Original Trade Mark: Antimonium crudum

A 38 years old man has anxiety and obesity problems. The anxiety problem started 10 years ago, the day his dog died. That day he ran searching for the veterinary, but in reality, “he ran to escape death”. Ten days later he woke up at 5 am with tachycardia, fast breathing and pre-cordial pain. In the hospital after lots of exams the doctor did not encounter cardiac alterations or any other type. He was diagnosed as having an anxiety crisis, was prescribed anxiolytics, but when he realized that it was prescribed to everybody he stopped taking it.

Now, 10 years later, the crisis are occurring at night. He is waking up at 2, 3 and surely at 5 am with an inside vacuum sensation, very depressing, feeling squeezed, empty. He gets up and goes to the kitchen to eat non-stop………he weighs 120 Kg. After several healing attempts made with endocrinologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, internists, he initiated his search for healing with alternative medicine that ended up in my consult office.

Type: He is an obese person (120 kg.) and 1.70 m tall. White skin, bearded, dressed in black, and somewhat disheveled. His eyes are very expressive and his voice is nice, seems very outgoing and grave at the same time. His hands catch your attention immediately. At first glance his hands and sausage-like fingers look like an undivided mass.

SWEATING: Easy, worse at night, wets the pillow, cold sweat just on head and neck, “Like a crocodile”.

FEARS: Too many, he fears heights, darkness, death, insanity, elevators, airplanes, death again, exercising (when his heart rate increases during exercising he panics, he fears he can die. That is why he does not exercise, which in turn does not help reduce his weight).

DREAMS: To be dead, being mourned and he can see it like a nightmare. He has dreamed it since he was a child, especially in stress periods like when his father and his dog died or when he has job problems.

MOOD: He is cheerful in welcoming people, he can be the soul of the party. When he was young he used to be very romantic, “he dreamed of love, listened to piano music just to cry, just for the sake of it…”

He can’t stand shoddy work or senseless people whose motto is “I don’t want to follow others people path, I am forging my own way”. At times he can be short-tempered. Perhaps what pisses him off the most is people hug or kiss him or when people touch him or pat on his back for no reason. (In Spain people can be effusive. Not as much as in Latin America, but a lot more than in Holland and Northern Europe in general).

BACKGROUND: He was raised in a catholic home. His father was a member of a religious organization called OPUS DEI, but not his mother. At age 7 he was interned in school as it was accustomed in his family, but not because he was unbearable. He had a happy childhood evolving around his mother, "she won heaven because of me". They both argued and still argue since he started to talk, such that when she said white he replied black so on and so forth.

Now he is living a phase in his live where everything is black, his clothes, his dresser. He wears a black bracelet on his arm “because nobody wears it”. In his house the furniture is black. Everything is black.
He wants to be a writer. He studied journalism, but now he has a job as a “text reviewer” in a publication company. “A shitty work” that makes him feel humiliated and disgruntled, but he has to survive. That makes him visit an internet blog every week to comment famous phrases just to kill tedious time.

LOVE: He has had a stable relationship for the last 10 years. Before that he carried a promiscuous sexual life, but now he has this boy. He does not regard himself as jealous person, but very “sexual.”.

SLEEP: He does not sleep well, waking up every 2 or 3 hours, for sure at 5 am to eat. However, during the day he is not tired for lack of sleeping.


ANALYSIS:
This case can help us clearly visualize the two main current approaches of the homeopathic practice: The traditional repertory, also known as elemental mathematics that basically add up apparently unlinked data to obtain a remedy and the New Homeopathic Vision that analyze the patient as a mathematic equation to be resolved and then state the problem and its resolution.

He is the dream-patient of every practitioner, someone who is easily diagnosed and whose treatment is very straightforward. In the traditional repertory approach this patient is what we would like to see in practice every day since it will spare us hours of thinking, with just few disappointments and of course, our clientele will be considerable.

This patient shows three keynotes: First of all contestant contrary behaviour. Secondly, something very strange like moonstruck, and third, aversion to be touched.
Other key characteristics of this individual are: physically, his milky tongue and emotionally, his bad sleeping aggravation at 5 am.

Putting together all these symptoms and with the use of a computer program, the result is straightforward, ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM.



Antimonium Crudum    



But why, what is the meaning of this? How are the symptoms related to each other? Solve the equation for X, what Dr. Paschero called “what is worth to cure”. A more ample vision of this case, understanding what’s going on in the patient evolution is what brought me to study the Scholten Method, that I am still grasping.

Following the Scholten Analysis, we can see the patient in his living context and carry out a broader analysis, not just add up data, and then state the problem and its solution. That way the analyst is not a robot-like anymore and the practice of homeopathy becomes an art. An art that can be learned after a prolonged time of practice or as many homeopathy practitioners can afford now, they take the minerals, plants and animal roots and put them in a totally new context that also allows you to see them individually.

