Chamomilla

The general constitutional state of Chamomilla is great sensitiveness ; sensitive to every impression; sensitive to surroundings; sensitive to persons; and, above all, sensitive to pain .

The constitutional irritability is so great that a little pain brings forth manifestations as if the patient were in very, great suffering. It naturally belongs to the woman's nervous system, when she is wrought up and extremely sensitive and in pain.

Mind

The mental state goes along with this. Sensitiveness of the mind. Great irritability. These two run through Chamomilla so closely that they are inseparable. Sensitiveness to pain . Easily affected by mortification, by chagrin, so that the nerves become extremely sensitive from these causes, and pains, convulsions, colic, headaches and other kinds of nervous symptoms set in.

The nervous child when punished will go into convulsions. The oversensitive nervous woman will suffer from chagrin. Jerking and twitching of muscles from mortification and excitement. Excessive sensibility of the nerves, so excessive that only a few remedies equal it, such as Coffea, Nux vom. and Opium.

Of course, without hearing a lecture on Opium you naturally think of Opium as capable of producing stupor. Those of you who have seen, the awful state of mind and distress that follow the administration of the crude Opium will understand what I mean by the Chamomilla sensitivity. Convulsions of children.

Convulsions: It is not an uncommon thing, even now-a-days, and especially when practicing in the country, for the young mothers and the nurses to give for baby Camomile tea for colic, and the baby goes into convulsions. No one attributes it to Camomile tea, but the doctor will see at once, if he knows Chamomilla, that these convulsions are due to Camomile.

Then you see the jerkings, the convulsions, the hot head, the great sensitivity; sensitiveness, to noise, and to persons, and the great irritability between the convulsions, convulsions of children; they become stiff; roll the eyes; distort the face; twitchings of muscles; throw the limbs about; clinch the thumbs; bend the body backwards.

Such is the natural appearance of the Chamomilla convulsions; those convulsions that come on in oversensitive children, when they have suffered a good deal of pain from teething. Teething ought to be a perfectly healthy process, but it is really looked upon as a disease, and many doctors carry medicines for " teething children," and administer them; first one and then another.

Chamomilla has fallen into that bad use of being given "for teething". It is true that many children suffer from irritability of the brain, convulsions, stomach disorders and vomiting about the time of dentition, but I say dentition should not be a diseased state, it should be normal.

If they were in healthy they would cut teeth without sufferings. But slow teething we have to contend with, and that irritable state, that oversensitiveness, so that he child does not sleep. Wakes up as if it had awful dreams. Wakes up in excitement, vomits, has diarrhea with teething.

These symptoms come at this time when the child has not been properly looked after. Or perhaps the mother has not been properly qualified for parturition.

"Tetanic convulsions.

Twitching in the eyelids.

Pain in the limbs.

General prostration, faintness."

Neuralgic pains all over the body with numbness. Twitching, darting, tingling pains. The pains are mostly ameliorated by heat, with the exception of the teeth and jaws. Toothache, pain in the teeth ameliorated by cold, and made worse by heat. But the earaches and pains in the extremities are made better by heat.

You will see in the text under " Temperature and Weather " the symptom:

"Pains are worse from heat," with two black bars as if it were the most important symptom in it, and then below, without any bar,

"Sensitive to cold. Chilly," and "Better from heat;"

but the fact is the pains that are worse from heat are about the teeth and jaws, and it is decidedly a particular symptom relating only to a part; whereas it is true that the patient in the general state, entirely contrary to what this says, is better by heat.

The pains in general are better by heat. The patient himself is better by heat. Consequently, this being a particular, it should state that the pains that are so commonly worse by heat are of the teeth.

The most important part of Chamomilla is the mental state. It pervades the whole economy and you will see that every region that is taken up, every part that is studied, brings into it the mental state of the patient.

This remedy has more mental symptoms than symptoms in any other part. Crying.

"Piteous moaning. Irritable."

The irritability is so great that it manifests itself sometimes in a very singular way. The patient seems to be driven to frenzy by the pains, and she forgets all about her prudence and her diplomacy.

