Homeopathy and Minerals

Calcarea muriatica

Only Clarke (1985, part 1, page 357) briefly mentions Calcarea muriatica. It does not appear in Kents Repertory. It is quite likely that many Calc cases will turn out to be Calc-m in the future. The picture of Calc-m is similar to that of Calc, but it does have its own character. Calc-m appears to be a great children’s remedy. Many cases in which I would previously have given Calc, with medium results, are now going much better with Calc-m.

Concepts

CalcareaMuriatica

What do others thinkSelf-pity

Sensitive to criticismCare

InsecurityNurturing

ShynessMother

FearsAttention

ProtectionSelf-awareness

Withdrawal

Group analysis

The theme of Calc-m, according to the group analysis, is the fear that others will see that they need a lot of care and attention. The first part of this theme corresponds with that of Calc: ‘What will others think of me’. But in Calc-m this fear is mainly focused on care and attention. They are afraid to ask for too much attention, to appear too needy and to be criticised for that.

Another variation is that they are afraid to give either too much or too little attention, especially as a mother to her children. They are afraid to spoil,or to neglect, their children. And the fear is especially that, by doing so, they will be rejected by others.

It is a theme that can easily be passed on from mother to child. The mother is very uncertain about how to care for the child. The child does not get enough and starts to ‘whine’. It wants more nurturing and attention. On the one hand the mother would like to give this, but on the other hand she is afraid to spoil the child. And ‘What will the neighbours and others say?’. She gets angry with the child and sends it away: ‘Don’t whine so much!’. And so the child becomes very unsure about his feelings and his need for love and nurturing.

Case

A woman aged 50 comes with various complaints. Her first complaint is a skin rash from the sun on her chest and arms. She is especially sensitive to that in the spring. She gets little  red itching lumps. She has had this complaint since the birth of her first child.

A second complaint is a frontal headache, together with a cold. She feels pressure in her eyes, and has a watery discharge from the nose. Sometimes she has pain in the upper jaw, mostly left sided. These complaints started since her second pregnancy, when she suffered from sinusitis. It makes her very tired. She is also very moody and impatient. She cannot tolerate a lot from the children. She also feels dull, ‘like a Zombie’. The complaints are worse in the winter, although the weather does not have a direct influence on them.

A third complaint is itching of the vagina and labia. There is little discharge. This complaint is worse before menses.

A fourth complaint is constipation. Stools are hard, thick and dark. Stool is expelled with difficulty < 16 till 21 h. She sometimes gets stomach cramps, mostly in left abdomen.

A fifth complaint is backache. She has had this for two years, starting two years after the birth of her second child. They were moving house and she did a lot of heavy carrying. She was exposed to a dry, cold wind. It started with sciatica, pain in the sacro-iliac joint and also in the coccyx. The pain extended to her right leg and calf. The pain is cramping and drawing, worst in the tendon in the hollow of the knee. She could only sit; lying made everything much worse. The modalities change sometimes: < in the morning, on getting up, sitting, stooping, standing still, bending the head forwards, lifting the legs, crossing the right leg over the left, > lying down, bending the leg, stretching the leg, changing position. Sometimes with cramp in toes and soles of the feet.

She has a tendency to put on weight quickly.

She suffers from painful and sometimes swollen breasts. Sometimes before the menses, but also sometimes for a few weeks without any connection to the menses.

Past history: severe mumps. Car sickness.

General characteristics:

Temperature: cold, cold hands and feet; cold feet make her knees ache.

cold weather makes her depressed.

Perspiration: often at night, on the back, chest and in axillae.

Time: < 3 pm; sometimes moody in the morning.

Desires: sweets (3), chocolate (3), grapes (3), coffee, smoking.

Aversion: cabbage, beans (2).

Menses: quite frequent, sometimes every 14 days, often copious, only during daytime; moody one day before menses.

Sleep: unrefreshing; lies on right side.

Mind: Quickly worried about husband and children. If her husband is late coming home, she gets very worried, so they have arranged that he will ring her if he is going to be late. She is afraid that the children will fall down the stairs. She also worries in her dreams. She dreams that she has to save her children from drowning.

She feels a great need for attention. Her parents, and especially her mother, had little time for the children, as they had a business. She feels that she missed out on attention. She often pities herself. Even now she has the feeling that her mother does not help her enough. Her mother is always ready to support her sisters when they are ill or when they are having a baby, but is never there for her. Everyone has always thought ‘She will manage on her own’, even when she was a child. She finds it difficult to ask for help, feels that she should be able to manage by herself.

She can be very moody. Is short tempered with the children. She feels like crying, but doesn’t want to, so she starts to sigh and swallow a lot instead.

She is afraid of insects and spiders. Also afraid to drive and have an accident.

She cannot stand criticism. She reacts with ‘sort it out yourself then’.

She works hard, thinks that she has to.

Her marriage is good. There was a problem in the past that her husband worked too hard and too many hours. He was often busy at night and even at the weekends. She felt that she was only a housekeeper to her husband. That was again the old problem of not getting enough attention.

Analysis

It took me three years to come to the conclusion that this woman needed Calc-m. During these three years she was given: Lyc, Sep, Tub, Lac-c, Cimic, Graph, Calc, Calc-s, Am-m. These remedies worked only temporarily or not at all.

Only Graphites had a positive and lasting effect. She became more stable. After that her complaints were sometimes more left sided, but nothing else changed. So Graphites took off one layer, but there had to be another remedy. The fact that Graphites is comple-mentary to many remedies has already been discussed in a previous chapter.

Reaction

After Calc-m 1M she first got a heavy cold with yellow-green and brown mucus. Then her headache disappeared. Following that, all her old complaints started to come back one by one, and also went away again: the swollen breasts, the backache, the constipation. After two months she felt her old self again, at ease with herself. She lost her excess weight, without much difficulty. After three months Calc-m was repeated for a return of the tiredness after a busy spell.