Impotencies.
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1996 Jul / Aug Vol V No 4.
Kulay F M.
Cases.
` Lyc.

Homoeopaths are exhorted to individualize a patient. We do not treat Malaria, Typhoid or Impotency. It has to be a China malaria, a Bryonia Typhoid and so forth. We do not consider impotency per se. We look for its type, whether it is a Lycopodium-impotency or Staph-impotency, or of any other type, Agar, Agnus...! Hence the title in the plural.

There is a distinction between two impotencies, that of Staph, and of Lyco, as explained by George II, Discussions pages 7-11). Staph has strong desire but no capacity. "The feeling was mostly on his occiput-- what I found out was that he had desire but no erection, but at the same time there was something which was not moving behind the brain. Staph gives a sense of weakness in thinking in performing, in his feelings and weakness generally. It is a feeling that something in the occiput is holding the brain. There are other remedies, Lyco, Nux-v, Agnus-c and Graph. "But this one has a certain type of impotency. The person was NOT aggressive. He cried because he could not have sex. The feeling that the brain was not moving along." the brain did not take part", gives you the idea of how he felt. Another will say something is holding the brain, mostly on the occiput. And yet another will feel as if there is a ball in his

brain; it does not matter so much how he describes it" but the central theme is "brain being held".

"With Lyco, it would be quite a different story. A Lyco is usually a man who has had a lot of sex with a lot of women.

"He (the Staph) said that for seven years he had lost his potency...he talks about his wife. A Lyco would say, "You know, I tried with my wife and it didnt work. I thought then that perhaps I was tired of my wife and I tried some other woman". They are the high livers. These Lyco remain unmarried because they find that life is good..without the responsibilities of marriage".

The point George is trying to make is that Staph men love their wives, are loyal, have great desire and feel humiliated at their own failure. When they improve, they are likely to say, "Ask my wife. "Lyco on the other hand, is a high liver, the libertine, expectedly a sufferer in the liver, with a few furrows on the forehead, goes out to women in spite of his timidity, perhaps because they fall for him these women not knowing that he is a mix of "Dictatorial-at-home" and "Angelic outside".

Some Reflections on the Indian Situation:

In spite of an undesirable exposure to a visual-medium boom, India represents , by and large, a closed society which respects values even in moments of temptations. Not that India is a paradigm of Virtue, but its culture succeeds in imposing, in a large measure, that attitude of restraint, the voluntary denial to self of the right to cross the line, to transcend the in-built ethical universe.

Most wives here stoically serve their impotent husbands well.

Weak husbands fall a prey to road-side quacks because they are too ashamed to see their doctor and reveal themselves. Then there are good as well as bad spouse-matches. If husbands can be blamed some time, likewise wives can be blamed too. Drinking males have erratic moments of passion when their wives cannot be aroused, and when the wives are in their element, the husbands are dead as logs. There is sometimes a temperamental mismatch, the bride and the in-laws conflict, tenement-dwellers, overcrowded families, discord between spouses, and myriad other situations that may dampen the sexual potentiality, masquerading as impotency of different kinds, eg psychic (Onos). Genuine feelings of love and attractions are not expressed because of cultural difference. Sexual immorality is not the order of the day, although it exists and one cannot pretend and wish it away.

The cultural backdrop briefly outlined explains the difficulties in prescribing for cases of impotency.

These patients go to roadside quacks because that ensures anonymity, but it does them harm. Finally, when they come to you they are likely to conceal many vital details, such as going to prostitutes, flirtatious sexuality, homosexuality, history of over-indulgence or venereal diseases--though, they mostly admit to masturbation without giving any details.

Once a young man, a high liver, told me that in addition to visiting call-girls, he masturbated frequently. One day, he masturbated several times and in the final act, he ejected blood instead of semen, and got frightened. Such openness on the part of a patient is quiterare.

The same cultural mind-set limits the prescribers enquiry as well. Inspite of the inherent cultural obstacles, homoeopathic results were as good as they are in other complaints and diseases. Strangely, the results of certain highly praised remedies are not as satisfying. My frustrating experience of Lyco in several cases proved instructive on reflection, as explained below.

After Lyco resolutely refused to oblige in three or four cases, I did not curse Lyco or myself I began to think hard. I then realized not as a flash of revelation, but as a fruit of a finer analytic exercise, that the great Sul-Calc-Lyco trio invites a deeper probe. Firstly, almost every human needs one or the other, or all of them, in his life-span, some time or the other. From skin to thorax to head, from infancy to puberty to old age, and from perhaps many ways of looking at them, they seem to be a TRIO-family most akin to the Human Species. Secondly, they are extremely well proved and that often poses the problem of choosing. One often finds a case with the

predominant symptoms of one of them but hardly ever finds a case which has NO symptoms whatsoever of the other two. There seems to be an orderly progression from one to the other and to the next, a progression from perversion of thought first, leading to willful, sinful, deed next, and compelling one, finally, to reap the harvest. If you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind (a perfect epitomisation of the life of Adam and the inheritance by his progeny, the Human Race).

Lets come to what I did in the next case, ie after filing with Lyco in three or four cases. A case can be stuck between Sulphur and Calc (Aversion egg, craving egg) or between Calc and Lyco (and fond of, or desires, sweet--Calc Craves sweet--Lyco). A thought assaulted me mercilessly with an inaudible (to others) loudness, "Cant you see that this case has NOT progressed fully into Lyco yet?" ie it is stuck between Calc and Lyco. I thought about how much of it is in Calc or in Lyco. A difficult decision. But the failure of Lyco (as well as mine) left no choice. I gave Calcarea and it helped. Calc has three marks in Impotency, as listed under "Erection Wanting" (KR pg 696). But all this that I have said is NOT important. What is important is to Learn Natures systematicness in spite of its aberrations

and learn to bear it, if not understand and admire it. All that is being explained, and that too only as I have come to understand, so that it has no universal binding, is that it may be very difficult to determine if a case has or has not travelled from X into Y or is stuck in between, and then what to do? Shall we harp only on the painless scientific aspect of homoeopathy or on the pain its art-aspect entails?.