LACHESIS


 LACHESIS

 
  Rare symptoms collected from C. HERING’s Analytical Repertory of the Symptoms of the Mind 
  Excessive joy, talkative with sudden change of the subject. 


  Insanity after fright: talking, preaching, telling stories, greatest sensitiveness of throat or other parts to the touch, even light clothing. 


After fright: apparent death, neither Pulse nor breathing perceptible, after a pain in Heart from Fright with  with grief. 


Shock of injury: increasing Stupor; dark areola around eyes; rapid yawning; skin shrivelled, livid 
Longing to travel early in march.


Unhappy love, with jealousy, suspicious despair, weary of life, pain in heart, fainting, apparent death. 
Jealousy with mistrust, suspicion, worse toward evening; during pregnancy. 


Love of solitude, ruminating his thoughts. 


Vexation with indignation, uses the wrong word. 


After emotions and excitement, Whooping Cough attack. 


Weak digestion from mental exertion, over-study. 


After long-lasting mental trouble, milk thin. 


Loss of all mental functions with distorted face. 


Flushed face with restlessness. 


Talking, hurried and hoarse with weak voice. 


Mouth: Saliva runs when thinking about her throat. 


Throat: constriction spasmodic, visible outside with over-hasty speech. 


Before vomiting, hasty and restless with headache. 


Loss of consciousness with vomiting. 


Cholera with loquacity. 


Constipation with fear. 


Suppression of sexual desire is followed by great mental acitivity. 


During Pregnancy: sadness, better sighing; suspicious; proud; jealous; excessive loquacity with sudden change of subject. 


During Parturition, fainting, after sadness and gloom; dreading society and company. 


Nursing: milk blue, disconsolate and sad on awaking; milk thin, dissatisfied and unhappy. 


Touch of throat causes anxiety. 


Laughs quietly to himself. 


Sighing relieves Melancholy during Pregnancy. 


Moaning and groaning with fear and hurry. 


Weeping after affecting poetry, with pain in eyes. 


Inclined to weep with pain in forehead and constriction of the throat. 


Weeping spasmodic. 


Short breathing with trembling and Depression. 


Impeded breathing with gagging. 


Emotions increased coughing. 


Great and inexpressible anxiety from Dyspnoea and weight on the chest, with acute rheumatism. 
Pulse quick,  cold skin and unconnected answers. 


Restlessness of neck and back. 


Coldness feet with hot head and dislike to talk. 


Want of strength with excitability. 


Trembling with ennui. 


Convulsions overcome by sexual desire. 


Mental and physical prostration  in the morning. 


Weakness, corporeal exhaustion and Loquacity. 


Drowsy but cannot sleep; talkative but losing  the thread. 


Keeps awake long and is lively in the evening. 


Write with facility in the evening and all night. 


Vexatious and Suspicious. 


When awaking, Fright about trifles. 


Morning: feels extremely sad, unhappy and distressed in mind. 


Children wake with ill humor. 


Worse after sleeping too long. 


Exalted spirits in the morning. 


Lively and talkative in the evening. 


When driving, apprehension of distant evil. 


Anxiety, is suddenly covered with hot sweat, with moaning and fear. 


Suicidal disposition with heat. 


Sweat worse from mental exertion. 


Mental symptoms worse every other day. 


Fear drives to despair. 


Lamentation and complaining about the insupportable pains in rheumatism. 


Varicose Veins in connection with mental derangement. 


Delirium in consequence of loss of blood. 


Emaciation with mental derangement. 


The slightest touch brings him in a rage. 


Apprehension when driving in open air. 


Anxiety with breaking out of black spots on skin. 


An ulcer gets worse from a Fright. 


Cardiac Anxiety, pain in the wounded foot and lameness in right arm each year, when the time comes round in which she was bitten. 


Yellow skin with indifference. 


Choleric, melancholic. 


Melancholic, meager, weak people. 


Children: lazy, unwilling to play or be active; very unmaniable when getting awake 
   -  Dr.Michel VAGNEUR, veterinaire de Briey‘HOMMAGE  AU DOCTEUR 
  PIERRE SCHMIDT.  pour son 90e anniversaire 22 Juillet 1984. 
  
