Repertory › Remedies in the repertory

Tuberculinum bovinum (Kent) (Tub.)

Tuberculinum bovinum (Kent) (Tub.) appears in 1,192 rubrics in the Repertorium. Of these, 71 are single-remedy rubrics in which only this remedy is listed, and 81 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. By far the largest emphasis lies in the rubrics on Children (331), followed by Fear, Delusions, Anxiety, Sadness, and Anger. They yield the picture of a restless, changeable person who cannot bear attachment and constancy, presses for freedom, variety, and intensity, and in outbursts fluctuates between destruction and mildness.

The child at the center

Of the 1,188 rubrics in all, 331 belong to Children, and the remedy carries a strikingly differentiated picture here. The children are disobedient toward their parents, insensitive to punishment, and provoke quarrels or reprimands. They are regarded as manipulative, tricky, cunning, and stubborn, yet unreasonable. Recorded is violence against the parents, up to the rubric in which a son scratches his father's face and strikes him, as well as throwing food and abusing the mother with throwing the medicine out of the window. A single-remedy rubric records that the child is successful at school until a severe illness sets in; another names a delay in development in reading. According to a further rubric, behavior disorders occur only at home, while the child remains normal at school and toward strangers. Added are sensitiveness to music, shrill screaming, and the wish not to be laid down after nursing but to be carried. The picture of the child thus joins intellect and wildness, outward adaptation and destruction within the family.

Destruction, malice, and mildness

The second major line is aggression and its alternation with gentleness. The Repertorium knows destructiveness, active destructiveness, and the tendency to break things, with the peculiarity that it concerns valuable objects belonging to others, or breaking "with a great fuss." The rage comes suddenly and over trifles, and on waking the irritability is already there as soon as the eyes are opened. Especially characteristic are the single-remedy rubrics in which malice and destructiveness stand alternating with mildness, likewise mildness alternating with obstinacy. The malice is directed readily against animals: dogs, tormenting and provoking animals, in children kicking pets out of malice. A small rubric describes malignity that increases with reproof. The anger is thus less a lasting grudge than a discharge, followed without transition by its opposite.

Restlessness and urge for freedom

The remedy shows a pronounced restlessness that is reflected in way of life and relationships. Single-remedy rubrics name frequent change of occupation, working rapidly, a great urge for freedom, the desire to live fully and savor everything, and the feeling of living breathlessly. Fitting with these are smaller rubrics on adventurousness, on persistent desire for changes, on the wish always to want something different, on mobility, inventiveness, and avant-gardism. The desire to travel by train, the desire for country life in the mountains, amelioration from traveling, and the desire to go hunting draw the same movement as longing for distance and expanse. In return there is a lack of perseverance, and work is rejected negativistically. Whoever always wants to go further evidently does not arrive; a small rubric consequently describes the feeling of being burned out.

Relationship and attachment

On the level of relationships the restlessness continues. Recorded are brief and casual relationships, intercultural relationships and foreign partners, beside them the inability to sustain a long-lasting relationship and to commit at all. A single-remedy rubric records that the person does not say goodbye, another a sexual come-on, and a small rubric describes the desire to pine away for someone. Intensity and fleetingness stand side by side here. Added are a feeling of being adopted and the groundless aversion to certain people. The picture can be read as closeness that is sought and at the same time not endured, because it would cost freedom.

Fear and anxiety

The fear divides according to its objects and shows a peculiar medical coloring. Recorded are fear of tuberculosis in the initial stage, of dogs in hydrocephalic complaints and in children, at night in tuberculous meningitis, as well as of animals with fur. Added are fear of being buried alive, fear of feathers, and fear that misfortune threatens the family. The anxiety concentrates in two single-remedy rubrics on the time until midnight; in children it occurs at night without comprehensible cause. The aversion to furry animals, to cats, and to animals as a whole corresponds to the fear of fur. The animal appears here as a source of threat and at the same time as an object of aggression, a dual relation that is rarely so clear in the Repertorium.

Delusions and bodily sensation

Among the delusions are several rubrics relating to space and motion. The bed rocks from side to side like a hammock, the head turns in a circle, during vertigo persons appear too large or enlarged, and when rocking in a chair there is a threat of falling backward. The room appears too large or strange and foreign; a single-remedy rubric describes the feeling of being crushed by the hurrying crowd. The illusion of rocking is also recorded as a single-remedy rubric for the bed. To this belong the feeling of not growing old and blindness to danger. The world evidently moves with the person, and it is too wide or too narrow.

Voice, pain, and unconsciousness

A smaller group concerns voice and consciousness. Aphonia is painful or transient, the voice nasal and intermittent, loss of speech occurs in tabes mesenterica. Unconsciousness is connected with screaming out, coma with tuberculous meningitis and with fever. Especially drastic are the single-remedy rubrics in which the person pulls or tears at her own hair from pain or during unconsciousness. Delirium alternates with sleeplessness and sadness, insanity with inflammatory fever and sadness. Here too the alternation stands out, not a fixed state.

Summary

In the Repertorium, Tuberculinum bovinum (Kent) appears as a remedy of alternation, urge, and transgression of limits. Children who evade rules and punishment, people who keep relationships brief and cannot bear attachment, a life of haste and urge to travel, a rage that destroys and passes without transition into mildness, plus fear of fur and tuberculosis: these traits fit together into a picture of inconstancy, behind which stand the need for freedom and the fear of being shut into order, closeness, or permanence.

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