Traveller's diarrhoea
by Huib Wijtenburg
Traveller’s diarrhoea
After a personal experience, I always ask patients with chronic diarrhoea after a trip to the tropics, if they have experienced any severe frights on their journey. Twenty five years ago, I travelled through Nepal. One evening in a lodge, we felt very threatened by a group of young men who were partying and we fled, with the idea that we were being chased for a long time (which, luckily, was not the case). Thank goodness, some people put us up for the night. This was the last day of a three week trek; we were going back to Kathmandu by bus the next day. It was only when we were actually on the bus that I started to feel safe. As soon as we departed, I felt the first signs of diarrhoea. I will always remember that trip: having diarrhoea while travelling on a bus from the fifties, driving over mountain paths next to ravines is not such a fun thing to do, and in my case it was charged with feelings of shame. Unfortunately, in that time, I didn’t have a homeopathic traveller’s kit with me, so I just sat it out. A few weeks later, my complaints were over. About ten years later, I did a proving together with several colleagues. On the second night of the proving, I had a dream: I was being chased by 3 giants. I could just escape but I felt terribly anxious. The next day, I went to work but I could hardly sit at my desk as I often had to run to the toilet with diarrhoea. The remedy that we were proving turned out to be Opium: diarrhoea after fright, ailments from shame. Later, I saw a patient who had come back from a trip to the tropics with intestinal complaints after he having been mugged. Opium relieved his symptoms.