A Lecture on Sepia

Dr Shiva kumar

Full Name;Sepia officinalis.
Common name;Cuttle Fish.
N.O. Cephalopoda.
Preparation;Trituration of dried liquid contained in the ink bag.
Proved by Dr.Hahnemann,first prover is male.

Clinical conditions; Amenorrhea. Bladder, weak. Cancer. Chloasma. Cystitis. Liver torpid. Menopause. Miscarriages tendency. Morning sickness. Neuralgias. Pityriasis versicolor. Psoriasis. Ringworm.Uterus.

Constitution;

• Hering gives these types:  Suited to tall,slim women with narrow pelvis and lax fibres and musles.The women does not have natural curves.
• Persons of dark hair, rigid fibre, but mild and easy disposition. (Puls)
• Children who take cold readily when the weather changes.
• Pot bellied mothers, yellow saddle across nose, irritable, faint from least exertion, leuco phlegmatic constitutions. Brown spots over abdom
  • en.(Potbellied child-suph)

Introduction;Ancient physicians has used this drug for leucorrhoea,gonorrhoea,catarrh of bladder,certain kinds of  tetters.

Mental generals;
(1) Anxiety ; with fear, flushes of heat over face and head ; about real or imaginary evils ; towards evening.

(2) Great sadness and weeping ;dread of being alone, of men, of meeting friends ; with uterine troubles.

The Sep. patient weeps when asked about her symptoms. Hysterical diathesis,breakes out in spells of weeping is sad in one minute,gentle yielding in other.

(3) Indifferent: even to one’s family ; one’s occupation ; to one’s nearest and dearest. I used to love them,now I have no feeling on the subject. Greedy,miserly (lyc)

4) All the affections are stilled,all things seen strange,she may even be estranged and turned aside from those she loves.This state is brought out in a women during confinement,after uterine and other heamarrhages,when nursing a child,from nursing an over vigorous child,twins who require more lateral fluid.

5) Patient is exitable,nervous and fridgity becomes the <noises,excitement,company.malancholy,sits and says nothing.

6) Does not like contradiction,the best impression of her is lost if controversy arises.

7) Patient never happy relating her grievances,sarcastic,fear of insanity,poverty.

8) The greatest irritability from slight causes,very easily offended,vexed and disposed to scold.

Physical generals;

1. Suited to diseases of women during pregnancy,child bed,climacteiric.
2. Diseases attended with sudden prosration,and sinking faintness (Murex,nux.m)
3. The washerwomens remedy,complaints that are brought on by or agg after laundry work.
4. Pains extended from other parts to the back (Rev-Sabina) attended with shuddering (with chilliness Puls)
5. Sep. is a chilly remedy from lack of vital heat, “chills so easily” ; this is especially the case in chronic diseases. (Acute diseases-Ledumpal)
6. Sensation of a ball in innerparts,during menses, pregnancy ,lactation,with constipation, diarrhoea, haemorrhoids,leucorrhoea,and all uterine complaints.
7. “Faints easily” is a note of the Sep. weakness: after getting wet; from extremes of heat and cold ; riding in a carriage ; kneeling at church.
8. All the coverings of the neck felt too tight and were constantly loosened (Lach,Around abdomen after food-Lyc)
9. Complaints associated with prolapses,it is the result of the state of relaxation of all the internal parts as if they were let down.
10. Erythism,flushes of heat from least motion,with anxiety and faintness,followed by perspiration over whole body, at climacteric(Lach,sang,sulh,tub)ascends from pelvic region.

