: The next most
important thing to be studied is the mental
state. Nothing stands out more boldly than the self-consciousness, the
self conceit, the envy, the hatred, the revenge and the cruelty of the man. These things, of
course, are matters of self-consciousness, an improper love of self. Confusion of the mind
to insanity.
All sorts of impulsive insanity. The mind is tired. The patient puts on
an appearance like the maudlin of a drunkard, talks with thick lips and thick tongue,
blunders and stumbles, only partly finishing words; the face is purple and the head is hot.
There is choking and the collar is uneasy about the neck; and the more
uneasiness about the neck, the more choking, the more confusion of mind and the more
appearance of intoxication. You will see if you talk with one who is intoxicated with
whiskey symptoms like Lachesis, he stumbles through, hardly realizing what he says,
half finishing his sentences and his words, leaving his "g's" off,
all the present participles; he stumbles and blunders, he mutters, and tells you first one
thing and then another.
These symptoms are increased under the circumstances mentioned in the
Spring; in the warm weather following a cold spell; in rainy weather; after a warm bath;
after sleep.
The mental state is large. Jealousy without any reason. Unwarranted
jealousy and suspicion. Many times this medicine has cured suspicionin girls, when they were simply suspicious of their
girl friends. She never sees a whispered conversation going on but they are talking about
her, to her detriment.
Suspects that they are contriving to injure her, and she will resort to
any scheme to see if they were not talking of her to her detriment. A woman imagines that
her friends, husband, and children are trying to damage her; that her friends are going to
put her in an insane asylum.
Apprehension of the future. Thinks she is going to have heart disease,
and is going insane; and that people are contriving to put her in an insane asylum. Imagine
her relatives are trying to poison her and she refuses to eat. She thinks sometimes that it
is only a dream and she can hardly say whether she dreamed it or whether she thinks it. She
thinks she is dead, or dreams that she is dead, and in the dream preparations are being made
to lay her out, or that she is about to die.
Thinks she is somebody else, and in the hands of a stronger power. She
thinks she is under superhuman
control. She is compelled to do
things by spirits. She hears a command, partly in her dream, that she must carry out.
Sometimes it takes the form of voices in which she is commanded to steal, to murder, or to
confess things she never did, and she has no peace of mind until she makes a confession of
something she has never done.
The torture is something violent until she confesses that which she has
not done. Imagines she is pursued. Imagines that she has stolen something, or that somebody
thinks she has stolen something, and fears the law. She hears voices and warnings, and in
the night she dreams about it. The state of torture is something dreadful, and it then goes
into a delirium with muttering. The delirium is carried on like one muttering when drunk.
This state increases until unconsciousness comes on and the patient enters into a coma from
which he cannot be aroused. The patient also goes through periods of violence and violent
delirium.
It is full of religious
insanity. You will find a dear, sweet old lady who has always lived
what would be called an upright and pious life, yet she is not able to apply the promises
that are in the Word of God to herself; these things seem to apply to somebody else but not
to her. She is full of wickedness and has committed the unpardonable sin. She is compelled
to say these things; she is overwhelmed by these things and she is going to die and going to
that awful hell that she reads about. The physician must listen to this with attention. The
physician might make the mistake in this instance of making light of such feelings. If he
does, the patient will not return, and he will be deprived of the chance of benefiting her.
No matter what her whims are, no matter what her religious opinions are,
her state of mind must be treated with respect. It must be treated as if it were so.
She must have sympathy and kindness. It is an unfortunate thing for a
doctor to get a reputation of being an ungodly man, among pious people, as he will be
deprived of doing these people an immense amount of good. He must be candid with all the
whims and notions of the people that he visits in the world. He must be everybody’s friend
and he can be such without any hypocrisy if he is simply an upright and just man.
The state of religious melancholy, with religious insanity, is not
uncommonly attended with much loquacity, with talkativeness, which Lachesis is full of. It is commonly among women, very seldom
among men, that we find this religious melancholy. Now, this woman is impelled to tell it;
she will annoy her intimate friends, day and night, with this story of the damnation of her
soul and her wickedness and all, the awful things she has done. If you ask her what things
she has committed she will say everything, but you cannot pin her down to the fact that she
has killed anybody. If you allow her to go through with her story she will tell you all the
crimes in the calendar that she has committed, although she has been a well-behaved and
well-disposed woman.
There is another kind of loquacity belonging to Lachesis. The
patient is impelled to talk continuously. It is found in another. state in which the patient
is compelled to hurry in everything she does and wants everybody else to hurry, With that
state of hurry is brought out the loquacity, and this is something far beyond comprehension,
until you have once heard it.
There is no use attempting to describe it, it is so rapid, changing from
one subject to another. Sentences are sometimes only half finished; she takes it for granted
that you understand the balance and she will hurry an. Day and night she is wide awake, and
with such sensitiveness to her surroundings that you, would naturally think, from what
things she hears and how she is disturbed, by noise, that she can hear the flies walk upon
the walls and the clock striking upon the distant steeple.
You do not get all these things in the text, you have to see them
applied. But the things I give you that are brought out clinically are those things that
have come from applying the symptoms of the remedy at the bedside to sick folks.
"Most extraordinary loquacity, making speeches in very select
phrases but jumping off to most heterogeneous subjects."
"One word often leads into the midst of another story."
These states may come on in acute diseases like typhoid, when it will
take the usual typhoid delirium, or they may come on in conditions like diphtheria, or in
any of the diseases that are characterized by blood poisoning; they may come on in the
puerperal state, or may take the form of insanity. It is a long acting remedy, and if it has
been abused its effects will last a life time.
In many cases a close connection between the mental symptoms and the
heart symptoms will be noticed, especially in young women and girls who have met with
disappointment, who have been lying awake nights because of disturbance of the affections,
or from disappointment, or from shattered hopes, or from grief.
Prolonged melancholy, mental depression, hysterical symptoms, weeping,
mental prostration and despair, with pain in the heart, with a gone sensation or sensation
of weakness in the heart, with difficult breathing. She meditates upon suicide, and finally
settles back into an apathetic state, in which there is an aversion to, everything, to work,
and even to thinking.
I might impress upon your mind the head symptoms if I related the case of
a patient who described her symptoms probably more typically than you can find in the books.
She was sitting up in bed and unable to lie down; she was worse from lying down, her face
was purple, her eyes were engorged, the face puffed and tumid and the eyelids bloated. She
sat there perfectly quiet in bed and described the pain as a surging sensation, which came
up the back of the neck and head and then over the head.
That is a typical feature of Lachesis. A surging in
waves. Waves of Pain that are not always synchronous with the pulse. They may not relate to
the flow of blood at all. The surging is aggravated by motion, not so much in the act of
motion, but after moving. It is sometimes felt after walking or changing to another place,
and sitting down again; that is, a few seconds after the motion is completed the pain
begins, and it comes to its height instantly and then gradually subsides into a very steady
surging or a more steady ache.
