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SPECTRUM OF HOMEOPATHY
CHRISTINA ARI ¦
ACUTE REMEDIES LEDUM AND BORRELIA / CONSTITUTION REMEDIES
BORRELIOSIS
22
AUTHOR ¦
Christina Ari
SUMMARY:
using three cases in which patients
decline antibiotics, the author describes homeo-
pathic treatment in the early stages of borreliosis.
Before constitutional treatment, Ledum and the
borreliosis nosode are used. In all three cases, the
borreliosis coincides with deep uncertainty in the
patient‘s life. In the author‘s experience, the liability
to borreliosis infection is increased if the person is
feeling generally unstable.
KEYWORDS:
Acidum phosphoricum, Apis, arthralgia,
borreliosis, borreliosis nosode, Calcium silicatum,
lymphadenosis benigna cutis, erythema migrans,
Ledum, Silicea, tick bite, Tuberculinum, Zincum
muriaticum
UNSTABLE ORDER
Ledum and the borreliosis nosode as acute remedies
PERSONAL ENCOUNTERS WITH IXODES RICINUS,
THE CASTOR BEAN TICK
In the 1950s, when I was still a child, I shared a bedroom with
my grandmother. I still clearly remember, as if it was yesterday,
seeing these strange, black, round creatures of varying sizes
in the varicose veins at the back of her knees when she got
undressed for bed.
“What are those, granny?” I asked in surprise.
“They‘re just ticks,” she replied casually. “They suck my blood
to survive!”
“Why don‘t you take them off?”
“There‘s no need. They fall off when they‘ve had enough.”
My grandmother, who was born in 1886 as the ninth of
fourteen children and who grew up in very poor circum-
stances, had no idea that ticks can transmit disease. She was
healthy all her life and died at the age of 94, shortly after
fracturing her radius. I often remember this conversation – it
has remained an inspiration to me and has strengthened my
confidence in a better world, giving me strength and optimism.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MONSTER TICK
In the 1970s, when I was a student, I was destined to encounter
the castor bean tick in a very different way. The vaccination
campaign for tick-borne encephalitis was just taking off and
Lyme borreliosis had recently been recognized as a discrete
disease. At that time, there was scarcely an alley in the center
of Vienna without at least one poster with an oversized and
menacingly monstrous picture of a tick! The effect was to
announce “red alert!” justified by a general hysteria about
ticks in the consciousness of modern civilization.
So, who was to be trusted, this dreadful monster or my grand-
mother?
Ever since I was a small child, I had repeatedly had contact
with ticks but without ever feeling afraid of an infection. In
1990, when I was hopelessly swamped with work and unable
to cope, as I had transferred from Vienna to the countryside,
where I opened a private medical practice, and when I was
also in the throes of a divorce, I fell ill with a borreliosis infec-
tion. Erythema developed on my right wrist, accompanied
by high fever. Since I had no time to attend to the illness,
I chose a two-week antibiotic treatment rather than homeo-
pathy, with a feeling of great uncertainty. A short time later
– although the reddening had already disappeared two days
after taking the antibiotic – I began suffering from severe
radicular neuralgic pains along the nervus ulnaris of the right
arm. This illness was destined to impact me for years, until
I undertook homeopathic treatment with a colleague in order
to get well again.
The manifestations of a borreliosis infection are extremely idio-
syncratic and multifarious. Pure pathognomonic symptoms
tend to be rare, especially when the disease is advanced, which
complicates the process of making a conventional diagnosis
but has no impact on homeopathic treatment. Borreliosis
possesses the special characteristic of being able to hide in the
host organism in order to emerge when the body’s defenses
are compromised, manifesting itself again via constitutional,
miasmatic weaknesses. So, illness symptoms and symptom
complexes arise in various constellations as the expression of an