Cheerful and lively: a case of Sabadilla

A five-year-old girl with very itchy eczema in the cubital region was brought to me by her mother. She is a very pretty, nicely chubby girl with blond hair and brown eyes. She sits on her mother’s lap, constantly smiling and giggling. Her mother admonishes her to behave because she is shy and embarrassed during the examination, which is not usual for her. Typical for her, however, is this cheerful, lively, chuckling behavior; she is either laughing or crying, nothing in between.
She is very affectionate and likes hugging, and she likes to show off to attract attention. When her mother criticizes her, tears appear. She is afraid of ghosts and storms. When she was younger, she was afraid of ladybugs, now she is afraid of flies and wasps. She likes the water, but after swimming her eczema is worse.
She wants her mother to read her fairy tales in the evening. Once, she dreamed of a dragon. Her favourite activities are dancing, singing, reciting, drawing, playing with dolls and toy cars and playing hide-and-seek. She learned to ride a bike by herself. Her favourite colour is yellow.

She often argues with her brother, who is three and a half years older. If he refuses to give her something, however, she does not have tantrums, as he did when he was younger.
She loves to eat honey (3), chocolate, tomato soup, sweet noodles, Nesquick balls with pasta, sausages, crackers, chips, apples, but in general can be quite picky in her eating. She does not like lentils, bean soup, vegetables, cabbage or meat. She drinks quite a lot.

Her eczema started when she was 18 months old. She was sitting in the hallway when a neighbor began to drill into the wall. She was so scared of this noise that she started crying very loudly, and shaking over her whole body. For the next seven days, she had bad constipation with very hard stools, tough as a stone, which had to be manually removed from her rectum. Since that time, she feared sitting on the toilet. A month after this incident, the eczema occurred. Apart from the eczema, she now has conjunctivitis in her left eye.

Past history: chickenpox, 3 x otitis media, ruptured eardrum in the right ear, with beige-green pus. She has had fevers with high temperature twice, about 40° C. She uncovers herself during sleep.

The child is similar to her mother, so I also ask about her. Like her daughter, she is cheerful and enjoys dancing. She says that her father died when she was fourteen. Four years ago, she started to have symptoms of allergy in her eyes; she has a sensation of dryness when moving them, as if the surface of her eye would be wrinkling and crinkling, but only up to the pupil. She has swelling of the lower eyelids, and her eyes and the region around them itch, then she has pain under her eyes. Sometimes, she sneezes. The condition improves by putting spoons chilled in the freezer on her eyes.

She had smallpox four years ago, at the same time as her daughter.
She loves spring and summer. When asked to compare herself with something, she says she could be a plant.
Usually, she is chilly. She likes meat and has an aversion to sweet dishes.
She is afraid to drive a car in order not to hurt someone. If something would happen, she feels she would have it in front of her eyes forever. She cares about others and is anxious for her children. She cannot bear raised voices.
Her brother had eczema until the age of two, and four middle ear inflammations.

Analysis

I noted the obvious similarity between mother and daughter. The most characteristic symptoms were the excessive gaiety of the girl and her enormous desire for honey. I used the following rubrics:
Ailments, fright, from
Generals, food and drinks, honey, desire
Cheerful

Hamamelis, Sabadilla and Veratrum album came up. When repertorizing, I always take notice of connections between remedies coming up. Of these three remedies, two belong to the same family: Sabadilla and Veratrum album.

Further clarification is obtained, if we use a rubric of her mother: Cares, full of others, about

The only remaining remedy is now Sabadilla.

This medicine is also in the section "hard stool" and "constipation", but they are very large, so I did not use them. The important part, however, is the genius of the remedy Sabadilla: shrinking, shriveling sensation (For example: Mind, Delusions, diminished, shrunken, parts are). It is a feeling that her mother felt in the eye: shriveled surface of the eye.  

Botanical names of Sabadilla remedy are Schoenocaulon officinale, Melanthium sabadilla, Veratrum officinale. This plant belongs in APG3 classification to the family Melanthiaceae (as well as Veratrum album), order Liliales. According to the latest findings of Jan Scholten, Melanthiaceae family belongs to a subphase 5 of a phase 6 (Liliales) of class Monocots. Subphase or phase 5 brings the nitrogen quality of enjoyment of life, vitality, vibrancy, vigour and enthusiasm. It is perhaps the reason why both mother and daughter had such a desire for laughing, singing, and dancing. I believe that nothing is completely random. Shrinking can mean the opposite of the expansion that nitrogen desires.
In the case of  the Sabadilla girl, the remedy corresponds to the Monocot class, which has a strong theme of silicium and carbon. The mother of our patient lost her father at fourteen, a period which corresponds to the silicium series. I do not want to say that we should automatically take everything into the account, although it is advisable to make as comprehensive and meaningful a totality of the case as we are able to.

Prescription:  on May 25th 1998, I prescribed the girl Sabadilla 5CH 3 x 2 globules.

Follow-up

July 28th: her mother told me that a week after taking the remedy, the eczema got worse, so she stopped administering the remedy. After three more days, the eruptions and itching subsided and since that time they have not reappeared. Mother also reported that her daughter had much less desire for honey. Meanwhile, fifteen years have passed, and the eczema has not returned.

Photos
Playing with confetti;Lee J Haywood; Flickr
Shriveled; Qhimm; Flickr