Cicuta is a remedy of the plant kingdom. The theme of Cicuta is that the patient has been hurt so deeply and horribly in the past by another human being, especially a man, that she regresses into a childlike state, and shuts out the rest of the world.
She becomes extremely fearful, hateful, suspicious and contemptuous of men. She gets violent and convulsive when excited or approached, and is especially affected by horrible things and sad stories. This tremendous sensitivity and reactivity of Cicuta, and also its shutting out the world, remind one of Opium, to which it is closely related.
A Swiss colleague, Dr. Hansjorg Hee, narrated a case to me while he was in India. It was the case of a child of 8-9 years, who had developed eczema of the face. One peculiarity of the eczema was that in spite of it being a wet eczema, with oozing and crust formation, there was no itching.
Also, she had become withdrawn and taciturn. The problem had started a few years earlier when her father told her the story of a girl, an angel, who had been buried alive in a coffin, and on awakening found all sorts of creatures creeping around her. This story shocked the child so much that her whole attitude and mood changed. I suggested that she be given Cicuta, based on the following:
- Horrible things, sad stories affect her profoundly
- Sadness from sad stories
- Talk, indisposed to, desire to be silent, taciturn
- Man, shuns the foolishness, of
- Sensitive to sad stories
- Company, aversion to, avoids the sight of people
- Quiet disposition
- Dullness, sluggishness
Combined with these, the rubric “Eruptions without itching” from Phatak’s Repertory gives Cicuta. I heard from Dr. Hee that the patient did very well on Cicuta, both mentally and physically.
Other rubrics:
- Delusion, thinks he is again a child
- Answers when spoken to, yet knows no one
- Contemptuous
- Dancing grotesque
- Delusion, everything is strange
- Misanthropy
- Recognize, does not, his relatives
- Unconsciousness, periodical
If you would like to learn more about Dr. Sankaran’s work, courses and lectures please visit: http://www.onlinehmp.com
To read about the philosophical approach to developing these remedy pictures, see Dr. Sankaran’s introduction to Soul of Remedies:
How correct it is to generalise reasons to the different mental symptoms ?(other than what is confirmed by provings done in several people)
We can’t say that the mental symptom “mistrust in men” of cicuta virosa results from a deep hurt inflicted by someone in the past ?
There is nothing in the provings of cicuta virosa to show that the mistrust arose from personal injury caused by another human being. For that matter it is actually forbidden in homeopathy to combine two observed conditions as ” cause & effect” of one another. Such a method can often produce Materia medica of poor quality by arbitrarily combining an obsevable with another concomitant or assigning undue importance to the erroneous notions of an individual patient. Such a method can exclude all other causatives to the inclusion of only a single causative factor not at all relevant in huge number of other cases requiring the same remedy.
The anguish of arsenic alb which causes the patient to change place frequently and the dread of undertaking new tasks of lycopodium are absolutely devoid of a common reason. They differ from patient to patient. But the pure symptom alone is reliable and forming part of the totality. Constructing a story from individual patient’s experience is unhomeopathic.
The combining of symptoms on the basis of physiological logic had been alien & detrimental to the Science of homeopathy.