3-442.17.12
Case by Franz Swoboda.
Mr. K. (I choose this letter because of the literary model of a man who is hard to figure out) came to my office in 1989 because of encephalitis disseminata. The disease had appeared after a flu at the age of 25 and after years of remission now in a therapy-resistant progression, without relapses. The leg-related spasticity was more pronounced on the right side. The dizziness in heat, in upright position and when descending stairs did not worry Mr. K.. The disturbance of depth sensibility as the first symptom of the disease did not leave him. Except for a commotio during a soccer game in youth and the surgery of an umbilical hernia, no previous diseases. But, yes, two warts on finger and palm, in childhood. Laxatives he needed for regular bowel movements, several coffees a day did not help. He wasn't picky about food, weather didn't bother him, sleep was good.
As a person working in a health profession, he knew the importance of a complete homeopathic history and made an effort to tell about his life. The upbringing was marked by principles such as "you eat everything on your plate" and "a man does not cry". The mother was experienced as dominant, the father as weak. Mr. K. experienced his university education examinations as anxiety-ridden. It had been a paralysing fear.
Mr. K. had been married for about 20 years and since his early retirement had lived in the home of his wife, who was several years older than he. A certain distance from his wife became apparent when he talked about his marriage. A discrepancy with the telephone conversations with her he occasionally had in my presence. There I heard how well he had adopted her country idiom and exchanged endearments in it. He told me that she had never forgiven him for not telling her about his illness until after the wedding. He had not thought it necessary because he had been in remission. After all, she was not as healthy as she had been in her younger years, he countered.
The woman knew about his homosexual orientation before the marriage, as well as that he met his life person, who lived in another country with his wife and children, during his trips to me in Vienna. I had no idea of this constellation until this friend visibly accompanied Mr. K. to the consultation door. Thus Mr. K. gave me the opportunity to draw conclusions and to suspect his sexual orientation. Nothing was said. He let me know, in his own way. We had known each other for many years.
Various medicines had helped him so far, and Mr. K. seemed to be quickly satisfied. Gelsemium, Thuja, Staphysagria, Lycopodium he got for several years and was "happy" with it, although the symptoms of MS slowly but steadily increased. The homeopathic consultations resembled small talk.
Symptoms were as difficult to elicit from Mr. K. as his own opinions. Lycopodium had offered itself again and again from the symptoms and the patient was so happy with it, it helped with stomach complaints and some other things. I had doubts about the remedy because I was concerned that he was losing weight, needed laxatives regularly and, most importantly, after ten years of treatment (when asked!) said the MS symptoms had gotten "a little worse." To add immediately that he was content as long as he got along without a wheelchair.
He certified the almost 100 year old mother "inflexibility". What was meant by that? I could not find out. In the case of his wife, who was several years older than he, diagnoses and illnesses multiplied. Mr. K.'s walking distance became shorter and shorter. After twelve years of my treatment, he knew more about me and my family than I knew about him and his. He tried to guess my views in order to adapt, for example, he complained about the evil conventional medicine, which would not recognise homeopathy. When I replied that I was not concerned here with good and evil, he immediately agreed with me.
Lathyrus, Lycopodium, Pulsatilla, then in my perplexity Lathyrus and Lycopodium alternated - I was treading water. An MR showed no new foci. Motor function limitations increased. "Actually, I'm doing quite well," he said.
At one point, when he started to talk about his marital problems, he burst out the next moment talking about Hahnemann. A note in my records in the sixteenth year of treatment: "Do not create a remedy. It is not possible to leave the level of diagnosis."
When I do not find a simile in patients in long conversations, it sometimes shows up on the phone in an acute situation. This is also the case with Mr. K.
One day - we are in year seventeen of treatment - he calls and tells us that he almost choked on a morsel of meat. The morsel had to be removed gastroscopical-ly. It later turns out that there had been a similar incident two years ago and that he generally has a problem swallowing dry foods, especially dry fish. The disease has reached a life-threatening stage.
At this point, in May 2006, I recommend
Pteridium aquilinum C9 to Mr. K. for the first time, to be taken daily.
I found the first reference to the remedy in the local rubrics of the recently examined Eagle Fern: "Strangulating pressure (in the larynx), aggravated by swallowing and talking", the dryness in the pharynx, pressure in the stomach area, cannot vomit, all symptoms of our AMSE and almost identical in Marie Geary's examination. There I also read "Lump in throat, not removed by swallowing".
The second reason was the proximity to Lycopodium, of which I was never convinced with Mr. K., but which he himself had always praised. To choose a remedy botanically related to Lycopodium seemed obvious to me.
The third reason was the experience of not having learned anything from the subjects in the examination. This is how I felt with Mr. K. for seventeen years. Why C9, once a day? Was probably the easiest to get, I can't say for sure today.
