– Tarkas P. and Ajit Kulkarni.
Region
Metabolism
Absorption
Nutrition
Central Nervous System Vasomotors
Endocrine
Genitalia
Heart
Bones
Skin
Rt. side
Worse
Cold; cold water (convulsions)
Least exertion
Motion (rheumatism)
Lying down (heart, like Gels.)
Thinking of it
Fasting
Vaccination
Cortisone
During menses
Critical stages
4-8 pm
6-7 pm
Better
Heat
Rest, recumbence (dyspnea)
Lying on abdomen (Med.)
Allergic. Cachectic. Tuberculous
Dysthrepsia. Dystrophy. Obese
Highlights : Problems of expectant mothers, growing children, of adolescents (Nat-a.) and the newly wedded; not of the elderly or the declining, except of menopause.
Make-up : Muscular weakness and malaise, emaciation or obesity but always with a peculiar cachexia (surmounting the original thyroid difficulty), oedemas, nervousness and tremors, tendency to faint, coldness, tachycardia, tendency to fibrosis and progressive dementia, menstrual problems; troubles after hernial, thyroid or hysterectomic operations. A look of puffiness and obesity.
Children : Nervous, highly irritable, weakly, lose flesh inspite of immense appetite; crave sweets, rickety and their development is arrested (e.g. testes are underscended), have nightmares, teething problems (e.g. several teeth are simultaneously under way, have diarrhea or convulsions); family h/o allergy, diabetes, of mother: toxemia or convulsions during pregnancy, goitre. Afraid of dogs (like Tub.).
Problems
1. Of infants and children : Maladjustment in the functional equilibrium of the organs. Convulsions (without fever or trauma), their mother suffered from eclampsia, parents are suffering from various nervous and metabolic disorders (including goitre), or cause quite obscure, during dentition. Vomiting: projectile, toxic or causeless; mother had toxemia of pregnancy; malignant, where mother has allergic asthma. Diarrhea: obscure or obstinate diarrheas of undeveloping children, during dentition or in other metabolic disorders e.g. marasmus or rickets. A typical case-in a child of 9 months, with vomiting, sour stools, jaundice, mother a victim of pregnancy toxemia (i.e. nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and pruritus) is icteroid with enlarged liver and acidity, takes liver-extract injections. Jaundice : desperate cases, with vomiting, in the newborn; mother has goitre. Loss of voice, underdevelopment of vocal cords. Teething eczema.Cretinism.
2. Of expectant mothers : Endometritis with menstrual disorder and glandular trouble where curettage had failed to help with dysmenorrhea and menorrhagia causing abortion or sterility. “Rectifies various obscure factors that hamper the set up and continuance of pregnancy or growth of foetus” (Ghosh). Toxemia or vaso-motor disturbances viz. vertigo, headache, epistaxis, flushed face, flushes of heat, albuminuria, neuralgias, paralysis, oedema pedis or pruritus, of pregnancy, stemming from glandular dysfunction. During labour: to break up uterine inertia, primary or secondary; in primipara and in delicate, hysterical, neurotic or neurasthenic multiparas. After labour: deficiency of milk and too early menstruation; heavy and prolonged or irregular, bleeding, esp. when nursing; eclampsia.
3. Of adolescence : Nervous disturbances like irritability, whimsical mood, chronic headaches, hysterical tendencies and vasomotor disturbances; of young people owing to drain on trophic balance due either to extra demands of absorption or to cares of a career (like Chin.) when both the growth of organs and general vital force (and functions) are not keeping pace with the general growth of the body. Boys and girls when they find themselves helpless in face of the disturbing sex impulses and their implications. Menstrual difficulties of those entering puberty, delayed first appearance and non-development of sex organs.
4. Of the young adults : Non-adjustment to coitus after marriage; a defective functional response to stimulation or stimuli, resulting in convulsions.
5. At menopause : (the last milestone controlled): toxemias or vasomotor disturbances, bleedings, mental disorders (hysteria), uterine fibroids, dyspnea (flushes etc. like and complementary to Lach. or Amyl-n.).
6. Allergic manifestations of vasomotor imbalance: e.g. urticaria and angioneurotic oedema (Antip.). They are generally exudative, eczemas are weeping, rhinitis, mucous colitis, even diabetes. Rhinitis with sneezing and oedema nasalis. Asthma, non- descript or obscure cases of dyspnea with oedema pulmonum. Allergically, emotionally and hysterically disturbed vasomotor balance due to glandular dysfunction. Allergy to lip-sticks (rash).
7. Lastly, complexes where growth and reactive mechanisms are faulty : Due to mal- adjustment of endocrine balance consequent inter-alia upon the highly mechanical and artificial mode of modern life with its heroic drugging etc. (e.g. steroids). After- effects of toxemias, to complete the cure when normal balance is not restored even after treatment (with other remedies); to stimulate the repair process.
Nerves
Pains : Bursting. splitting (in appendix, chest, spine), clutching, sticking, aching pains all over. Burning palms and soles. Numbness: diagonal; in fingers. Many queer nerve symptoms. Prescription of Thyr. here is based on the misbalanced growth mechanism (not on declining states) ignoring presenting symptoms which may be vague and confusing. Nervousness. Nervous tremors. Trembling of limbs or entire body. Fine tremors in hands and fingers. Restless, busy hands (like Kali-br.).
Malaise. Feels tired and sick. Wants to lie down. Easy fatigue, weak pulse, tendency to fainting, nausea, cold limbs, palpitation. Profound depression.
Convulsions : regular feature. Tendency to puerperal eclampsia (metastasizing to babies).General tonic muscular spasm with loss of consciousness. Tetanus: surgical, traumatic and idiopathic.Tetany from parathyroid disease or injury, or thyroidectomy. Epileptic fits, preceded by chilliness or oedema of limbs.Hysterical disposition. Hysterio-epilepsy with amenorrhea at climacteric, during puerperium.
