ACONITUM NAPELLUS

Synonym: Aconite, Monkshood


Source: a plant belonging to the natural order of Ranunculacae.


Habitat: The plant grows in the mountain districts all over Europe.


Proved by: Hahnemann

Description:

Aconitum is useful in the early stages of an inflammation or a fever. It is indicated when there is a sudden onset of violent symptoms, especially after exposure to a dry, cold wind. The patient to whom Aconitum is indicated is fearful, restless and thirsty for cold drinks.

• Its symptoms are acute violent and painful.
• They appears suddenly remain for a short while as of a big storm which Soon blows over.
• Mind is affected by such emotional factors as FRIGHT; SHOCK  Vexation.
• Nerves are excited and the patient remains under emotional and nervous
• Physical and mental restlessness, fright, is the most characteristic manifestation of Aconite.
• Disorders from fright and of sudden onset with acute symptoms.
• Anxiety and restlessness in any disorder. Life is rendered miserable by fear. Intolerance of pain, great fear and severe anxiety; unreasonable fear that the patient will die.
• Numbness and tingling in all parts.
• Cannot bear the pain, or to be touched, or to be uncovered.
• Skin dry, burning hot, intense thirst for cold water, red face sometimes changing to pale.
• Feels faint, dizziness on rising.
• After a fright with vexation during menses to prevent suppression.
• Heat with thirst, hard full frequent pulse, anxious impatience, inappeasable, beside himself tossing about with agony.
• Predicts the day she is to die, especially in pregnancy or child-bed.
• Initial stages of the common cold.
• Fevers of sudden onset; hot, dry skin; often one cheek is red and the other is pale.
• Unquenchable thirst for large quantities of cold water.
• Painful, red, hot, scanty urination, with profound anxiety.
• Respiratory disorders: Wakes up child frightened from sleep with dry, hoarse cough; this is usually the only remedy needed.
• Eyes: Relieves pain and aids healing in injuries such as an injury of the conjunctiva or pain due to irritation by inflammation or pain due to a foreign body in the eye.
• Bursting, throbbing headache; sensation as if there is a tight band around the head.

Mind

• Great fear, anxiety, and worry accompany every ailment, however trivial.
• Delirium is characterized by unhappiness worry, fear, raving, rarely
• unconsciousness.
• Forebodings and fears.
• Fears death but believes that he will soon die; predicts the day.
• Fears the future, a crowd, crossing the street.
• Restlessness, tossing about.
• Tendency to start.
• Imagination acute, clairvoyance.
• Pains are intolerable; they drive him crazy.
• Music is unbearable; makes her sad. [Ambra.]
• Thinks his thoughts come from the stomach-that parts of his body are abnormally thick.
• Feels as if what had just been done was a dream.

Fiver

• Cold stage most marked.
• Cold sweat and icy coldness of face.
• Coldness and heat alternate.
• Evening chilliness soon after going to bed.
• Cold waves pass through him.
• Thirst and restlessness always present.
• Chilly if uncovered or touched.
• Dry heat, red face.
• Most valuable febrifuge with mental anguish, restlessness, etc.
• Sweat drenching, on parts lain on; relieving all symptoms.

Head

• Fullness; heavy, pulsating, hot, bursting, burning undulating sensation.
• Intercranial pressure (Hedera Helix).
• Burning headache, as if brain were moved by boiling water (Indigo).
• Vertigo; worse on rising (Nux. Opium) and shaking head.
• Sensation on vertex as if hair were pulled or stood on end.
• Nocturnal furious delirium.
• Headache with increased secretion of urine.
• Crackling in head.
• Pulsation in forehead.
• Knocks the head.

Eyes.

·        Red, inflamed.

·        Feel dry and hot, as if sand in them.

·        Lids swollen, hard and red.

·        Shooting pain in eyeballs.

·        Can not bear the reflection of Sun from the snow.

·        Conjunctivitis from cinders or other foreign bodies.

·        Eyes glitter stare bleared.

·        Aversion or desire for light.

·        Profuse watering after exposure to dry, cold winds, reflection from snow, after extraction of cinders and other foreign bodies.

Ears.

·        Very sensitive to noises; music is unbearable.

·        External ear hot, red, painful, swollen.

·        Earache (Cham). Sensation as of drop of water in left ear.

Nose

·        Smell acutely sensitive.

·        Numb with epistaxis.

·        Pain at root of nose.

·        Coryza much sneezing; throbbing in nostrils.

·        Hæmorrhage of bright red blood.

·        Mucous membrane dry, nose stopped up; dry or with but scanty watery coryza.

Face.

• ANXIOUS expression; becomes pale and red alternately.
• Hot red cheeks.
• Red face becomes deathly pale on rising or he becomes dizzy.

• One cheek red, the other pale (Cham, Ipec).

• Neuralgia with restlessness tingling and numbness.
• Lips black.
• Dry peeling off.
• Heavy feeling of the whole face.
• Red, hot, flushed, swollen.
• Tingling in cheeks and numbness.
• Neuralgia, especially of left side, with restlessness, tingling, and numbness. Pain in jaws.

Mouth

·        Tongue swollen; tip tingles.

·        Teeth sensitive to cold.

·         Constantly moves lower jaw as if chewing.

·        Gums hot and inflamed. Tongue coated white (Antim crud).

• Toothache in sound teeth.
• Throbbing in teeth and head.
• Grinding of the teeth.
• Everything tastes bitter except water which has bad taste.
• Trembling and temporary stammering.
• Mouth and tongue numb; dry burning heat in mouth.
• Tingling on coughing and swallowing.

