Materia Medica

Tarentula

Written by Ute Seebauer

Tarentula materia medica and complete drug picture of homeopathy remedy Tarentula. Learn all the signs and symptoms of homeopathic Tarentula by Ute Seebauer.

Remedy Source

Tarentulas belong to the spider (Arachnida) family given the scientific name Theraphosidae.

They are characterized by having tarsi (feet) with two claws and claw tufts. Lycosa Tarentula, common name “European Wolf Spider” or “Spanish Tarentula” belongs to the family of Lycosidae. For the preparation of the homeopathic remedy, the tincture of the living spider, collected in the month of July, during which time the poison is stronger, is used.

Originally, the name “tarentula” was exclusively given to the species of wolf spiders. Today, the word tarentula applies to two very different kinds of spider. The spider that originally got this name, the Lycosa Tarentula, is neither particularly large, particularly hairy, or particularly venomous. When people who knew about the tarantulas emigrated to the Americas and discovered fearsomely large and hairy spiders in the New World, they bestowed the name “tarentula” on them. Those spiders belong to the Suborder Mygalomorphae, the Family Theraphosidae (Greek for thera “wild animal, beast” + phos “light”) and the Families of Atypidae, Hexathelidae and Dipluridae. Hence, there are more than 850 different species of tarantulas under this broader definition of tarentulas, sometimes called bird spiders, monkey spiders, baboon spiders and rain spiders. These spiders can be quite large.

The Spanish Tarentulas is a long-legged, long-living spider (10 years and more), whose entire body is covered with short hairs called setae. It lives in southern Italy, mainly in an area around the town of Taranto, but is found all over the South of Europe. Tarantulas in general inhabit any tropical to temperate regions in South- and Central America, Mexico and the south-western United States, Asia, Southern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The mainly black body of the Spanish Tarentula is covered with hair and approximately 2 inches (5 cm) across with a 3 to 5 inch (8-12 cm) span of brown legs and a weight of approximately 1-2 ounces (30-60 grams). Despite the scary appearance and reputation, it does not make the list of deadly spiders.

To grow, tarentulas, like other spiders, have to shed their exoskeleton periodically in a process called moulting. Young tarentulas may do this several times a year, while full grown specimens will only moult once every year or sooner in order to replace lost limbs.

Tarentulas are nocturnal predators, killing their prey including birds, lizards, snakes, frogs and toads by injecting venom through their fangs. The hungry tarentula typically waits partially hidden at the entrance to its retreat to ambush passing prey. It has sensitive hairs that enable it to detect the size and location of potential victims from the vibrations caused by their movements. Like many other spiders, it cannot see much more than light, darkness, and movement and uses its sense of touch to perceive the world around it.

The town Taranto (or Tarentum in Latin), a town in Southern Italy gave the spider its name. The bite of this spider was once believed to cause a fatal condition called tarantism. It was believed unfoundedly that Lycosa Tarentula spread the disease “tarantism”, thought to be inflicted by tarantulas’ bites, in southern Europe. The illness was first recorded in medical journals in the 14th century. Occurring every summer for three hundred years, Tarantism reached its peak in the 17th century. According to the local belief, the only cure was to dance to certain music — tarantella — for days or even weeks.

Actually, the bite of this kind of spider is not even particularly painful, let alone life-threatening. There are no substantiated reports of tarantula bites proving fatal to a human. Because proteins are included when a toxin is injected, some individuals may suffer severe symptoms due to an allergic reaction rather than to the venom.

In the 1600s, people discovered that these spiders were virtually harmless. Many then concluded that the whole phenomenon of Tarantism was simply an excuse for a wild party. However, it is now suspected that there has been an entirely different kind of spider in the fields around Taranto that caused fairly severe bites (one candidate being the malmignatte or Mediterranean black widow, one of several species in the genus Latrodectus), but the tarentulas, being wolf spiders, were fairly large, out in the open, and were frequently seen running around, which drew attention to them, and so they got the blame. Join that factor with the belief in tarantism and the supposed need for wild dancing to prevent sure death, and the fearsome world-wide reputation of the tarantula was guaranteed.