  Children have an easy comprehension and sharp intellect.  They are keen and highly competitive.  They desire company of older children, people.  Clever, intelligent, with a kind of selfishness.  They sweetly manipulate the circumstances to their advantage.  Vividly describe their symptoms; egotish but clever not show it.  Deceitful but in a clever dignified way.  Full of enthusiasm.  Fond of amusement, love (being with) people, 
movies, discos, etc.  (Apis children refuse to tell their complaints to the doctor or say there is nothing wrong with them.) 

  (Jayesh SHAH, HL. 1/93) 
  
  Sexually active and engaging in fantasies.  More grounded and realistic when compared to Hyoscyamus. 
   (G.VITHOULKAS, HL. 2 & 3/94) 
  
  A Clerk of 59 who had ECG alterations but not a confirmed Thrombosis awakened at 4.30 a.m. with oppression of his chest, a ‘throbbing headache’, a hissing sound like steam, and felt a little unsteady on his feet.  Lachesis has all these including Ataxia so he was given Lachesis 30 in water. 


  A man admitted for Posterior Coronary Thrombosis.  His complaint was fullness of chest during night.  He had been given Lachesis with improvement and it was continued after admission when he still complained of fullness in the chest, yet he wanted to get home as soon as possible. KENT has Lachesis in capitals under fullness of chest as well as fullness of heart, and it is also found in italics under desires to go home. 
  (T. Fergus STEWART, JAIH. Jan-Feb. /1966) 
  
  The eyes are widened and may bulge with fear.  Warmth aggravates the fear and drives the blood to the head, so that the feet grow cold.  Fear with suspicion and jealousy.  The demonstrativeness which exists inspite of the fear is often not without a certain play-acting pathos in Lachesis. The Lachesis fear is a stupefied, a venostatic, congested fear.  It does not appear in the final, terrible inevitability. 


 Restrained fear, expressive of a benumbed consciousness is fear typical for Greek work of Art (as the facial expressions of Apollo and his sons show), the Greek being restrained in everything, even Fear. 
  (Gerhard KÖHLER, BHJ. 1/76) 
  
  It is another remedy which has made several of our patients lose weight. 
   (HUI BON HOA, BHJ. 2/75) 
  
  Intense.  They like to chop wood.  They are sharp, incisive people.  They can cut you to ribbons with a few well chosen words and are quick, sharp and sarcastic.  They are very sensitive to being restricted or being contained - both physically and emotionally. 
  (William SHEVIN, HT. Sep./91) 
  
  A few characteristic expressions of patients whose symptoms have improved with Lachesis 
  When I take my clothes off it hurts my skin.  On a hot day, I like to find a cool, damp chair to rest in. 
  I feel I am weak creature unable to support myself. 


  I like to coil up into a ball. 


  I  have problems opening my mouth. 


  Looking up makes my throat tight. 


  My throat is very vulnerable.  I hate people touching my throat. 


  I dream of black ribbons, masoleums, bones, crypts, twisted pieces of body kept alive on support machines. 


  I used to get a total obsession with having a Brain Tumor every Monday during latin lessons. 


  When I am near an oven I become numb around my Eyes. 


  I woke up with the sensation as if the top of my head had been sliced off and was in a different part of the room. 


  I have a feeling that there is a fire inside me that cannot come out. 
  (HT. Oct. 1991) 
  
  The Surucucu has more exaggerated or unverified information associated with it than any other remedy-source in the Materia Medica.  This distorted information may influence the application of the remedy itself.  Many of the commonly cited characteristics of Lachesis may have their origin in the natives’ tall stories of fear and loathing echoed by Homœopaths.  For example, many stories about this mysterious snake tell of its singular meanness.  “An aggressive brute, attacking human  beings without provocation ...  Lurking in the grass, it waits patiently for someone to approach, then darts like lightning at its prey.” - D.M.GIBSON.  Easy to believe, but there are no known reliable sources for these stories.  In reality, the snake is quite shy and will flee humans to avoid conflict.  Scientific field studies have proven that these snakes typically steer clear of all human activity and will only strike when concerned or if someone threatens their young. 


  There is a classic Homœopathic legend of how HERING clubbed a Bushmaster (“Stunned with a blow to the head” - CLARKE) in the middle of the Brazilian jungle, and, as he was holding the snake’s head down with a forked stick got venom on his skin and immediately went into a Coma.  The picture of this event, based on the available Homœopathic texts, is that it took place somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, “on the upper Amazon” - CLARKE.  Frau HERING is hunched over her raving , prostrate and semi-comatose husband, precisely noting his complete rantings and other symptoms, with the corpse of the cross-eyed Bushmaster slumped at the foot of the good doctor’s cot. 


