Page 62 - Spring 2019 Journal

• Feeling that thoughts come so rapidly that the sufferer can’t grasp them.
Dr. James Tyler Kent was an American physician and homeopath of the last century. His voluminous works that describe human ailments associated with their homeopathic medicines are still used today. In his treatise, Materia Medica,2 he states the following for the study of Can- nabis indica:
• Things seem strange and unreal. He seems as though in a dream. Confusion as to his personal identity. Makes mistakes in writing and speaking, and misunderstands what he reads and hears said.
• Sounds in the room seem to come from a distance. When she speaks, it seems as though someone else were speaking. Seems as though her senses would vanish.
• Despondent in forenoon, lively in the afternoon. Fear of going to bed. Hysterical feeling in the throat. Anxiety in the stomach. Confusion of mind and vertigo.
• Chordee (curved penis). Burning at starting and closing of urination. Intense stabbing pain in urethra when not urinating. Most difficult and painful urination. Pain that extends from meatus back along the urethra while urine flows.
• Pressing out feeling at the orifice of the urethra after urination in a woman. Violent urging to urinate. Constant or frequent urging to urinate. Involuntary urination. Violent pain at the close of urination. Bloody urine.
• Intense sexual excitement in both sexes.
AIMLESS HARRY
How are these symptoms addressed using homeopathy? Let me illus-
trate using a clinical example. Harry was his mother’s greatest worry. At age twenty-four, Harry was aimless and incapable of carrying through a directive and had pie-in-the-sky ideas and impractical plans that he never followed through on. His mother recalled that this had been a long-lasting problem for him. Harry often made his mother squirm with discomfort and embarrassment due to his immoderate and inappropriate laughter, which seemed out of context.
Had he had an increased appetite, physical coordination problems or slow physical reflexes, his mother might have suspected the use of marijuana, but Harry actually didn’t have any interest in weed. However, Harry’s father did. In fact, a day rarely went by without Harry Sr. getting high. This had been his lifestyle since college, well before Harry Jr. was conceived. While Harry’s mom had lost interest in smoking the stuff around the time they married, Harry Sr. either smoked it with friends on weekends or alone in the garage daily. Harry Sr. was a musician, with a home music studio in the garage. The family struggled financially because he always seemed to have exalted ideas of what he was going to do with his music. Harry Sr. was loved by all, due to his childlike, easygoing and sanguine personality. His wife admitted that he had stage presence and a great deal of charisma, but that didn’t pay the mortgage. It seemed as though Harry Sr. just hadn’t grown up.
60 Wise Traditions
Harry Jr.’s mom worried that the son had inherited his father’s personality. Young Harry spent far too much time theorizing about and pondering the science fiction books he devoured. At first, his mom thought it was intelligent and precocious of him to take these theories to a deeper level and discuss them late at night instead of getting to sleep at an early hour. Sure, he had little interest in looking for a job or earning some pocket money, but his mother initially rationalized that, in her admiration of her son’s deep thoughts. But now that he had graduated from college, she couldn’t help but note that he seemed to have little common sense and no interest in moving out of the house and facing adulthood.
It was around this time that Harry’s mom learned about homeopathy from her friend Darcy, who had been studying it for months. Darcy knew enough about the family to recog- nize that there might be a homeopathic medicine that could help Harry Jr., but because she was still new in her studies, it didn’t occur to her that homeopathy might be helpful to Harry Sr. as well.
Darcy offered to take Harry Jr.’s case as part of her homeopathy class study, and this is what happened. On Darcy’s recommendation, Harry Jr. took Cannabis sativa 200C once per day for three weeks. Within the first few weeks, Harry’s mom noticed some minor changes that only the watchful eye of a mother would recognize. She noticed that Harry was getting to bed at a reasonable time and was waking proportionally early in the morning.
Second, she was surprised when Harry ini- tiated a conversation with her about some ideas he’d had about pursuing a job with a neighbor’s advertising business. A few months earlier, their neighbor had been looking for someone to work in his shipping and receiving department. When the neighbor originally proposed the idea, Harry’s eyes had glazed over, indicating his lack of interest at the time. But now, he returned to the idea with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
The third remarkable change came after two months, when Harry declared that he had gotten the job in the shipping and receiving department and was hoping to find his own apartment within a few months. He even had a timetable of some of his goals scribbled on paper. Harry’s mother
SPRING 2019