Incomplete paraplegia. Paralysis, of arms and hands.
Tissues
Rapid emaciation, looks pale and feels ill; diabetic. Arrested development, even wasting of infants, rickets. Dropsies. Brawny swellings. Elephantiasis. Angio – neurotic oedema (allergic due to angio-neuro i.e. vasomotor nerve difficulty). Oedema pulmonum. Hydrocephalus. Beriberi (epidemic dropsy).
Glands : Swelling, with stony hardness, sluggish cases (Bar-i., Cal-fl.). Goitre. (Hyperthyroidism: with tachycardia, bigeminous pulse, tremors, nervous irritability, insomnia, hot flushes, sweat and digestive disturbances (and of course loss of weight).
Myxoedema: with chilliness, obesity and sluggishness etc. T.b. is very common in them (the so called fat t.b.). Tuberculous disposition in nervous and glandular patients with tendency to fibrosis, uterine hemorrhages and cardiac problems.
Bones : Ache. Enlarge, acromegaly, soften.
Joints : Rheumatoid arthritis, with tendency to obesity, coldness and cramps. Painful swelling at each menstrual nisus.
Growths : Uterine fibroids. Mammary tumors.
Blood : Anemia, acute pernicious, in fat women. Hemorrhage from nose, gums, chest.
Destruction : Neuroleprosy. Malignancy. Lupus.
Noteworthy Symptoms 1. Troubles which have in the background a deep and complex metabolic disturbance with consequent loss of neurogenic and cardiovascular balances. Conditions which point towards loss of balance in the human economy due to drain or strain during some particular period of development, to climactic variations, to parents, allergy or to some mental or emotional factors- a want of metabolic nervous and / or vascular adjustment.
2. Patient not rallying after an acute infection due to thyroxin liberated during the fever.
3. Lack of vital reaction, no response to indicated drugs; patient is sensitized to thyroid, mother taking thyroid extract during pregnancy.
4. Symptoms appear in attacks or paroxysms: fainting; sneezing; colic, menses; metrorrhagia; urticaria.
5. Hirsutism : hair falls from head; but accrues to face (moustaches), chest, limbs ( cp. Med., Pit., Thuj.), with amenorrhea etc.
6. This and anemia suggest a sycotic and tubercular taint. Child of a Med. parent may require Thyr. Nux-v. and Penic. the acutes of Thyr. are sycotic.
7. Syphilis : secondary and tertiary. Syphilis probably disturbs iodine (and therefore endocrine) balance. “A possibility of syphilis should always be considered in affections of the thyroid. Tertiary syphilis of the thyroid gland is a rare but actual condition.” Latent ( or inherited ) syphilis may produce thyroiditis, goitre and allergy ( Envas ). Sycotic too should not be lost sight of; Nat-m. and Sep. the great antigoitre pair is sycotic in structure and symbiotic to Thyr.
Injuries : Delayed union of fractures (Symph.).
Reaction : Diuresis (of toxemias).
Resume
Thyr. becomes a deep acting chronic medicine, where the usual constitutional drug symptoms goitre is superadded. The usual constitutional or repertorized drug does not in such cases reach deep enough, though discharges itself well as an acute or subacute remedy e. g. in an Aur. patient with goitre in addition, Aur. becomes the remedy for acute troubles like pains, dyspepsia etc. In cases with deep-seated chronic complications, Thyr. unlocks many a tangle and puts the patient on the track. Ill- health after an acute infection, coming even much later or in adult life. The reason the trouble crops up late is that thyroxin liberated during the infection protects him for some time.
Mind : Irritable: worse least opposition, goes into a rage over trifles; attacks of great violence with intervals of depression and nervousness (before myxoedema); easily irritated and led away, shallow with not a very fine or discriminating sense of humor (like Sep.); coarse.
Also light, fleshy and jolly, amiable; good natured (but dull at arts), stingy, miserly (like Sep., Lyc.). Timid, with fearful nightmares. Whimsical, suspicious of husband’s fidelity (after thyroidectomy). Homicidal, wants to strangle persons by closing her arms round their neck.
Progressive dementia. Restless melancholy and profound depression; alternation with stupor; fretfulness and moroseness; nervous and indolent; apathetic, memory weak; speech drawing or aphonia (retarded growth); dull, idiotic, cretin (Bac.).
Insanity: In young girls due to disordered menstruation; with vasomotor symptoms and / or metabolic disorder; puerperal (with fever); allergic background; phthisical (t.b. and insanity are interchangeable). Mental disturbances and hysterical troubles of climaxis. One case of insanity recovered (Stram. failing) after having a convulsion.
Select Particulars
Head: Undulating or levitating vertigo. Persistent, congestive headaches.”Chronic hydrocephalus, stunted growth, too weak to hold head or sit erect, protruding eyes, craving for sweets; in reaction he got fever and passed profuse milky urine which attracted ants” (M.B. Desai).
Alopecia, premature greying and falling of hair, with accession to unwanted parts (Med., Nat-ars.).
Eyes : Conjunctivitis with chemosis, glaucoma; during epidemic dropsy, or with allergic vasomotor disturbances. Progressive amblyopia with centre (Tab.). Optic neuritis (Carb-s.). Prominent eye – balls.
Ears : Hyperplasic otitis media with sclerosis and immobility of ossicles (Calc-f.).
Nose : Allergic nasal conditions sans fever. Paroxysms of sneezing, esp after meals.
Face : Flushed. Lips burn; dry; red; swollen.
Throat : Full sensation, choking, burning, splinter-pain; (