5.15.1 Antimonium tartaricum, Case 1
A 25 year old woman suffers from asthma, especially in foggy weather. She gets a lot of mucus in her throat and has to scrape frequently when she is speaking. She often wakes up at 3.am. and has to take Ventolin, which loosens the phlegm so that she can cough it up. Everything is worse when she is lying down and when she wakes up in the morning. The cough is better from warm drinks and worse from cold drinks. Coughing leaves her short of breath and it creates a feeling of rawness behind the sternum. The amount of mucus increases when she drinks milk. The mucus is usually white, sometimes yellow. Concomitant symptoms are frequent colds and painfully red eyes that are gummed up in the morning.
Before the menses she tends to feel angry with everything and everybody and can’t see the funny side of life. She is a person who is generally quite short tempered, but she quickly gets over it again. Occasionally she will remain angry for a long time, for instance when a friend has done something wrong and hasn’t offered his or her apologies. If they don’t apologise the friendship is over as far as she is concerned, but if they do apologise she will quickly forget the whole incident.
She doesn’t have many friends but the ones she does have are very good friends.
Her parents gave her a lot of freedom hen she was little, she was always allowed to choose for herself. She did not really like this, because she never knew what her parents really felt about things. Her father was very short tempered and was often very unreasonable towards her mother, looking for a fight and picking holes in everything she did. He never apologised to her afterwards. Her mother usually remained silent.
When she works the pressure soon builds up because she wants to do it well. This causes problems in her shoulders. The pain in her shoulders is worse on the left side, mostly situated on top of her shoulder and radiating to the scapula and left arm. The shoulder is stiff and painful, > sauna, > night and morning, < paraffin, < tension in the her arm and crossing her arms in front of her and putting her hands on her shoulder (3). She likes to be busy however, otherwise she feels bored.
When she was 12 the family moved from Amsterdam to a small town where she had to start a new school. She hated it and couldn’t fit in, nobody accepted her and they called her a punk with all her strange ‘towny’ manners.
She dreams about riding a motorbike in fine weather, which she loves; as a child she used to dream of the death of friends or relations.
Generals
Weather: cold, < damp (2), sea.
Perspiration: easy < exertion.
Time: < 3 am; < autumn.
Desires: vegetables, fruit (3), spices.
Aversion: sour, egg(2), milk.
Food: < milk.
Menses: profuse, ill with irritability, stomach- and back pains before menses.
Sleep: on right side.
Analysis
There are many Antimonium symptoms in this case: asthma, short of breath, < cough, cough < lying down, < talking, < mist, contrary, easily angered. The ‘punk’ theme is also typical of Antimonium.
At the time when she came to see me I only really knew Antimonium crudum or tartaricum. I chose Antimonium tartaricum because she feels the cold and she isn’t particularly romantic.
Other Antimonium symptoms: cold, fruit, <- sour and milk, being called a punk.
Symptoms that belong to the Carbon series: dreams about the death of friends and relations.
Reaction
Two days after Antimonium tartaricum she gets a bad cold that lasts a week. After hat the cold and the breathlessness diminish and her energy starts to increase. After a month her complaints are 50% better in spite of stopping with the Becotide and using the Ventolin spray only very occasionally. She feels much better inside, she is more active and less nervous. Her dreams are different too, she doesn’t get caught up in other peoples business so much.
Before she got Antimonium tartaricum I had given her Natrium sulphuricum with quite good results.