Throat

·        Red, dry, constricted, numb, prickling, burning, stinging.

·        Tonsils swollen and dry.

Stomach

·        Vomiting, with fear, heat, profuse sweat and increased urination.

·        Thirst for cold water. Bitter taste of everything except water. Intense thirst. Drinks, vomits, and declares he will die.

·        Vomiting, bilious mucous and bloody, greenish.

·        Pressure in stomach with dyspnœa. Hæmatemesis. Burning from stomach to œsophagus.

Abdomen

·        Hot, tense, tympanitic.

·        Sensitive to touch. Colic, no position relieves.

·        Abdominal symptoms better after warm soup.

·        Burning in umbilical region.

Rectum

·        Pain with nightly itching and stitching in anus.

·        Frequent, small stool with tenesmus; green, like chopped herbs.

·        White with red urine. Choleraic discharge with collapse, anxiety, and restlessness.

·        Bleeding hæmorrhoids (Hamam).

·        Watery diarrhœa in children. They cry and complain much, are sleepless and restless.

Urine

·        Scanty, red, hot, painful.

·        Tenesmus and burning at neck of bladder.

·        Burning in urethra. Urine suppressed, bloody.

·        Anxiety always on beginning to urinate.

·        Retention, with screaming and restlessness, and handling of genitals.

·        Renal region sensitive.

·        Profuse urination, with profuse perspiration and diarrhœa.

Male

·        Crawling and stinging in glans.

·        Bruised pain in testicles, swollen, hard.

·        Frequent erections and emissions.

·        Painful erections.

Female

·        Vagina dry, hot, sensitive.

·        Menses too profuse, with nosebleed, too protracted, late.

·        Frenzy on appearance of menses.

·        Suppressed from fright, cold, in plethoric subjects.

·        Ovaries congested and painful. Sharp shooting pains in womb.

·         After-pains, with fear and restlessness.

Respiratory

·        Constant pressure in left chest; oppressed breathing on least motion.

·        Hoarse, dry, croupy cough; loud, labored breathing.

·        Child grasps at throat every time he coughs.

·        Very sensitive to inspired air.

·        Shortness of breath.

·        Larynx sensitive.

·        Stitches through chest.

·        Cough, dry, short, hacking; worse at night and after midnight.

·        Hot feeling in lungs. Blood comes up with hawking.

·        Tingling in chest after cough.

Heart

·        Tachycardia. Affections of the heart with pain in left shoulder.

·        Stitching pain in chest.

·        Palpitation, with anxiety, fainting, and tingling in fingers.

·        Pulse full, hard; tense and bounding; sometimes intermits.

·        Temporal and carotid arteries felt when sitting.

Back.

·        Numb, stiff, painful.

·         Crawling and tingling, as if bruised.

·        Stiffness in nape of neck.

·        Bruised pain between scapulæ.

Extremities.

·        Numbness and tingling; shooting pains; icy coldness and insensibility of hands and feet.

·        Arms feel lame, bruised, heavy, numb.

·        Pain down left arm (Cact, Crotal, Kalmia, Tabac).

·        Hot hands and cold feet.

·        Rheumatic inflammation of joints; worse at night; red shining swelling, very sensitive.

·        Hip-joint and thigh feel lame, especially after lying down.

·        Knees unsteady; disposition of foot to turn (Aescul).

·        Weak and lax ligaments of all joints.

·        Painless cracking of all joints.

·        Bright red hypothenar eminences on both hands.

·        Sensation as if drops of water trickled down the thigh.

Sleep

·        Nightmare. Nightly ravings.

·        Anxious dreams. Sleeplessness, with restless and tossing about (Use thirtieth potency).

·        Starts up in sleep. Long dreams, with anxiety in chest. Insomnia of the aged.

Skin

·        Red, hot, swollen, dry, burning.

·        Purpura miliaris. Rash like measles.

·        Gooseflesh. Formication and numbness.

·        Chilliness and formication down back.

·        Pruritus relieved by stimulants.

Fever

·        Cold stage most marked.

·        Cold sweat and icy coldness of face.

·        Coldness and heat alternate.

·        Evening chilliness soon after going to bed.

·        Cold waves pass through him.

·        Thirst and restlessness always present.

·        Chilly if uncovered or touched.

·        Dry heat, red face.

·        Most valuable febrifuge with mental anguish, restlessness, etc.

·        Sweat drenching, on parts lain on; relieving all symptoms.

Modalities

·        Better in open air; worse in warm room, in evening and night; worse lying on affected side, from music, from tobacco-smoke, dry, cold winds.

·        Vinegar in large doses is antidotal to poisonous effects.

Dose

·        Sixth potency for sensory affections; first to third for congestive conditions. Must be repeated frequently in acute diseases. Acon is a rapid worker. In Neuralgias tincture of the root often preferable, one drop doses (poisonous), or again, the 30th according to susceptibility of patient.

Relations:
Complementary to Arnica montana in trauma; to Coffea cruda in fevers and to Sulphur in ail cases. Sulphur is the chronic remedy which very well complements Arnica montana.


Summary of Indications:
Fear of death - acute inflammations - pain - fever - pre-operative medication before surgery (to allay anxiety).


Antidotes:
Aceticum acidum, Belladonna atropa, Nux vomica, Sulphur (also complementary)


Note:
Trio of Restless Remedies: Aconitum napeilus, Arsenicum album, Rhus toxicodendron.