Lycosa Tarentula’s bite was said to cause hallucinogenic effects. In some versions of the legend, the venom itself caused the dancer to move uncontrollably. The condition that results from the bite of Lycosa Tarentula was common in southern Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were strong suggestions that there is no organic cause for the heightened excitability and restlessness that gripped the victims. The stated belief of the time was that victims needed to engage in frenzied dancing to prevent death from tarantism, although the wolf spider’s venom is not dangerous enough to cause death. Many people have suggested that the whole business was a deceit to evade religious proscriptions against dancing.

The cultural history of tarantism and the tarantella dance is discussed in John Compton’s introduction to the world of spiders called The Life of the Spider, pages 56-57. He suggests that ancient Bacchanalian rites that had been suppressed by the government went underground under the guise of emergency therapy for bite victims.

Some theorize that the frantic dance was a means of purging the body of the spider’s poison and thus avert death. In any case, neither the wolf spider nor tarentulas have dangerous bites, so there is no need to dance to ward off any ill effects. There are no arachnids known to have hallucinogenic venom.

The venom of Lycosa Tarentula contains Arachnolysin, the active haemolytic principle of spider venom. Even though it is being discussed, whether in tarantula provings and observations from Kent, Allen and Hering etc it truly was Lycosa tarentula that was proved or indeed the Mediterranean black widow. It doesn’t exactly matter, as Arachnolysin is common in all poisoning spiders, though the quantity of the poison injected into the victim differs from species to species. Besides the actual spider venom, some spiders also have some venom in their claws which also helps to decompose the victim. In humans these protein containing substances often cause allergic reactions. Lastly, spiders are not the cleanliest animals and hence a spider bite often causes bad infections and ulcerations of the bite.

Symptoms of Arachnolysin are not constant and vary from person to person. Especially convulsions and dyspnoea can occur in intervals. The symptoms come on first as precordial anxiety, palpitation, oppression of the chest followed by dyspnoea, then abdominal colic, diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting, later convulsions, trembling and twitching all over the body, hyperactivity and restlessness (more or less combined with anxiety). Mental symptoms include anxiety, melancholia, complaining and sighing as well as restlessness and overactive senses and over sensitivity towards sound and colors.

Lycosa Tarentula’s face is unmoved, almost mask-like, while it is waiting in front of its hole in the ground, which it built to trap other animals, for a victim to pass by. Then it suddenly attacks and bites to kill. Just as foxy is the patient in need of the remedy Tarentula: Especially when nobody is watching, Tarentula children for instance will destroy their buddy’s toy. Adults will spin intrigues, be friendly with fellow humans to their face and at the next best occasion talk bad about them behind their back. They might even report somebody they’ve been just very nice to, to an authority for something these people never did.

The amatory dance is a very important feature in the spider’s romance life. Several males will dance for one female and it is her, who then picks her chosen one to reproduce. The dance also, as discussed before, is important for the Tarentula patient as his symptoms are influenced by music.

After mating, the male has to get away as quick as possible from the female spider or it will most likely be eaten by her. This is a common habit in many spiders and shows quite clear the violence, the destructiveness and the foxy character of the spider. The same applies to the Lycosa Tarentula patient: He, too, is destructive and at times violent and will most probably bully or abuse animals or weaker persons whenever he can. Tarentulas often destroy things purposely to blame somebody else for it.

Mentals

Restlessness & Excitement

Tarentula cases are sometimes caused by

– Anger (2)

– Bad news, (1)

– Excitement, emotional (2)

– Joy, excessive (1)

– Love, disappointed (1)

All these possible causes suggest that in a Tarentula case, unexpectedly the rhythm or the balance get upset. Tarentula’s nervous costume is tensed, like a coiled spring ready to jump any time it is released. And this is exactly what Tarentula does: the least emotional / mental excitement brings the normal flow of emotions and thoughts in him to a stop or changes the direction and he ‘jumps’.