  HERING’s own account of the July 28, 1828 event is available in French from a Swiss Homœopathic journal.  Based on HERING’s own words it is clear that he was not in Brazil, was not in the middle of a jungle, and was not in the upper Amazon.  He discovered his famous Bushmaster on the outskirts of the coastal city of Paramaribo in Surinam, more than 500 miles WNW of the lower Amazon.  He mentions nothing of his wife being there.  He did not club the snake, it was delivered to him with a freshly broken back, “and was tied up, half dead, in a basket so he couldn’t move....  I opened the basket to take him out, and seeing that his vertebrae had been broken, I had him untied to see if he could still move his head.  His colours were still bright, his mouth closed, and his eyes shone with life, but he could not move.  I immediately got ready to take his venom, but I had trouble getting my men who were much afraid of him, to help me”.  He hastened to extract the venom while the reptile was still alive.  He assimilated his first accidental dose later that same day during the process of triturating ten drops of venom in 100 grains of milk sugar for one hour, and proved it shortly thereafter.  He describes in clear detail his Symptoms after this accidental proving. 


  In contrast to all the unfounded mythical powers attributed to the Bushmaster are the many verifiable characteristics that can be found by studying its documented physiology and natural history.  These fall under the ‘Doctrine of Signatures’. 


  When it strikes its prey, Surucucu drops his mandible which automatically rotates left to right.  As it swallows the prey, its more than 400 ribs move left-right, left-right in a peristaltic swallowing rhythm.  All the creature’s organs are found on the left side of its body. 


  Bushmaster avoids Sunlight and especially temperatures over 80 degrees by going underground or into the cooler high regions of the jungle.  The venom of the Bushmaster is both Neurotoxic and Hemotoxic.  It causes disseminated intravascular coagulation where the hemorrhage cannot be stopped.  The bite of this reptile creates large blotches of blue or blue-purple colour. 


  Surucucu is vulnerable to its predators only in its jaw and neck area.  The rest of its body is virtually resistant to natural predators due to heavy musculature.  If seized by the neck the snake will thrash about violently, often breaking its neck in the process. 


  The bushmaster is an extraordinarily fast animal agile in movements. 


  The cognitive speed of the Lachesis patient is well-known.  A typical claim is that they can walk into a room and size up the situation in an instant. 
   (Greg BEDAYN, SIM. 4/91) 
  
  These suspicious children, may tell you they are being followed by their enemies.  They are animated children who gesticulate with  their hands as they tell you of strange people that may enter your office.  They warn you that you may have to jump off your terrace to escape these people. 
  (Janet ZAND, JAIH. 1/89) 
  
  Do not prescribe to a woman who is not social and communicative, someone reticent, not loquacious or jealous. 
  (Thomas PASCHERO, HG. 6/80) 
  
  A remedy for Head Lice.    (DG) 
  
 LATRODECTUS MACTANS 


  Pains more marked in the Abdomen and the upper abdomen rather than the Chest. 
  (T.Fergus STEWART, JAIH. Jan-Feb, 1966) 
  
  Owing to Paralysis, the patient is unable to stand or even sit and lies around helplessly crying.  Acute Psychomotor disturbances progress into deep Torpor with Amnesia.  Unable to grasp even simple words. 


  Angina pectoris; constriction of chest, better from warmth of bed.  Hypotension of shock moving into Hypertension. 


  Increased dischrges: salivation, lachrymation, GI discharges, sweat.  Increased sweat of affected parts. 


  Increased thirst for cold drinks. 


  Dyspnoea. As if cannot breath again.  Gasping.  Speech labored from difficult breathing. 


  Labored breathing with expiratory grunt. 


Pulmonary Oedema. 


Paroxysmal abdominal Cramps extending to Chest.  Abdomen stiff like a board.  


  Colic better warmth. 


  Urinary retention.  Albuminuria.  Renal damage. 


  Heat and burning in Soles.  Pain in paralysed parts.  Hemiparesis after mental symptoms improve.  Icy-cold legs. 


