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Spongia tosta (Spong.)

Spongia tosta (Spong.) appears in 871 rubrics. Of these, 33 are single-remedy rubrics in which only this remedy is listed, and 65 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. The emphasis is on anxiety and fear, cheerfulness, delusions, singing, and the voice. A mood emerges that swings in rapid alternation between exuberance and dullness, courage and fear.

Anxiety

Anxiety is the largest main rubric. It occurs in bed and passes on sitting up, "Anxiety – bed, in – sitting up, passes on"; it accompanies sudden heat and the cough that turns into a dry one. It attaches to pains in the chest and cardiac region, to the future, and to one's own condition. In whooping cough, single-remedy rubrics also list fear and obstinacy. Small rubrics record that children want to be carried in croupy cough.

Cheerfulness and dullness

The alternation makes the remedy unmistakable. Cheerfulness alternates with oppression of the chest and palpitation, with confusion and distraction, and in a single-remedy rubric with destructiveness: "Cheerful, gay – alternating with – vandalism, destructiveness". Singing and dullness likewise alternate. Small rubrics add fear alternating with courage and cheerfulness, which follows exhaustion. Dancing does not ameliorate; it aggravates.

Voice

The voice fails, intermittent in the evening and without resonance, "Voice – intermittent, failing – evening". Added are aphonia after long talking and oversensitiveness to singing and noises.

Looking back and resignation

The counterpart to exuberance is dwelling in the past. A single-remedy rubric describes torment from the terrible scene of a past sad event, and a delusion gives it the form of visions of terrible events. There is a feeling of futility, "Resignation – futility, feeling of", and an inconsolable wish to die in fever. The small rubrics name brooding with suicidal disposition, talking of death, and discouragement that remains silent.

Doing and not doing

Work is shot through with alternation: laziness that works well once the person has begun, and cheerfulness alternating with aversion to work. When eating she is slow, speech is dragging, the staring in the morning is thoughtless.

Summary

The picture resembles a pendulum: singing and dancing are followed by exhaustion and brooding, and the anxiety breaks through at night in bed or in the cough. Where cheerfulness returns, it is not free of destructiveness and distraction.

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