In the 17th century, Tarantella was recommended after a bite of a tarentula; indeed, such a bite causes violent movements of the muscles that remind one of an eccentric or macabre dance. Tarentula is one of the hastiest remedies in the Materia Medica, if not the hastiest of them. E.g. The patient suffers extreme restlessness of his legs and of the whole body or tosses and turns in bed all night long. Not only is this restlessness of a physical kind, but emotional and mental as well.

Tarentula patients are impatient with themselves as well as with fellow humans, especially when they deal with individuals that are slower. The reason for this impatient restlessness is partly to set free the enormous energy that inhibits Tarentula and partly that these are individuals driven from anxiety.

  • Mind – Hurry, haste (3)
  • Mind – Impatient (1)
  • Mind – Restlessness (3)
  • Mind – Restlessness – anxious (3)

The excitement of Tarentula can go from extreme gayety and much singing (as far as) to hysteria, when the state of insanity becomes more severe, and can generally cause all kinds of strange, paradoxical behaviour:

  • Mind – Cheerful (2)
  • Mind – Vivacious (2)
  • Mind – Jesting (2)
  • Mind – Laughing (2)
  • Mind – Laughing – involuntarily (2)
  • Mind – laughing – hysterical (1)
  • Mind – Excitement (2)
  • Mind – Foolish behaviour (2)
  • Mind – Hysteria (3)
  • Mind – Insanity (3)

Music & Rhythm

Since Tarentula’s nervous costume is so tensed, so under pressure, music can have a very soothing effect on him. Music comes along with rhythm and brings relaxation of the mind and the body for Tarentula, though the ‘wrong’ music can aggravate the complaints as it will be perceived as a disturbance. The music needs to be of the same rhythm as the patient himself and then his thoughts and his movements will be graceful, flowing and elegant. This is, why Tarentula sometimes sings his own song

  • Mind – Music – agg. (2)
  • Mind – Music – amel. (3)
  • Mind – Excitement – Music, from (2)
  • Mind – Singing – hoarse, until very (2)
  • Mind – Dancing (3)

Fear & Anxiety

Tarentula is afraid, that he gets out of the rhythm that keeps him in balance. He fears, something could go wrong or that he can’t get all work of the day done. This is, besides the nervous excitement, the other reason he becomes so fast in everything and is so restless.

  • Mind – Fear – happen, something will (1)
  • Mind – Fear – restlessness from (1)

Violence & Aggression

When the restlessness of Tarentula gets slowed down or even stopped by external circumstances, he can become very aggressive and violent. The patient then develops vandalism, which he can hide very well at first. One has the impression, Tarentula didn’t do anything and it is said that Tarentula is “lynx eyed” and “smart as a fox”.

However, even the smart Tarentula patient can’t hide his anger for long and the stronger the pressure grows, the more his rhythm is disturbed, the angrier he becomes and his anger will eventually turn into rage with a desire to even kill. But whereas Stramonium’s or Anacardium’s anger can get totally out of control and become unreasonable, Tarentula’s anger always has a true exciting cause and will not get out of hand that much. The patient will stop raging, when this cause is eliminated. The greater the disturbance of his inner rhythm is the angrier will the patient be. This is why ‘rage’ is only rated ‘1’. The rage is uncontrolled anger. Tarentula however has control about what he’s doing just not about how strong his anger is. He doesn’t desire to bite either. He totally logically tries to get rid of his annoyance, by first getting angry, then trying to punish (striking, wanting to fight) and lastly trying to eliminate the cause of his anger by simply trying to kill the disturber or throw the object of his anger against a wall.

  • Mind – Malicious (1)
  • Mind – Anger (3)
  • Mind – Rage (1)
  • Mind – Fight, wants to (2)
  • Mind – Striking (2)
  • Mind – Throwing – things around (1)
  • Mind – Kill, desire to (1)

Tarentula’s anger might also be directed against himself, when he can’t succeed what he had planned on or when something just doesn’t work. He then becomes impatient, angry and in the end might strike himself:

  • Mind – Impatience (1)
  • Mind -Striking – himself (2)

When the border from sanity to insanity is passed, the uncontrollable movements and restlessness of Tarentula cause acts of vandalism that are more bizarre, but never as bizarre as in most other psychotic remedies:

  • Mind – Striking – himself • head: hands, her body and others; strikes her head with her (2)
  • Mind – Striking – himself • knocking his had against wall and things (1)
  • Mind – Tearing things in general (2)
  • Mind – Pulling – hair • presses her head; an (1) (only remedy in this rubric)
  • Mind – destructiveness (2)

Erotica

The male Tarentula lives for about 5-8 years to mature. Then it will go out and start looking for a female, dance his amatory dance, copulate and in case it has not been eaten by the female spider, die soon after, the latest after a year or a year and a half. The main purpose of its life is obviously reproduction and for Tarentula patients, too, erotica plays a big role.

The erotic possession might drive the patient to active, open, sexual approach which makes him appear pretty shameless and with increasing degree of insanity this erotic mania will become worse:

  • Mind – Shameless (2)
  • Mind – Shameless – exposing the person (2)
  • Mind – Lascivious (2)
  • Mania – sexual • men (2)
  • Mania – sexual • women (2)
  • Nymphomania (2)
  • Delirium, erotic (2)

Periodicity

Once a year, in July, the Tarentulas will go out and start searching for a partner spider. The females will be sitting close to their hole but the males will be walking around looking for a female. Just like this phenomenon, the Tarentula patient’s symptoms are prone to occur with a certain periodicity. His general complaints might occur only once a year or once every night at a certain time; his sleep might be interrupted and he wakes up.

Delirium & Delusions

The degree of insanity in Tarentula is just as strong as in other psychotic remedies, However, Tarentula does not have such a strong tendency to be unrealistic but his insanity concerns more his behaviour and his attitude. Whereas other insane patients totally loose their sense for reality and develop hallucinations, Tarentula will stay more in the ‘here and now’ and usually knows pretty well, what’s going on. It is his way he thinks about the world and people, and it is the way he acts that makes him appear insane.

  • Insanity (3)

Since Tarentula has this tendency to aggression, it might happen, that he feels attacked imaginary or real, verbal or physical; and the delirious patient then can become quite raging, brutal and even develop superhuman strength:

  • Delusions – assaulted, is going to be (1)
  • Delusions – insulted, he is (1)
  • Delirium – hysterical, almost (1)
  • Delirium – maniacal (1)
  • Delirium – raging (1)
  • Delirium – exaltation of strength, with (2)

Though hallucinations are not a very marked characteristic of Tarentula, they do occur (especially on closing the eyes) and if they do so, they are of frightening, of a horrible character and usually concern figures and animals:

  • Delusions – visions, has / • closing the eyes on (1)
  • Delusions – visions, has • horrible / • monsters, of (1)
  • Delusions – spectres, ghosts, spirits /- figures • seeing (1)
  • Delusions – images, phantoms, sees (2)
  • Delusions – images • closing eyes on (2)
  • Delusions – images • frightful (1)
  • Delusions – faces, sees (2)
  • Delusions – faces, sees • closing eyes, on (2)
  • Delusions – faces, sees • diabolical faces crowd upon him (1)
  • Delusions – faces, sees • ugly (=hideous) (2)
  • Delusions – animals / – animals • frightful / – insects (1)
  • Delusions – absurd, ludicrous • figures are present (1)

There are strange sensations as if his legs were cut off or he is floating in air. Both show somewhat the affinity to spiders: 8 legs that are so important to crawl along the threads in the spider’s net and the feeling of floating in air, when swinging on these threads. Tarentula might also feel smaller than he actually is:

  • Delusions – floating • air in (2)
  • Delusions – legs • cut off, legs are (1)
  • Delusions – small • body is smaller (1)

Other very peculiar delusions that perfectly reflect his uncertainty and fear, something unforeseen could happen are:

  • Delusions – fall, something would / him on (1) the only remedy in this rubric
  • Delusions – strange • room, seem to be in the (2)
  • Delusions – unseen things, delusions of (1) the only remedy in this rubric

