Cuprum metallicum — metallic copper — is the remedy of the spasm. Kent gives it its rank in one sentence: "Cuprum is pre-eminently a convulsive medicine."
Boericke's opening line sets out the whole territory: "Spasmodic affections, cramps, convulsions, beginning in fingers and toes, violent, contractive, and intermittent pain, are some of the more marked expressions of the action of Cuprum; and its curative range therefore includes tonic and clonic spasms, convulsions, and epileptic attacks." Boger compresses it further: "Violent effects; in recurring symptom groups. CRAMPS AND SPASMS; of all kinds... extort cries; tonic, knotting the muscles."
Behind the violence stands a second idea, and it is the one that decides chronic cases: suppression. Clarke: "Metallic copper is an antipsoric remedy, working from within outwards. It ranks with the most important of those which relieve states arising from the 'striking inward' of diseases or the failure of eruptions or discharges to appear." His causation line is two words long: "Suppressions. Fright."
The remedy is prepared by trituration of the metal. This guide profiles it for clinical study from Boericke, Boger's Synoptic Key and General Analysis, Lippe's Keynotes, Kent's Lectures and Clarke's Dictionary. The originals can be read in full — Clarke's Cuprum, Boericke's Cuprum and Kent's Cuprum — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Cuprum State
The state announces itself at the periphery. Kent: "When these are coming on the earliest threatenings are drawings in the fingers, clenching of the thumbs or twitching of the muscles... the thumbs are first affected; they are drawn into the palms and then the fingers close down over them with great violence." From fingers and toes the spasm spreads until, in Kent's words, "it seems as if the frame would be torn to pieces by the violent contractions of the muscles everywhere."
The colour of the state is blue. Boericke's face is "distorted, pale bluish, with blue lips"; the skin "bluish, marbled"; Boger prints "Blueness" among the generals, alongside "Continued weakness. Poor reaction. Easy relapses."
Boericke notes that "symptoms disposed to appear periodically and in groups", and that "complaints begin in left side" — Clarke makes the periodicity astonishingly precise: "Periodicity every 15, 30, or 60 minutes; every fortnight." There is also a marked oversensitivity to medication itself; Boger: "Hypersensitive: every drug overacts, without curing."
Constitutionally, Clarke finds it "suited to fair-haired people; and the carbo-nitrogenoid constitution. Women who have borne many children (after-pains)." Kent adds a distinctive clientele: those cramping subjects who have become "prematurely old from vices, from strong drink, from late nights and various abuses" — debilitated, nervous, tremulous people whose calves and soles cramp at night in bed.
Mental and Emotional Picture
Malice and moroseness. Boericke's Mind line: "Fixed ideas, malicious and morose. Uses words not intended. Fearful." Clarke is blunt: "Maliciousness is an indication for Cupr.", and his record includes "attacks of rage (wants to bite the bystanders)". Boger catches the alternation: "Sullen; tricky; alternately yielding and headstrong."
Anguish with fear of death. Clarke: "Melancholy, with attacks of extreme anguish, like fear of death; restlessness, groaning, and desire to escape." Boger: "Melancholy; with spells of fear of death."
Delirium and shrieking. Between convulsive attacks Kent describes "incoherent talk, delirium, during which the patient is spiteful, violent, weeping or shrieking. They go into convulsions with a shriek." Lippe's keynote: "Mania in attacks followed by perspiration" — and Boger's "Piercing shrieks. Delirium; loquacious; then cold sweat."
Ailments from fright. Clarke reports Mossa's chorea cases: after a fright, involuntary movements of one arm and leg developing into pronounced general chorea, slowly and decidedly recovered under Cuprum. Boericke's keynote is simply "Chorea brought on by fright."
The death-like pause. Kent records the drug's ability "to produce a group of spasms followed by the appearance as if the patient were dead, or in a state of ecstacy" — the stasis that gives the whooping cough its terrifying character.
Physical Affinities
Nervous system and convulsions
The cerebro-spinal axis is Boger's first region. Epilepsy has the recorded signature: Boericke — "In epilepsy, aura begins at knees, ascends to hypogastrium; then unconsciousness, foaming, and falling"; Kent — "He falls with a shriek and during the attack passes urine and faeces." Clarke documents cures of epilepsy of decades' standing, and Guernsey's indication for the puerperal sphere: "Convulsions during pregnancy and puerperal convulsions which begin in the fingers or toes, and spread all over the body." Kent's picture of the eclamptic labour is unforgettable: "the patient suddenly becomes blind. All light seems to her to disappear from the room, the labor pains cease, and convulsions come on, commencing in the fingers and toes."