Loss of generosity: she has no consideration for the feelings of others. She will simply enter into a quarrel or dispute regardless of the feelings of anybody.

So, when you go into practice, do not be surprised when you go to the bedside of a patient in labor, who is full of pains and sufferings, if she says:

"Doctor, I don't want you, get out." just such an one will pass under other circumstances as a lady. The awful pains that she is having drive her to frenzy, and this frenzy, this oversensitiveness to pain, is coupled with the mental state.

Inability to control her temper, and the temper is aroused to white heat. Now, in the child, the child whines and cries and sputters about everything. It wants something new every minute. It refuses everything that it has asked for. If it is for something to eat, for something to play with, for its toys, when these are handed to the child it throws them away; slings them clear across the room.

Strikes the nurse in the face for presuming to, get something or other that the little one did not want, yet had asked for. Capriciousness . It seems that the pains and sufferings are sometimes ameliorated by passive motion, this very particularly in children.

The pains seem to be better when the child is carried, so the child wants to be carried all the time. This is true in the colic and in the bowel troubles. It is true with earache; it is true with the evening fevers, and the general sufferings from cold and conditions while teething.

Children must be carried. The nurse is compelled to carry the child all the time. And then there is the restlessness and capriciousness about the members of the family. The child goes two or three times up and down the room with the nurse, and then reaches out for its mother; goes two or three times up and down the room with her and then wants to go to its father. And so it is changing about. Never satisfied. It seems to have no peace.

When it has earache the sharp shooting pains cause the child to screech out. Carries the hand to the ear. The pains often cause that sharp, piercing tone of the voice. Adults in pain cannot keep still the pains are so severe; it is not always that they are decidedly ameliorated by moving, but they seem to be. But they move because they cannot keep still.

So the Chamomilla patient is tossing in bed, if in bed; not an instant quiet. And along with all of these the same irritability; becomes violently excited at the pain angry at the pain; irritable about the pain; will scold about the pain the pain is so torturesome. Aversion to talk, and snappish. The patient is constantly sitting and looking within herself when pains are absent.

Chamomilla has melancholy, and has suffering of the mind, without pain. Then the Chamomilla patient sits and thinks within herself a sort of introspection. Cannot be induced to say a word. Sadness. The Chamomilla child cannot be touched.

Wants to do as he pleases. Wants to change; wants to do something new. The answer from both the adult and the child are snappish. Complaints come on from contradiction; from anger. Convulsions come on from anger.

If the child is suffering from, whooping cough it will have a coughing spell, a spasmodic cough from being irritated. Goes into a spunky state, gets red in the face, and then gets to coughing. Peevishness.

"Quarrelsome. Easily chagrined or excited to anger.

Bad effects of having the feelings wounded."

Such is the mental state, and, as I have remarked, that mental state will be found wherever there is an inflammatory condition that Chamomilla fits. In pneumonia, in bronchitis, laryngitis, inflammations of the ear, erysipelas, headaches, fevers, Chamomilla. is capable of curing when the mental state is present, and the symptoms, in particular, are present.

Headache: The headaches of Chamomilla are found in sensitive people, sensitive women, nervous; overstrained; overtired. Fidgety. Excitable women that suffer from pain. A little headache seems an enormous thing. Throbbing, tearing, bursting pains. Congestive headaches.

Worse when thinking of the pain, or when thinking about the sufferings. The headaches are worse evenings. A particular time in the evening for many complaints to be worse is 9 o'clock. Sometimes 9 o'clock in the morning, and sometimes 9 in the evening.

Fever condition worse 9 o'clock in the morning. Pains worse in the evening, and especially worse about 9 o'clock. Stitching, tearing pains in the temples and head. Wandering pains in the temples.

Pressing pain in the head as soon as attention was directed to it, better by busying the mind at something else, or by occupation; forcing one's self to do something, and to think of something else. Congestion to the head. Violent neuralgia of the face, teeth, ear' sides of the head. Pains inside of the mouth are ameliorated by cold. Pains of the ear and sides of the head are ameliorated by heat; earache ameliorated by heat.

