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COCCULUS INDICUS
Source: Indian Cockle.
A very important medicine used in our
routine practice and is considered to be prescribed in
the following ailments:-
Travel Sickness
- Migraine - Occiptal headaches
- Meniere's
disease
Action:
Cocculus acts on the cerbro-spinal system, producing
great debility of these organs It causes a paralytic
weakness of the spine, and especially of its motor
nerves.Thus, we find it a certain and frequent remedy in
paralysis originating in disease of the spinal cord.
Typical Subjects:
It shows a special attraction for light-haired females,
especially during pregnancy causing much nausea and
backache. Unmarried and childless women, sensitive and
romantic girls, etc. All its symptoms are worse by
riding in a carrieage or on shipboard; hence in use in
patients having affinity to seasickness.
Points and features:-
Weakness of cervical muscles with
heaviness of head, can hardly hold the head up.
Affections-Nausea or vomiting Vertigo
etc. caused or < by ridng in cars, carriage or boat.
Sensation of weakness, or hollowness in
various organs.
Ill effects from loss of sleep,
night-watching or overwork. (Causticum, Cuprum met.,
Ignatia, Nitric acid).
Mind:
Impulsive,
and stupid. Time passes too quickly; absorbed in
reveries. Inclination to sing irrestible. Slow of
comprehension. Mind benumbed. Profound sadness. Cannot
bear contradiction. Speaks hastily.
Head:-
Vertigo, nausea, especially when riding in a carriage or
sitting up. Sense of emptiness in head. Sick headaches
from carige riding, cannot lie on back part of head.
Pupils contracted . A peculiar symptom of Cocculus
is the sensation as if the occiputwere opening and
shutting especially in occiput. This is also
one of the kot chracteristic symptoms of Cannabis;.
another is a tendency to constnt headache, it has also
pain in left orbit and frontal protuberance. Trembling
of head. Pain in eyes as if torn out of head. The
headaches of Cocculus in general are worse from
mental effecort, and are better indoors and during rest,
and there is a constant tendency to stretch the head
backwards.
Face:
Paralysis of facial nerve. Cramp-like
pain in masseter muscle; worse, opening mouth.
Facial neuralgia in afternoon, with wide raditions of
pain.
Throat:
Paralytic conditons of the throat after diphtheria.
Paralysis of oesphagus. Cannot swallow.
Stomach:-
Nausea from riding in cars, boat etc. or looking at boat
in motion; worse on becoming cold or taking cold.
Nausea, with faintness and vomiting. Aversion to food,
drink, tobacco. Loathing of food. Metallic/bitter or
sour & nauseas taste in the mouth. No food tempts. He
lies there sick with a little fever or a
"cold".
In intermittent or perhaps a low typhoid state, we have
this loathing of food with nausea. You go to the bedside
and you ask the nurse,
"What
hve you been feeding the patient? and the patient gags.
The thought of food makes the patient gag.The nurse will
say that every tme she mentions food the patient gags.
That thought of food or the smell of food in the other
room, or in the kitchen, will nauseate the patient. Two
medicines have this-Cocculus and Colchicum.
Abdomen:-Distended,
with wind and feeling if full of sharp stones when
moving, better, lying on one side or the
other.Th flatus seems here and there, and passage of of
id does not seem to relieve much, for new forms again
takes its place. Pain in inguinal region,
as if something were forced through. Abdominal
muscles week; it seems as if a hernia would take
place
Female:
Dysmenorrhoea with profuse dark menses. Too early
menses, clotted, with spasmodic colic. The pains are
griping, cramping pains which are very severe, and
also a remarkable degree of weakness. She is
so weak tht she can hardly stand, walk or talk. This
is very chracteristic and so far as weakness goes,
resembles Carbo animalis, but in Cocculus
it is in line with the geneal prostration of the remedy,
while in Carbo Ani. the flow weakens her. In
Cocculus the flow may not be all excessive, but on
the contrary may grow less and less and a leucorrhoea
appears in its sted, or even between the menses also.
.
Respiratory:-Sensation
of emptiness and cramp in chest. Dyspnoea as from
constriction of trachea, as if irritated by smoke.
Choking constriction in upper part of oesophgus,
oppressing breathing and inducing cough.
Back:
Cracking of certical vertebrae when movng head. The
chracteristic symptom is
"Weakness
of cervical muscles with heaviness of the head, muscles
seem unable to support the head"-
also in Calc.Phos.,Verat.alb).
Paralytic pain in small of the back. The small
of the back gives out when walking. Pain in
shoulder and arms as if bruised. Pressure in
scapula and nape. Stiffness on moving shoulders.There
is
Extremities:-
Knees sink down from weakness, he totters while walking
and threatens to fall to one side. At one time the feet
are asleep, at another the hands,. The hand trembles
while eating, and the more the higher it is raised. Now
one hand, now th other seems insensible and asleep. The
soles of the feet go to sleep, while sitting. Geneall
attacks of paralytic weakness with pain in the back.
Knees crack on motion. Limbs straightened out, painful
when flexed. This weakness is because Cocculus acts on
the voluntary muscular system first, and then the
sensorium-the intellectual powers causing nausea,
vomiting, vertigo etc.
Sleep:-
Spasmodic yawing. Coma vigil.Constant drowsiness. After
loss of sleep, night-watching, nursing. Dr. Kent gives
an examaple ,"A
wife nursing her husband, a daughter nurising her
father, becomes worn out by the anxiety, worry and loss
of sleep. She is exhausted; unable to sustain any mental
or physicaleffort; weak in the knees, weak in the back
and when th time comes for her to sleep she cannot
sleep. Sickness brought about in this manner is
analogous to that caused by the
Cocculus poison and hence Cocculus from
the time of hahnemann to the present time has been a
remedy for complaints from nursing,(not exactly
complaints that come on in the professional
nurse, for cocculus needs the combinatin
of vexaion, anxiety and prologned loss of sleep, such as
you have in the mother or daughter who is nursing, or
the nurse when she takes on the anxiety felt by a member
of the family; a wife nursing her husband through
typhoid, or other long spell of sickness. At the end of
it she is prostrated in body and mind, she cannot
sleep, she has congestie hedaches, nausea, vomitng an
vertigo.That shows how a Cocculus case begins. One who
is thus exhausted in body and mind goes out for a ride.
She gets sick headache, pain in back, dizziness, nausea
and vomiting. She gets into the car to take a journeh.
Soick headache comes on. She goes on a milie or two and
will hve nausea, vomiting and sick headache. She feels
weak ll over, feels as if she would sink away. Sshe gets
spssms through the body like electric shocks,
conveulsiions after loss of sleep. The patient goes on
with nervousness and excitement anxiety and loss of
sleep until convulsions supervene.
Fever:
Chill with flatulent colic, nausea, vertigo, coldness of
lower extremities, and heat of head. Sweat general.
Nervous form of low fever. Chillines withg perspiration,
and heat of skin.
Modalities:
Worse Eating;
Drinking ; Loss of sleep;
Smoking; Talking;
Carriage ; riding; Motion or tossing
of ship or vehicle;
Rising up during the pregnant state;
swimming; Menstrual period; after emotional disturbance.
Summary of Indications:
Travel Sickness-
Migraine-Occipital headaches-
Meniere's
Disease.
Antidote:-
Camphora officinarum
Chamomilla
Cuprum Metallicum
Ignatia Amara
Nux Vomica.
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