Mind: The mental symptoms are very important, and the impressions made upon the mind and thence upon the body guide to Staphysagria as a remedy.
Excitable, easily aroused to anger, but seldom irascible, that is, easily disturbed and excited, but seldom manifests it.
Suitable in cases where complaints come from pent up wrath, suppressed anger, suppressed feelings. The person becomes speechless from suppressed indignation, anger with indignation. Complaints brought on by these causes; irritable bladder with frequent urging to urinate, lasting many days after suppressed wrath, after insults.
“Great indignation about things done by others or by himself; grieves about consequences.”
A gentleman comes in contact with one beneath his station and an altercation takes place, an argument which ends in insult, and the gentleman turns his back on the other. He goes home and suffers; he does not speak it out, but controls it and then suffers from it.
He has sleepless nights and many days of fatigue, brain-fag; for days and weeks he cannot add nor subtract, makes mistakes in writing and speaking, has irritability of the bladder, colic, etc.
Loss of memory with a sense of weight between the eyes; it is difficult to say whether this is a feeling in the head or an effort to describe a dullness of mind. Feels as if a ball of wood were in the forehead, or as if the whole cerebrum were made of wood; it feels numb.
It is difficult to state whether it is a condition of the mind or head. Accompanying this sensation of a lump in the forehead is a feeling as if the whole back of the head were hollow; the patient may describe it as a feeling of numbness or a lack of sensation.
“Indifferent, low-spirited, dullness of mind after onanism.”
Staphysagria cures these conditions when they are the result of sexual excitement, masturbation, excesses in venery, allowing the mind to dwell too much on venereal subjects. Thinking on sexual relations. These patients are irritable, easily fatigued, most excitable, and when they have to control their emotions they suffer intensely.
One who is in health can easily put aside a controversy, knowing that he has done what is right, but a Staphysagria patient when he has to control himself goes all to pieces trembles from head to foot, loses his voice, his ability to work, cannot sleep and a headache follows.
Many a time a man has come into my office with blue lips, trembling hands, pains about the heart and all over, and he thinks he is going to die. He tells a story of an altercation and pent up wrath, and Staphysagria stops his trembling and quiets him. Without it he would have sleepless nights, brain-fag, prostration and headache. This state belongs especially to those who have indulged in sexual excesses.
Now, the next step. The senses are in this same irritable state, so that the tips of the fingers are sensitive, the ears are sensitive to noise, the tongue is sensitive to tastes and the nun to odors; so sensitive that everything is painfully sensated.
Every little inflamed spot will have in its center sensitive points, little nerve spots; ulcers when touched cause the patient to go all to pieces and a convulsion threatens.
Hoemorrhoidal tumors are so sensitive that they cannot be touched. Little nerve tumors form in the skin, little polypoid growths the size of a wheat grain and denuded of epithelium, covered with moisture, red, inflamed, blue, and a mere touch will throw the patient into convulsions and suffering for days and nights. A hypersensitive nerve growth will come out on the hand or on the back. Sometimes it turns back.
Women: Again, a little wart will come out, especially about the genitals and anus, little caruncular growths about the urethra and vagina, so sensitive that if nipped between the fingers the patient will go into spasms, especially if a woman.
Staphysagria suits all three of the miasms.
These nervous states run all through the complaints. Look for a case of Staphysagria where the whole mind and nervous system are in a fret.
The Staphysagria headache is a numb, dull pain in the occiput and forehead, especially in these nervous constitutions.
“Sensation as of a round ball in the forehead, sitting firmly there even when shaking the, head.”
Headaches from vexation and indignation.
Crusty, squamous eruptions on the scalp.
“Painful sensitiveness of the scalp, skin peels off, with itching and smarting, worse in the evening and from getting warm.”
The scales are lifted up by a watery exudate and the denuded surface is extremely sensitive to touch.
New growths about the lids and balls of the eyes, extremely painful to the touch. Meibomian tumors (Conium, Thuja), in irritable children (Kreos).
Another feature in Staph, is its action on the glands; scrofulous glands; glands of the neck enlarge; enlarged and indurated ovaries and testes; stitching, tearing pains in the glands everywhere. Hardness and chronic induration.
