Aurum

6.11 Aurum, Case 1A 40 year old man suffers from several complaints. Since about 5 years ago his the vision in his left eye started become hazy and now his sight has been reduced to 5% in this eye. He also suffers from headaches, worse when he has been working hard. He gets a sort of ‘starting pain’ in his feet, they creak in the morning when he bends his heels. His nose is blocked and the eustachian tube feels full, better from blowing while holding his nose shut. He gets a peppery type of sensation in his mouth when he eats currants or raisins. He has two operations to lengthen his Achilles tendon, because he always walked on his toes.
All these troubles started after stress at work. He was given a bad report because they wanted to get rid of him. And all this because he did not want to participate in a certain research project because he simply wanted to carry doing his other work properly. He thought putting in 10 hours a day was more than enough, he also did not like the mentality of the other people, they were always very blunt. He felt he wasn’t respected and it made him feel depressed, as if there was nothing to look forward to in the future.
And when his wife suggested it might be his own fault he felt completely betrayed. He doesn’t understand why they should want to get rid of him because he has always worked hard and has built up quite a reputation as a surgeon. He doesn’t understand why they don’t want to keep what he has built up and expand it for the university college. But apparently all professors have to do what the government tells them to do: so many hours of work, so many hours of teaching and so many hours of research.
Hard work does him good, he is good at his job and he can do operations that nobody else can do. He wants to be the best and needs to be appreciated. He is a perfectionist and is afraid of failure, which gets worse as soon as doubt starts to creep in. Criticism and stress aggravate the problem. What he likes best is to do his work and to train the students. He has been feeling tense for two years, but none of his colleagues have noticed it. He likes to keep his problems to himself. He is very closed and often doesn’t know himself what he would enjoy doing. He is loyal to his colleagues often at the cost of his own wishes. The present problems have made him wonder whether he should look for another job, but he is afraid of being rejected. Verbal communication is his strong point and he gets on well with his colleagues. One day, after a quarrel, he suddenly felt an acute fear of death. He thought he had a brain tumour because of all the headaches. He is quite nervous, fiddles with his nails, picks the skin around the rims. He loves classical music and plays the clarinet himself.
Dreams: operations that go wrong, slides that are in the wrong order during a lecture; burying his father.GeneralsWeather: warm, > walking outside, -> sea and water.
Perspiration: profuse, < stress, sweaty feet.
Time: < night; 3 am, morning.
Desires: fat, gravy, chips with mayonnaise, chocolate, coffee, grapefruit.
Aversion: meat, fruit.
Food: < currants and raisins.
Sleep: >>, unrefreshed in the morning; awake around 3 o’clock, anxiety about the problems at work.AnalysisA normal repetorisation will bring up Aurum: serious, perfectionist, anxiety of conscience, workaholic, > work, music, < 3 am, > outside, < contradiction (of his wife, at work).
Later on the group analysis proved to bring up the same remedy: the nature of his work indicates that his remedy is one of the metals. This must be a metal in the Gold series, because of his desire to be the best, his need for respect and the independent way of working. The attack on his position indicates one of the later stages: Aurum, Mercurius, Thallium or Plumbum. His strong urge to keep the development in surgical techniques for the benefit of the university college shows us that his remedy must be Aurum.ReactionOne month after Aurum 1M he feels much better. His mood has improved, he has given up his job and is busy applying for a post somewhere else. The headache and pain in his feet have gone. The first two weeks after taking the remedy he had a feeling of fullness in his stomach, not related to eating, with pain in his lower abdomen and urging for stool. He felt quite ill with it. He dreamt about the death of his grandfather and cried, which he hadn’t been able to do at the time, when he was only 10 years old. He no longer dreams about his work and the things that went wrong. Three months later he has improved even more and he is really enjoying life. He still needed an eye operation, Aurum wasn’t able to cure that.