Eyes

There are pains in the eyes. Inflammation of the eyes with bleeding. Oozing of a bloody water from the eyes of the new born infant. Chamomilla will cure if there is irritability of the temper.

Profuse acrid discharges; yellow discharges; discharges of purulent matter from the eyes. Violent pressure in the orbit. Lachrymation accompanying coryza with sneezing. Stuffing up of the nose. Headaches, irritability.

Associated with the above is a symptom:

"Face red and hot on one side, the other side pale."

Ears

Like the whole constitution of the remedy there is a great sensitiveness of hearing. Roaring, ringing and singing in the ears. Stitching pains in the ears, ameliorated by heat. Pressing earache.

You will see the little one when the pain comes on put its hands up to its ears, and spitefully moaning, yelling and screaming. Violent pains in the ear. When old enough to talk about it will complain of heat in the ear, and a feeling of fullness as if the ear were obstructed or stuffed up.

In adults, nervous, sensitive women who cannot ride in the wind without covering up their cars.

The ears are so sensitive to air when other parts of the face and head are not sensitive to air.

You will find some patients that can not have air touch the neck. Others have extra covering between the shoulders. Chamomilla singles out the ears. The whole body is sensitive to air and to cold, and he wants to dress with plenty of covering.

Sneezing, watery coryza. Hot face on one side, and often with pains in the head and jaws. Fluent coryza, viscid, acrid, with loss of smell. Loss of smell lasting while the cold lasts.

Face

Rending pains in the face, sometimes involving the teeth and the outer face at the same time. It is not an uncommon thing to have a very sensitive woman if she is disturbed by chagrin, if she has been vexed by her servant, to go to her room and suffer tortures from pain in the face from that excitement, from anger.

If it is the outer nerves in the face the pains will be ameliorated by heat; but when it affects the teeth the pains will be ameliorated by cold. Heat of the face, while the rest of the body is cold.

"The face sweats after eating or drinking."

It is a common feature of this remedy to sweat only about the head, the hairy scalp.

Sometimes during measles or scarlet fever we will have Chamomilla manifestations. Sweating about the head, face red on one side.

"One-sided swelling of the check;"

that is, an inflammatory attack, gets redder, and redder, and finally purple, going into erysipelas, with the mental symptoms.

Hot face, redness of one side. Burning in the face. Neuralgia of the face. If anything warm is taken into the mouth it will bring on aching in the teeth, and sometimes burning and throbbing in the roots of the teeth; tearing, stitching, stinging pains, aggravated by talking; aggravated in the open air; aggravated in a warm room, or getting warm in bed, anything that heats up the body will aggravate this toothache; ameliorated by holding cold drinks in the mouth.

Teeth and gums: Toothache that is entirely absent in the daytime; as soon as it comes night, and the patient gets into the warm bed, then these shooting, tearing pains begin; with the irritability, oversensitiveness to pain, the mental state, hot head, you have the Chamomilla toothache.

"Swelling and inflammation of the gums.

Threatened abscess of the gums.

Toothache when coming into a warm room," when it has been better in the cold air. This toothache is one that may be brought on by taking cold, by exposing one's self to cold air when sweating; and yet the toothache itself when present is ameliorated by cold.

"Toothache from a draft of air."

"Ameliorated from eating cold things.

Worse before midnight."

The most of the troubles of Chamomilla that come on in the evening and night subside about or sometimes before midnight.

"From midnight to morning almost all of the complaints of Chamomilla, are absent.

Many of them are absent during the day.

It has aggravation in the forepart of the night.

"Teeth feel too long.

Swollen gums."

The Chamomilla infant will often hold a glass of cold water against the gums. The little one has inflamed gums, painful gums, the coming forth of the teeth is painful, and it seems to want to prolong the cold in the mouth; when it is so young you would not think it would realize the good of making use of the cold edge of the glass. Offensive foetid smell from the mouth.

The spasms that affect the child all over are likely to affect the larynx, and sometimes affect the larynx without affecting the child anywhere else.