Stomach and abdomen
"Nausea greater than in any other remedy," Boericke claims — with "vomiting, relieved by drinking cold water; with colic, diarrhœa, spasms" and the "strong metallic, slimy taste, with flow of saliva" that Clarke ranks among the strongest indications for the remedy. Two curiosities confirm it at the bedside: "constant protrusion and retraction of the tongue, like a snake", and Lippe's "What he drinks descends with a gurgling noise."
The colic is ferocious — Boericke: "Colic, violent and intermittent"; abdomen "tense, hot and tender to touch; contracted". Boger: "Frightful colic, > pressure, < raising arms." Hiccough precedes the spasms.
Chest and cough
Kent locates a spasmodic centre at the lower chest: "a constriction so severe that he thinks he will die, and at others a feeling as if he were transfixed with a knife from the xiphoid appendix to the back." Boericke: "Spasm and constriction of chest; spasmodic asthma, alternating with spasmodic vomiting... Suffocative attacks, worse 3 am."
Whooping cough is classic Cuprum ground. Boericke: "Whooping-cough, better, swallow water, with vomiting and spasms and purple face." Kent renders the mother's account — the child "coughs until it loses its breath", face livid or blue, nails discoloured, eyes turned up, then lying insensible until, "with violent spasmodic action in its breathing, the child from shortest breaths comes to itself again just as if brought back to life." And the household discovery that clinches the prescription: "If the mother can get there quickly enough with a little cold water she will stop the cough."
Cramps, menses and cholera
"The Cuprum patient is full of cramps" (Kent) — calves, soles, palms, toes and fingers, nocturnal, in old age and premature old age; Boger notes the calf cramp "> stretching leg out". In the female sphere: "Painful menstruation with spasms commencing in the fingers and extending over the body" (Kent), cramps extending into the chest before, during or after suppressed menses, after-pains, and suppressed foot-sweat as a cause (Boericke).
In cholera and cholera-like states, the picture is total: Kent — "the patient is fairly emptied out, becomes blue all over, the extremities are cold, there is jerking of the muscles, cramping of the extremities and of the fingers and toes... he is cold, mottled, blue in blotches, going into collapse." Lippe's keynotes add the "flaky" character of the vomiting and diarrhoea, the "icy coldness of the whole body" and the slow, scarcely perceptible pulse. Clarke records the old use of copper as a cholera prophylactic, "either when worn next the skin, or when taken internally."
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Suppressions — of eruptions, discharges, foot-sweat (Boger, Clarke)
- Emotions: anger; fright
- Touch and contact — Lippe: "Contact renews and aggravates the ailment"; the pains "are increased by movement and touch" (Boericke)
- Before menses; from vomiting
- Hot weather; overtaxing; loss of sleep; raising the arms
- Evening and night (Clarke); suffocative attacks at 3 a.m.
Better from:
- Drinking cold water — vomiting, colic, cough and spasm all yield to it; Boger heads his ameliorations "Cold drinks"
- During perspiration (Boericke)
- Pressure — over the heart (Boger) and on the colic
- Stretching the leg out — the calf cramp
Keynote Symptoms
- Cramps and convulsions beginning in fingers and toes
- Thumbs clenched into the palms, fingers closing over them
- Convulsions with piercing shrieks
- Spasms followed by death-like stillness — the whooping-cough pause
- Strong metallic, slimy taste with salivation
- Nausea greater than in any other remedy; vomiting relieved by cold water
- Whooping cough with purple face, better a swallow of cold water
- Violent, intermittent colic; abdomen tense and contracted
- Drinks descend with a gurgling sound
- Blueness — face, lips, nails, mottled skin
- Cramps in calves and soles at night
- Ailments from suppressed eruptions, discharges and foot-sweat
- Symptoms periodic and in groups; giddiness with the head falling forward on the chest
Clinical Applications
Convulsive disorders. Epilepsy with the ascending aura from the knees, nocturnal attacks, and the peripheral onset in fingers and toes; puerperal convulsions with the recorded sudden blindness; chorea from fright.
