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Tarentula hispanica (Tarent.)

Tarentula hispanica (Tarent.) appears in 1,172 rubrics in the Repertorium. Of these, 97 are single-remedy rubrics in which only this remedy is listed, and 76 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. The main emphases are Children, Sadness, Colors, Restlessness, Fear, Hysteria, and Music. These rubrics yield the picture of a person who cannot come to rest, discharges the restlessness in movement and destruction, observes and deceives others, and finds relief only in music and rhythm.

Restlessness and motion

Restlessness is the continuous theme. The rubrics record a mania for motion, wild motions, the hurry with which the person rushes and drives everyone else on, and the impression that things are not moving fast enough. The restlessness shows in the limbs and legs, in the stomach with pain and at night, in asthma, and in chorea; at night it extends from midnight to five o'clock. A single-remedy rubric records the paradox that the person must move constantly, yet walking aggravates. Anxiety follows the same contradiction, since rapid walking and physical exertion ameliorate it. It seems to be a restlessness that demands discharge without being cured by the motion itself. The gestures reminiscent of knitting and the jumping, which in children ends with a terrible scream, accordingly appear pointless.

Music

Music alone stills the restlessness. The rubrics list music that is pleasant, that the person likes to hear or play, that soothes, and whose rhythmic form ameliorates even when the limbs are restless. Drumming produces euphoria, yet the Repertorium also records restlessness caused by music. In children there is a pronounced sense of rhythm, in hyperactive children a calming effect of music, and in nursing infants a desire for music while being breastfed. Music also ameliorates in hysteria. Singing, on the other hand, can intensify to exhaustion until the person is hoarse, and occurs together with dancing and weeping.

Dissimulation and observation

One group of rubrics points to dissimulation. The person wants to show that she is sick, pities herself and wants to play sick, simulates fainting in fits, and pretends to take the medicine but mostly throws it away. In children the same appears as tricky, clever, and cunning. The pattern is captured most precisely by the rubric "Looking – directions, in all – hysteria, to observe the effect of her/his actions on others, in." The hysterical person thus looks in all directions to see what her behavior produces in others. Rubrics on hiding, on being closed, and on secretiveness in insanity fit with this.

Destruction and violence against oneself

The restlessness turns into destruction. Destructiveness appears alone, with cunning, and alternating with fear; it threatens with words of destruction, with death and destruction, and ends in mania, followed by laughing and apologies. The person tears up her books, cuts objects open, bites her clothes, and strikes friends in anger. Much of this is directed against the person herself: she strikes her head and body with her hands, strikes herself in rage, pulls her own hair, and presses her head with her hands. The striking occurs when she is unobserved; this can be read as the counterpart to the observation described above. The destruction appears not as an unrestrained outburst but as an action with an element of calculation, often followed by an apology.

Colors, light, and sensory impressions

The colors form a group of their own and are among the main emphases. The person has an aversion to strong and bright colors and especially to red, yellow, green, and black, yet desires dark colors and is delighted by blue, green, and red. The contradictions between the rubrics show that it is not a single color but the impression that is at the center. In addition there is an aversion to lights, while shining objects ameliorate. The mind reacts violently to sensory stimuli without this amounting to a uniform tendency.

Fear, grief, and ill humor

The fear relates to physical threat. The person fears that everything will fall on her, that she will bump into something, that she is thirsty when drinking and yet cannot drink, and she fears death during convalescence; single-remedy rubrics record deadly anxiety and fear of typhus. The sadness has particular times and conditions: it occurs in the evening and improves while eating and after supper, it follows sexual excitement, it seizes the person on entering the house, and she sees herself as in the wrong, as if she were to blame. On the other side stands irritability. After grief or difficulties with someone, the person becomes bilious and choleric, at times malicious or spiteful, and responds to grief or disappointment reactively with malice. The mood changes suddenly, and liveliness alternates with grief and with cares.

Sexuality

Sexuality appears as aggressive approach, among the single-remedy rubrics even as aggressive-erotic. The desire is violent in women and in men, in nymphomania and in sexual mania. According to one rubric, coition ameliorates irritability, but according to others it aggravates nymphomania and the violent desire of women. The rubrics on hypochondria after masturbation and on sadness after sexual excitement indicate that relief is not lasting.

Children

With 154 rubrics, Children form the largest field. They are rhythmic and musical, hyperactive, tricky, malicious in periodic phases and spiteful after grief or disappointment, strike themselves, as newborns cry persistently with restless legs, and play with their fingers. The picture of the children repeats what can be read in the adults: restlessness, music as relief, cunning, and the tendency to test the effect on others.

Summary

For Tarentula hispanica the Repertorium shows a restlessness that demands discharge and finds in motion, destruction, and self-injury what it cannot resolve in rest. Behind it stands a mind that observes others, dissimulates, and tests its effect, and that calms itself only in the rhythm of music. The picture remains split between haste and exhaustion, between deception and remorse.

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