Head ;

• Coldness of the vertex with headache(Verat,heat of vertex-Calc,graph,sulph)
• Headache in terrific shocks,at menstrual sinus,with scanty flow,in delicate,sensitive,hysterical women pressing,bursting,<motion,stooping,mental labour,>by external pressure,continued hard motion.
• Headache nervous,bilious,periodic,congestive,>lying down,keeping quite,<ordinary motion,>by violent motion.
• A substantial sleep relieves if awakned after a short time headache returns.
• <warm room,>long walk in open air ,exercise in open air.
• Headache in occiput,worse in the morning >sweat,vomiting.  (sang->dark room,sleep,Phos->sleep, but continued rapid motion<)
• Headache with jaundice.Headache with nausa the smell of food repulsive.
• Falling off the hair after chronic headaches or at climacteric.

Face;sallowness,jaundice,yellow saddle across the nose and down the sides of face,a tell tale face of uterine ailments.Acne before the menses.

Brown discolouration in pregnancy,brown spots on check,brown warts,

Face is puffed,smooth,and rounded.

Ear;Ear discharge thick,yellow pus,offensive.

Herpes; behind ears; on lobe of ears; on nape of neck.

Nose;
Prolonged nasal catarrh of the nose,green,thick,and yellow crusts are brown from the nose.

Loss of smell, large offensive plugs from the nose,often so large that they have to be drwn back into the mouth and expectorated,causing vomiting.

Mouth;
Toothach and neuralgia,from taking cold.

Toungue foul,but becomes clear at each menstrual nisus,returns when flow ceases,

Throat;
Sensation of lump in the throat,(Lach-.swallowing, neayness,sensitiveness)

GIT;
Empty allgone feeling >by eating,or relieved only for a movement.(Hydr, Phos-typical hunger>eating,Ign-is always sighing,cannot get rid of thst feeling,Lyc-not>by taking food,Kali.c-not>by taking food,even it is intensified by eating.

Pain in stomach after the simple food,stitches and burning,>vomiting(Nux)

Cattarh of stomach,and when it persist with milky vomiting.

Craves spicy,pungent,bitter things,The smell of coocking food,meat causes nausea. (Ars,Col)

Rectum;

• Chronic diarrhoea,stool jelly like lumpy,alternating diarrhoea and constipation,a great amount of mucous with the stools weather constipate or diarrhoea,
• Goes for days with out stool and then sits and srains until copious sweat breakes out and after assistance with finger ,prolongrd strain a little stool is passed,followed by cup off jelly like mucus.
• Acute diarrhoea or desentry with jelly like mucus-Kali.b,colchicum.,But sepia is chronic
• In graphitis Stool mixed with mucus threads looking kike the coocked white of egg,as if covered with albumin.
• In sepia stool is much offensive,sweat is foetid,urine foetid.
• Sepia has ineffectual urging like nux,ball like sens,not> by stool.(Nux,Lyc) pain in rectum during and long after stool(Nit.ac,sulph)
• Diarrhoea from boild milk.(>cold milk-iodum,hot milk-Graph)
• Constipation always during pregnancy,afeeling of a lump in the rectum,nt> by stool.

Urinary complaints;
Urine deposits a reddish clay coloured sediment which adhere to the vessel as if it had been burned on,so offensive must be removed from the room,(horribly offensive after standing-Indium.

Involuntary urination as soon as child goes to sleep at night,always during first sleep.(caust,kreoso,sulph)

Urine is lost when coughing,sneezing,loughing,a shock when the mind is diverted.(nat.m,caust,

Sudden desire with tenesmus,as if the uterus would come out,sudden desire with chills all over body,so always concentration over bladder.

Female; Diseases of women especially those occurring during pregnancy,child bed,and lactation.

