Meconopsis cambrica = Welsh Poppy
Vergleich: Siehe: Ranculales
[Enna Stallinga]
Case
A female lecturer first came to see me at the end of December 2000. Born
in 1956, she is married and has two children. She was anxious, cried a lot and
had for several months great difficulties in falling asleep. Her problems dated
from a fall in January 2000, when she had fallen backwards, landing on the back
of her head on a concrete floor. For months after this she suffered from
various complaints: tiredness, dizziness and inability either to read or watch
television, all to such a serious degree that she could hardly cope with life. At
the beginning of June 2000, just when things were beginning to go a bit better
with her, she fell again and once more sustained a bad blow to the back of her
head. From this moment her condition deteriorated. Her sleep problems became
worse and were now accompanied by a sense of panic. Attempts to fall asleep
would result in a mental state of crystal clarity and compete alertness. She
could not surrender herself to sleep. The instant she seemed to be dozing off
she would feel an enormous shock about her heart. The alertness was connected
with the idea that something could happen, that she would then be left alone
and that she would be unable to cope with this. There was a sense of
helplessness, powerlessness and utter desertion/desolation (??). The worse she
felt she was getting physically, the deeper her despair.
She often dreamed about houses. There was a dream about a beautiful
house which was burnt on the outside, a house in a wrong position or one with
rooms too narrow for her to be able to get in. One of these dreams was about a
narrow house made of mother-of-pearl. In another dream, a man came to the door
and raped her in the house. There was also a dream in which she fell into a
hole and noticed that she was no longer in her own body; she experienced a fear
of being at so tall and rejoined her body. She had other dreams involving shock
followed by a sudden sense of leaving
her body.
She felt so miserable that she went from one person to another in search
of care and attention. In fact, she felt like an angry child that did not
really want to get better: ‘I just want to be looked after’. She felt herself
alienated from reality. In addition to these problems she suffered from
terrible stomach-ache: ‘As if someone had given me a real kick in the stomach’.
This was accompanied by a constant sense of tension in the whole stomach area. There
was tension too in the muscles of the back, in particular between the
shoulder-blades, as if the shoulder-blades were being pushed apart. Her
appetite was poor; she weighed only fifty kilos. She also complained of
stabbing pains in the liver.She felt better in the
evenings than in the mornings. However, she was regularly troubled in
the evenings with cramping pain beneath the sternum and cold feet. She
often awoke in the mornings with palpitations and feeling generally low.
Character
Next to the feelings of helplessness and powerlessness that she had been
faced with in recent times, the opposite polarity also played a role in her
life. She knew precisely what she wanted and would tolerate no contradiction:
‘What do they think they are talking about; that’s not what it’s about at all!’
She had difficulty accepting authority but was herself capable of enormous
feelings of superiority. She was easily irritated and impatient. For example,
if her husband tried to tell her something she would have an overwhelming
desire to cut him short because she already knew what he was going to say. Every
little thing annoyed her. She compared herself to a fire-breathing dragon: ‘Get
lost, all of you; I have to manage everything by myself anyway.’She
had been low-spirited all her life. She hardly knew what it was like to feel
happy. Impatient, talkative, eloquent, hearty, empathetic and refined; she was
prone to markedly alternating moods. She was afraid of being alone and of
thunderstorms (especially as a child) and had a deep fear of death. Religion
was important to her.
Previous history
She was brought up in a reformed Protestant, middle-class family as the
second oldest of five sisters. Her father did not concern himself with the
family. As a child she had the role of supporting her mother whilst she herself
had to remain calm and brave. She developed a strong character.
At the age of seven or eight she would deliberately do her sums wrong so
as to draw attention to herself; then she would be called up in front of the
class, which she loved. For a while she could not walk, although no physical
explanation could be found for this. Her parents had to take her to the
optician because she could no longer see. All these devices were designed to
attract attention. It hurt her terribly not to be seen: everyone thought that
she could manage everything so well. She told me that she had experienced
numerous situations in which she had been terribly shocked. When she was a
child her mother had wanted to hang herself. Not long after she met her present
husband he was diagnosed as suffering from cancer. She made a conscious choice
to stay with him and they decided to marry. The entire marriage had revolved
around the central role played by his four to five yearly relapses. The moments
that stood out in her memory were those in which he had arrived home with the
news that he was once again sick. These moments always took her by surprise.
Generals:
Temperature: chilly, cold hands, cold feet
Desires: fruit (3), cheese, sweet (2), chocolate, eggs, fresh things,
fish, spinach;
Aversion: sour (2), salt, fat, bacon, meat (1);
<: fat, coffee (stomach), alcohol (poor sleep), sour (stomach);
Perspiration: none
Menses: regular, 31/2 weeks, heavy loss (clots), dysmenorrhoea +
Premenstrual symptoms: irritable, headache and vaginal discharge with
burning pain. Lot of headaches during (2) pregnancies.
Sleep: without use of Normison, falls asleep 4
h. to 4.30 h.; with use of Normison, wakes at 4 h.
Locals
Headache: either band sensation or else the whole head is painful
(changes from day to day), + numbness of scalp, especially over the vertex. A
prickling sensation along the hairline.
In the past, there was pain above left eye, pre-menstrually,
and nausea lasting 2-3 days.
