Thallium

6.13 Thallium, Case 1A 40 year old woman has problems with her joints. Her right shoulder is painful, it is diagnosed as bursitis. Four weeks rest and some injections gave little relief. The pain is violent and her whole arm and hand tingles. The pain is worse when she lifts her arm and moves is forwards or backwards, better from letting it hang down or pulling it down. Sometimes her fingers tingle when she lets her arm hang down and it makes her drop things. Worse from a warm shower and around 7 pm. Also worse when she works hard. It started six months ago when she was working 12 hours a day for a while. Weather doesn’t affect it. Twenty four years ago she had neuritis in that same upper arm. She works as an assistant attorney and has 9 people working for her. She loves being in charge. She isn’t afraid of anything and will tackle whatever comes along. She is easily angered but it is also easily forgotten. She gets angry at injustice and when things don’t go the way she wants them to, or when people don’t stick to their agreements. She attacks them immediately. She is always loudly proclaiming her opinions and her ideas. She is independent and very black and white in her way of thinking. She has some problems with her own family and with her in laws. She doesn’t want to be too involved with her family because everybody always lived for himself. Her mother sent her to a catholic boarding school. There, as a torture, they often locked her up in a dark room or tied her up when she did something wrong. She ran away several times, but each time her mother sent her back because she did not believe these awful stories. Her mother couldn’t cope with five children at home. Her mother used to taunt her and once even cut off the tip her finger by squashing it with a metal box.
She has suffered from high blood pressure for a long time. It makes her feel rushed and restless, as if their are hordes of people chasing her. She suffered from heart problems for a while, with pain radiating down her left arm, making the arm turn blue. She also gets back pains, radiating from her coccyx via the outside of her pelvis to her stomach, going up to her chest and down to her groin. It is a drawing sort of pain, worse from tension and before urination, better from pressure, and sitting hunched up tightly. It started during her first pregnancy when she slipped on the ice and fell on her coccyx.
She gets frequent headaches, starting from her neck, going to the forehead, > fresh air, < turning head, noise, > lying flat in bed, sleep. She gets pain in her joints, in ankles, knees and wrists, < rain, < winter, < cold. She gets bronchitis 2-3 times a year, coughs up green-brown smelly lumps, < sea. Frequent vaginal discharge. As a child she had profuse salivation, it was so bad that they had to buy her a new pillow one.GeneralsBuild: rather overweight.
Weather: < too hot and too damp, < draught, < sea.
Perspiration: profuse, < night (3).
Time: < 7 pm
Desires: sweet, chocolate, cake, spices, mango.
Aversion: fruit, snails, buttermilk, yogurt.
Food: < oranges.Analysis and reactionThis woman had been coming to see me from time to time for the past seven years. She had had the following remedies: Kali carbonicum, Dulcamara, Natrium muriaticum, Staphysagria, Helleborus, Natrium sulphuricum, Arnica, Lachesis, Caulophyllum, Pulsatilla, Aurum, Cereus bonplandii, Cactus, kreosotum, Latrodectus mactans, Viburnum, Calcium carbonicum, Mancinella, Crataegus, Kali iodatum, Kali fluoratum, Sanguinaria, Rauwolfia. Only Aurum, Cactus and Crataegus had a lasting effect, where Crataegus cured the heart problems.
At this point she returned with the shoulder pains. She felt hurried, as if being chased by hordes of people. Her blood pressure was still high and she had profuse perspiration at night. This reminded me of Mercurius, also because of her managerial position. Other confirming symptoms: angry < injustice, independent, closed, doesn’t let anyone intimi-date her, attacks people if necessary, full of principles, black-white thinking, bossy, high blood pressure, overweight. When I asked her about salivation and she told me the story of buying a new pillow because of it I thought I had found the right remedy.
A month after Mercurius vivus 1M there wasn’t much change, except that she had twice been threatened with a knife at work. I was surprised, because Mercurius did seem to fit. Suddenly I remembered Thallium, the element that is next in line after Mercurius. After Thallium 1M she really started to improve. She has taken the remedy five times during the course of two years and all her complaints have nearly gone. On hindsight we can see several confirming symptoms for Thallium: tingling, violent pain, neuritis, nobody believed her, she was tied up and locked in a dark room, they cut the tip of her finger off. Here we see the theme of restriction, confinement and disbelief belonging to Stage 13.