Repertory › Remedies in the repertory

Hyoscyamus niger (Hyos.)

Hyoscyamus niger (Hyos.) appears in the repertory in 2,277 rubrics. Of these, 187 are single-remedy rubrics in which only this remedy is listed, and 274 are small rubrics with no more than two other remedies. The emphasis lies on Delusions, Delirium, Gestures, Insanity, the Children rubrics, Speaking, Laughing, and Love. Together they yield the picture of a person thrown out of order by suspicion, jealousy, and wounded longing, whose behavior tips over into grotesque, uninhibited, and shameless forms.

Delirium and delusion

The delirium shows a reality that has lost its order. It produces people who prepare for a wedding, who lament imaginary faults or an imaginary wrong, who have been accused of theft, or who refuse medicine. It occurs with twitching and angular movements, with rattling of mucus, during menses or with threatened abortion, alternating with laughing, and with whistling. The delusions carry the confusion further: letters are ants, objects are animals, animals move about in a cup, people appear grotesque, one is a harlequin, one is hunting peacocks, chasing them away, or driving them ahead, one has been sold, bound in chains, in a debate, or in the wrong place. The confusion is clearest where an object turns into something that can be climbed: "Delusions – stove – takes the stove for a tree – climb it, and wants to". With the same consistency of delusion the delirious person embraces the stove, and in heat he wraps himself up, as the rubric says: "Delirium – wraps himself in fur in summer".

Fear of betrayal and poisoning

The fear of this remedy has a clear center. The king-pin symptom is "Fear – betrayed/deceived, of being". The accompanying commentary reads it as a fear that trust will be abused and that something of one's previous possessions will be lost, a fear directed less at the illness itself than at its consequences. Fitting this are the rubrics on the feeling of being constantly deceived and lied to, even by fate, and on the suspicion of being poisoned. It is sharpened in a single-remedy rubric: "Fear – medicines, of – poison, medicines are". Accordingly, the person refuses medicine and evades every strategy for taking it, likewise in madness and in delirium. She also fears drinks that are offered. Further rubrics record the fear of being devoured, especially by animals, the fear of falling from a height, and the fear of suddenly losing one's voice.

Gestures, motions, and automatisms

With about 75 rubrics on Gestures, this is one of the densest fields. Described are bizarre, angular, clinging, and awkward movements, behavior like one intoxicated or drunk, like an actor, or like a monkey. The hands grasp at the air, pick, crack nuts, clench into a fist, catch things that are not there, and play with the buttons of the clothing. In brain disease the repertory records the grasping at the bedclothes: "Gestures, makes – hands, involuntary motions of the – picking – bedclothes, at – brain affection, in". Added to these are brushing the face, rubbing the nose, and imitating animal voices and movements. The movements seem to have detached themselves from the will and gone their own way.

Nakedness, shamelessness, and sexuality

With the order, restraint also falls away. The repertory lists the desire to be naked, in drunkenness, mania, and hyperesthesia of the skin, during menses, and in bed in the morning, running about naked, exposing the genitals, touching the genitals in public, as well as exhibitionism and shamelessness in bed. Children are included as well, from violent desire through shamelessness in girls to a tendency to masturbate in boys. Two single-remedy rubrics link sexuality with purpose and compensation: seeking reassurance about sexual intercourse, and paying with sexuality. The exposure here perhaps shows less lust than the loss of shyness and protection: a person without a covering, who surrenders and offers herself at the same time. A further single-remedy rubric fits this: "Ingratiating – feeling she/he must ingratiate herself/himself to be loved".

Jealousy and disappointed love

Jealousy occupies a broad space, listed also in men, accompanied by anger, incoherent talking, grief, and lewd railing. It can drive to murder or to a wish for revenge, it can trigger catalepsy, and the idea that the spouse is unfaithful is listed separately. Closely connected are the ailments from disappointed love, which end in raving, epilepsy, amenorrhea, laughing, and suicidal disposition, namely in the impulse to drown oneself or to jump into a river. Even laughing, including forced laughing, is listed as a consequence of disappointed love. Alongside fear and suspicion there stands thus a mind that turns pain into its opposite.

Raving, stupor, and alternation

The raving also has its peculiarities. It lasts day and night, is hardly containable, may be joined by striking, biting, and scratching every person who interferes, and by the desire to kill everyone she sees; at the same time it is listed as alternating with calm: "Raving, rage, fury – alternating with – quiet, tranquility". Similarly, mania alternates with insanity and insanity with stupor. In stupor there is a peculiar presence: questions are answered correctly before the state returns, as in the rubric "Stupor – answers questions correctly, but stupor returns immediately". Alongside these stand unconsciousness with a rigid posture like a statue, coma from alcohol and fever, and delirium tremens, which appears after epileptiform attacks or in which the patient must be restrained.

Speech and laughter

Speech is inappropriate and excessive: irrelevant, unrelated to the subject, raised to the point of screaming, with words that are pushed out loudly one at a time and grow louder with every word. There are muttering, talkativeness about business and household matters, talking of war and slaughter, also in sleep, and lewd language even during coitus. Laughing is listed in drunkenness, without cause, giggling, forced, or at reproof, and it alternates with weeping, with silence, and with singing. Laughing without occasion points to a mind in which the link between occasion and response has come undone.

Children

In children (194 rubrics) the traits reappear on a smaller scale: curiosity, intrusiveness, disturbing the parents in conversation, stereotypically repeated questions, snapping at everyone, playing with dirt and feces, fear of bullying, schizophrenia, and grasping at the genitals during convulsions.

Summary

In the repertory Hyoscyamus niger appears as a remedy in which suspicion, jealousy, and wounded feelings dissolve self-control until behavior falls into the grotesque, the naked, and the wild. The king-pin symptom, fear of being betrayed, suggests reading the disinhibition as the result of broken trust: whoever feels continually threatened and deceived gives up bearing and shame, and the reality on which one can no longer rely turns into animals, specters, and chains.

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