Coffea Cruda
by E. B. Nash — Leaders in Homoeopathic Therapeutics
All senses more acute; reads fine print easier; smell, taste and touch acute; unusual activity of mind and body; full of ideas, quick to act, no sleep on this account, etc.
Affections from sudden surprises, especially joyful surprises; very emotional.
Pains insupportable, drive to despair; exasperation, tears, tossing about in agony; great sleeplessness.
Headache, from over-mental exertion, thinking, talking; one-sided, as from a nail driven into the brain (/Ign., Nux); as if the brain were torn or dashed to pieces; < in open air.
Jerking toothache; relieved by holding ice water in the mouth; returns when water becomes warm.
Coffea cruda, like Chamomilla, acts strongly upon the nervous system. Indeed in nervous troubles, where the patient has not been addicted to the coffee habit, it often takes precedence. If on the other hand he is a coffee drinker, Chamomilla is the remedy. Doctor Teste, of Paris, used to say that coffee was responsible for a large proportion of the neuralgias of France. The Coffea patient is a subject of very great general exalted sensibility. See Hering’s characteristic cards. “All the senses more acute, reads fine print easier, smell, taste, and touch acute, particularly also in increased perception of slight passive motions.” “Unusual activity of mind and body.” “Full of ideas, quick to act, no sleep on this account.” “Lively fancies, full of plans for the future.”
These symptoms portray, as plainly as words can, the nervous conditions calling for this remedy.
It makes one think of Chamomilla, but the mind of Chamomilla is not there. On the other hand, it makes one think of Aconite, but the fear of death is not there. Hering used to recommend Aconite and Coffea in alternation in painful inflammatory affections, where the fever symptoms of the former and also the nervous sensibility of the latter were present, and I know of no two remedies that alternate better, though I never do it, since I learned to closely individualize. Coffea is especially adapted to mental shocks, such as sudden surprises, especially joyful surprises, excessive laughter and playing, disappointed love, noises, strong smells, etc. It is also adapted to variable moods; first crying, then laughing, then crying again.
Coffea also vies with Chamomilla and Aconite as a pain remedy. “Pains insupportable, drive to despair.” “Exasperation, tears, tossing about in great anguish.” Here again we would not give Coffea in an habitual coffee drinker, but Chamomilla rather.
The particular localities where these pains mostly occur are in the head, where the pain is generally one-sided, feeling “as though a nail were driven into the head.” Ignatia has a similar headache, and it generally occurs in hysterical subjects. Then the choice may have to be made between these two remedies.
Prosopalgia, which is often traceable to bad teeth, and Coffea has a very peculiar toothache, in the fact that the tooth is easy as long as he holds cold water upon it. Remember Chamomilla toothache is often caused by taking warm things into the mouth, but is not relieved by taking cold things like Coffea.
Dysmenorrhœa, with excessively painful colic. If there are large black clots and Coffea does not relieve, follow with Chamomilla. Pains threatening abortion, or after-pains, or very severe unbearable labor pains are often relieved by this remedy. In short, for pains anywhere, which seem intolerable, and there are no other especially leading symptoms, Coffea is to be remembered.
The same over-excitability, so characteristic of this drug, causes great sleeplessness, and Coffea has won to itself great credit as a sleep remedy. In my experience and observation, it works best here in the 200th potency. And there is no more beautiful verification of the truth of Similia than just here, for it causes great sleeplessness in many people when taken in large quantities. Cough and sleeplessness after measles (a very common occurrence) is wonderfully relieved by it, and it is sleep, not narcosis, and never injures or sickens the patient like the stupor of the opium preparations.