spectrum of homeopathy
Anne Koller-Wilmking ¦
various remedies
Problem Children ¦
Cases of our time
8
CASE 3: two-year-old Felix, severe constipation
Two-year-old Felix has come to dominate family life with his
severe constipation. Even as a baby, he had problems with his
stools. While he was still being breastfed, things were just
about fine but even then, his mother had to often use the
thermometer to help him. Since the introduction of solid
food, things have got from bad to worse. He only has a stool
about every ten days, preceded by severe pain and screaming,
with a rigid abdomen and a refusal to eat. Conventional medical
investigation found nothing. “We’ve already tried everything:
switching to high-fiber foods, more fluids, enemas, mild
laxatives. Felix’s digestion is now the number one topic in our
family. His grandparents and relatives are very worried. We
talk of almost nothing else. Everyone gives us well-meaning
but unproductive advice. We’ve almost resigned ourselves to
the situation, but something must be done. Things can’t go
on like this.”
Felix is a cheerful, open, affectionate child, very charming and
well developed, with no unusual symptoms or modalities that
might indicate a remedy to me. So, I hoped that the history of
his mother’s pregnancy would help.
Pregnancy:
his mother says: “Felix was a test-tube baby. My
husband’s sperms were too slow or somehow sluggish, so we
Homarus gammarus
The lobster is a typical loner. At regular intervals,
the animals shed their skin because the rigid cara-
pace does not keep pace with their growth. In the
first years of life, this happens up to nine times a
year, then only once a year. When the lobster is
fully grown, it sheds its skin only once every two
years. After shedding its skin, the animal is unpro-
tected. The new carapace hardens within three
weeks. During this time, lobsters prefer to stay in
caves. Mating occurs during the period when the
skin is lost because the semen of the male can only
be absorbed by the female when its carapace is
still soft. Limbs that have been lost grow back over
a period of several sheddings. The animals live in
summer in shallow waters but when it is cold, they
withdraw to a depth of around 50 meters. Together
with fish, mussels, and other marine creatures,
they eat carrion above all. Since lobsters move
only slowly, they rarely manage to catch creatures
that swim fast. There is also cannibalism. They go
in search of food at night.
tried it that way. I was very tired, anemic, and weak. I had
something very strange, which I knew from before, but it was
particularly strong during the pregnancy. I had trouble swal-
lowing, as if an apple core had got stuck at the back of my
throat and I couldn’t get it down. If I was feeling energetic, this
wasn’t a problem. It’s like a resistance that I can’t get rid of, like
an object that disturbs me when swallowing, like something
got wedged and you want to swallow it down by force. It’s like
pushing away a cupboard, but something stops it or it gets
stuck. I have to find a solution, how I could get round it. I always
try to solve problems on my own but there are many things you
can’t solve immediately. When Felix was born, I had a really bad
skin rash on my hands, something I sometimes have anyway.
My skin was so raw and inflamed that I hardly dared pick him
up. I had the feeling that the love couldn’t flow, it was getting
dammed up inside me and I had a really bad conscience. Maybe
his constipation is him reflecting that to me.” A very intelligent
woman.
Analysis:
with preverbal children, it is often difficult to find
symptoms specific to a remedy, so we often have to rely on a
good casetaking of the mother’s pregnancy. The mother’s
sensation of being hindered, blocked, stopped – the father’s
sperms were also hindered – points to the Cruciferae family,
which corresponds to the Ringworm miasm with alternation
between trying and resignation. I gave the mother and child
Sinapis alba
1M. Felix‘s constipation reacted by slowly but surely
improving. He is now three and a half, has had four doses of
the remedy and is completely symptom-free. The mother’s
swallowing difficulties, feeling of a lump in the back of the
throat, and skin rash also disappeared after a few doses.
Prescription:
Sinapis alba
M
CASE 4: fourteen-year-old Janina, pronounced eating
disorder, anorexia, self-harm, suicidal thoughts
Three years ago, she began to cut her arms “so that she did not
feel the other pain.” Her father left the family a little while ago
and started a relationship with her mother’s best friend. Two
step siblings were born of this relationship, and Janina never
forgave the couple. She will have nothing to do with the new
family and calls her father an ‘arsehole’. “I’m no longer his
princess like I used to be, now he prefers the others. The other
family is trouble. With mom, it’s one-on-one combat – I won’t
get beaten. With dad I’ve now got two people having a go at
me, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with them.”
She ate less and less, lost weight and kept putting her finger
down her throat to vomit. She had attacks of bulimia in between,
and she cut herself again and again.
She repeatedly says that she does not want to live any more.
Her school friends bully her on the internet and Facebook,
writing she is too fat – another reason why she is now trying to
lose weight. “That really hurt me. I wanted to be liked at
