Picture of sulphur child and two case reports

Dr Elampirai M

ABSTRACT:
Sulphur is an important polychrest and anti-psoric remedy. In homoeopathy, we all know children picture of Chamomilla, Cina, Aethusa, Tarentula and Tuberculinum. But Sulphur also has wonderful indications in Pediatric age group. Here we elaborate the picture of Sulphur child and two case reports which was treated by Sulphur.

Keywords: Sulphur child, Pediatric, homoeopathy. 

GENERAL INDICATIONS:

• In Aphorism 284 of the sixth edition of the Organon, Hahnemann suggested giving sulphur to pregnant women to kill psora.
• When carefully selected remedies fail to act, especially in acute diseases.
• When Complaints that relapse.
• Often of great use in beginning the treatment of chronic cases and in finishing acute ones.

APPEARANCE AND CONSTITUTION:

• Children: cannot bear to be washed or bathed; emaciated, big-bellied; restless, hot, kick off the clothes at night; have worms, but the best selected remedy fails.
• Skin harsh, wrinkled; child looks like an old man.
• Atrophy of children.
• Hair: They are apt to have very coarse, strong hair, and always a fairly high color. That is one of the exceptions to the coarse hair, because that type of SULPHUR child very often has poorly developed eyelashes; they have had repeated attacks of blepharitis, they have crusty eruptions about the eyelids which they have picked and scratched, and consequently the eyelashes tend to be undeveloped or poor.
• According to Dr.Borland, two types of Sulphur child is there. Much the commonest is a fairly well-nourished, well-grown child, always with a definitely big head. They are usually fairly heavy in build and rather awkward and clumsy in their movements. The other Sulphur type, which is usually thin, with a fairly big head but rather spindly legs, very often with a big abdomen, rather poorly developed chest, very often not so much color, tending to be paler, with a definitely rougher skin.
• These thin Sulphur children have even less stamina than the fat ones, they are more easily exhausted and, like all Sulphur patients, they cannot stand for any length of time. They stand badly in the ordinary instance, and if they are kept standing they go to pieces.
• Muscles of neck weak; child cannot hold head.

MENTAL GENERALS:

• Standing is worst position, it is always uncomfortable.
• Dirty, filthy people, prone to skin affections. Aversion to being washed.
• Child cross and obstinate.
• Child grasps everything within reach and thrusts it into its mouth.
• Sulphur child likes to touch everything, as if only what they touch is real.
• Child kicks the clothes off at night.
• Sulphur children; badly handled they are dull, heavy, cross, irritable; and properly handled they can be bright, interesting, quite friendly, and very often clever. Some of the Sulphur children have a most astonishing command of languages.
• Child jumps, starts and screams fearfully.

PHYSICAL GENERALS:

APPETITE:

• Good appetite.
• SULPHUR children is that they have an almost perverted desire for out – of – the – ordinary food, the unusual dish that the average child dislikes, the Sulphur child will eat with relish.
• Another constant feature in both children and adults is that they are always very sluggish after meals, they get heavy and sleepy, they want to lie about, and are irritable when disturbed.
• Also they get a hungry period about 11 a.m. Sulphur children are liable to be seedy, headachy, and irritable and tired out if they have to wait for their meals.
• One very useful pointer about Sulphur children is that they are liable to get digestive upsets from milk. The small Sulphur baby very often gets sickness, and may get diarrhoea and vomiting, from milk, and this marked milk aggravation is often overlooked.
• Nutrition is affected on account of defective assimilation, in spite of voracious appetite, the patient emaciates (esp. children).

URINE:

• Enuresis, especially in scrofulous, untidy children.

STOOL:

• Constipation: stools hard, knotty, dry, as if burnt; large, painful, child is afraid to have the stool on account of pain, or pain compels child to desist on first effort; alternating with diarrhea. Associated with that is an enlarged abdomen, frequent enlargement of the liver, abnormal appetite, sleepiness after meals, and a very definite tendency to attacks of colic.
• Diarrhea in children: agg during dentition.
• In addition to the general surface irritability, these children tend to get very marked irritation of all the orifices – nose, ears, mouth, urethra, anus – any orifice tends to be congested, red, hot and itchy.
• Diarrhea tending to come on early in the morning, any time after four a.m. , and the stool is always offensive.
• Sulphur children is that they have disturbed areas of heat; they have hot heads and cold hands, or hot hands and cold feet; or hot feet and cold heads – very often cold, damp heads – local disturbances of heat and cold as well as general disturbances of heat and cold.
• Diarrhea; of infants with pale face, profuse sweating, drowsiness, half open eyes, suppression of urine, spasms of limbs, and the child wakes up screaming.

DISCHARGES:

• The other constant Sulphur characteristic is an offensive odor. Discharges, eruptions, perspiration all are malodorous, and the Sulphur child is very difficult to get clean and wholesome.
• The discharge is always excoriating, there is a redness about the nose, with intense irritation, the children tending to pick at it until it is raw and bleeding.

SLEEP:

• Another feature often met with in Sulphur children is that they are often heavy and lethargic and sleepy during the day, and very sleepless at night; also they are liable to get most terrifying nightmares
• Another point which occasionally occurs in a Sulphur child. It is quite lively in the evening, slow getting to sleep, gets off to sleep, and wakes up soon after in fits of laughter. Happy dreams, wakes up singing.

