Learn a Remedy through Cases: Crotalus-cascavella
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2002 Sep / Oct VOL 4 NO 5.
Complied by:
T K Kasiviswanathan
'Crot-c
The venom of this Brazilian rattlesnake (Crotalus-horridus is a rattlesnake of North America) in potentised form, produces a magnetic state wherein the patient feels that his intellectual faculties and his personal power are increased. He is extremely sensitive to sensual impressions. The patient experiences an element of fright with no apparent reason. This quality makes it as one of the most hypochondria snake remedies. The following rubrics clarify:
Death thoughts of, alone, when;
Delusions, footsteps, hears behind him people; behind him, someone is; walks
behind him someone; skeletons, sees;
Specters, ghosts, spirits, sees; death appears, as a gigantic black skeleton;
hears voices; hears voices he must follow; groans, he hears.
Dreams, frightful; Fear, night; fear, alone, of being; fear behind him, that
someone is;
Fear, death of; fear ghosts, of; starting, sleep during.
Sadness, despondency, dejection, depression, gloom and melancholy
Case 1:
Mrs S P, aged 34, consulted Dr Rajan Sankaran for low-grade evening fever
with chilliness followed by sweating; headache extending from right to left with
heaviness in occiput and pain in legs in the evening; could sleep only with
tight bandage.
During consultations some mental symptoms came up prominently- violent rage at least provocation and often without any apparent cause. When angry, she would beat her children severely till exhausted. Once, when upset with husband playing cards with his friends, she went in a fit of rage and threw a heavy stone, injuring one friend. Later, she was repentant. Her body is hot when angry; also many times in the last 6 years, she fell unconscious then. She is very sensitive to noise, which causes palpitation. The main reason for her anger was that her husband and in-laws have squandered all their wealth and also her dowry, through drinking and gambling. Quarrels with husband were on this only; on two occasions she even tried to commit suicide.
She suffers from many hallucinations: in sleep, someone calls out and if she replies, it comes out and chokes her, causing numbness over her whole body. At times, she sees a lady lying next to her husband; a dark lady who steals rice from her house. Also dreams of being chased by a tiger and a man with a club. She is pushed by a man from top of the mountain and she gets stuck midway and a five-headed snake.
Rajan Sankaran analyzed the basic themes of snakes in this
case as under:
Pursued, persecuted, deceived, jealous, amorous. Choking/ suffocation. Danger
Rubrics:
Delusion, some one is behind him; fear someone is behind him. Del hears
footsteps behind him; suicidal disposition and fear of death.
He selected Crotalus-cascavella as that remedy has marked hallucinations.
200th potency one dose was given. In the first follow-up
the patient said that she had improved and her anger was much less; she was not
angry when her son broke a jar containing sugar. (Further follow-ups are not
given but it is clear that this remedy was appropriate) This remedy does not
appear in the rubric Anger in the Repertory (since it is not a
well-proved remedy) but we know from common folk-lore that snakes get angry when
provoked.
-Rajan Sankaran, Substance of Homoeopathy
Case 2:
Ms DM, 33y, consulted Dr Deborah Gordon for a variety of complaints. Renal
failure from use of Lithium; high BP. She is emotionally very depressed with
suicidal tendencies. Gets violently angry easily, then cannot sleep for which
she had to be hospitalized. Hears noises in her head.
Past History: viral pericarditis at age 12, pneumonia as an infant; gall bladder was removed 7 years back. She had depression due to birth control pills.
Life situation revealed that she had to endure sexual abuse from step-father’s father and also from an outsider. She thus had mental and emotional illness, bipolar, PTSD and stress complicated by sleep disorder, in association with iatrogenic renal failure with secondary anemia and hypertension. At her first visit her symptoms were well controlled by allopathic medicines and she looked mild mannered and pleasant. The doctor, underestimating the seriousness of the pathology, gave her Staph 1M, based on the history of abuse and suppressed anger.