Whooping cough and spasmodic respiratory states. The violent paroxysm with cyanosis, the insensible pause, and relief from cold water; spasm of the glottis; spasmodic asthma alternating with vomiting.
Cholera and choleraic collapse. The convulsive member of Hahnemann's classical trio, with cramps in abdomen and calves.
Violent colic. Intermittent, cramping, with shrieks — the abdominal expression of the same spasm.
Spasmodic dysmenorrhoea. With cramps spreading from the fingers over the body and epileptiform manifestations in the recorded cases.
Cramp states of the debilitated. Nocturnal cramps of calves and soles in old and prematurely old subjects.
Sequelae of suppression. Boericke places the vomiting, stupor and convulsions that follow retroceded eruptions in scarlet fever squarely within the remedy's sphere.
Differential Diagnosis
Cuprum vs. Veratrum album. The cholera trio, with Camphor as third member. Kent: "Cuprum for the cases of a convulsive character, Camphor in cases characterized by extreme coldness and more or less dryness, and Veratrum when the copious sweat, vomiting and purging are the features. That is little to remember, but with that you can enter an epidemic of cholera with confidence." Boger lists Veratrum as Cuprum's related remedy; the cold sweat on the forehead and the flooding discharges belong to Veratrum, the cramping shriek to Cuprum.
Cuprum vs. Cina. Both meet the convulsive states of childhood — Clarke records difficult dentition with convulsions for Cuprum. Cina's convulsions arise on the reflex irritation of worms, with the boring at the nose and ravenous hunger of its own picture; Cuprum's carry the clenched thumbs, the shriek and the blueness, and follow fright or a retroceded eruption.
Cuprum vs. Ipecacuanha. Rivals in whooping cough and spasmodic asthma, and both intensely nauseated remedies. Ipecacuanha's nausea is persistent, with its clean tongue, and unrelieved by vomiting; Cuprum's violent vomiting comes with cramps and is relieved by drinking cold water — and in the cough, Ipecacuanha has the rigidity and bleeding, Cuprum the cyanotic pause ended by the glass of cold water.
Cuprum vs. Zincum metallicum. Boger cross-references Zinc twice in the Cuprum text — at the spasms accompanying cough and at "repressed or undeveloped eruptions, discharges, etc." Both are metals of suppression with twitching and jerking; but Zinc's failure is one of weakness — too feeble to develop the eruption, with fidgety feet and brain-fag — where Cuprum answers suppression with violence: shrieking convulsions, knotted muscles, collapse.
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Cuprum in high grade:
- Generalities; CONVULSIONS; beginning in; fingers and toes
- Extremities; CLENCHED; thumbs
- Mind; SHRIEKING; convulsions, before or during
- Generalities; CONVULSIONS; fright, after
- Generalities; ERUPTIONS; suppressed; ailments from
- Mouth; TASTE; metallic
- Stomach; VOMITING; drinking; cold water amel.
- Cough; WHOOPING; drinking cold water amel.
- Face; DISCOLORATION; bluish
- Abdomen; PAIN; cramping; intermittent
- Extremities; CRAMPS; calves; night
- Throat; GURGLING; drinking, when — oesophagus, audible
Anchor on the mode of onset — spasm starting in fingers and toes with clenched thumbs — plus the causation (suppression or fright) and the cold-water amelioration, then confirm with the blueness and the metallic taste. In epidemic bowel states, sort the trio by Kent's rule before repertorising further. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Boericke gives the compact sphere — convulsions, whooping cough, cholera — with the aura, modalities and dose
- Boger's Synoptic Key supplies the violence in grade: cramps that extort cries, knotting of muscles, blueness, poor reaction and easy relapses
- Boger's General Analysis condenses the generals — bluish-purple-livid, calf, cramp and colic, spasmodic effects, drinking ameliorates
- Lippe's Keynotes records the flaky vomiting and diarrhoea, the icy coldness and the gurgling descent of drinks
- Kent's Lectures develop the whooping-cough narrative, the cramp constituencies and the great cholera comparison
- Clarke's Dictionary holds the suppression doctrine, the cured epilepsy and chorea cases, and the metallic-taste indication
You can read all of these side by side for any remedy through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place Cuprum among its peers, see the guide to the essential polycrest remedies, or read how materia medica and repertory work together in case analysis.
