CASE1
Sarsaparilla officinalis
MAN, 61 YEARS OLD
This is an acute case of a man who had blood in the urine. Here you have to know what the causation is. Is this a prostate cancer, is this a polyp of the bladder, is this a stone in the kidneys or what is it
In the supervision I proposed to have radiographs taken and afterwards we will solve the problem
A: First, you have been seen by a colleague on December, 21. You already took antibiotics three times. Here it says, the last time was three weeks ago. For what did the family doctor give you this?
P: For inflammation, he said.
A: You had complaints in your back, saw your family doctor and you took antibiotics three times and afterwards you had blood in the urine. It was red blood, dark and thick.
The family doctor gave him antibiotics because he thought that this had to be an inflammation somewhere. That was a good reaction, but I promise you that if you give antibiotics this patient will come back after one or two months; and then you can give him antibiotics again and he will come back. With antibiotics you will never solve the problem. Yes, it will be solved now but he will come back, it is only a delay. You must give him something homoeopathic now to enforce his resistance
A: Then we said, first we will have some radiographs taken, to see if something could be found at the kidneys; at the right kidney passage a small stone had been found. Besides, a prolapse of the right kidney, a large stone in the bladder and a hypertrophy of the prostate.
So, these are the problems. We are dealing with a stone in the kidney on the right side, "Urine, gravel" (p. 690).
URINE,SEDIMENT,SAND,gravel (small calculi) : Arg-n., aspar., berb., calc., carb-v., coc-c., coloc., con., kali-i., Lyc., nit-ac., nux-m., Sars., Sep., zinc.
We can prescribe immediately, but we have to be sure, we need homoeopathic symptoms to prescribe a remedy. We know that he has a stone in the kidneys on the right side - why not on the left side? The fact that it is only at the right side is peculiar
A: You asked what you should do and I said I am treating your complaints and then we will see how it goes on. Then we know at least that it is a stone and nothing else is to be found.
You also said: "My abdomen hurts and I can not tolerate tight clothes."
The first symptom, "I have pain in the abdomen and I don't tolerate clothes," so "abdomen, clothing sensitive to" (p. 541).
ABDOMEN,CLOTHING, sensitive to : Apis., Arg-n., benz-ac., Bov., Calc., carb-v., caust., chin., coff., Crot-c., crot-h., eup-per., graph., hep., kreos., lac-c., Lach., Lyc., merc-c.,nat-s., Nux-v., puls., raph., sars., sep., spong., stann., sulph.
That is a big rubric, but we have to write down all the remedies, unless you know which remedy you have to give from the beginning, but I do not know it yet
A: Further you said, "When I look at the urine, it is as if there is gravel in it, so little stones."
The next symptom, "gravel in the urine." We have to look - "Urine, sediment, gravel" (p. 690). Now we can compare this with the rubric "abdomen, clothing sensitive to": Argentum nitricum, Calcarea, Carbo vegetabilis, Conium - it can be Conium because Conium also can have this swelling of the prostate in elder people. But mostly in which kind of people? Who are dissatisfied, in widows. Also in nuns who can not do anything with their sexual desires, they suppress their sexual desires and get uterus cancer and tumor in the breast. Again Lycopodium appears in both rubrics, Sarsaparilla and Sepia
A: You had pain in the right region of the kidney and it was extending downwards to the bladder.
So pain in the right kidney and pain extends downwards - "Kidneys, ureters, right side" (p. 664).
KIDNEYS,PAIN,Ureters, right side : Apis., berb., cann-s., canth., dios., indg., Lyc., nux-v., oci., sars., tab., tarent.
Do you see the remedy? There are two remedies: Sarsaparilla and Lycopodium
A: Tell us something about his character.
WP: He is rather
still and irritated.
A: Also hot-tempered?
WP: Yes.
A: Is he very orderly?
WP: No, he is very untidy?
A: Very untidy, but he works hard, then he can not be orderly. Your wife has to remind you?
P: No, no.
WP: I say then, "You haven't put it in its place again."
A: Use something and not putting it back to its place?
WP: Yes.
What is an untidy remedy? One of the most untidiest remedy is Sarsaparilla. Does this man gives the impression of Lycopodium the way he is sitting there? No, I could not agree with the prescription of Lycopodium. You will see other Lycopodium men and their behaviour is totally different from this one
And how is the gravel in the urine of Lycopodium? Red. Look in
the Repertory.