Modalities

The Symptoms of Tarentula are :-

Worse Better
  • Rest
  • Pressure
  • Touch
  • Noise
  • Tobacco smoke
  • Seeing others in trouble
  • Strong sensory impressions
  • Cold (especially cold water)
  • Motion
  • Music
  • Rubbing the affected part
  • Sleep
  • Open air
  • Bright, lively colors
  • Perspiration

Motion & Touch

In general, symptoms are > motion and < rest – because Tarentula has this great desire to keep on moving. However, several symptoms, especially pains, can be aggravated from motion, e.g. the headache is < moving head in the direction of the pains; the pain and oppression in the chest < raising arms, pain in middle of abdomen < riding horseback, etc. Motion always aggravates the pain when it is motion towards the pain. This aggravation is not due to the motion itself, but to a kind of pressure that is hereby applied to the affected part or one might say the blood flow into the affected part is hindered slightly. A standstill occurs, but Tarentula must stay in motion. On tipping the head to the painful side, the blood flow gets diminished, on raising the arms, the upper body gets stretched, but indeed, the chest becomes even more oppressed and bouncing up and down on a horseback naturally makes the abdomen of the rider become the center of two alternating impacts. The place where two forces meet – while the rider is pushed upwards with one step of the horse, he is still on his way back down from the preceding step.

The same principle of course applies to touch: touch stops, touch applies pressure and therefore Tarentula is < touch.

The only exception to this schema is that headache and sometimes pain in eye can be > pressure. Usually, everything is < pressure: stomach complaints, colic, even shooting pains in callosities of the finger and convulsions < pressure on the spinal column.

Rubbing produces warmth and rubbing produces energy. Rubbing a body part will get the circulation of this part flowing and thus Tarentula’s complaints are > rubbing, sometimes referred to as > warm friction. (E.g. headache, pain in thighs)

Positions & sleep

The pain in the left side of the chest is < lying on the left side. Again this has nothing to do with a side the pain prefers, but with the pressure of the bodyweight that is applied to the painful part.

In general, all complaints are < sleep in Tarentula, because during sleep, the patient doesn’t get enough movement.

Temperatures & Weather conditions

In general, all symptoms are > open air but < cold air: whereas everything freezes in cold air, becomes rigid and stiff, open air is space, freshness, wind, nature and live.

Warmth on the other hand, brings with it energy and activity. While the body is working with intensive energy to cool down, perspiration sets in. This is when everything is in action and Tarentula’s complaints get better: > perspiration. The vertigo in Tarentula however is < open air.

Tarentula’s complaints may be < from change of weather or < at sunset.

The senses

Interestingly, symptoms in Tarentula are < from noise, but > from music. One explanation might be that noise in general is something that makes us stop and listen. Noise acts like a signal; there is no rhythm to it as opposed to music. Tarentula is rhythmic; it wants and needs to move. Music has a steadiness to it and is a sound that carries us away, makes us involuntarily move or go with the sound: Music might be a supportive tool that keeps Tarentula moving.

Naturally, Tarentula has < fixing sight on any object, namely the headache, as this is again a standstill. Same applies to being blinded by the sunlight, but there is > from bright, lively colors. By being bright, colors express liveliness and strokes the right string in Tarentula: another tool, to keep it going.

Eating & Food

Tarentula is < smoking tobacco. That’s because tobacco has a constricting effect on the blood vessels and lowers blood pressure and circulation – Tarentula needs the flow though.

Emotions

Very peculiar is < Seeing others in trouble in Tarentula and all complaints are in general aggravated by strong sensory impressions: < cold, < touch, < noise; everything that interrupts the rhythm.

Etiology

As mentioned above, the most Tarentula cases are brought on by sudden and strong emotions like

  • Anger
  • Bad news
  • Excitement, emotional
  • Joy, excessive
  • Love, disappointed
  • Scolding and punishment

The other Tarentula states are usually brought on by

  • Falls
  • Sepsis

Locality

Tarentula acts to a great extent on the Nervous System, the spine, the generative sphere and the mind which becomes quite obvious on consideration of the restlessness and all these choreic movements.

Tarentula also effects the heart and the respiration and predominantly the right side, which represents the left side of the brain, which itself is the center of the emotional part of the mind.

