Argentum CaseA 65 year old woman comes with arthritis. She is dignified, quiet, but slightly tense, also a little arrogant.
The joint problems are located in shoulders, thumbs and knees. Her shoulders are often painful and stiff on trying to lift her arms. Pain in the front of her left shoulder, radiating to left arm and wrist, < when breathing out. Both thumbs are painful at the wrist joint. Knees painful after cycling. Pains are worse in the heat, summer, damp weather and in the morning. Sometimes pain in the lower back. The diagnosis is arthritis.
Her bowels are slow and she has frequent colds from being in a draught.
Past history of two eye operations, when she was 9 and 15, because of a lazy left eye. Also an operation for painful and bleeding piles when she was 44.
General characteristics:
Temperature: she likes the summer, but the sun sometimes gives her a headache.
complaints aggravated from warmth and damp; little perspiration.
Desires: sweet (3), salt (2), pineapple (2), apple sauce (2).
Aversion: broad beans (2).
Menses: stopped when she was 55; used to be a little tense before menses.
Sleep: difficulty falling asleep, uses a sleeping tablet; sfleeps on her right side.
Mind: she says about her character: impatient, wants to do everything in a hurry, easy going, too soft, rather than too hard. Other people think she is a bit pushy, not easily shaken. She doesn’t get angry, is very restrained, except when people say something about her that isn’t true.
She likes to behave in a civilised manner: she won’t boast, for instance, about her beautiful home, for which she saved up for many years. She likes soft music, such as piano or violin music. Religion is important to her, because it gives her strength and security. She suffers from fear of heights on swings, high towers and in the mountains.
She is happily married. Her husband works hard and has not always given her the attention she would have liked. He is also rather strict and was often angry with their eldest child, who couldn’t learn very well and only managed to finish his secondary school with great difficulty. She still cries sometimes because her husband was far too strict with him.
She doesn’t often feel like sexual contact.
AnalysisThis last case is the most beautiful, from a homoeopathic point of view. One dose of Arg-m 1M cleared up all the problems and she feels much better, mentally and energetically.
At the end of the consultation I still did not know which remedy I was going to prescribe, until I asked myself where I had felt this sort of atmosphere before, with the slightly arrogant and at the same time anxious and trembling appearance. This was a personality that reminded me of the previously mentioned Arg-m cases. Then it was no longer difficult to recognise the other indications of Arg-m: the fear of heights, desire for sweet and the arthritis.