He says, "I have stone, gravel in my urine." Look in the rubric
"urine, sediment, gravel, pale" (p. 690). That is the difference
between Lycopodium and Sarsaparilla in the aspect of
the sediment
First, with problems of the kidneys or bladder you have to smell the urine. We have to do the examinations like our old masters did. We forget it, we are too much concentrated on the EEG, scan examinations, echography and all the technical examinations. But the symptoms given by the urine, by the smell, by the color, by the aspect of sediment, the smell of the perspiration - everything what we can smell, see or hear is more important than all these technical examinations. How often the clinical examinations are wrong
Second, we know from Sarsaparilla that this is one of the most untidy remedies. It also has cracks in the foot-soles and they have tumors, it is a cancer remedy. The mental picture is not so well-known as in other remedies like, for example, Lycopodium. But anyhow, there is no reason to prescribe Lycopodium and the differential diagnosis is clear
We prescribed Sarsaparilla M, on December, 26. And now it is January, 8
WP: And then I have to clean it afterwards.
A: You are a little bit a farmer?
P: No.
A: You don't have a horse anymore?
P: Nothing.
A: Neither rabbits?
P: Yes, I have.
These are often farmers, small farmers, who only have one horse and a few cows.
A: Do you have cracks or corns at your feet?
P: No.
WP: But they are itching.
P: That time is over.
A: But you didn't have much problems in urinating?
P: Yesterday I often had to urinate and in the evening it felt a little bit stiff.
A: First, we will see how it developed after the remedy. What about the pain, the sediment in the urine and the pain extending downwards?
P: It was quickly over.
"I have pain for a while, I think about two or three weeks." I gave him the remedy on December, 28 and now it is one week later. I asked him how the reaction is to the remedy. The pain is immediately gone
A: How quickly?
P: The next day.
A: The next day the pain was completely gone?
P: Completely gone.
A: There was no sediment in the urine anymore?
P: No.
A: And the pain in the right kidney was also completely gone?
P: Yes.
Very strange. You give the remedy and the gravel in the urine disappears. Where did it go? It is very strange in Homoeopathy. I had a patient who was completely blown up, the feet were blown up, completely edematous. The feet, the face, the eyes, the hands, everything. It was a man who had an accident many years ago. He took LASIX i.v. The nurse came at home to inject the LASIX and then he could urinate; but after a while this LASIX did not help him anymore. He came in the centre. He told me what was wrong, I asked him about his character and so on and then I gave him Kali carbonicum M. After three weeks he came back and said, "Doctor, I don't know. The water is gone, but I didn't have to urinate more." Very strange, isn't it? He was urinating normal, but where is the water gone now. That is Homoeopathy, that is strange, that is divine. We can not understand this. We have to be humble. We all are theorizing and we try to explain, but these explanations are not true
Where is the gravel now? I do not know
A: Yesterday you still had some complaints?
P: Yes, yesterday evening while urinating it felt a little bit stiff.
A: And how is it today?
P: Still a little bit stiff.
A: But it has become better from itself?
P: Yes.
A: So, yesterday again some complaints, today it is better. All right then I give you a few tablets to take home. If you get complaints again, you can take one of these. I give you a higher potency than the last time. You don't have cracks in the fingers?
P: No, I don't have complaints with it. And the little stones, do they come out from themselves?
A: In fact, they should disappear with the remedy. Eventually, it has to be repeated a few times.
P: Yes, yesterday it has creaked a little bit while urinating, as if there were stones in it.
A: I think that there
will be gravel in it regularly, until the stone has disappeared. In this case
the symptoms for the remedy are so clear, that I will expect that you don't see
anything on the radiographs later. Therefore it is good that you have a
radiograph, and then you can have a check up in one year and compare. I give
you a few tablets to take home. If you have
clear complaints you can take one.
You must feel an agreement in yourself with the remedy. Internally, I could not agree with Lycopodium. There is something in me that says I do not feel Lycopodium in this case, the way I know it
If I would have given Lycopodium, maybe he would be better, but then it was a suppression. So, it must be another remedy. If we find it, all right, then we can give it, if we do not find it we can give Lycopodium