• Tendency to absorption at 3^rd month,5^th month.
• All sorts of ulceration conditions,displacements,dragging down and relaxation,retained placenta,
• Violent stitches upwords in the vagina,lancinating pains from the uterus to the umbilicus.
• Metrorrhagia during the climacteric,during pregnancy, especially at the fifth and seventh months.
• Both female and male have avertion to sex.
• Tired after coition,sleepless nights,sleep full of dreams, jerking musles,leucorrhoea,congestion of the pelvis.
• Thought of sexual relations causes nausea,and irritability.
• Morning sickness of pregnancy the sight or thought of food sickens(Nux.m),the smell of coocking food nauseates,(Ars,colch)
• Menses;scanty ,Most violent dysmenorrhoea in girls of delicate fibre,sallow girls.
• Women out to menstruate when the child ceases to nurse,sometimes the child dies and menses out to be established but donot appear.sepia will establishes flow.
• Calc-opposite menses comes on while the child is nursing.
• Leucorrhoea thick,acrid or milky leucorrhoea,in little girls(calc,milli,caulo)

Murex-flow profuse with out sensitive,increased sexual desire.great soreness and congestion of uterus.Acute pain in rt side of uterus which crosses body diagnolly upwords to the left side of chest or left breast.empty feeling in both murex and sepia.

Sepia-<exertion,>sitting with limbs crossed ,pressure on genetalia,diminished sexual desire,and avertion.Charecterestic >from violent exercise.

Pt wants a bandag to hold the parts up or wants to place the hands or napkin on the parts,>sitting down and crossing the limbs.

Respiratory;Cattarh of chest with,tenacious yellow expectoration,accompanied with a violent cough, retching,gasping,.

• Whoophing cough,asthematic cough with retching and loss of urine.
• Cough during first sleep(Lach,in irritable children-Cham)
• Spasmodic dry cough in the evening until midnight,holds the chest during cough.(Bry,nat.s,phos)

Skin;

• Ring worm upon the face and body,it has cured zona,herpetic eruptions of the labia and foreskin,in isolated spots on upper part of body(In intersecting rings over whole body-Tell)
• Eruptions between the fingers,moist eruptions that pour out a watery fluid or thick,yellow,purulent fluid.
• Itching of skin,various parts,of external genetalia,is Not> by scratching,and apt to change to burning(suph)
• The scaly eruptions looks like a epithelioma is especially sepia.when the scales comes off a yellow ,green,ichorus base remains,as soon as crust feel off another forms, finally it torns off prematurely it bleeds.
• It is indicated in lumps,and lupoid formation of the skin,where there is a infiltration,sometimes healing from the centre to form a ring,this is a typical sepia condition.
• Eruptions and falling out of hair,yellow crusts,oozing pus,and other fluids,eczema of infants.

Extrimities;Aching in the back mostly from the loins to the coccyx,often coming on from sitting,stooping and kneeling >from violent exercise.  (Nat.m->by lying down.)

Coldness of legs and feet especially in the evening in bed,when feet gets warm the hands get cold,profuse sweat of the feet or sweat of unbearable odour causing soreness between the toes,swelling of the limbs >while ealking.

Fevers;In old cases of suppressed malaria,sepia brings back the chill,but its most usefull sphear is after a bad selection of the remedy and the case becomes confused.

But Nat.m,china for regular symptoms and stage.

If case is confused think of calc,ars,sulph,sep,ipec.

Modalities;

• <before and during menses,during pregnancy,after eating,during first sleep,moist weather,before a thunderstorm,sexual excess,rest,cold air and cold wind,
• >warmth of bed,hot application,violent exercise.
• Many of the symptoms especially those of head,heart,pelvis,are both <and>by rest and exercise.

Relationship;Sepia complementary,sensitive to noises,

• Inimical to Lach, should not be used before or after to Puls,with which should never be alternated.
• Frequently indicated after sil,sulph.

A single often acts curatively for many weeks.

Refererence;

• Lectures on Materia Medica by Dr.JT.Kent.
• A Practical Materia Medica by Dr.Clark
• Lotus Materia Medica by Dr.Robin Murphy,
• Keynotes      by H.C.Allen.
• Leaders in Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E.B.Nash.
• Physiological Materia Medica By Dr.Burt
• Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica by Dr.W.Boerick

Dr Shiva kumar,M.D(Hom)
Email : drshivasree@gmail.com