Silicea

Weak, puny children; not from want of nourishment taken, but defective assimilation.

Inflammations tending to end suppuration or refusing to heal; becoming chronic.

Coldness, lack of vital warmth, even when taking exercise; must be wrapped up, especially the head, which >.

Suppressed sweats, especially of feet, which is profuse and offensive.

Weak, nervous, easily irritated, faint-hearted: yielding giving up disposition, “grit all gone.”

Constipation; stool protrudes and then slips back again, again and again; weak expulsive power.

Modalities: < from cold or draft, motion, open air, at new moon; > in warm room, wrapping up head; magnetism and electricity.

Scrofulous, rachitic children with large heads; open fontanelles and sutures; much sweating about the head, which must be kept warm by external covering; large bellies; weak ankles, slow in learning to walk.

Diseases; caused by suppressed foot-sweat; exposing the head or back to any slight draft of air; from vaccination (Thuja); dust complaints of stone cutters, with total loss of strength.

Vertigo; spinal headache ascending from nape of neck to head, as if one would fall forward; worse looking upward.

Unhealthy skin; every little injury suppurates.

Promotes expulsion of foreign bodies from the tissues, fish bones, needles, bone splinters.

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Silicea is another of our invaluable constitutional remedies, and also one which is of little or no use except as developed by Hahnemann’s process of potentization. Like Calcarea, it is especially useful in sweaty-headed children (Sanicula) with defective assimilation. It is not in the fat, torpid, obesic patients, over-nourished in one part and insufficiently so in another, like Calcarea, that Silicea is indicated, but in the over-sensitive, imperfectly nourished (generally), not from want of food, but from imperfect assimilation. The Silicea child is not larger than natural anywhere except in its “big belly,” which is due to diseased mesentery. Its limbs are shrunken, its eyes sunken and its face pinched and old looking. It does not increase in size or strength, learns to walk late; in short, if not actually sick in bed, everything seems to have come to a standstill so far as growth or development is concerned. Now if this state of things continues the bowels become very constipated, and a peculiar constipation it is, too. The little fellow strains and strains, the stool partly protruding and then slipping back (Sanicula and Thuja), as though the general weakness of the patient affected the expulsive power of the rectum, or else the bowels become very persistently loose, especially during dentition or the hot weather of summer. The stools are changeable, but Pulsatilla does no good, almost every kind and color of loose stool appearing. The child takes nourishment enough, but whether vomited or retained, goes on emaciating and growing weaker and weaker until it dies of inanition, unless Silicea checks this process. Many such cases have I saved with this remedy and made them healthy children. I have always used the 30th and upwards, hence cannot speak of the lower preparations. (Silicea also has constipation < before and during menstruation.)

Silicea ranks among the first of our remedies for inflammations ending in suppuration. It seems to make no particular difference whether the suppuration takes place in the soft or hard parts, for it is equally efficacious in glandular or bony ulcerations. It seems to come in at a later stage than Hepar sulph. or Calcarea sulphide, which expedite the discharge of pus already formed, while Silicea comes in for healing after the discharge has taken place. Cellular tissues with deep-seated suppurations, including tendons and ligaments, also come within the range of its healing powers. In these cases the constitution of the patient has an important bearing in the selection of this remedy. The Silicea subject is weakly, with fine skin, pale face, lax muscles. Even the mind and nervous symptoms come into the general picture of “weakness.” He is nervous and irritable, weak, fainthearted, yielding, giving up disposition, “grit all gone.” (Pulsatilla.) In such a case Silicea is grand. I hate to use the term, but as the old school would say, “it builds them up,” and so it seems, for under its action the patient’s spirits rise, hope revives, the weakness and depression give way to a feeling of returning strength and health. It makes no difference whether the ulcerations are in the tissues already named, in the lungs, intestinal tract, or mamme, or elsewhere, the effect is the same, and the improvement in the local affection generally follows the general constitutional improvement. This condition of weakness seems to attack the general nervous system, affecting the spine, and so we get those cerebrospinal headaches, or headaches beginning in the nape of the neck and running forward over the head to the eyes, for which Silicea is so useful. Vertigo also ascends from the nape to head, < looking up. (Pulsatilla.)

There seems to be lack of nerve power to resist outward depressing influences. He is cold, or, as Hering puts it, there is “want of vital warmth, even when taking exercise.” He is sensitive to cold air, takes cold very easily, especially when uncovering the head or feet. On the contrary, he is relieved by “wrapping up the head” (Magnesia mur.), or, in other words, by supplying artificially the warmth that he lacks naturally.

I have several times found a Silicea child suffering from epileptiform spasms which were always worse at new moon. A few doses of Silicea 200th set them all right.

Silicea subjects are often afflicted with offensive footsweats (Sanicula, Psorinum, Graphites), which are easily suppressed by getting the feet cold. Such suppression must be remedied, the sweat restored and cured by proper medication or serious results often follow, such as convulsions and other spinal troubles, even locomotor ataxia. Silicea is the remedy to restore and cure such sweats by correcting the conditions upon which the sweats depend. (Baryta carb., Graphites, Psorinum, Sanicula.)

The Silicea patient desires to be magnetized and is relieved thereby. (Phosphorus.)

This is one of the remedies of which, like Sepia, Lachesis, Lycopodium and others, the old school knows little or nothing, because their chief virtues are only developed in potencies above the 12th.

Silicea is the chronic of Pulsatilla.