CASES

Silicea terra

Keywords

- Extremes of timidity, diffidence, non-thriving, chilliness to the bone, and a home for suppuration.

Synopsis (identifying features)

- 1. Timidity appearing in public.

- 2. Want of self-confidence - want of grit, moral and physical.

- 3. Noise, very sensitive to - starts at least noise.

- 4. Anxious, yielding, faint-hearted.

- Shrinks from the least responsibility; utterly lacking in self-confidence and self-assertion, seems to have no "go", no grit, in him.

- 5. Dreads failure in examination; or the lawyer appearing before the judge, although he knows his ubject well, and does well once he is "in harness".

- 6. Great weakness, debility; wants to lie down.

- 7. Always chilly, even if working hard (Led., Sep.); too sensitive to cold; hugs the fire, wants plenty of warm clothing.

- 8. Hands and feet cold, esp. in winter.

- Takes cold from exposure of feet and head, which must be kept warm by covering.

- 9. Fetid, horribly offensive sweat of feet and soles, even with no bodily sweat; every evening.

- The feet become sore with the sweat.

- Sore between the toes too.

- 10. Stool also horribly offensive; often it is hard and difficult and when it is half out, it slips back again; "bashful stool".

- 11. All his PAINS are like splinters; or stitching pains; or pain like a gathering.

- 12. Sweat profuse on the head; at night; running down the face (Calc.).

- Bar.c. though similar to Sil. in many other respects does not have his sweat on the head.

- Also Sil. is self-willed, and contrary.

- 13. Desire to be magnetised or rubbed which amel. (Phos.).

Mind

- Mild, yielding and timid, yet obstinate and conscientious about trifles.

- Mental acuteness with physical weakness and torpidity.

- Unwarranted loss of self-confidence and fear of failure.

- Anxiety when appearing in public.

- Complaints from anticipation.

- Brain fag; cannot stand mental exertion.

- Very sensitive to noise.

- Weeping, tearful mood.

Objective

- Open fontenelles with distended abdomen (in children).

- Malnutrition; emaciation.

- Keenly sensitive to noise, pain or cold.

- Large head with wasted body (child).

- Stubborn suppuration of every hurt.

- FOOTSWEAT FOUL, acrid, itching.

- Sweat profuse, head or affected parts, at night.

- Want of vital warmth even while taking exercise.

- Ailments from foreign body embedded in the tissues.

Causation (a.f. )

- Suppression of sweat, esp. foot-sweat.

- Vaccination.

- Loss of vital fluids.

- Injuries, sprains or splinters.

- Exposing the head to any slight draft of air.

- Stone cutters (or those working in textile mills and have to breathe fine particles of cotton) with chest complaints and total loss of strength.

Modalities

- Aggr.

- Cold air; draft; warm, wet weather.

- Checked sweat of feet.

- Nervous excitement; jarring of spine; new and full moon (epilepsy, insanity); mental exertion.

- Alcohol.

- Amel.

- Warmth; wrapping up head; profuse urine.

- Rubbing.

Food & drinks

- Appetite, Thirst etc.

- Want of appetite; excessive thirst.

- Desires

- Ice-cream and ice-water; feels comfortable when it is in the stomach.

- Aversion

- Disgust for meat and warm food.

- Aversion to mother's milk, child vomits.

Female

- Increased menses, with paroxysms of icy coldness over whole body.

- Discharge of blood from vagina every time child is nursed.

- Constipation always before and during menses.

- Discharge of blood between menstrual periods.

- Nipples very sore; ulcerated easily; drawn in.

- Fistulous ulcer of breast.

Male

- Elephantiasis of scrotum; hydrocele.

- Nocturnal emissions.

- Extreme exhaustion after coition; takes a week to overcome weakness.

- Prostatorrhoea while straining at stool.

Child

- Rachitis, marasmatic, with disproportionately large, sweaty head (Calc., Sanic).

- Open fontanelles and sutures; big abdomen and emaciated limbs; poorly developed bones and muscles; sunken eyes, old-looking pinched face.

- Weak ankles.

- Slow in learning to walk; all due to defective assimilation of whatever nutrition is given.

- Aversion to mother's milk, which is vomited or causes diarrhoea.

- Tabes mesenterica.

- Child doesn't thrive, doesn't learn; doesn't even play; utterly lacking in self-assertiveness.

- Always tired, lies down.

- Cries when kindly spoken to.

Peculiar, uncommon, grand characteristics

- 1. Head

- Headache, chronic, since some severe illness, ascending from nape of neck to the vertex, as if coming from the spine, on uncovering the head.

- Amel. by pressure and wrapping up warmly.

- Amel. by profuse urination.

- 2. Eyes

- Lodging of foreign bodies in eyes (after Acon.).

- 3. Mouth

- Sensation of a hair on forepart of tongue.

- 4. Rectum

- Fistula-in-ano alternates with chest symptoms, esp. asthma.

- 5. Rectum

- The coccyx is painful, as after a long carriage ride; painful to pressure.

- 6. Urine

- Nocturnal enuresis in children, from worms.

- 7. Gen. Male

- Nausea during coitus.

- 8. Ears

- Caries of mastoid (Aur.).

- 9. Expectoration

- Purulent, when coughing.

- 10. Extremities

- Crippled nails fingers and toes.

- 11. Sleep

- Night-walking, gets up while asleep, walks about and lies down again.

- 12. Sleep

- Hands fall asleep at night.

- 13. Nose

- Itching at the tip of the nose; dry, hard crusts form, bleeding when loosened; perforated septum.

- 14. Sleep

- Dreams of animals, battles, cruelty, large dogs following him; of earthquake; of epilepsy, ghosts, wild beasts, vertigo.

- 15. Ears

- Foetid discharge; sensitive to noise; roaring in ears.

- 16. Skin

- Unhealthy, every little injury suppurates.

- (After Hep.s. or Calc. s. has expedited discharge of pus, Sil. comes in for healing; promotes granulation and cicatrisation).

- 17. Bones

- Caries or curvature.

- Swelling and distortion of spine.

- 18. Sweats

- All over only after a good deal of exertion.

- But he sweats as soon as he falls asleep.

- 19. Suppression- of footsweat : convulsions, dullness of sight, cataract, paralysis, locomotor ataxia, etc.

- Asthma from suppressed gonorrhoea.

- 20. Generals

- Epilepsy, noturnal, esp. appearing about the time of the new moon.

- 21. General

- Expels foreign bodies (when surgically not possible), such as fish-bone, thorn or a needle, by setting up

suppuration of the affected part.

- 22. General

- Upward and outward direction of symptoms.

- In epilepsy aura begins in solar plexus and moves upwards.

- Headache ascends from nape to vertex.

- Pains shoot out through eyes.

 

CASES