  Hypertoners, Hyperreflexia, Spastic paresis, Opisthotonus, Clonic contractions of tongue and jaw, Chorea.  


  Backache extending to Occiput.  


  Constriction in lumbar region. 
  (Martin BLOCH, SIM. 1/93) 
  
 LAUROCERASUS 


  Laurocerasus subject no longer puts her heart into her activities.  (Laurocerasus produces a sudden break in the balance, nothing seems enjoyable anymore, everything seems burdensome)      (DG) 
  
 LILLIUM TIGRINUM 


  Heart conditons, but pain of functional or neurotic origin, not organic heart disease.  Hysteric persons who want to be ‘centre stage attraction’. (BLACKIE) 
  (Lee HOLLAND, BHJ. 4/94) 
  
  Whatever their mental state, they are worse in the evening and night.  Depressed, a sort of religious melancholia.  Not like Aurum at all.  They never sort of sit and stare with a melancholy expression. 
  (M.G.BLACKIE, BHJ. 4/78) 
  
  Lilum tigrinum  They are not the soft and yielding type by any means.  They are not unduly aggresive, as the Nat-m. type can be, and they are quite different from the resentful attitude of Sepia. 


  They are fat rather than thin 


  When they come to see you, they sit there pushing their coat back or something back because they are much too hot.  As a rule they have rather blue lips - I find it more or less constant.  They are apt to be a bit cyanotic generally and rather full lipped. 


  They get all sorts of strange ideas into their heads, particularly that people have done something that they should not have done and one against them, and if you try to explain they deliberately take you up the wrong way and if you persist in your explanation they get really angry.  (This is characteristic of Lil-t., Nat-m. and Sep.).  


  They get a sort of crazy feeling in their heads at times and don’t know how to explain things, or what to do and what to decide and they get very depressed. 


  Characteristically, they always feel that they have something most important and very urgent to do,  which they are responsible for, which nobody else can do and that they are the people who are left to do it.  They are often quite indifferent towards their families.  Tormented by an inner ‘rush’, fidgety even while sitting. 


  They are definitely very snappy, or awfully bad-tempered and nothing pleases them.  In fact they are very impossible to please.  They are very exacting. 


  A patient of mine - a lady of about 48 when I first saw her - is a good example she had been to acting schools and thought she had a wonderful career.  But her first performance was a dead failure. She determined to be the centre of the stage some how, and so she stayed in bed, and has stayed in bed for the rest of her life.  Nothing would get her up, except an air-raid!  Her mother and step sister waited on her.  She always felt that she was the pivot of the family; that they couldn’t decide anything without her; that they had to ask her advice over everything; that she managed their money affairs and all their other affairs and that was how she went on.  A Psychiatrist was called in, who could not advice anything useful and she felt humiliated.  I called in Dr. BORLAND, and she told him of all she had to decide.  Dr. BORLAND said to me, ‘she is shouting for Lilium tigrinum.’ 


  The remedy did not get her up, it did make her very much to her family and to the people she had to deal with and that was a great thing, because honestly, she gave them hell.  Another thing: she always thought she had some fatal disease which the doctors had missed. No one could convince her that it was not so. 


  Lilium tigrinum has a big appetite.  They do not get any real satisfaction from eating and they may remain hungry after a really good meal.  (Nat-m. and Sep. are also hungry remedies.  


  Nat-m. feels more an emptiness not relieved by food and they do not take much at a meal.) 
  The sensation ‘as if their whole insides are going to drop out’ occurs as they get aged or at the Menopause.  They cannot be helped by a belt, because their epigastrium is so sensitsive to pressure. (Sep. does not feel such a drag and that the whole insides will fall, but only of pelvic contents.  Lil-t.  feels there is a large lump there and the whole of it is going to fall out Sep. gets an urgent desire for stool with the sensation of lump; Sep.feels full there though there is no urging to stool ever). 
  
  A great deal of palpitation (Nat-m, Sep.)  As if heart grasped (Cact.)  and it gradually goes off.  As if heart is grasped and let go.  Heart feels overloaded with blood. 
  
