drop in temperature and pulse, the sudden possibility of rest and sleep, the sudden well-being of the patient, when he asks for food, the newspaper, and talks and smiles, announce the cure, even though the lungs may take days to resolve. In the same way with herpes, the pain and the redness, the inflammation, suddenly go, the vesicles are seen to be dried up, mere scabs; the thing is dead, and will give no more trouble. In acute sickness the needed homoeopathic remedy declares itself unmistakably and often almost suddenly. When you have hit it, there is no mistaking the fact.
Belladonna has been found to abort whitlows in the early stages, to abort an appendicitis, has doubtless aborted countless pneumonias. The typical Belladonna picture is unmistakable when you meet it:- the bright-red face, the dilated pupils, the burning skin, the throbbing pains, the intolerance of pressure and JAR. Those call for Belladonna, whatever the disease. Belladonna can abort and can cure (as we have seen elsewhere) where drug-picture and disease-picture match. Of course there are drugs, aspirin, genasprin, etc., which abolish the sensation of pain only, and cure nothing. Such drugs may be dangerous in acute appendicitis, acute middle-ear disease, because they merely mask symptoms while the disease runs on, perhaps into a gangrenous appendix and general peritonitis, or an “acute mastoid” necessitating speedy operation to avoid cerebral abscess. Beware of analgesics. They are not safe. Homoeopathic remedies that fit the symptoms only kill the pain by curing the condition that caused it.
An early experience, never forgotten, of Belladonna’s rapid curative action was away in the country years ago, where a boy having been exposed to a very hot sun, came down suddenly with violent headache, flushed face, and a very high temperature–as high a one as I had met with in those days, and which filled me with awe–105, or 106. He got some Belladonna–and was well by next day. These early striking experiences are not lightly forgotten.
In sunstroke, and in violent congestive headaches, Belladonna and Glonoine would seem to run almost neck and neck. Glonoine (potentized nitro-glycerine) also has throbbing, bursting headache–waves of throbbing, bursting headache, waves of intense pain. It has also the flushed, hot face and, like Belladonna, cannot bear the least JAR. The great difference between them seems to be, that Glonoine is markedly aggravated by heat –can’t bear any heat about the head, may even be ameliorated by cold applications, whereas Belladonna is very sensitive to cold; the Belladonna head is especially sensitive to cold, and Belladonna has complaints from getting the head chilled, or wet–even from getting the hair cut.
One has seen the extraordinary effect of Glonoine in the terrible pains of a badly fractured skull. The boy had been for days under morphia; how was he to possibly exist without it? Glonoine soon settled that question satisfactorily.
Belladonna is hypersensitive to LIGHT–with its hugely dilated pupils!–to noise, to motion, to PRESSURE. to JAR, to cold and, as we said, to washing the head and to getting the hair cut.
GUERNSEY says about Belladonna,”Manifested under this drug is a remarkable quickness of sensation, or of motion; the eyes snap and move quickly; pains come and go with great celerity; a pain may have lasted for sometime, then, in a second, it is gone; may commence suddenly, slowly increase in celerity till the height is reached, then in a second be gone. Much twitching and jerking of the muscles. Dull and sleepy, half awake and half asleep.”
In regard to the sudden come and sudden go of Belladonna pain, one remembers a capable and much appreciated little housemaid, who began to get sudden, very violent headaches, and, presently, occasional sudden convulsive attacks, for which no cause could be found. As to the headaches, she would go to bed all right, then, some nights, would come down to my room, where I was sleepily preparing for bed, swaying–waving tremulous hands before her head, “Oh, my head! my head! oh! my head! Oh! give me something for my head!” A dose of Belladonna; a few minutes’ wait –then, suddenly, “It’s gone now!” and off she would go, happily, to bed. The matter ended, tragically, in a fit, when cleaning the drawing-room grate in the early morning. An under-housemaid discovered her lying forward with her head in the large fireplace, while a black mark across her throat, from the top bar, betrayed the cause of her death–suffocation. The girl who found her made no attempt to pull her out, but ran off in a fright to tell someone else, and time was wasted before any attempt was made to resuscitate her. A post mortem revealed a “glioma” of the brain, a small tumour which accounted for the whole condition. But it was curious to see how Belladonna would always quickly, suddenly, relieve the severe head pains, even when dependent on such a condition.
Never think that Homoeopathy can cure everything: it cannot. But it can relieve even the incurable to such an extent that it is difficult, to realize, at times, its incurability.
KENT has a wonderful lecture on Belladonna, from which we will proceed to borrow.
Belladonna stands for heat–redness–intense burning.
The Belladonna throat burns like coals of fire: the inflamed tonsils burn like fire. The skin burns like fire to the patient, and is intensely hot to the doctor.
Put your hand on a Belladonna patient and you want to suddenly withdraw it: the heat is so intense. Kent says the sensation of heat may remain in your fingers for hours afterwards.
The heat is violent. “Heat intense. Violent heat.”
With the Belladonna heat there is Redness; bright redness; going on perhaps later to dusky appearance, or to mottling. But bright- red, shiny skin.
Belladonna has rapid swellings: “as if it would burst.”
Then throbbings-violent pulsations: “A veritable turmoil: an earthquake. EVerything is shaken when the patient needs Belladonna.”
“One of the most painful of remedies”: pains come suddenly, and go suddenly.
Motion, with Belladonna, means violent suffering: feeling that the head will burst, that the eyes will be pressed out: hammering pains.
Worse for touch, which excites violent throbbing.
Worse for JAR. A patient worse if you jar or touch the bed, “will reveal to you the remedy – Belladonna”.
Intense pains, then, worse for light-for jar-for motion-for cold. Better hot: better wrapped up:worse draught.
Inflammations: especially of brain, lungs and liver.
Belladonna’s pains, its inflammations and sufferings, its nightly attacks of delirium, are violent inflammatory attacks, and are attended by that violent heat.
Spasms: from the twitchings in sleep of teething babies, to the most violent convulsions.
Convulsion of infants, with hot skin and cerebral congestion: attacks which are brought on by light, by a draught, or if the infant gets cold.
Spasms, again, of circular muscles also, of the circular muscles of the bile duct, clutching a little stone. Kent says after a dose of Belladonna the spasm lets up and the stone passes, and the agony of gall-stone colic is relieved.
Violence, again, runs through all the mental symptoms which Belladonna can cause and therefore cure: “a wild state,” says Kent, “perhaps relieved by eating a little food.”