The tongue in Tarentula is dry and looks red, brownish or even dark “as if stained with nitrate of silver” (Hering). The tongue might be drawn backwards and this way preventing speech.

Tarentula can be indicated after Gonorrhoea that has been checked by injections of silver nitrate or other, especially when complications occur in bowels, rectum and male genitalia. (Hering)

Acute disease in Chronic Remedies

In acute disease, Tarentula can be of great value in

  • Neuralgias
  • Headache (& Migraine)
  • Epistaxis
  • Diphtheria
  • Hiccough
  • Diarrhoea
  • Cystitis
  • Neuralgia of uterus
  • Gonorrhoea
  • Spinal irritation
  • Septic diseases
  • Anthrax

In emergencies Tarentula most often is used for

  • Epilepsy
  • Chorea, spasms
  • Affections of the heart
  • Angina Pectoris

Bodily Functions and Discharges

Menses

The Menses in Tarentula tend to appear too early and to be profuse, while accompanied by the typical and characteristic symptoms for this remedy: chorea-like restlessness, dancing, twitching and jerking of muscles etc and severe pains and spasms, which increase and decrease with the flow.

The menstrual discharges are light-coloured with small dark clots, darker and more profuse on rising.

Leucorrhea, if present, is usually of yellowish color and may alternate with discharge of blood.

One distinct feature in Tarentula is the expulsion of gas from the uterus.
Pregnancy

The pregnancy of Tarentula patients is marked by diverse symptoms that concern the digestive system, appetite and metabolism like loss of appetite, intense thirst, general prostration, vomiting after eating or getting out of bed and craving of raw food.
Digestion

The hepatic region is painful to touch and might be swollen or the whole abdomen is bloated. Violent burning of abdomen and rectum occurs and a sharp, lancinating pain in the umbilical region.

The digestion of Tarentula seems to become more difficult with every day and the patient looses his appetite due to flat, bitter, salty or sweetish taste in his mouth. There is nausea, compelling to lie down and pain and intense burning in the stomach that gets worse from drinking cold water. The patient vomits mucous and acid matter.

Tarentula has a tendency for constipation or violent urging and profuse, dark, fetid and bloody stools.
Excretions (skin, bowels, urinary tract)

In general, the Tarentula patient has profuse excretions and secretions, which are however not easily expelled due to their tough or thick character and this way they are fatiguing for the patient, except for the perspiration which ameliorates. Usually excretions, secretions and discharges are bloody, dark and thick, often fetid.
– Eyes

  • thick tears
  • Lids agglutinated on waking

– Ears

  • Profuse mucous secretion
  • thick, brownish discharge

– Nose

  • Sneezing and coryza
  • Profuse epistaxis of black, quickly coagulating blood

– Mouth

  • Great dryness of the mouth and teeth

– Throat and air passages

  • Dry cough: painful, fatiguing
  • Loose cough
  • Suffocative catarrh
  • Hawks up brown mucous with blood

– Stomach / Abdomen

  • Vomiting of acid, mucous matter
  • Bloating

– Urine

  • Passing of drops of dark-red brown, fetid urine
  • gravel-like sediment
  • frequent and very painful
  • hot, thick, much sediment
  • difficult micturition
  • incontinence

– Male genitals

  • Emissions
  • Difficult coitus – se-men rose-coloured containing some blood.

– Stool

  • Constipation
  • profuse, dark, fetid
  • hard stool with blood
  • Profuse diarrhoea
  • several times daily
  • partly formed, containing much mucus

– Skin

  • vesicular eruptions becoming pustular, turning into ulcers
  • ulcers discharge thin greenish & very offensive pus
  • Miliary eruptions

– Perspiration

  • general and copious perspiration

Sleep & Dreams

Even though Tarentula patients tend to yawn a lot, they are usually sleepless because they always want to stay in motion. Sleep aggravates their troubles and in the morning they wake up cross after dreams of business (staying in action) or drowning.