"Spasms of the larynx during cough, or without cough.

Spasmodic constriction of the larynx.

Choking.

Spasms of the throat. Sore and inflamed."

Throat

Chamomilla, cures sore throat when the throat is of a uniform redness, spreading pretty evenly over the whole throat, with considerable swelling. Inflammation of tonsils. Much redness; when the mental state is present. It will never cure a sore throat except in these irritable constitutions, such as suffer from pain, such as are easily angered, in a constant fret. The Chamomilla mental state determines when you ne to give Chamomilla in sore throat.

"Want of appetite. Great thirst for cold water and desire for acid drinks.

Unquenchable thirst."

Aversion to coffee, warm drinks, to soups and liquid foods, The aversion to coffee is a strange thing. Chamomilla and coffee are very much alike in the general sensitivity of the economy. They antidote each other. When persons have been overdrinking coffee, nurses drinking coffee to keep up at night to take care of the patient; persons overdrinking coffee when tired and overworked. Chamomilla is its antidote.

"Thirsty, and hot with the pains."

When the pains come, no matter where, she heats up, and sometimes becomes really feverish. Face red, especially on one side. Head hot; extreme irritability.

Chamomilla has much vomiting. Eructations of gas which smells like sulphuretted hydrogen. The Chamomilla patient has violent retching. Making violent efforts to vomit. Seems that it will tear the stomach. Covered with cold sweat. Exhausted. That is just what Morphine does.

If you have ever seen a patient who has been overdosed by a doctor - I hope that you will never see one that has been overdosed by yourself. Do not make a case, you will have one soon enough, but if you get into a town where there is an allopathic physician, and he happens to give Morphine to one of these oversensitive patients; it may relieve her pain for a little while, but on will come the awful eructations, and she will retch and vomit, and continue to retch when there is nothing to vomit.

Chamomilla will stop that, the first dose, in a few minutes, and it is the only remedy you will need. It will always stop the vomiting from Morphine after the crude effect of Morphine has passed away and the vomiting comes.

Colics: Colic, especially in the little ones, in the infants. Pain in the stomach and abdomen, The child doubles up, and screams, and kicks; wants to be carried; is extremely irritable; attack comes on in the evening; one side of the face red, the other side pale; wants things, and when they are given does not want them; and you have a Chamomilla colic.

It is a wind colic. It lasts a fraction of a minute, and then it straightens out again. It shows that it is a cramp, a wind-cramp. in adults, who have felt these symptoms, they are said to be cutting, burning, griping. Griping pains.

Of course, such are the pains that are called colicky. Cramps in the bowels. Griping pains. Sometimes griping as if must go to stool The abdomen distended like a drum. Sometimes ameliorated by warm applications.

"Colic while urinating;" that is an uncommon symptom.

"Colic in the morning.

Tympanitic abdomen."

The most striking Chamomilla stool is grass green , or like chopped eggs, or like these two chopped up; yellow and white, intermingled with mucus that is grass green, like chopped grass; chopped spinach. Greenish, slimy discharges, greenish water.

Those old enough to express themselves in the proving said that the stool felt hot while it passed. It smells like sulphuretted hydrogen. Copious stool; scanty stool, with dysenteric straining. Watery diarrhoea, six or eight passages daily. Mucous diarrhoea. Green, watery stool, fæces and mucus.

"Yellowish brown stool."

Also constipation, with no ability to strain. A paralytic weakness of the rectum; inactivity of the rectum. Anus is " pouting," with swollen appearance and redness.

Women: The woman, such as I have described, oversensitive to pain, snappish, suffering intensely from a little pain, takes on many symptoms at the menstrual period. The menstrual flow is black, clotted, offensive. Cramping pains in the uterus, clutching and griping, ameliorated by heat.

"Oversensitive to pain," with all the pains and complaints, and the mental state, the irritability, the snappish mental state at a menstrual period. Whether it be a menorrhagia, or a metrorrhagia, there are copious black clots.

