Nervous system: Hyoscyamus is hill of convulsions, contractions, trembling, quivering and jerkings of the muscles. Convulsions in vigorous people, coming on with great violence. Convulsions that involve the whole economy, with unconsciousness, coming on in the night. Convulsions in women at the menstrual period; and then the lesser convulsions of single muscles, and contractions of single muscles.
Little jerkings and twitchings. In low forms of the disease it takes on the latter, jerkings and twitchings of muscles. In low typhoid states where there is great prostration with twitching. He feels it himself if conscious, enough to realize it, but others see it. An evidence of great prostration of the nervous system. Sliding down in bed, twitching of the muscles.
All the muscles tremble and quiver, a constant state of erethism throughout the economy. A state of irritability and excitability. Convulsive jerks of the limbs, so that all sorts of angular motions are made, automatic motions. Choreic motions.
But angular motions of the arms, and picking at the bedclothes. Picking at something in delirium. Gradually increasing weakness, whether it be in a continued fever where there has been a delirium or excitement, or in a case of insanity with erethism, of the nerves and mind; excitability and gradually increasing weakness.
Complete prostration, so that the patient slides down in bed, until the jaw drops. So the intermingling of jerkings and quiverings and tremblings and weakness and convulsive action of muscles are all striking features. Infants go into convulsions.
“Falls suddenly to the ground with cries and convulsions. Convulsions of children, especially from fright. Convulsions after eating.”
The child becomes sick after eating, vomits and goes into convulsions.
“Shrieks and becomes insensible.”
Goes into convulsions, such as the old books used to say, from worms; and the mother goes into convulsions soon after the child is born, called puerperal convulsions.
“Convulsions during sleep.
Suffocating spells and convulsions during labor.
Toes become spasmodically cramped.”
Mind: The mental state is really the greatest part of Hyoscyamus. Talking, passive delirium, imaginations, illusions, hallucinations; talking, rousing up and talking with a delirious manifestation, and then stupor. These alternate through complaints. And during sleep talking, crying out in sleep; but, talking and mumbling and soliloquizing. Then, there are wakeful periods, in which there are delirium and illusions and hallucinations all mingled together.
Sometimes the patient is in a state of hallucination, and the next minute in a state of illusion. Which means that a part of the time what he sees as hallucinations he believes to be so; and then these hallucinations become delusions.
Again, the things he sees he knows are not so, and then they are illusions. But he is full of hallucinations. He sees all sorts of things, indescribable things in his hallucinations. He imagines all sorts of things concerning people, concerning himself, and he gets suspicious. Suspicion runs through acute sickness; it runs through the mania in insanity. Suspicion that his wife is going to poison him; that his wife is untrue to him. Suspicious of everybody.
“Refuses to take medicine because it is poisoned.”
“Imagines, that he is pursued, that the people have all turned against him, that his friends are no longer his friends.
He carries on conversations with imaginary people.”
Talks as if he were talking to himself, but he really imagines that some one is sitting by his side, to whom he is talking.
Sometimes he talks to dead folks; recalls past events with those that have departed. Calls up, a dead sister, or wife, or husband, and, enters into conversation just as- if the per son were present.
Hyoscyamus has another freak in this peculiar mental state. Perhaps, there may be a queer kind of paper on the wall, and he lies and looks at it, and if he can possibly turn the figures into rows he will keep busy at that day and night, and lie wants a light there so he can put them into rows, and he goes to sleep and dreams about it, and wakes up and goes at it again; it is the same idea.
Sometimes, he will imagine the things are worms, are vermin, rats, cats, mice, and he is leading them like children lead around their toy wagons – just like a child. The mind is working in this; no two alike; perhaps you may never see these identical things described, but you will see something like it that the mind is reveling, in strange and ridiculous things.
One patient had a string of bedbugs going up a wall, and he had, them tied with a string, and was irritated because he could not make the last one keep up. Hyoscyamus did him a great deal of good. You do not find that expression in the text, but I will speak of it as analogous to the things that belong to the text. He is in alternate states. One minute he raves, and another he scolds in delirium, in excitement; the next he is in a stupor.
Stupor: Finally, in a typhoid state, after he has progressed some time, he passes into quite a profound stupor. Early in the case he can be roused, and he answers questions correctly, and he seems to know what you have said to him; but the instant he finishes the last, answer he appears to be sound asleep.
Then you shake him and ask him another question, he answers that, and again he is sound asleep. The delirium that belongs to typhoid grows more and more profound, more and more passive, more and more muttering, until he passes into a complete unconsciousness front which he cannot be roused; in which he will lie for days sometimes, and weeks, becoming more and more emaciated; lying there in profound stupor unless this remedy is administered.
Lying there picking the bedclothes, and muttering. Even when he is in a stupor and realizes nothing apparently, that is going on, he makes passive motions, mutters, talks to himself, and once in a while utters a shrill scream. Picking his fingers, just as if he had something in his fingers when there is nothing there. He picks at the bedclothes the same way. Picking at his nightshirt, or picking anything he get his fingers on. Or, picking in the air, grasping as if he were grasping at flies.
This passive delirium goes on until he is in a profound stupor, and lies as one dead. In an insane state it sometimes takes on something of wildness, but not often. It is more passive, talking and prattling, sitting still in one corner and jabbering, or lying down, or going about.
“Undertaking to do the usual things, the usual duties.”
That is, the housewife will want to get up and do the things she is used to doing in the house; the cooper will want to make barrels and the unusual things belonging to that business. Wants to carry on the usual occupation in his mind, talks about it, carries on the things of the day, and he keeps busy about it, so it is a busy insanity. Also, the delirium takes on the type of a busy delirium.
Now, to give you something of an idea as to the grading of this general type of insanity it should be compared with Stramonium and Bell. You heard in the lecture on Belladonna that it is violent, its fever most intense. There is much excitement. In Stramonium, when we reach that you will see that his delirium, his insanity, is expressed in terms of extreme violence.
These three run so close together that something can be brought out by associating them together. When considering Hyoscyamus in its mental state it is well to realize that it seldom has much fever in its insanity. It has a fever sometimes in the low form, but when Hyoscyamus is thought of in relation to a febrile state the intensity of the heat would be this order:
Belladonna, Stramonium, Hyoscyamus. Now, Belladonna is very hot in its mental states. Stramonium, most violent and active, murderously violent, is moderately hot in its fever, as a rule. Hyoscyamus has a low fever, not very high, sometimes none at all, with its insanity. When one comes to take into consideration the violence of its delirium, or the maniacal actions, then it changes the order.
The order as to violence of conduct would be: Stramonium, Belladonna, Hyoscyamus. That brings you to see that even when associated with those medicines that look most like it, it is at the bottom of the list. It goes as a passive medicine, while the upper ones are more active. Hyoscyamus has a passive mania. Does not go into violence.
That is, the patient will sometimes become murderous, but it is more likely to be suicidal. Sometimes the patient will talk and prattle, sometimes sit and say nothing.
“Full of imaginations and hallucinations when asleep and when awake.
Religious turn of mind” with women who have been unusually pious; they take on the delusion that they have sinned away their day of grace. They have done some awful things.
“She imagines that she has murdered, that she has done some dreadful thing.
She cannot apply the promises that she reads in the Word of God to herself.”
She will say:
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.