  Must bend double to relieve palpitations (reverse Spig.).  Palpitations with the thought of their awfully imperative duties and responsiblities...’ 
(M.G.BLACKIE, BHJ./ 75) 
  
  Lilium tigrinum is often indicated for women with uterine or ovarian affections.  They escape their basic metaphysical anxiety by working to the point of exhaustion.    (DG)  
 
 LYCOPODIUM 


  Adolescent; exerts himself in various competitions at school; opposition to family.  Feels all his schoolmates develop more quickly. 
  (Didier GRANDGEORGE, CGH. 1988) 
  
  Perpetual frown between the eyebrows, thin build and anxious expression; also stout women with Gall Bladder disease.  Intellectuals who worry over little things.  Headache and Skin lesions are usually worse heat; better cold. 
  (Hamish W.BOYD, BHJ. 1/78) 
  
  Always have a worried expression, and are very difficult to get Symptoms out of, simply because they are a bit nervous of their interview and they do not want to give anything away.  Lycopodium never wants to give away anything, not even to his best friend.  They will only give half their confidence, but always keep something up their sleeve.  The result is that they are called haughty and stand-offish but actually both these expressions hide the fact that theLycopodium patient is very distrustful, insecure and uncertain of himself.  I do not think you will ever find a true Lycopodium patient who is very expensive. They also seem to be unfriendly.  More than once I have heard a mother say, “You know, she never asks for anything, she never wants to have a party, or go out or play games.  She likes to come in and read a book”. When the mother protests the child says, “I see them at school all day”, and she does not want to see them again!  Then there is the small boy and this is a very typical Lycopodium symptom - who dreads going to School, who cannot eat this breakfast and who gets to the School gates clinging to the hand of his mother and then is persuaded.  However, they are rather reasonable children, they listen to your persuasion that it is really going to enjoy it, then they finally go in and in five minutes have forgotten that they ever minded going to school. 


  They can get indigestion if kept waiting for tea - they cannot stand waiting for their lunch.  They are awfully nice people, but if they are not well, they are peevish, fretful, and irritable and want to sit about and do nothing and not be disturbed or interrupted. 


  They tire easily; the school child comes home from school absolutely whacked.  The Businessman returns from work in the same condition, wants to sit quiet and not be disturbed by anyone. 
  Greatest mental fatigue and greatest sleepless remedy. 


  Physical activity, games render them dead-tired. 


  The aggravation time may be 4-8 in the morning.  They think they are not going to be able to carry on, or that it is not worth while to carry on.  They think they cannot go on with the frightful effort any longer. Some of them give up their jobs.  Others, with help of Lycopodium, manage to pull themselves together and keep it on, and they feel differently about it, and it is most useful for that. And then they begin to save and cut down expenses.  ‘Suppose anything happened .... and we did not have anything to live on.’ 
  
  Lycopodium can never stand tight clothing.  Very sensitive to noise and smells, and dry, hot hands and dry, hot soles of  their feet.  A Lycopodium in my experience never says thank you.  I do not particularly want them to, but they never do!  But when they walk to the door, their thanks is all in their  handshake.  Your hand is gripped and shaken with all their force.  But remember the Lycopodium is a very faithful patient.  They remember if you did them good in childhood or a long time ago, and back they come. 
   (M.G.BLACKIE, BHJ. 4/79) 
  
  What would the profession or the law or indeed the teaching ranks do without MLycopodium‌  Here the mind from the word go has been developed at the expense of the Body, incompetence, dread of new or even of familiar roles, infinite procrastination coming from this sphere, Indecision, Misanthropy, the Imperiousness of weakness, the personification of the Inferior complex, or as one of my patients put it, of mental Impotence. 
  (E.W.HUBBARD, HG. 6/78) 

  The child rubs his nose on waking; throws head from right to left while moaning sleeps with eyes half open.  The infant sucks so hard that it makes the nipple bleed. 
  (P.SCHMIDT, HG. 3/74) 
  
  These individuals fret too much; they suffer from stomach aches, abdominal bloating, constipation and Haemorrhoids.    (DG) 
 
 LYCOPUS VIRGINICUS

 
  Failure of Valvular heart disease, heart failure with Haemoptysis, tumultous heart action.  High output failure of. Hyperthyroidism, heart/cardiavascular systems affected by emotional stress and anxious overexertion.  Dyspnoea with exertion  
   (Lee HOLLAND, BHJ. 4/94) 
  
 LYSSIN 
  

    Said to be of use in long-standing cases of Uterine prolapse. 
  (D.M. GIBSON, HG. 8/76)