Repertory › Remedies in the repertory

Aconitum napellus (Acon.)

Aconitum napellus (Acon.) appears in 1,648 rubrics in the repertory. Of these, 79 are single-remedy rubrics listing only this remedy, and 111 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. The emphasis lies on Fear and Anxiety, on Ailments from fright, on Delusions, Delirium, and Restlessness, as well as on Children and Childbirth. From these emerges the picture of a person struck by a sudden blow, who stands in mortal anxiety, restlessness, and violent excitement without being able to compose himself.

Fear and Anxiety

The core lies in the anxiety that seizes the whole person. The repertory records it in striking breadth: as anxiety during fever, with hemorrhage, with toothache, in infants, as anxiety that interrupts sleep or breaks in suddenly at night, and as anxiety that cold drinks ameliorate. It rises to panic and is explicitly framed as inconsolable in two rubrics: "Anxiety – inconsolable" and "Anxiety – panic and despair, to". Fear has many objects, but above all death. It occurs with convulsions, with pneumonia, with hemoptysis, after menses, and in pregnancy. Beside these stand concrete fears: of underpasses and subways, of flying, of approaching vehicles, of wolves, of wind, and of going out into the open. One rubric describes how fear switches off the intellect: "Fear, phobia – headless, blind, senseless". Indifference can follow the anxiety, as if it were exhausted.

Fright and Aftereffects

Fright supplies the occasion. The repertory knows ailments from violent fright, irritability and timidity following fright, and in children bashful behavior after being frightened. Even the sight of an accident continues to act, as the single-remedy rubric "Fright – ailments from – accident, from sight of an – long ago" records. Startling remains: the person wakes with fright at the slightest noise, is startled by coughing, and starts from sleep. Labor, too, can set in prematurely from fear or fright.

Restlessness and Raving

From fear arises movement. Restlessness occurs internally, while walking, with pain in the sciatic nerve and in angina pectoris, and it shows in bed as tossing about, especially during cough. A group of single-remedy rubrics links it with impatience and obstinacy: the person throws himself about impatiently, defiantly, with red cheeks or in fever. Where the excitement discharges, there stands raving, recorded as paroxysmal in children and at the beginning of menses and alternating with laughing, weeping, or clear consciousness. Delirium bears the same features: the person jumps out of bed at night, talks of death, grasps the genitals in delirium, or screams for help with a fixed stare, as recorded in inflammation of the brain.

Delusions and Body Sensation

The king-pin symptom is "Delusions – body – deformed, some part is". The note on the rubric describes it as the feeling that some unspecified part of the body has lost its original shape. The neighboring rubrics continue this: parts of the body are thick or deformed, faces grow, the brain is smaller than the skull. A group of its own among the single-remedy rubrics relocates thinking into the abdomen. The thoughts come from the stomach, the brain is located there, and it holds: "Delusions – stomach – mental activity takes place in the stomach". To this are added the deception of being drunk, the delusion of bumping into everyone one meets, and the idea of driving sheep. One can see in this an experience in which the body becomes alien and thinking placeless.

Pregnancy and Childbirth

Pregnancy is a focus of its own. Recorded are fear of death during pregnancy, fear that the child is deformed, anxiety in the region of the heart, aversion to friends, and absence of tenderness. In childbirth, restlessness, fear of death, and the delusion that one is about to die stand side by side; a single-remedy rubric lists a constrictive sensation during labor: "Childbirth – constriction, sensation of, during". Wrong position of the fetus and fright as a cause are also listed.

Children

Among the rubrics on Children (146), Anxiety and Fear predominate. Children show panic to despair and fear the wind; in incipient brain diseases, fear and restlessness are recorded. They scream when moved and pluck at the upper lip. Infants cry immediately after birth. The picture corresponds to that of adults in miniature: a shock that cannot be calmed.

Alternation of States

Against the excitement stand counterpoles that alternate state for state. Activity alternates with sluggishness, dullness with desire for mental exertion, desire for company with aversion, cheerfulness with despair. In the depths the repertory records coma with half-open eyes and unreactive pupils, dullness from smoking and on entering a warm room. Speech is at times laconic, at times rambling. One rubric falls out of the frame: clairvoyant dreams solve the important questions of the day.

Summary

Aconitum napellus shows in the repertory a remedy of suddenness. An experience strikes into the person, and what follows is fear of death, restlessness, and an excitement that alternates between raving, delirium, and rigidity. The body image falls out of shape, thinking migrates into the abdomen, and even long-past frights continue to act, as if the shock had never ceased.

A reference work for professionals; it does not replace diagnosis or treatment.