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IGNATIA
(St. Ignatius Bean)
Botanical name:
Ignatius Amara.
Ignatia is a branching tree with long,
taper, smooth, scrambling branches. The leaves are
veiny, smooth and a span long. The flowers are long,
nodding and white, and smell like jessamine. The fruit
is small
And pear shaped and the seeds number
about twenty, are angular, and are imbedded in a soft
pulp.
The tree is indigenous to the Philippine
Islands, and the seeds thereof are the
'St.
Ignatius'
Bean of the drug shops. The bean yields its
properties best to alcohol, but will also yield them to
water. It contains about one-third more strychina than
nux-vomica, but is seldom used for the production of
strychina on account of its extreme scarcity.
Considering its active ingredients i.e.
Strychina, it produces a marked hyperaesthesia of all
the senses and a tendency to clonic spasms. Mentally,
the emotional element is
uppermost and co-ordination of function is interfered
with
Ignatia
is one of the long list of our nervous remedies. Its
peculiar mental symptoms like those of Aconite,
Chamomolla , Nux Vomica and many others, are
most characteristic. Like these remedies, it seems to
exalt the impressionability of all the senses; but
unlike the others, it has in it a marked element of
sadness, and disposition to silent grieving.
Anyone suffering from suppressed, deep grief, with
long drawn sighs, much sobbing, etc., and especially if
inclined to smother or hide that grief from
others, is just the subject for this remedy.
She desires to be alone with her grief. Sighs
much and seems so sad and weak. The weakness is
complained of right in the pit of the stomach. She
feels weak, faint, and
"all
gone".
Another equally charactgeristic state of
mind is a changeable mood. No remedy can equal
Ignatia, for this. Aconite, Coffea, Nux Moschata
and a few others have it, but Ignatia in the
greatest degree. And so this remedy becomes one of our
best in the treatment of hysterical affections. The
patient is at one time full of glee and merriment, to be
followed suddenly with the other extreme, of melancholy
sadness and tears, and so these states, of mind rapidly
alternate. Again, we have in Ignatia an
impatient quarrelsome, angry mood(but not to
the degree of Chamommila) at times. Again the
Ignatia patient is, because of her excessive
impressibility, easily frightened. Here it becomes one
of our bes remedies for the effects of fright, vying
with Aconite, Opium and Veraturm album.
In short, Ignatia may justly be termed
pre-eminently the remedy for
moods. those gentle,
Kent says, Ignatia is frequently
required and is especially suited to sensitive, delicate
women and children; to hysterical women. You will not
cure the natural hysterics with Ignatia, but you
will cure those gentle, sensitive fine fibred, refined,
highly educate, overwrought women in their nervous
complaints with Ignatia when they take on the
complaints that are similar to such symptoms as come in
Hysteria. The hysterical diathesis is one that is very
singular and difficult to comprehend. But a woman, when
over-wrought and overexcited and emotional, will do
things that she herself cannot account for. She will do
things as if she were crazy in her excitement. Will do
things she regrets, while the hysteric is always glad of
it. No matter how much foolishness there is in it she
has only made an exhibition that she is proud of. But
our efforts go out for those who imitate them
unconsciously. Those who will to do well.
A women has undergone a controversy at
home. She has been disturbed, is excited and goes into
cramps, trembles and quivers .Goes to bed with a
headache. Is sick. Ignatia will be her remedy. When
she has great distress; un -required affections. A
sensitive, nervous young girl finds out that she has
misplaced her affections; the young man has disappointed
her; she has a weeping spell, headache, trembles, is
nervous, sleepless; Ignatia will make her philosophical
and sensible. A women loses her child, or her husband.
A sensitive, delicate woman, and she suffers from this
grief. She has headaches, trembles, is excited, weeps
is sleepless; unable to control herself. In spite of
her best endeavors, her grief has imply torn her to
pieces. She is unable to control her emotions and her
excitement. Ignatia will quiet her and tide her over
the present moment. In all of these instances where all
of these conditions brought on from such troubles keep
coming back , where your patient dwells upon them,
dwells upon the cause, and the state keeps recurring,
Natrum mur. Will finish up the case. It will nerve her
up and help her to bear her sufferings. Especially
useful in constitutions that have been overwrought at
school, in science, music, art. Of course, it is
natural for very sensitive girls to go into the arts,
such as music, painting, etc. A daughter comes back
from Paris after a number of years close application to
her music. She is unable to do anything. She flies all
to pieces. Every noise disturbs her. She cannot sleep
nights. Excitable, sleepless, trembles, jerks, cramps in
the muscles; weeps from excitement, and from every
disturbing word. Ignatia will tone her up wonderfully.
Sometimes it will complete the whole case. But
especially in these oversensitive girls is Naturm mur.
very commonly the chronic. It is the natural chronic of
Ignatia. When the troubles keep coming back, and
Ignatia comes to a place when it will not hold any
longer.