From then on, things changed. Mr. K. calls more often. He was enthusiastic about the new remedy, which made his swallowing problems disappear. For the first time, he talks about feelings, at least about the fact that it has always been difficult for him to show feelings. "I am sometimes quick-tempered and hot-tempered. Is there a medicine for that?" he asks. It takes me a long time to elicit an example from him. When his wife reproaches him, "You did that on purpose!" it bothers him a lot. "After all, that's not the case. If you did, you'd be a bad person if you deliberately annoyed your wife." I don't want to be ungrateful. Now I have elicited something almost personal from him after all, even if he pushes it into the general as "one." Jörg Wichmann has in "The World of Pteridophytes. Von der Bedeutung des scheinbar Unscheinbaren" (+) about it very nicely.
When Mr. K. feels cornered by his wife again, the sentence escapes him: "It would be best if you weren't there!" What drives him so into a corner? "I've always had trouble expressing my feelings." I have to be content with that. "A certain disappointment in myself for being acted upon." Before I can ask and it now goes too much into the emotional life, he scratches the curve with a little joke: "We accuse each other of paranoia. But in reality, only she has it!"
At least Mr. K. begins to talk about plans for what he still wants to do in life. He has never formulated his wishes before. Is he now becoming aware of feelings and desires for the first time, or is he allowing himself to express them for the first time?
After two years of C9 and later C12, the symptoms of MS have hardly increased. "It's almost a panacea," he says. At times, he has bowel movements without a laxative. This amazes him after years of taking it; he attributes it to the remedy. The sour belching (have I probably not heard it so far?) has become less.
He and his wife are looking for a new apartment where they will have less cleaning and fewer stairs. She's hesitant, he says: "I'll have to bang on the table to get us to a new apartment." (My note: well, I'll watch him bang on the table).
Towards the end of 2008, I see Mr. K. for the last time. He lives far away, traveling has become more difficult, he is soon 70. Now and then - for longer distances - he takes the wheelchair, otherwise he walks with a cane. His friend also no longer comes to Vienna. Should I be surprised that I don't find out the reason for this? We stay in contact via emails. Several times a year we exchange greetings and congratulations. In 2012 he suffers a fracture of the neck of the femur and is operated on successfully. I learn this from his wife on the phone, with whom I now speak for the first time. She tells me how terrible it is in the rehab department. Shortly afterwards, I spoke to Mr. K. himself on the phone. He does not complain, not even when asked.
The following year, a piece of carrot got stuck in his throat and had to be removed. We intensify the intake of the remedy (we keep changing the potencies, between C9 and MK). Examinations of the organs in question reveal no reason for intervention. The following year his wife dies. Of what, I do not find out.
We exchange emails until 2016. "
Thanks, I'm fine," he replies when asked how he is. Then, as usual, he changes the subject, asks about my family, and the conversation peters out.
In preparation for this paper, I want clarity. What has become of Mr. K.? I call the number of the residential home he gave me a few years ago. I learn from the director that he is not doing very well. He calls back the very next day. I am pleased with the strong voice. How is he doing? "Yes, thank you." When I ask if he has any visitors, I learn that relatives "probably can't visit him at the moment" because of the Corona measures. Immediately, he wants to know how our son is doing, how it is in Vienna, etc. He does not let me get close to him. He has good memories of the medicine. I tell him that the reason for my call is a paper about bracken. He does not respond, changes the subject, makes himself my accomplice. Whether it's the pandemic or homeopathy in the health system, he always agrees with me. How does he manage that?
Can I believe that the medicine has helped him as well as he says? Mr. K. has been suffering from encephalitis disseminata for 55 years, of which 42 years have been spent with the progressive form, known for poor prognosis and early disability. Of these 42 years, he has been under mainly homeopathic treatment for 31 years. When the MS became life-threatening, we started him on bracken fourteen years ago. I'm beginning to think Mr. K has good reason to feel that the bracken is a "big hit." "And next year I'll be 80." Ad multos annos, dear K.
Mr. K. and the bracken fern.
The oldest known fern lived 400 million years ago. These plants are highly adaptable as living conditions change. The bracken fern is found in almost all areas of the earth. Such a plant must not impose great conditions on the environment, it must be frugal. Fern spores remain germinable for centuries, waiting for enough water to sprout. Such a plant must also be well connected. The rhizomes of the bracken fern grow up to sixty meters long.
Mr. K. has also found his way. He learned early on to put his needs aside and not to express them. In the conversation with the doctor he tries to be his opinion in the sense of a complicity, a fraternisation. He does not take his own standpoint, as if renouncing individuality would offer him protection. He does not attach importance to being perceived with personal preferences, ideas, desires. Does he perceive them himself?
In the AMSE, one examiner noted, "It's so hard to express one's own needs." The wishes of the environment are met, the demands of everyday life are managed. Problems occur only when external pressures increase. Emotions are experienced as shameful, in other cases not perceived at all, neither by the examiner nor by the environment.