"Menstrual colic following anger," which means violent cramping pains in the uterus during menstruation if she has had any great excitement to anger her. Sexual irritability, emotions, disturbance of mind, will bring on cramps at the menstrual period in a woman who is not subject to cramps, affecting her as if she had taken cold.

It is a very useful remedy in membranous dysmenorrhoea. It, perhaps, has existed from the first menstrual period. Every month the woman throws off a little membranous formation. This is thrown off with violent labor-like pains, and often with clots.

Chamomilla may be a palliative. It is not the constitutional remedy that clears away, and prevents the future formation of this membrane, like the deeper antipsorics, but it is often palliative in the more severe attacks, with the irritable condition of the mind; feverish condition, ameliorated by heat; cramping, and clutching like labor pains,

"Yellow, smarting leucorrhoea.

Excessive menstruation; blood dark, nearly black, clotted, with pain through from back to front, attacks of syncope, coldness of limbs, much thirst."

Pregnancy: In pregnancy the woman has also Chamomilla conditions. Irregular contractions; false labor pains. Labor pains that are felt in wrong places. Labor pains that are felt too much in the back.

Contractions that are most painful, cutting, tearing, bringing out screams. so irritable; she scolds the pains; she scolds the doctor; she scolds everybody; drives the doctor out of the room; drives the nurse off, and then calls for her again; refuses things that are offered.

Labor pains that are clutching here, and clutching there, and cramping, showing that certain fibres of the uterus are contracting in one direction, and certain other fibres in another. There is not that uniform, regular contraction that should take place in the expulsion of the contents of the uterus; expulsion of a mole or expulsion of a child.

If the physician can have the pregnant woman under his care during the period of gestation he ought to be able to select remedies to remove these irregular contractions of the uterus, or to prevent them when it comes time for labor. The pains are then not so violent. She feels the contractions, but in many instances they are painless.

You will not always be able to prepare women, they will not always permit it. Women are more inclined to be notional and whimsical and to have their own way a short time before confinement than at any other time. A woman ought to be under treatment all through, gestation, and sometimes it takes longer.

Gestation is a fortuitous time for the woman to take treatment. Symptoms representative of her disordered state come out then that do not appear at any other time. If she has a psoric condition it may remain dormant until pregnancy comes on, which may act as an exciting cause to bring out the conditions that are in the constitution.

It furnishes, therefore, a good time for the homoeopathic physician to study the case and give that woman a constitutional remedy based upon those symptoms that will not only remove those symptoms and prepare her for confinement, but will remove very much of the disorder in her economy, and she will go on through life liberated from much distress, cured from many conditions that perhaps would not have come out until some other occasion brought them out.

A woman that knows much about Homoeopathy would submit herself regularly to constitutional treatment during gestation, that is, would be particular to give the physician everything, all the details, all the sufferings, all the trouble, that he may study that case.

The things that are to be observed during gestation are to be added to the constitutional. symptoms found when gestation is not present, because they are all evidence of a disturbance in that one patient. And it is the patient that is to be treated, not a disease. It is simply another form of disturbance, of disorder of the economy.

The things that Chamomilla reaches during confinement, and during its course, and at the close of it, are irregular contractions, like hourglass contractions.

"Rigidity of the os."

After confinement, after pains. With all these the same mental condition, the same oversensitiveness to pain.

"Postpartum hemorrhage."

Every time the child is put to the breast, cramping of the uterus; cramp in the back. Either of these, or both, Chamomilla cures. The two principal remedies you will have to rely on for these conditions, cramping in the back and cramping in the abdomen every time the child is put to die breast, are Chamomilla and Pulsatilla.

They are two decidedly different remedies in the mental sphere. One is mild and gentle, though whimsical; and the other is snappish and irritable. Both are sensitive to pain, but Chamomilla is far more sensitive to pain than Pulsatilla.

Chamomilla has inflammation of the mammary glands. You cannot prescribe for that unless you have something along with it, and I am sure you will recognize a Chamomilla patient. The woman goes into convulsions.

At the beginning of the confinement the husband comes into the room in some snappish way,

"to make his wife behave herself;" it makes her mad, and she goes into convulsions.

