CALCAREA


CALCAREA symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Homeopathic Drug Pictures by M.L. Tyler. What are the symptoms of CALCAREA? Keynote indications and personality traits of CALCAREA…


Introduction

      THIS remedy, impure calcium carbonate, is as trituration of the middle layer of the oyster shell. It was proved by Hahnemann; and Clarke calls it “one of the greatest monuments of Hahnemann’s genius His method of preparing in soluble substances” (by trituration) “brought to light, in this instance, a whole of therapeutic power formerly unknown.”

Some remedies are difficult to spot: the difficulty is to miss Calcarea, when typical.

Calcarea has at least five definite pictures in the provings; they are distinct, yet they merge into one another. There is the teething picture. The picture of rickets. The picture of anaemia. The picture of tuberculosis. The picture of mental deficiency, and decay.

In Calcarea the child is father to the man-or woman. If you know the Calcarea child, you realize Calcarea later on in life.

First, then, the teething picture: the fat, flabby bay, with fair hair, a big head (often sour-smelling), that perspires furiously at night in sleep, and wets the pillow par and wide. Dentition is delayed. The teeth that should begin to appear, don’t. The gums are swollen, throbbing, sore. You are told that “her milk disagrees”: she vomits, sour water, sour curds; sour water runs from the mouth. Calcarea is very sour; the stools smell sour-sour and pungent-excoriate. (In Lycopodium it is the urine that burns and excoriates: in Calcarea, Sulphur and others, the stool.) In Calcarea the stool (in diarrhoea or in constipation) may be white like chalk. Bracelets of fat begin to surround the wrists and ankles, the rickety rosary may be felt. Fontanelles are slow to close-teeth to erupt-bones are slow to bear weight, of poor quality-bend.

Cough: a “teething cough”. (One used to give something for the bronchitis and with it Calcarea to help the teeth through, till one found that Calcarea covered both-in a Calcarea child.)

All this merges into the rickety child. The Calcarea child of the Provings and the Materia Medica, is the typical rickety child.

The fat, fair, pallid child is brought in, and dumped down onto a chair, and sits there. No wriggling down to wander about, and touch everything in the room. She sits there, lethargic and dull. Perhaps plays with her fingers and picks them. With the chalky complexion, goes – Fatness without fitness. Sweating without heat. Bones without strength. Tissues of plus quantity and minus quality. Mere flabby bulk, with weakness and weariness.

The Calcarea head, when you inquire, still sweats exceedingly. Sweats when cold. Sweats in cold room. Sweats at night and soaks the pillow. (It is Calcarea and Silicea that soak the pillow at night and during sleep; but their pictures are so different.)

In Calcarea everything is slow, and late, and heavy, and weak.

You will be told about the night-terrors; how the child starts out of sleep screaming with terror; knows on one; can hardly be pacified. Is trembling with fear. “Calcarea children have dreadful times in their dreams,” Kent says. And Calcarea has a wonderful record for curing night terrors.

Calcarea desires eggs; eats lime, slate pencils, earth (Alumina), chalk, clay, raw potatoes, sweets, ice cream, etc.

And later on, hates coffee, meat, milk (or likes milk which disagrees); hates tobacco.

Stomach swollen “like an inverted saucer”.

A third picture-further on in life-“the leucophlegmatic patient”, as she has been called,-fat, fair, flabby. She comes in puffily, and presents you with a froggy hand, that makes you shiver and look round for soap and water-so boneless it is, so moist and cold. You can spot Calcarea by that hand.

She will give the symptoms of her ANAEMIA: her weariness, her weakness, her palpitation. Her breathlessness on going up the slightest ascent. Her sensation of chest too full of blood; head too full of blood.

Her chilliness. Her tendency to sweat, especially about head and feet. How she sweats when cold; in a cold room; in sleep. How her coldness comes in patches, even spots-cold head, cold feet, cold abdomen, cold thigh, cold scalp; icy cold.

(Sulphur has heat in patches: Calc, has cold in patches, and, Kent says, sweat in patches.)

Here you see a great fat woman, without strength, breath, energy, firmness, colour, health. Such weakness! such weariness! such breathlessness! such palpitation!

She will tell you that her menses are too early, too profuse, too long-lasting: are apt to recur with any exertion or excitement.

And then her cramps! She cannot get into a cold bed without cramp. She stretches out her leg in bed and gets cramp: calves, fingers, and toes all indulge in painful cramps (Cuprum).

And she is so easily sprained. Has pain in the small of the back as if sprained; is unable to lift anything heavy; and sweat breaks out suddenly; in the morning; at odd times.

