Sepia sep.
Characteristic
Adapted to persons of dark hair, rigid fibre, but mild and easy disposition.
Diseases of women; particularly those occurring during pregnancy, child-bed, and lactation; or diseases attended with sudden prostration and sinking faintness (Murex, Nux m.).
"The washerwoman's remedy;" complaints that are brought on or are aggravated after laundry work.
Pains extend from other parts to the back (rev. of Sab.), are attended with shuddering (with chilliness, Puls.).
Particularly sensitive to cold air, "chills so easily;" lack of vital heat, especially in chronic disease (in acute disease, Ledum).
Faints easily: after getting wet; from extremes of heat or cold; riding in a carriage; while kneeling in church.
Sensation of a ball in inner parts; during menses, pregnancy, lactation; with constipation, diarrhœa, hemorrhoids, leucorrhœa and uterine affections.
Coldness on the vertex with headache (Ver.—heat of vertex, Cal., Graph., Sul.).
Anxiety: with fear, flushes of heat over face and head; about real or imaginary evils; toward evening.
Great sadness and weeping. Dread of being alone; of men; of meeting friends; with uterine troubles.
Indifferent: even to one's family; to one's occupation (Fl. ac., Phos. ac.); to those whom she loves best.
Indolent; does not want to do anything, either work or play, even an exertion to think.
Headache: in terrific shocks; at menstrual nisus, with scanty flow; in delicate, sensitive, hysterical women; pressing, bursting < motion, stooping, mental labor, > by external pressure, continued hard motion.
Great falling of the hair, after chronic headaches or at the climacteric.
Yellowness of the face; conjunctivæ; yellow spots on the chest; a yellow saddle across upper part of cheeks and nose.
Herpes circinnatus in isolated spots on upper part of body (in intersecting rings over whole body, Tell.).
Painful sensation of emptiness, "all-gone feeling," in the epigastrium, not > by eating (Chel., Murex, Phos.)
Pot-belliedness of mothers (of children, Sulph.).
Tongue foul, but becomes clear at each menstrual nisus, returns when flow ceases; swelling and cracking of lower lip.
Constipation: during pregnancy (Alum.); stool hard, knotty, in balls, insufficient, difficult; pain in rectum during and long after stool (Nitr. ac., Rat., Sul.); sense of weight or ball in anus, not > by stool.
Urine: deposits a reddish, clay-colored sediment, which adheres to the vessel as if it had been burnt on; fetid, so offensive must be removed from the room (fetid after standing, Indium).
Enuresis: the bed is wet almost as soon as the child goes to sleep (Kreos.); always during the first sleep.
Gleet: painless, yellowish, staining linen; meatus glued together in morning; obstinate, of long standing (Kali iod.); sexual organs, weak and exhausted.
Violent stitches upward in the vagina; lancinating pains from the uterus to the umbilicus.
Prolapse of uterus and vagina; pressure and bearing down as if everything would protrude from pelvis; must cross her limbs to prevent it; with oppression of breathing (Agar., Lil., Murex).
Irregular menses of nearly every form—early, late, scanty, profuse, amenorrhœa or menorrhagia—when associated with above-named symptoms.
Morning sickness of pregnancy; the sight or thought of food sickens (Nux); the smell of cooking food nauseates (Ars., Colch.).
Dyspnœa: < sitting, after sleep, in room, > dancing or walking rapidly.
Erythism: flushes of heat from least motion; with anxiety and faintness; followed by perspiration over whole body; climacteric (Lach., Sang., Sulph., Tub.); ascend from pelvic organs.
Itching of skin; of various parts; of external genitalia; is not > by scratching, and is apt to change to burning (Sulph.).
Relations
Complementary: Natrum mur.
Inimical: to, Lach., should not be used before or after; to, Puls., with which it should never be alternated.
Often indicated after: Silicea, Sulphur.
A single dose often acts curatively for many weeks.
Aggravation
In afternoon or evening; from cold air or dry east wind; sexual excesses; at rest; sultry, moist weather; before a thunderstorm.
Amelioration
Warmth of bed, hot applications; violent exercise.
Many symptoms, especially those of head, heart and pelvis, are both < and > by rest and exercise.
Type
Many types; quotidian most common. Monthly (Nux, Puls.—every six or twelve months, Lach.). Quotidian; tertian; quartan. Bilious, remittent, malarial, typhoid.
Time
9 or 10 A. M.—4 to 6 P. M. Indefinite periods; time not marked.
Cause
In women, uterine diseases, menstrual delays, suppression or irregularities are often present. Constitutional chronic disease usually found.
Chill
With thirst. Shaking chill for an hour in the evening, with brown, acrid-smelling urine; he must lie down. Chilliness from every motion, though in a warm room (Nux). Chill commencing in fingers and toes (Nat.) in chest (Apis) and between shoulder-blades in back (Caps.). Violent headache during chill, external warmth is unbearable (Puls.). Icy coldness of the whole body, she could not get warm in warm room. At 11 A. M. a shaking chill, beginning with very cold feet, thence over whole body; she had to lie down, became hot at 4 A. M., and slight sweat during night over whole body. Chill, with icy cold hands and warm feet, or vice versa. Very cold feet, with headache, evening and in the morning. Icy cold and damp feet all day, like standing in cold water up to ankles, (Lyc., Puls.—icy coldness of right limb, as in cold water, Sab.). Coldness, with deadness of the limbs and fingers.
Heat
With less thirst than in chill. Attacks of flushes of heat, as if hot water were poured over one (Rhus), with redness of face, sweat of the whole body, with anxiety, without thirst or dryness of throat. Flushes of heat from the least exercise. Violent rising of heat to the head, alternating with chilliness in lower limbs. Heat ascends (Nat., Ver.). Face hot from talking. Feet hot at night. Vertigo, unable to collect one's senses.
Sweat
Profuse in the morning after awaking (see Samb.). Sweat worse from least exertion, mental or physical, walking, writing, eating (Bry., Psor., Sul.); smelling like elder blossoms. Cold night sweat on breast, back, thighs and male genitals. Sour night sweat. Sweat from above downwards to calves of legs, every third night.
Pulse
Pulsations in all the blood vessels (Nat.); violent beating after waking, from anger or mental emotions; pulse full, quick, intermitting, with an occasional hard "thump" of the heart.
Tongue
Coated white, with vesicles in old cases. Food tastes too salt (Carbo v., Cinch.). Aversion to meat (Arn.).
Apyrexia
Canine hunger, or complete loss of appetite.
Analysis
Chill; monthly, with thirst, < by every motion, < by external warmth; icy cold feet up to ankles; deadness of limbs and fingers.
Heat; without thirst, red face, in flushes, as if hot water were poured over body; heat ascends; sweat with heat.
Sweat; profuse after waking (Rum., Samb.); from least exertion, mental or physical; of single parts; odor of elder blossoms.
A good picture of a spoiled case—of Cinchonism—of suppression of paroxysm, of menses, of rheumatism, of eruptions. The face is yellow, sallow, dirty, doughy, yellow patches here and there; the so-called "old malarial," often found in the tropics