Skin: vaginal warts, painful to the touch; warts on soles of feet;
clefts in thumb; bruises easily; bleeding gums; cold sores upper lip (1)
Mucous membranes: tongue carries indentations of teethStomach:
stabbing pain >warm water-bottle; acidic burning Bowels: periodic flatulenceJoints: pain right shoulder (2), right hip and
wandering complaints of ankles and knees
Extremities: restless legs evenings (2), varicose veins right lower leg
(2)
Prescription
The first prescription was Chelidonium 30K on
the basis of:
M desire to be carried
M fear something will happenM weeping from
despair
M anger at trifles
M loquacity
M anxiety, beside oneself
M practical, strong-minded (Frans Vermeulen, Synoptic Materia Medica 1)
M dreams fallingM dreams injuries
M dreams soldiers
G sleeplessness, until 4am
G desire cheese, coffee, aversion spinach (here???, desire), desire sour
(here ???, aversion)
G - < 4 h.
L indented tongue l. - varicosis
L appendicitis
L head pain forehead, above left eye
L head pain, injuries mechanical
L back pain, dorsal region, scapula betweenL
extremities, pain, joints, wandering
Follow-up
Quite soon after taking the remedy Mrs R began to feel much better: She
was less nauseous and the pressure over her stomach felt less. After initial
bouts of crying she had a number of good days. She felt much better than in
recent years.
Despite the encouraging reaction to Chelidonium,
I kept feeling that mother-of-pearl should somehow be involved in the
prescription. By chance, I saw in a garden magazine a beautiful picture of
the mother-of-pearl papaver (a poppy variant
with fragile pastel tints) and I thought at once ‘this is the remedy’, without
realising that Papaver and Chelidonium
belong to the same botanical family. Although the reaction to Chelidonium had been quite good, I nevertheless decided to
change the prescription to Papaver rhoeas a readily available remedy (given colour
difference), Rhoeas meaning in Greek ‘that readily
fall’ (referring to the petals), a theme clearly running through this patient’s
history.
At the end of January 2001 she received Papaver
rhoeas 30K. Bouts of incredibly deep weeping followed
on the taking of the remedy. She had a mental picture of a whole village being
annihilated and experienced a terror of being left behind alone. There was
nobody else left in the village. She made contact with a profound inner sense
of solitude and realised that this had to do with suddenness. Her sleeping and
appetite gradually improved. The numbness of her scalp also became less. Now
and then she felt anger rising inside herself. She felt she wanted to wear the
colour red.The dreams of the slaughtered village
became more and more clear as time went on. She saw in her dream that a woman
was raped by soldiers while her husband and children had to look on.
The woman could not accept the help offered to her by angels. She was so
desperate in her loneliness that she had given up completely. After each dose
of Papaver rhoeas she once
again went through deep bouts of weeping whilst physically things steadily
improved: sleep, stomach, liver, neck and head were all better. She kept trying
to fall asleep without the aid of sleeping pills because she was so afraid of
becoming addicted to them. In about May 2001 she at last succeeded in doing
without sleeping pills.In May 2002 she once more
sustained a whiplash injury, this time as the result of a car accident
(top-to-tail collision at traffic-lights). Again she complained of dizziness
and inability to read or watch television. According to her chiropractor the
whiplash was a serious one. However, she continued to sleep well. After the
accident she dreamed of falling, of flying and of drowning. The shock of the
whiplash brought her again into still deeper contact with the earlier dream and
now she experienced herself as the rape victim and the helpless man onlooker. She
expressed enormous rage, both at the soldiers and at the man who did nothing. Papaver rhoeas 50MK was repeated
and the complaints resulting from the whiplash disappeared fairly quickly. Over
the course of one and a half years, I have prescribed Papaver
rhoeas in increasing potencies from 30K
to 50MK. She now no longer reacts with sleep problems when, for example,
her husband is unexpectedly admitted to hospital.
Some thoughts over Papaver rhoeas
The only symptom listed for Papaver rhoeas in RADAR is apoplexy (1-108) (generals). A
vulnerable area for this patient is the head: pain in the head, numb scalp and,
of course, falls upon the head. It would seem that Papaver
rhoeas is a remedy for head injuries and whiplash. Sudden
shock is also characteristic of the remedy. Shock is anyway a theme of the Papaveraceae (see Opium). A sudden shock might be
specifically characteristic of the poppy (in Dutch klaproos=
slap or blow rose).The fleeing aspect of the papavers,
which contain a lot of acid, is reflected in this case in the tremendous panic,
the desire to be taken care of (desire to be carried) and out-of-body
experiences in dreams. The other pole of this is the being brave and carrying
on, a trait which had its use when her husband was seriously ill (DD.: Ferr-met. In the case of the Papaveraceae,
patients can really nearly give up: they are closely acquainted with death. This
gives the remedy a religious tone. < 4 h.
(Chelidonium) is known to be a moment of
transition. She did not dare to surrender herself to sleep. Many of the Papaveraceae have an influence on sleep disturbance (Opium,
Eschscolzia).
The theme of father /husband and power/powerlessness also plays a role
here. This is evident in the dreams which occurred after taking the remedy, the
difficulties with authority and the patient’s own tendency to be domineering. Her
father was also dominant, but did not bother himself with the family. The man
in the dream undertakes no action while his wife is being raped. The area of
the heart is important for this remedy. The patient refers constantly to her
heart: heart palpitations, pain beneath the sternum and shock felt around the
heart. Papaveracea (= poppy family):A.P.G.classification: angiospermiae
dicots order of the ranunculales,
family incl. berberidaceae, menispermaceae,
papaveraceae, ranunculaceae.
Papaveraceae contain alkaloids and are inedible.
The alkaloids are localised in specialised cells and, in Papavera
and Chelidonium, also found in the milky sap. They
form compounds with organic acids (in many cases). Tannins are missing.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum