Case Of Distortions.
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1995 Jan / Feb Vol IV No 1.
Meena Mankani.
Cases.
` Cic.

A two year old male child was brought to me on 20th of April 1992, with the complaint of recurrent attacks of asthmatic bronchitis from the last six months. He was on a lot of allopathic medicines which gave only temporary relief. Also, a month back he had suddenly developed very high fever with convulsions, and was hospitalised for five days. The child was gradually losing weight and growing weaker with every passing day.

Now, as the mother was giving me all the details, I observed that the boy was constantly moving around my consulting room, continuously babbling and touching everything around. His head was proportionately very large as compared to his emaciated body. As I took out my stethoscope to examine him, he started shrieking very loudly. I saw that as he cried, his face got frightfully distorted. In order to pacify him, I gave him a musical toy to play with. (I always keep some toys i my consulting room for small children to play with and that helps me to observe them well from every angle.) Here I observed that with the musical chime, the boy started jumping on one leg and moving his arms up and down; and continued to do so even after the music stopped. His actions were such that it was very difficult for me to suppress my laughter. It was here that the mother remarked, "Doctor, just look at this clown. I dont know why he dances in such a funny manner. He looks like a typical stupid brat".

Forgetting her sons problems, she started pouring out her own woes. In a very sharp tone she said, "He is stupid because he is a boy and not a girl. I tell you doctor, I came to you just because you are a female Homoeopath and not a male one. I can never imagine myself going to male doctors. I hate these shit men. They are all stupid, selfish and full of garbage, having no brains of their own. The only thing that they ar capable of doing is dirty sex like dogs and to be cruel to women. I wish that all women would unite together to abort each and every male fetus in order to completely destroy this disgusting breed. We women are a thousand times superior to them. And mark my words doctor, one day the bastards will be shown their rightful place, where they belong - at the feet of women".

She blurted all this out in one breath without a single pause, with extreme disgust and hatred overflowing in her speech and expressions. A little further probing revealed that she had a very insecure, lonely and disturbed childhood. She was the only child of her equally insecure parents. Her father was an alcoholic who would drink daily and beat her and her mother very cruelly for no reason. So she grew up with an intense hatred towards her father and all men at large, along with an intense sympathy towards her mother and all women. For her, all men were "bloody lachers" and all women "suffering angels".

All along I found that her reactions were very extreme intense, displaying a lot of hardness and rigidity of thought, where no suggestions contradictory to her fixed beliefs could be accepted by her. She was also very strongly averse to marriage, but reluctantly had to give in to her mothers repeated pleadings. She had an arranged marriage at the age of 19. She got pregnant immediately after, for which she was totally unprepared. Throughout her pregnancy she remained very irritable and depressed and hated her husband for doing such a "rotten" thing to her so soon. Also, whenever she would her or read about any tale of any womans agony at the hands of any man, she would feel very sad for them and weep a lot. Then, on seeing her husband, her "blood would boil; so she would catch hold of the poor fellow to pour out the worst of her poison on him to her hearts content.

Again coming back to the child, she said, "My son seems to be the master of all stupidity. He eats any thing and everything without using any of his brains. This foolish fellow can comfortably gulp down raw onions, raw garlic, raw ginger, the whole of slippers, shoes dirty walls. I am fed up of tolerating this stupid brat. This devil tortured me no end even during my labor. I had to suffer the torments of undergoing a Cesarean. He is a devil, he behaves like a devil and he even looks like a devil during his fits".

When asked that what she meant by "looked like a devil" during convulsions she said that, at that time, his face got completely distorted, with his whole body bent backward, so that he had to be immediately rushed to the hospital. The child slept only for 6-7 hours daily, during which he had profuse sweat on his head wetting the pillow far around.

Case Analysis:

This case required the minimum of interrogation from my side. All the necessary information unfolded gradually, unmistakably leading to the choice of the curative remedy.

After a careful study, it was very interesting for m to realize that the mother and child required the same remedy, although for each of them the totality of symptoms that pointed towards this common remedy was completely different. Each or them had beautifully exhibited two totally different aspects of the remedy in common.

Let us first look at the mothers case. When we try to understand her state of mind, we find two extreme and opposite passions, love and hate, existing together in equal intensity. We see an intense hatred towards all men at large, on one extreme and an intense sympathy and tenderness towards women, on the other extreme. We could also sense a lot of hardness in her, where we find her being very rigid and uncompromising and highly vindictive towards all men, to the extent that even her son had not escaped being the object of her wrath. Her present state of mind seemed to have been the product of her stressful childhood, the situational cause that was intense enough to provoke her own inborn morbid sensitivity regarding any cruelty towards women by men, real of imagined. This had further led to the feelings of utter contempt towards all men and of great concern for all women. Also, her reactions to any such reports of so-called injustices toward women would be two-fold. One was that she would feel very sad of those "suffering" women and weep out of sympathy for them, and the other would be of great excitement and anger leading her to quarrel with her innocent husband just because he belonged to that "cruel breed".