PARTICULARS:

• Extremely red lips and face, flushing easily.
• Ears very red; in children.
• Chronic conditions, chronic ear discharge, with the Sulphur characteristics, the excoriating, offensive discharge, redness about the external ear, intense irritation; the aggravation of any pain from hot applications, particularly hot fomentation.
• In all acute or chronic conditions they tend to have a red coated tongue, with a very red tip, and very often a red margin running along the sides, not unlike a Rhus Tox. Tongue. Most of these Sulphur patients have a dry mouth, a hot mouth, and they are thirsty. This applies more in acute conditions than in chronic.
• Aphthae of children.
• Tenesmus: Burning at the anus; Excoriation about the anus: Soreness in the whole intestines: Pressure in the rectum: Prolapsus ani: Child falls asleep as soon as the tenesmus ceases. Worms.
• Sulphur children often get chronic tonsillitis, a deeply infected throat, very swollen, feeling very hot, with very offensive breath. And most Sulphur children with tonsillitis tend to get masses of glands in the neck – more than ordinary tonsillar gland enlargement and it tends to spread, and involve particularly the submaxillary glands. The tonsillitis is accompanied by irregular heat and cold, shivering attacks, sweaty attacks and thirst for cold water.
• Chest conditions in Sulphur children vary from a mild bronchitis to an acute pneumonia; and again certain features are constant. A tendency to waves of heat and sweat, very often occasional shivers, very often burning extremities, and a very definite heavy smell about the child.
• Sulphur is one of the most commonly indicated drugs in jaundice of children – acute catarrhal jaundice – particularly with the marked intolerance that Sulphur has to milk in its acute conditions, intense skin irritation, feeling of burning heat on the surface very often with attacks of colic, frequently with attacks of diarrhea. A Sulphur diarrhea produces an excoriating discharge, redness and rawness about the buttocks, intense irritation, scratching.
• Indicated in urticaria in children, particularly if associated with digestive upsets.
• Skin conditions always irritates. It is an intense irritation that they cannot leave alone; they describe it in various ways – itching, feeling of animals crawling over the skin, sensation of stinging nettles, and any description that fits an intense irritation of the skin. Scratch until bleeds. Itching aggravation night.

MODALITIES:

• Another constant in the Sulphur patient, no matter what the condition, whether it is a skin eruption, or a child with rheumatism, or a child with a tummy upset, no matter what condition, it is aggravated by bathing. And Sulphur children nearly always look dirty.
• Always aggravated by heat.

CASE EXAMPLES:

CASE 1:

5 yrs old female child came with the complaint of redness and itching around vagina from birth. Itching agg night. Child used to cry and sleep. If they use allopathic ointment, complaints disappear for some days and again it reappear if they stop to use ointment.

Pregnant history: nothing specific.

Past history: child had frequent diarrhea at age of 1. And redness around anus during diarrhea.

Analysis of symptoms: Considering itching agg night, redness around orifices.

Rx SULPHUR 30/ 1 dose.

Follow up 1 month after: itching and redness disappeared and mildly started again.

Rx SULPHUR 200/ 1 dose and pl for a month.

• Follow up 2 months after: 2 months no complaints. Again redness and itching started.
• Rx Sulphur 1M/ 1 dose and pl for a month.
• From that no relapse of same complaint. Child is better.

CASE 2:

8 months old child came with the complaint of diarrhea.

Mental state: Nothing specific.

Stool: greenish and sometimes yellowish. Semi solid in consistency.

Rx PODOPHYLLUM 30/ water dose – 2 hours once for a day.

Next day child better. Then parents consulted about the whitish discoloration around the mouth.

It started as a small dot in lower lip and started spreading. Day by day size is increasing.

Rx PL for a month. (because podophyllum was prescribed a day before)

Follow up after a month: Again diarrhea.

Last 3 days – she had mild constipation. Followed by diarrhea. Redness around anus and lips also red.

Rubrics:

• Rectum – diarrhea – alternating with constipation
• Rectum – discoloration – anus – red
• Skin – discoloration – white
• Generals – history – personal, diarrhea ; of recurrent

Rx Sulphur 30/water dose – 2 hours once

• Next day diarrhea stopped. Then PL for a month.
• Follow up after a month: Mild color changes in whitish discoloration and now it is not spreading.
• No recurrence of diarrhea.
• Rx Sulphur 200/ 1 dose and PL 1 month.
• Follow up after a month: Whitish discoloration reduced.
• Rx Sulphur 1M/1 dose.
• Follow up after 2 months:Whitish discoloration disappeared.
• No recurrence of diarrhea.
• RX pl for a month.

CONCLUSION:
According to Dr.Borland, in irritant skin conditions Sulphur helped to cure the children but some cases after a dose of sulphur it aggravated the conditions.  So we have to look at the child’s state and symptoms and then prescribe sulphur based on that.

In order to kill psora in pregnant women, Hahnemann suggested giving them sulphur. If sulphur was prescribed during pregnancy, there is a possibility these children wouldn’t have these symptoms. More research is needed to determine if anti-psoric medications are effective during pregnancy.

References:

• Allen’s Keynotes; rearranged and classified with leading remedies of the material medica and bowel nosodes including reportorial index – H.C.ALLEN
• The homeopathic therapeutics of diarrhea – JAMES B.BELL.
• Boger Boenninghausen’s characteristics Materia Medica and Repertory.
• A Synoptic Key to the Materia Medica – C.M.Boger.
• Children’s types – BORLAND D. M.,

Before Treatment and After treatment:

Dr.Elampirai M
PG scholar, Department of Materia Medica,
Government Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital,Bengaluru.