|
|
Aconite Napellus
Botanical name
:
Monkshood
Common Name;
Wolf's bane.
This plant is a native of
mot parts of Europe growing in wooded hills and plains
and is much cultivated in gardens. It flowers in May and
June. All parts of the plant contains poisonous
properties; but the root is the part mot generally
applied for medicinal purpose. It yields to Aconite. In
crude doses it act as an energetic, acro narcotic
poison. As a sedative and anodyne(pain reliever) , it is
capable of many beneficial uses in the hands of a
skilled person. In Homeopathic Materia Medica , it is
medicine of par excellence. It is a short acting
remedy. Its symptoms do not last long. As already
indicated above it is a violent poison in large doses,
either destroying or passing away in its effects quite
soon, so that f the patient recovers, the recovery is
not delayed. There are no chronic diseases following it.
Like a storm, it comes and sweeps over and passes
away(i.e. its symptoms).
It is generally indicated in Homeopathy
for the following conditions:-
Fear of death(in any disease)-
Acute inflammation(first stage) -
pain-
fever-
preoperative
medication before surgery(to
allay anxiety).
Aconite
is commonly used as a First Aid Medicine. It is
therefore useful in the early stages of an inflammation
or a fever. It is indicated when there is a sudden onset
of violent symptoms, especially after exposure to dry,
cold wind. The patient to whom Aconite is indicated is
fearful, restless and thirst for large quantity of cold
drinks.
The other characteristic symptoms on
which it is indicated are:-
1. Disorders from fright and of
sudden onset with acute symptoms.
2. Anxiety and restlessness in any
disorder. Life is rendered miserable by fear.
Intolerance of pain, great fear and severe anxiety;
unreasonable fear that patient will die.- No remedy has
it in such a degree as this one. Patient says, Doctor,
there is no use in attending to him, I am going to die.
Many a time he actually predicts the time of death-if
there is clock in the room, he may say that when the
hour hand reaches a certain point he will be a corpse.
As regards the restlessness, Dr. Nash says, it is
the fear as much as pain that makes the patient so full
of that agonized restlessness. As comparing with other
Medicines which also have the symptoms of restlessness
viz.. "Arsenic Album" and Rhus Tox, the
restlessness in Arsenic Album goes with
extreme prostration and reduced vitality
and Rhus Tox , on account of aching pains, which
make him want to move for the temporary relief he gets
from the movement. Arsenic want to move from
place to place, but it not relieved from movement.
3. The pains of Aconite Nap are
followed by numbness and tingling. The patient feels
faint, dizziness on rising.
4. Fevers: of sudden onset; hot,
dry skin often one cheek is red and the other is pale.
5. Thirst: Unquenchable thirst for
large quantities of water.
The other symptoms are as
follows:
Head Symptoms
:
The headaches can hardly be described,
they come with such violence. Tearing, buring in the
brain, in the scalp, attended with fear, with fever,
with anguish, headache from taking the cold from
suppressing catarrh in the nose.
Catarrh stops suddenly in plethoric
people, from exposure, from riding in the dry, cold wind
such as we have in this northern climate in
winter. Violent headache over the eyes. Congestion of
the brain, with congestive headache, with anxiety with
hot face.
Eyes:-
The yes take on sudden inflammation. Congestion of the
eyes. Blood red appearance of the eyes. Sudden
inflammation of all the tissues. Conjunctivitis etc.
from taking cold, from exposure to dry, cold winds.
Ears:
Inflammation of the ears comes on just as suddenly.
"Throbbing, intense, cutting pains in the ear." The
child comes home after being out in the cold north
winds, and is not sufficiently clothed, and now it
screams and puts its hand to the ear. The attack comes
on early in the evening after being out in the daytime.
Fever and anxiety. Child must be carried. The suffering
is intense. Noise is intolerable. Music goes through
every limb, so intense is the sense of hearing.
Nose:
Coryza, if attended with violent headache, come on in
the night after exposure and taking cold during the
day, suddenly, this short acting remedy, very quick
acting remedy, will be indicated.
The symptoms likely to occur with
coryza are nosebleed, headache, anxiety and fear. The
anxious expression is one of the first things observed
in the Aconite sufferer. The Aconite pneumonia will
often show itself on face. Look at the face there is
great anxiety. It shows much of proving of Aconite.
Face:
One cheek hot and the other pale, is in a good many
remedies(Cham., Ipecac). On rising the red face becomes
deathly pale. Neuralgic pains in the face, like hot
wires running along either sides of the face." Tingling
in cheeks and numbness. There is intense fever in the
face. The side of the face laid on will break into a
sweat and if the patient turn over, that side will at
once becomes dry, and the other side will at once break
in a sweat.
Teeth:-
Oh! What a comforting remedy for toothache. It has been
so useful in toothache that nearly every old lady now a
days knows enough to put a drop of Aconite on a bit of
cotton and put it in the old hollow tooth. It will quire
often palliate. A dose of Aconite will act much better.
But the violence of the toothache, again the same old
story., from the dry, cold winds, plethoric individuals,
with hollow teeth, pain intense, cutting, shooting pains
in the teeth.
Taste:-
Everything tastes bitter, except water and patients
longs for water. It seems almost impossible for him to
get water enough and it agrees well.