Characteristic Sensations

Tarentula complaints are characterized by choreic movements and restlessness that is particularly noted in the lower extremities. The patient has to keep moving which relieves his symptoms. Frequently the inner restlessness affects the head and the patient has to move his head from left to the right or back and forth, possibly purposely banging it against the wall or any other object, while doing so.

Twitching and jerking of muscles and limbs accompany almost every disorder. All complaints are – mostly positive – influenced by music and dancing. Physical as well as mental, the patient is in a state of hysteria. All senses are over sensitive: irritated to a great degree and aggravated from the least excitement.

Neuralgias can occur anywhere and are always aggravated by sensual impressions.

Tarentula is known for its foxy character. He is malicious and calculating as many things he does, he does in a calculating way. He is great in planning intrigues. So it doesn’t surprise that, as Farrington discovered, Tarentula’s hysteria is only present when the patient is watched and subsides immediately, when there is no audience, though it is not, that the patient feels better in solitude at all. He simply likes to manipulate people to get his way, be that concerning goods, attention, care or plain simply for his own satisfaction.

Typical for Tarentula also is the affinity to the right body side and the periodicity of the recurrence of symptoms (most times annually). Characteristic also is an apparent imminent choking and red or purplish coloration and swelling of tissue and skin.

Pains most likely are neuralgic: sharp, lancinating or cutting and a sensation as if hammered can occur anywhere in the body but especially in the head. There is also an alive sensation that might be felt in any body part e.g. of a living body in the stomach, rising to the throat, motion in the uterus as from a foetus, as from something crawling up the legs under the skin or as if the heart turned and twisted around.
Appearance

Hering considers Tarentula suited to “nervous, hysterical patients, who are subject to choreic affections” and people that have a “mischievous and destructive tendency”.

Sometimes in Tarentula, one pupil is much dilated, the other contracted. The eyes might be glassy, red and have blue circles around them.

The face itself is flushed or pale / earthy, possibly in strong contrast with the purple neck and shows the expression of terror. The hands might be hot and sweaty.
Physical Symptoms

  • Alternating Symptoms
  • Discharge of blood alternately with leucorrhea
  • Burning heat alternating icy coldness that causes trembling & shaking (in fever)
  • Concomitant Symptoms
  • Constrictive headache with pain in uterus
  • Headache with restless, has to move about
  • Vertigo with bad taste in mouth and headache
  • Vertigo accompanied by incomplete erection of penis
  • Snapping and pain in ear with hiccough
  • Toothache with hiccough
  • Tonsillitis with fear & sensation of suffocation
  • Throat complaints or cough accompanied by smarting in eye
  • Gastric complaints accompanied by neuralgic ones (head, face, ears, teeth etc)
  • Pain in uterus with constrictive headache
  • Faint feeling in stomach with frontal headache
  • Nausea with dizziness
  • Lancinating pain in spleen, with pain in stomach and uterus
  • Hard stool with blood
  • Profuse diarrhoea with prostration, nausea, vomiting and fainting
  • Constipation with involuntary passing of urine on coughing
  • Menses accompanied by toothache
  • Uterine trouble with bearing down pains
  • Precordial anxiety with tremulous beating of heart
  • Heat of face and palms
  • Intermittent fever with choreic convulsions

Characteristic, peculiar Symptoms

  • Desire to pull out his hair on account of burning heat in scalp
  • objects seen with the left eye appear bright red
  • Cough > smoking
  • Stools occur on washing the head
  • Wetting hands in cold water < all symptoms
  • Cannot keep quiet anywhere or in any position
  • Right sided complaints
  • Sensation of cold water being poured over a body part (eye, head, inside of throat etc)
  • Complaints > music & dancing (fast)
  • Desires sand, ashes or cuttlefish, spiced food and craves cigarettes

Antidotes
Tarentula is antidoted by and antidotes Lachesis. It may also be antidoted by Pulsatilla, Magnesium carbonicum, Moschus, Cuprum, Chelidonium, Gelsemium, Bovista and Carbo vegetabilis.
Sources:

Allen, Clarke, Hahnemann, Hering, Kent, Sankaran, Wiesbauer

About the author

Ute Seebauer

Ute Seebauer