The doctor, perhaps, has just turned his back upon it, but now he says,

"Well, why did I not think to give this woman a dose of Chamomilla?

If I had done that I would have prevented these convulsions."

She becomes very philosophical after a dose of Chamomilla, and often goes to sleep.

Chest, cough and respiration: There are many suffocative attacks and difficulties of breathing, inflammation of the larynx, that you can read up easily.

The cough of Chamomilla has some striking things in it. It is a hard cough, a dry, backing cough. The child goes to sleep at night and coughs and does not wake up. Coughs in its sleep, It is a little feverish has taken cold, and one side of the face is flushed.

It is crabbed when it is awake. The child becomes angry when it has a cold and a little cough, and a little disturbance of the larynx and bronchial tubes has been noticed coming on, and all at once it becomes more excitable, wants to be carried, and if not pleased, or is angered, it will go into a hard coughing spell, and cough and vomit.

"Coughing spells from anger."

That is, he coughs when there is already a cold or a cough, and if the patient becomes angry he has a fit of coughing. The coughing complaints, and chest complaints, and laryngeal complaints are generally worse at night.

The feverish condition comes on at night with the Chamomilla colds, with the Chamomilla whooping cough, with the Chamomilla chest complaints.

Most of the complaints of Chamomilla are better after midnight. From 9 o'clock to midnight they are worse.

"Dry cough worse at night and during sleep."

Dry cough from catching cold. Rough, scraping cough of children in winter, with tickling in sus sternal fossa, worse at night.

Dry cough, continuing during sleep. Amelioration of cough when getting warm in bed. Chamomilla is a very common remedy in whooping cough, where the child wants to be carried; keeps the nurse busy all the time. Coughs and gags and vomits, and it is very irritable and capricious in all of its wants and coughs during sleep.

You can now easily detect the chest symptoms. They go with the mental symptoms and the irritability and cough. The cough in the chest is scarcely different from the cough in the larynx and the cough from cold.

It is the same Chamomilla cough. Cough during sleep . During most of the complaints, fevers, colds, acute complaints and little attacks, burning of the extremities.

Limbs: Stitching pains in the limbs. Cramping in the muscles. Limbs go to sleep. With the pains in the limbs, and sometimes in other parts, but particularly in the limbs, a benumbed feeling , or pains with the feeling of deadness, pains accompanied by a benumbed feeling; sometimes almost complete loss of sensation of the skin, yet the pains in the long nerves in the extremities are very violent, and the patient seems just as sensitive to pain as at other times.

Extremely sensitive to pain, but the pains themselves cause a benumbing feeling to follow them .

It has been called in Older books a paralyzing pain. Convulsions of the extremities. Convulsions of the whole body.

"Cramps in the legs and calves.

Tearing pains in the feet following a severe chill.

Burning of the soles at night, puts the feet out of bed."

All the routine prescribers whenever. the patient is known to put the feet out of bed give Sulphur ,, yet there is a large list of remedies with hot feet, burning soles, and all of them will put the feet out of bed, of course, to cool them off.

There is no reason why they should all get Sulphur.

Another feature of the pains that come on at night, sometimes, before midnight is, they are so violent that he cannot keep still. When the child has pains he wants to be carried, that seems to do him good. When the adult has pains at night in bed he gets up and walks the floor.

Benumbing pains, pains ameliorated by heat, pains that drive him out of bed at night, with twitchings of the limbs.

Oversensitiveness to pain. Great irritability.

Sleep

The Chamomilla patient can not go to sleep at night. He is sleepy, like Bell ., but he cannot sleep. If he quiets down during the day he wants to go to sleep. But as soon as the time comes to go to bed he is wide awake, he is sleepless and restless at night, especially the fore part.

At times the Chamomilla patient becomes so full of visions and so much excited during the forepart of the night in his efforts to go to sleep that when be does go to sleep he jerks and twitches and has horrid dreams, and is full of sufferings.

"Anxious dreams. Sees horrible apparitions and starts; dreams about fatal accidents."

Worn out mentally from trying to go to sleep, and he is tired out.