Stomach:
Vomiting, with fear, heat, profuse sweat and increased
urination. Thirst for cold water. The patient is
restless, with fever, coming on from taking cold- not
from overeating, but from taking cold, which is settled
in the stomach from exposure to an ice
bath, or in a very hot summer from
intense heat, associated with an irritable brain, in
vigorous children. Vomiting of bright red blood.
Bilious mucus, greenish vomiting. Intense thirst.
Drinks, vomits, and declares, he will due. During the
febrile state he craves bitter thins, wine and beer, and
brandy, but they will come up as soon as they reach
stomach. Everything he takes, tastes bitter.
Abdomen:
In the abdomen, there are shooting pains, burning,
stinging pains after exposure to cold, becoming chilled.
Sensitive to touch. Colic no position relieves.
Abdominal symptoms are better after warm soup. Burning
in umbilical region.
Urine:
It is useful in urinary troubles, bladder and kidney
troubles. Inflammatory conditions, and with bloody
urine. Scanty urine, suppressed urine, or retained
urine. Retention from shock. This retention from shock
makes it one of our best remedies for retention in the
new born. The infant jut born into the world.
has undergone a shock. At your next visit
the nurse says, "The child has not passed urine." The
function of that little ones are not yet established,
because of the great shock the little one has gone
through.
Male;
Orchitis from cold, from being chilled, in plethoric
men. But in chronic orchitis, Aconite is useless.(There
is a bruised pain in testis.
Female;
The women is a natural Aconite patient, with her
sympathetic natural sensitiveness. She usually takes on
complaints from nervous shock, from fear, and she
naturally takes on complaints from causes other than
those from which men take on sickness. It is very seldom
that fear will give a man, inflammation, but fear is a
common cause of inflammation of the uterus, and of the
ovaries, in plethoric, excitable women. Fear will cause
abortion, but when Aconite is given early enough it will
check abortion that comes from fear. We will have the
stitching, burning, tearing pains of Aconite sometimes
following fear or sudden emotion. Sometimes a pregnant
women will say, "Doctor, there is not use your planning
for my confinement. I know I am going to die in that
confinement." If there is anything that is really a
strong symptom to prescribe, on it that , a dose of
Aconite, and then change the subject, she goes away, and
in a few days you ask her about that fear and she says,
" Oh, never mind that." Many little things like that can
be singled out. But that state of fear is a very
peculiar thing, and really represents the whole nature
and being of the women. She predicts the day of her
death. The reason that Aconite is so often the infant's
remedy is because the infant is so often made sick from
fright. Uterine haemorrhage after child birth- bright
red blood and fear of death.
New born children, with difficulty of
breathing, after the use of forceps, or from a tedious
labor, the child is breathless, there is difficulty with
the heart, and in a few hours, fever comes on. Aconite
is a very simple remedy.
Respiratory:-
Aconite is a great routine croups remedy; but is
indicated in all cases of croup which comes on suddenly
in plethoric children, from exposure to dry, cold wind.
The child is put to bed and rouses up
from the first sleep, grasps the throat, choking cough,
with hoarse, dry, barking cough, stitches in chest <
night and after midnight.
Pleurisy and pneumonia also come under
this head and they are, as would be expected, almost
invariably accompanied by the high fever, anguish,
restlessness and fear, so characteristic of this remedy.
Back and extremities: back of head and
neck sore, "The head is drawn backwards from contraction
of the muscles at the nape of the neck. Violent aching
down the back. Rheumatism in the back. < lying down.
Numbness of the limbs- Trembling. Soreness."
Hot hands and cold feet. Rheumatic
inflammation in the back. < night. Red shining swelling
, very sensitive. Hip joint and thigh feel lame,
especially after lying down.
Fever:- There is no better picture in a
few words of the Aconite fever than is given by Dr.
Hering- "Heat with thirst, hard, full and frequent
pulse, anxious impatient, unappeasable beside, himself,
tossing about with agony. "
Dr. Nash says," that the custom of
alternating Aconite and Belladonna in inflammatory
affection, which so widely prevails is senseless. Both
the medicine cannot be indicated at a time.
Let us look for a moment at some of
the diagnostic differences of these two remedies:-
Both have great heat of the skin, but
Aconite has characteristically dry hot skin and no
sweat. Belladonna has even greater surface heat, but
sweats on covered parts. Aconite tosses about in agony
with great fear of death. Belladonna often has
semi-stupor and jerks and twitches in sleep. Aconite has
great distress in heart and chest. Belladonna -
everything seems to centre in the head. Aconite fears
death without much delirium. Belladonna fears imaginary
things, with delirium. So that is how we select a single
remedy.
Heart:
Tachycardia. Affection of the heart, with pains in the
left shoulder. Palpitation with anxiety, fainting and
tingling in the fingers. Pulse - full hard, tense and
bounding. Temporal and carotid arteries, felt when
sitting.
The best effects have resulted from the
30th , 200th , 1000th
and still higher potencies, and from the use of medicine
in single dose.
Modalities:- > open
air; < warm room, in evening and night; < lying on
affected side, from music, from tobacco smoke, dry cold
winds.
Compare:
Belladonna; Chamomilla, Coffee,
Ferrum phos.
|
|