Another place where Ignatia and Naturm
mur. run close together. A sensitive, overtired girl,
after she has been working in music, and in art, and in
school, and has tired herself out, is unable to control
her affections. Her affections rest on some one whom
she would despise. That may be a signular thing, one
may not be able to understand it. A sensitive girl,
though who would not let anyone but her mother know of
it, falls in love with a married man. She lies awake
nights, sobs. She says,
"Mother,
why do I do that, I cannot keep that man out of my mind."
At other times a man entirely out of her stgation, that
she is too sensible to have anything to do with, she
just thinks about him. Ignatia, if it is very recent,
will balance up that girl's
mind. If not, Natrum mur. comes in as a follower. We
do not know half as much about the human mind as we
think we do. We only know its manifestations. These
little things belong to this sphere of action of this
medicine. The one who knows the Materia Medica applies
it in its breadth and its length, and sees in it that
which is similar.
Ignatia has quivering in the limbs.
Nervous, tremulous excitement.
"Weakness
of the body coming on suddenly. Hysterical debility and
fainting fits. Fainting in a crowd."
It is especially useful in the tearful, nervous sad,
yielding, sensitive minds.
"Jerking
and twitching. Convulsive twitching ."
Children are convulsed in sleep after punishment.
Convulsions in children in the first period of
dentition. Spasm in children from fright. The
child is cold and pale, and has a fixed staring look,
like CINA.
"
Convulsions with loss of consciousness. Violent
convulsions. Tetanic convulsions. Tetanus after fight.
Emotional chorea. After fright, or grief."
Choreic girls. Emotional epilepsy, or epilepticform
manifestations. Paralytic weakness.
"Great
mental emotion.
"
Nursing; night watching. A loss of one arm with as
perfect paralysis as if it had come from a cerebral
haemorrhage. In a few hours this passes off, and the arm
is as well as ever. That is a hysterical paralysis.
"Numbness
of one or the other arm. Tingling and prickling in the
arm."
Mind:
Mentally the patient does the most
unaccountable and most unexpected things. Seems to have
no rule to work by , no philosophy, no soundness of
mind, and no judgment. The opposite of what would be
expected, then will be found. The patient is better
lying on the painful side. Instead of increasing the
pain, it relieves the pain. He has a changeable mood;
introspective, silently brooding. Melancholic, sad,
tearful. Not communicative. Sighting and sobbing.
After shocks grief, disappointment.
Head:
Ignatia, like its male partner, Nux
Vomica, is a great remedy for headaches of nervous,
especially hysterically nervous, subjects. That would
be about the same as saying, that while Nux Vomica
is adapted to nervous men Ignatia is the same for women,
which is quite true. You will remember that hysterical,
nervous headaches are often one-sided. Hence Ignatia is
such an efficient remedy for headaches as expressed in
these words:
"Headache
as if a nail were driven out through the side of the
head relieved by
lying on it."
These headaches come on in highly nervous and sensitive
subjects, or in those whose nervous systems have
suffered from over anxiety, grief, or mental work.
The ever-changeable and contradictory so
characteristic of the drug show here as elsewhere. Not
only does the pain in head change localityh, but at one
time the pain will come on gradually and abate suddenly
(like Sulphuric acid), or, like Belladonna, it will
come on suddenly and abate as suddenly as it came. Like
Aconite, Gelsemium, Silicea and
Veratrum album, the headache often
terminates with a profuse flow of urine. That is
often the case in headaches of nervous hysterical women
(Lac defloratum, profuse flow during headache.
Congestive headaches following anger or
grief; worse smoking or smelling
tobacco,alcohol,smokestooping, inclines head forward
while it is sometimes relieved while eating, aggravated
soon after. The Ignatia headache is sometimes
accompanied by hunger like that of Psorinum. It is
also<by cold winds, turning head suddenly, change of
position, running, looking up long, moving the eyes
noise and light. It is > by warmth,
lying on it, soft pressure, external heat and
profuse flow of limpid urine.
Eyes:
Asthenopia, with spasms of lids and neuralgic pain about
eyes (Nat. Mur.). Flickering zigzags.
Face:-
Twitching of muscles of face and lips.
Mouth
:Sour taste. Easily bites inside of cheeks. Constantly
full of saliva. Toothacahe;< after drinking coffee and
smoking .Some of the particularly valuable guiding
symptoms of Ignatia, is
"extreme
aversion to tobacco smoke."[
This is a general aversion and aggravates many, many
complaints.]
Throat:
Ignatia has some strong throat symptoms.