RUBRICS:

1. SR I pg 105-Aversion, men, contempt for
2. SR I pg 105-Aversion, men, loss of confidence in
3. SR I pg 105-Aversion, men, shuns the foolishness of
4. SR I pg 7-Abusive, insulting
5. SR I pg 181-Contemptuous
6. Overestimation of self (Ph MM**). (She says, for instance, "Women are angels and men are lechers").
7. SR I pg 570-Hatred
8. SR I pg 720-Malicious, spiteful, vindictive
9. SR I pg 578-Horrible things, sad stories affect her profoundly
10. SR I pg 888-Sadness, stories, from sad
11. SR I pg 454-Excitement, hearing horrible things, after
12. SR I pg 985-Sympathy, compassion

The only remedy that emerged beautifully from the above totally was Cicuta-virosa. And now, when we look into the childs case we find:

1. SR I pg 562-Gestures, ridiculous or foolish
2. SR I pg 193-Dancing, grotesque
3. SR II pg 250-Food and drinks; indigestible and, desires
4. KR pg 222-Head, perspiration, sleep, during
5. KR pg 364-Face distortion
6. KR, pg 893-Back opisthotonous
7. KR, pg 1354-Generalities, convulsions, heat, during the
8. KR pg 763-Respiration asthmatic

Again, the only remedy that emerges from the above totality is Cicuta-virosa.

Dr. Phatak, in his Materia Medica, mentions under Cicuta, "Craves coal, chalk and many other strange articles from inability to distinguish between edible and things unfit to be eaten, etc".

Now, this one expression is illustrative of a general disturbance at the level of perception; there is at root a total inability of sensible judgment and analysis. The child expresses this disturbance by his eating habits. The mother shows the same disturbance in her attitude, unable to distinguish or appreciate the fact that if there are "bad men" in this world, then there are "good men" as well. Her level of perception is so deeply deranged and distorted that she cannot spare even her won child-her own flesh and blood-and addresses him only as a "stupid brat".

So Cicuta, which is very well known for its DISTORTIONS at the physical level, we learn from this case, has distortions at all the levels. For instance, the ladys attitude was distorted, the childs face distorted, his dancing distorted, body distorted; cravings distorted; and incidentally, even the childs coming into the world was in a distorted manner (Caesarian birth).

So I, gave the child one dose of Cicuta-virosa 1M on April 22nd, 1992. Fourteen days later the child developed crops of boils with pus on his back and abdomen. I was later told that he had experienced similar eruptions at the age of five months, which were treated with local ointments. We all know very well the wonderful action of Cicuta on the skin; and after suppression at the level of the skin, its repercussions on the BRAIN and the NERVOUS SYSTEM, wherein it produces SPASMODIC EFFECTS - convulsions and distortions.

With the eruptions coming back, we saw a tremendous improvement on all levels. The very first change that came was that he started sleeping for a few more hours at night and even napped some afternoons. Gradually, his eating habits normalized, his chest trouble resolved, he became less restless and started putting on weight. In due course, we found that whenever he cried his face did not get as distorted as before.

The skin cleared up completely by June 30th, 1992, and there has been no looking back since then. The remedy was repeated at irregular intervals up to CM potency and now he is a very healthy child who dances in a graceful manner although still a little bit funny.

The childs mother also later came for her treatment and did beautifully on Cicuta. We could clearly see a pleasant transformation in her manner of communication which was previously very abusive. Her speech became much more decent and soon she stopped addressing her son as a "stupid brat". She softened a bit in due course, but her dislike for men still continues. We have yet to see favorable changes at the deeper levels of her psyche, but the presenting gradual progress and changes in her state of being have been very satisfactory and encouraging.

If a child has asthma give Nat-sulph as the first remedy. Asthma, when hereditary is one of the sycotic complaints of Hahnemann. For years I was puzzled with the management of asthma.

But now I am beginning to get quite liberal on asthma. Since I have learned that asthma is a sycotic disease and I have made judicious application of anti-sycotics, I have been able to manage and cure a great number of cases. That outside of sycotics you will seldom find a cure for asthma. There is that peculiarity that runs through sycosis which gives you hereditary disease and asthma correspond to that disease

(Dr. Kent - Natrum-sulph and Sycosis - Kents lesser writings - Edited by Gypser, Page 185-86).