The sparse communication with Mr. K. is reflected in the AMSE examiners and in the Erreibungsprüfung. To communicate is hardly possible, hardly need and if, then hardly verbally. We have found something similar in erictions of other primordial plants. The bracken does not conquer habitat, does not grow invasively like mushrooms. It colonises fallow land, hence the English term "bracken". It never grows alone, but as a monoculture in huge groups.
In testing situations, the protection of the group is missing, Mr. K. is "paralysed with fear". Paralysis can become life-threatening - Mr. K. almost suffocated a few times, in the context of a disease with increasing paralysis. There is not much room for reaction in such a threat.
Our examiners also experienced this. It is only when they can no longer cope with their daily lives that emotions emerge and make them vulnerable. Again, it is not the big goals that are not achieved. It is experienced as unacceptable when one does not manage what everyone else manages. Then one stands out, then one is no longer part of the group. In the later test of exorcism, someone allows himself to be segregated without being asked, so as not to endanger the well-being of the group.
Communication in this context is either not necessary - because the other person knows what one thinks anyway - or dangerous: others could recognise that I am differently minded and do not belong to the group - then my protection is lost. In a nutshell this means: I enjoy the protection of the group if I renounce individuality.
"We have the receipt of fern seed: we walk invisible" - Shakespeare knew it. (++)
Where can a life in the bracken lead?
We know enough consequences of such subordination. First speculative, where the sentence "I'm fine" was just as inapplicable as with Mr. K.: The regional exhibition of Lower Austria 2014 in the Schallaburg near Melk on the Danube "Jubel und Elend - Leben mit dem Großen Krieg 1914-1918" offered deep insights into the life of that time. One was the correspondence between front-line soldiers and their families. The 29 billion letters and postcards of the German field post were censored with the knowledge of all. But does that adequately explain what the exhibition's curators highlight?
"It is striking that many soldiers chose a similar way of phrasing. In the letters from the front, there are often phrases like 'I'm fine,' which sound like platitudes. Little was said about the terrible experiences at the front. The soldiers did not want to worry their relatives, often could not even put what they had experienced into words."
Not at all speculative are the dreams and images of the examiners (in AMSE 2005 and Erreibung 2020), in which the bracken led us to areas that one would rather not know in detail.
"Then this terrible dream: I have committed murder. Now I sit at the sewing machine to tailor something for one of my granddaughters from this stranger's dress, a dark grey loden fabric. The child wants to sew with me, is clumsy, I instruct her. The deed weighs on me, I know the child will never want to wear this dress, it is completely absurd that I sit here and sew. I confer with my accomplice, wanting confirmation that "she was alive when we left her." He responds by saying, "That's not certain, they'll find out." I realise that he's going to dump everything on me. I will never get rid of this act in my life, even though I do everything I can not to be condemned. Deepest fright - how can one dream such a thing?"
An excerpt from another examiner's dream: "Me and B. are working somewhere in the forest, secretly and illegally dismembering three people or three large animals (cows?). We don't want anyone to catch us doing this or suspect anything. We put the meat cut from the bones into sacks (to make soup out of it later? Then no one can find the meat anymore). We hide the remains of the bones in a big box... We carefully remove all the remains and traces... Why did we do this? In the process I do not experience any emotion, it is like a mechanical rational doing. Only in awakening disgust and surprise at the cruel dream."
I attempt a summary of Erreibung 2020 here, staying close to the texts of the examiners. All words are taken from their texts.
One does not show oneself, one has a dark, a dark secret that is not to be discovered. Hiding, not looking, even oneself. Silence about the shame for something you did because you knew it wasn't right, even if it seemed right in the situation. One does not speak about the shame, as one does not speak at all. One keeps silent.
Through complicity in the group, in the clan, such a shadow becomes an eagle. One comes into power and exercises it. Others should function, they should not come up, one(s) makes them submissive. The affected person feels constricted, encapsulated, inferior. He is unable to move and remains passive in humiliation, silently seeking revenge.
No conquering, no open conflict, but at some point violence erupts, spontaneously. Only the outbreak of violence is spontaneous in the eagle fern. The immersed find each other, what remains are ashes.
To put it more succinctly, what one should expect with the bracken: Adapt instead of show, create accomplices, stay hidden.
Secrecy, shame, silence, the group commands confinement, paralysis.
Spontaneous violence instead of open conflict.
How would it be different? Solutions have also been shown in the friction: Unconditional obedience is not a virtue. The same ones are not right just because there are many of them. Have reverence for the whole, but: "If you draw your strength from the masses, you lose yourselves." ***
** Erreibung: We are familiar with "Verreibung" as the German word for trituration. But "ver-reiben" sounds as if we want to rub something away, grind it, make it go away, get it small. The opposite is the case. We want to open, to make visible and tangible, to prepare. Isn't the word "rubbing" more appropriate? We owe Hans Ziller this inspiring deletion of the "V".
*** Sentence from the trituration examination by Susanne Diez, to whom I (author S.) sincerely thank for the many hours in which we come closer to our remedies together. She shows us her experience and creativity with the deer tongue fern in this booklet.