What is interesting about this patient? First, his query for creativity and to be original. To be exclusive, different from anybody else because his clothing, house, his self-determination and his way of going against the mainstream including his mother, father and society in general. These are the two versions of what is classically known as “contrary behavior” and the invariable “NO” response described by Boericke in his medical work. Boerike writes in regards to Antimonium cru, “cross and contradictory, whatever is done fails to give satisfaction”.



swans    


In the Periodic Table of the Elements, creativity is situated in the silver series. This is a neat fact, but what is the relationship between this patient and creativity? Where is his anxiety coming from? The patient explains it very well. When he faced his dog’s death, his first crisis showed up. Moreover, it is from his dreaming of being dead, buried and mourned. From his preference for the color black, the color of mourning. Dead means absolute loss, the end of everything. "the lost of creativity". That is what the patient shows in stage 15 and that corresponds to Antimonium. Obesity is more related to Antimonium cru as well as the romantic aspect and the milky tongue.

Scholten writes in his book “Homeopathy and Minerals” page 645, "they feel they are going to lose their creativity and with it, the love and respect of their friends and family.." In this case the concern is to loose the respect and to be seen as someone else in his family, with his partner and the world.

That is why their reaction is to be outstanding, different in every way, (this is the other side of the coin of what is known as “contrary behavior”, what I call “original trade mark”). Astonishingly, at least for me, this is theorized in the book Homeopathy and Minerals page 645, "So they always have to be different to produce something that goes right against all the common expectations."

Other homeopathic practitioners have also established relationships between Antimonium cru, love and to eat, but without emphasizing the creativity factor. For instance, Dr. Grandgeorge in his book “L’esprit du remede homeopathique” (1992), in regards to Antimonium cru describes it as “sick of love, especially for his mother”, as it was a rupture with his mother that prevents him from receiving affection and protection. This is compensated by eating in excess, given its pediatric orientation.

About the tartar and milky appearance of the tongue, I have only found a description and cause in Chinese medicine for which this symptom is characteristic of what they call stagnant food in the body, clogging it and it is reflected in the tartaric look of the tongue. The causes for stagnant food can be found in excessive work load and concerns, cold foods, diet rich in fat, the onset of an obese person.


REACTIONS:
A week after he was taking Antimonium cru 7 ch, this patient started to sleep better. No waking up for 10 hours, lost weight (after 3 months he lost 15 kg), “I am feeling wonderful”, he said and commenced doing exercise. But more important he calmed down, decided to do what he was passionate about, participated in a contest to work in a TV station as a journalist and got selected.
Now, a year later, he is writing his first book with 30 kg less and has decided to marry his partner “as God order it”.

“Doctor, I think I found out why I was cured by homeopathy”, he told me last visit. “Because to cure gripe or headaches can be done by any doctor, but to cure me is a totally different story, it had to be done by a very special medicine, quite exclusive.” Original trade mark: Antimonium cru.


Questions and comments:

1) If we think about it, it is amazing the fact that a mineral that belongs to a series (silver series) and to an stage (15 stage), can be used as a guide to determine the conduct that we expect and find in a patient.
Why is it that a mineral, the lack of it or its excess, can cause an emotional change? Or is it possible that a certain situation can bring a person into having excess or deficit of a substance used in homeopathy? In the first case, we know that it does occur, like in the relationship between lithium and the maniac-depressive syndrome. In the second case, I don’t know.

So, I throw this question, wondering whether at the beginning of something totally new, a bold homeopathic practitioner can set out to develop a new physiology, new anatomy, histology and biochemical, based on how minerals and medicines derived from plants and animals, according to their position upon a pre-established classification, determined by atomic number and its physical characteristics, influence the way a person reacts before certain situations. And the other way around, how a given situation, emotional, physical, work-related, family-related, can modify a certain element in our self, emotional or physical.

2) Is it possible that a patient may remain in an unchanged state through all its vital cycle? In general, the patients evolve, changing and showing a different situation as the treatment goes on, driving the treatment according to new developments. It is what we call in America the patient onion, with layers, one beneath the others.
It is possible that it happens as with the LANTHANIDES, what is known as FRACTALIZATION, and that a patient goes through all the states with just one remedy. And if it is like that, what makes him to go through such process? And last but not least, does it have any use to know this in the process of getting a patient cured? I guess it does, but because I don’t have an answer yet, I leave it to you as homework.

Following a Chinese tactic war principle go from the big to the small, or as it is known currently, from the macroscopic to the microscopic. That is like going from a 3 double page text to a single phrase, my quest has been to have a neat and concrete image of a remedy that can create a reference in two words and focus in what each person needs. That’s why when I think of Antimonium cru, I think of originality.


F.Cesar Erazo,MD.
fredy_cesar@hotmail.com