When she showed up for the first follow-up, she said that "I am not able to sleep; have suicidal tendencies and I want to shoot myself or cut myself or take pills. I feel life is not worth living. I want to avenge those who have hurt me and want to chop my stepfather. Death could be a relief. She was given Aurum because of her suicidal tendencies with strong anger component. While her BP improved, her physical symptoms such as heart pain (She was to undergo angioplasty earlier), pneumonia and cholecystitis did not improve. She was hospitalized for cardiac evaluation; she was given antibiotics for her pneumonia. She was given Hepar-sulph, Lachesis, Cenchris-contortrix and Lyssin without any lasting improvement. One year later she said that she was having hallucinations- insects and snakes crawling on her during her aggravations. She was also occasionally joking. Crotalus-cascavella has such a hallucination of snakes and insects. The doctor also took note of the observation of Rajan Sankaran in a case of this remedy (Case No 1) where the patient would get into violent rage at the least provocation causing actual destruction like the rattlesnake. The doctor could now decide on this remedy. Additional relevant rubrics were:
Mind: Dreams: spiders, enormous, hairy which tried to climb
on him;
Mind: Dreams: vermin;
Mind Anxiety, chest in;
Death, thoughts of, alone when;
Mind: alternating with groaning; Mind: suicidal disposition, throwing himself
from windows. Additionally the remedy has this rubric Mind: violent deeds
of rage, leading to (I could not find it in Synthetic or Robin Murphy’s
Repertories) as was stressed by Dr Rajan. (This is the second case of this
remedy where such anger was detected and can be treated as a clinical symptom
and concomitant).
She was given Crotalus-cascavella 200 one dose and 12C daily. After the medicine she saw the snakes constantly in dreams and also in daytime and later that hallucination subsided; she had a lot of flashbacks of her abuse. Since then she had several ups and downs in her conditions including several acute illnesses for which she was given acute remedies. Throughout treatment, she was free from hallucinations and suicidal impulses. When there was a serious relapse of her symptoms due to suppression during acute illnesses she was again given another dose of the same remedy in 200th potency and she responded well. After three years of treatment she went back to work but developed intermittent rectal bleeding and blood in urine. This discharge was a favourable sign but because of the seriousness of her pathology she was administered 1M potency of the drug. Her bleeding stopped. Her BP was in control with medication. Gradually she became normal.
There are many instructive points in this case, as pointed out by the author. She was in fact given two snake remedies (Lachesis, Cenchris-contortrix) without much improvement. Her psychotic depression dramatically changed when she was prescribed Crotalus-cascavella. When the upper layer was removed the latent serious pathology asserted itself which had to be treated and when the mental symptoms returned this remedy had to be repeated resulting in rectal bleeding. The homoeopathic remedies were administered while she was still taking allopathic drugs, which were suppressive. Once the correct remedy was given the allopathic remedies did not seem to interfere with the action of her constitutional remedy. (Homoeopathic Links 4/97). Dr Sehgal used to say that when the correct similimum is administered there will be a discharge which is healthy and the process to cure.
Case 3:
Dr Rajan Sankaran presented another case of a 46-year-old woman who
consulted him for severe joint pains and asthma. History revealed two sides -one
thinking that there is no one like her and the other has the feeling that she is
being pursued and troubled. She was loquacious but her talk was wandering; talks
as though she were two persons instead of one. On the one hand, she wanted her
family to be happy and on the other, she did not care; pessimistic and negative
in outlook, feels nothing will work- her daughter’s marriage will not work out
and her investments will fail. Her main feeling is that people do only negative
or bad things to her. She can only see the negative side in things; constant
feeling of hopelessness. She is always fearful that because she is on top of the
world people are there to finish her. She is afraid of dark and has the feeling
that there is someone behind her to grab and kill her.
Initially she was given Lachesis because of her
loquacity, wandering speech; antagonism with herself, jealousy etc but it did
not fully meet the case. Dr Rajan then had a group consciousness session with a
few colleagues and based on the dreams experienced by the participants he
selected the following rubrics:-
1. Delusion, people sees, behind him someone is.
2. Thoughts of death when alone and
3. Thoughts of murder. On the basis of these she was given Crotalus-cascavella,
which in infrequent intervals cured her. (System of Homoeopathy)