In the first placae it has the so commonly observed
symptom called
"globus
hystericus",
or as if a lump came up from stomach into the throat as
if she would choke. She swallows it down but it comes
right back and is very distressing. It is especially
apt to come if she gets grieved and wants to cry. These
are of course purely nervous sensations, but Ignatia
goes further and also cures real serious affections of
the throat like tonsillitis and diphtheria. In these
cases the real characteristic symptom is, that the pain
and suffering in the throat is relieved by
swallowing or is worse between the act of
deglutition.(Capsicum).A very peculiar symptom
for such troubles, for such cases are generally
aggravated by swallowing, hence we would not
expect to frequently find a case in which this would be
the remedy. But such cases do arise occasionally and
baffle us if we haven't
the remedy. With Ignatia cases, in addition to the <
when not swallowing, there is sometimes < when
swallowing liquids and > from swallowing solids. This
is like Lachesis, but is the reverse of Baptisia, which
can swallow liquids only; the least solid food gags. It
is necessary to keep these correspondences and opposites
in mind, for it often enables us top make what are
called
"snap
shot" prescriptions and save much time, study and
sufferings.
Stomach:
"Weak,
empty, all gone feeling at the pit of stomach."
Sinking in stomach, > by taking a deep breath.
In the case of Ignatia this symptom is apt to be
accompanied by a disposition to sigh or take a
long breath. Two other remedies have this symptom of
goneness in the stomach as prominently as Ignatia. They
are Hydrastis and Sepia. The other symptoms must
decide between them. This weak feeling in the stomach
in Ignatia is sometimes described as a feeling of
flabbiness, as though the stomach hung down relaxed.
Ipecacuanha has a similar feeling. Sometimes we
come across very severe cases of gastralgia. In women
of hysterical tendencies. Here this remedy is the first
to be thought of.
Abdomen:
Rumbling in bowels. Weak feeling in upper
abdomen. Throbbing in abdomen.(Aloes; Sang.)Colicky,
griping pains in one or both sides of abdomen.
Rectum:
Ignatia has a positive action upon the
anus and rectum as does Nux Vomica. Prolapsus of the
rectum is marked (Ruta G.) Like Nux Vom. It has frequent
desire for stool, but in place of stool or with it comes
the prolapsed rectum. The patient is afraid to strain at
stool, to stoop down or lift, for fear of the prolapsus.
A contractive sore pain follows after a stool and lasts
for hour or two. This is like Nitric acid, which has
the same symptom only after a loose stool. There is
also some pain in anus without reference to stool.
Dunham, that prince of observers, gave us the
characteristic:
"Sharp
pains shooting upwards into the
rectum."(Sepia
has similar pains in uterus.) Nash says that it is a
gem, and has often been verified. So we see that
Ignatia is one of our important anal and rectal
remedies.
Urine:
Profuse watery.
Respiratory:
Dry, spasmodic cough in quick successive
shocks. Spasm of glottis (Calc.) Reflex coughs.
Coughing increases the desire to cough. Much sighing.
Hollow spasmodic cough, < in the evening, ,little
expectoration, leaving pain in trachea.
Female:
Supprssion of menses from grief. Menses,
black, too early, too profuse,. Or scanty. Spasmodic
pains in stomach and abdomen during periods. Feminine
sexual frigidity.
Extremeties:
Jerking of limbs. Pain in tendo-Achilles
and calf. Ulcerative pain in soles.
Sleep:
Insomnia from grief, . Jerking of limbs
on going to sleep.
Fever:
Intermittent fever. Chronic cases that have resisted the
Quinine treatment for years are often quickly and
permanently cured by the 200th and upwards.
This remedy is very unique in its fever
symptoms. The following symptoms indicate Ignatia:
Thirst during chill and in no other
stage.
Chill relieved by external heat.
Heat < by external covering.
Red face during the chill .
These are the four legs to the stool and
we may sit upon it in perfect confidence. No other
remedy has thirst during chill and in no other stage. In
Nux vomica, you will remember, the chill is not
relieved by the heat of the stove, or the bed and during
the heat Nux vom must be covered, as the least
uncoverings brings back the chill. So we see that
notwithstanding the alkaloid of both drugs is strychnia
they differ widely when we come to apply them to the
cure of the sick. Dr. Nash says that ,
"the
red face during chill led him to the cure of an
obstinate case, and after he noticed the red face he
also noticed that the boy was behind the stove in the
warmest place he could find, the 200th
promptly cured. Two other cases in the same family, at
the same time, and from the same malarious district,
were cured, one by Capsicum 200 and the other by
Eup. Per. Same potency. The former had chill
beginning between shoulders, in the latter the chill in
the A.M. , great in bones before, and vomiting of bile
at the end of the chill.
Skin:
Itching, nettle-rash(during fever). Very
sensitive to draught of air. Excoriation especially
around vagina and mouth.
Modalities:
Worse: morning, emotions, grief, tobacco
smoke coffee, Cognac, Smoking, Light touch
Better: Lying on the painful side,
Warmth, Waling, Hard pressure, Swallowing.
Relations:
Incompatible with Nux vomica, coffea
cruda and Tabacum
Naturm Mur is complementary.
Summary of indications:
Emotions problems(mostly of women)-
chorea-headache.
Antidotes:
Acetic acid, Arnica, Chamomilla, Cocculus
indicus, Pulsatilla nigricans.
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