And she has a curious feeling as if tight-laced about the waist. Has rushes of blood to head. Vertigo on turning head.

I once saw Calcarea clear up a very bad case of pernicious anaemia for several years. I had tried things on various indications, then gave Calcarea because her chalky face looked like it. She lived far away and gave up treatment at last, and relapsed and died. But she bloomed and got strong meanwhile.

Then the T. B. type. All foreshadowed in the provings. They tell of submaxillary glands as big as hens’ eggs (Drosera). Of hard swellings in submaxillary glands. Ulcers, with indurations about them.

Night sweats.

Abdomen very much distended; hard, swollen glands in both groins.

But all in a “Calcarea patient, whether adult or child”

Kent describes it thus: “Children with cold feet, emaciated extremities, enlarged abdomen, stomach distended like an inverted saucer, bloated abdomen. Cold, and sensitive to cold. Pale skin. Pale, waxy face.”

Then, the chest is so sore-so sensitive to touch and inspiration. So tight. So full up with blood.

And the cough-the tickling cough, with sweetish expectoration and spitting of blood. Yes: the provings suggest rickets, anaemia, tuberculosis.

Then the Calcarea mental picture.

So frightened-so afraid!

The terrors at night; after sleep; on waking from sleep.

Fear; fear; fear.

Fear that something is going to happen to herself, or to someone else.

Fear that she will lose her reason, and that people will notice.

Fear that people will notice her confusion of mind.

Fearfulness, with restlessness and vague fear. Fear of Death.

Can’t help it! She sits-sits and fidgets with small things-bends pins by the hour. Broods over little things that have no importance. Dread and aversion to labour. Fear of consumption. Peevish; fretful; obstinate.

Thoughts vanish. Brain feels paralysed-can’t think or remember; with confusion.

Dread of disease and suffering. Despairs of her life and reason.

Calcarea epilepsy has for aura the “mouse sensation” Sensation of a mouse running up arm or leg. (Belladonna has this also, and Silicea)

NASH says: “If Calcarea has one symptom that not only leads all the rest, but also all other remedies, it is found in the PROFUSE SWEATS ON THE HEAD OF LARGE-HEADED, OPEN FONTANELLED CHILDREN. The sweat is so profuse that during sleep it rolls down the head and face, wetting the pillow far around. Many a little child has been saved from dying of hydrocephalus, dentition, rachitis, marasmus, eclampsia, cholera infantum, etc., where this sweating symptom was the guiding symptom to the use of Calcarea.

He also draws attention to malnutrition as one of the disorders calling for Calcarea. He quotes from Hering’s Guiding Symptoms:

“Tardy development of the bony tissues with lymphatic enlargements.”

“Curvature of the bones, especially spine and long bones.”

“Extremities deformed, crooked.”

“Softening of the bones: fontanelles remain open too long, and skull very large.”

And he adds, these symptoms “show the lack of, or imperfect nutrition of bones. They are nourished irregularly, or unevenly. One part of a bone, the vertebrae for instance, is nourished, while the other is starved. While all this irregular bone development is going on the soft parts are suffering from over- nutrition. This we have recorded in the pathogenesis, tendency to obesity, especially in children and young people.”

By the way-Calcarea is the chronic of Belladonna: i.e. when Belladonna has again and again helped the acute condition, Calcarea will be curative, and so, prevent its recurrence.

Now we will conclude with some points from KENT:

“Calcarea sweats in spots. When Calcarea’s feet becomes cold, they sweat.*Cold Sweat, feet and legs, sensation of damp stockings, Sepia also.-ED.

“Children going through difficult dentition have dreadful times in their dreams: screech out in the night, and the pillow is wet all round the head.

“Calcarea produces that kind of anaemia known as chlorosis. It produces a most pernicious anaemia.

“Sensitiveness to cold and weakness run through the remedy fat, flabby, very anaemic subjects. Calcarea is a very tired patient

“They go into a state of enlarged glands, emaciation of neck and limbs, while abdominal fat and glands increase. Calcarea has both fat flabby and pale patients, and it has emaciated states too.

Margaret Lucy Tyler
Margaret Lucy Tyler, 1875 – 1943, was an English homeopath who was a student of James Tyler Kent. She qualified in medicine in 1903 at the age of 44 and served on the staff of the London Homeopathic Hospital until her death forty years later. Margaret Tyler became one of the most influential homeopaths of all time. Margaret Tyler wrote - How Not to Practice Homeopathy, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, Repertorising with Sir John Weir, Pointers to some Hayfever remedies, Pointers to Common Remedies.