Stitching, tearing pains along the course of the nerves; in the heart, and as in such a nervous patient the mind is likely to be on the heart, the stitching pains in the intercostals are supposed to be in the heart. Stitching pains directly through the chest to the back.
Swelling of the tonsils after the abuse of Mercury. Chronic tonsilitis, tonsils are not large but hard from previous attacks of acute tonsilitis; strumous diathesis; cross and irritable.
“Pains come on after eating.”
The Staphysagria patient has much difficulty in the bowels. Subject to chronic diarrhoea and to constipation. Colic, twitching, tearing pains in the abdomen. Diarrhoea from cold water, from eating, from indignation, anger, with flatulence of a terribly offensive odor like spoiled eggs.
“Chronic diarrhoea or dysentery of weakly, sickly children after anger; after being punished, after emotions.” (Coloc. and Chamomilla)
Staphysagria and Coloc. resemble each other. In both, eating and drinking cause griping and stool, both have colic as if stones were squeezing; Staphysagria in the intestines, head and testes; Coloc. in the intestines and ovaries; both are worse from anger. Causticum, CoIoc. and Staphysagria follow each other like Sulph., Calcarea and Lycopodium
It often happens that nervous women soon after marriage are attacked with frequent and painful urging to urinate which becomes extremely troublesome and may last many days. Staph, is very comforting to the young wife.
Urinary and Genitals: Great teasing and tearing all night long bloody urine; involuntary discharge of urine, acrid and corroding, with burning, worse from motion.
Profuse discharge of pale urine with burning and urging. Burning during and after urination.
Staphysagria has cured enlarged prostate with frequent urging to urinate, especially in old men; continued teasing with dribbling.
”Frequent urging to urinate, with a scanty discharge in thin stream or discharge of urine in drops; may be followed by a sensation as if the bladder were not fully emptied.”
The most distressing symptom of the male genitals is excitability, but there is also impotence, great weakness of the sexual organs; the sexual desire is greatly increased but there is impotence.
Useful in the results of secret vice, long practiced.
“Seminal emissions followed by great chagrin and mortification, prostration, dyspnoea.
Effects of onanism or sexual excesses; loss of memory, hypochondriasis, taciturnity, face sunken, abashed look, nocturnal emissions, backache, weak legs, relaxed organs, deficiency of vital heat and tendency to take cold, deep sunken, red, and lusterless eyes, hair falls out; loss of prostatic fluid and impairment of sexual desire; dull and contusive pains in the testicles, voluptuous itching of the scrotum, atrophy of the testicles.”
Think of the extremely nervous patient.
Dry, sensitive warts about the genitals, from sycosis or from the abuse of Mercury, which cause a tendency to warty growths. Moist red, offensive warts belong to Thuja.
The testes dwindle as well as become inflamed and swollen; genitals waste away.
Sensation as if there were worms crawling over him. Crawling, etc., in the female external genitals, Coffea, Platina, Petrol., Apis, Tarent. hisp, the latter has. While outer parts feel as if insects were biting. and crawling, better from heat or cold.
In the female there is violent sexual excitement, nymphomania with extreme mental and physical impressions; mind has been dwelling too much on sexual subjects.
“Very sharp, shooting pains in the ovary, which is exquisitely sore to touch; pains extend along crural regions and thighs.
Menses irregular, late and profuse, sometimes wanting; first of pale blood, then dark and clotted.
Scorbutic diathesis, vegetations of the vagina; stinging, itching of the vulva.”
Miscellaneous: Stitching in the region of the heart; trembling of the body with nervous excitement is an excellent indication for Staphysagria
Effects from loss of blood, shock, from surgical operations, injuries from sharp instruments, incised wounds. Stinging, etc., in surgical wounds, cuts; colic after lithotomy, urging to stool, qualmishness, worse from drinking.
Tetter on the hands, itches and burns in the evening after scratching; numbness in the tips of the fingers; arthritic nodosities on the fingers.
I remember a patient suffering from gouty nodosities; he had lived a life of peculiar continence, dwelling on his vices, broken down in body. Staphysagria brought out an eruption on his legs as high up as the knees that looked like a pair of trousers.