I think all of you know pretty much about Alumina. It is another neurological remedy. It mostly goes for the neurological system. The essence of this remedy is confusion and constipation. Now, I mean constipation, not just of stool, but constipation in general. Things are inside and they can’t get them out. That means that things are retained. The sweat is retained. They almost have no perspiration at all and the skin is very dry. They have very short menses. The menstrual period doesn’t even come out. The stool doesn’t come out and even sexually it doesn’t come out. So they are anorgasmic, both men and women, and there is dryness throughout the remedy because the mucus doesn’t come out. All of the mucus membranes are dry. Now, the same thing is true in mental state an psychological state. Things don’t come out of the person. That means that their emotions are held in. They seem closed. They seem like closed people. But they can’t bring the emotion forward. They can’t bring their ideas forward. Very dull. Slow to comprehend things. They give the information slowly. It’s not always just stupid people. They can be intellectual people, but whenever they come, compared for their walk of life, understand? They are going to be slow for that walk of life. So, they may be a farmer that is really dull, or they may be a professor that is dull for a professor. The intellectual types of Alumina - they will notice a drop in their intellect. They will notice that slowly their mind is becoming weaker and they will come in with lists of things and they will give you the symptoms very slowly and exactly, and they will think for a long time when you ask them a question. Remember, get the drift of the case because this is a remedy that you will miss easily because you won’t notice it. You are so busy writing down the symptoms of the case, you don’t notice the way he is giving the case is really abnormal. Now, here is the extreme and you ask in the case, you sit down and say, "How do you feel?" "I, uh, mm, I don’t feel well." "Well, I mean, how are you feeling?" "Mmmm, not well." "Are you feeling anxious?" "Ammm," and even to the extent of "uhh, uhh, mmmm, oh, yeah, I think so, yes." "Are you afraid? Do you feel a lot of fear inside?" They don’t really groan, I mean, but you can see that the mind is constipated. It won’t come out. You can see that there is a lot of anxiety sometimes in this state that won’t come out. It’s like, you know the state of sleep that you can get into? Where you can’t quite wake yourself up, but you want to wake yourself up? Well, that’s like pushing through mud. Pushing through deep syrup, to get things through. It’s like there is a vague anxiety. You say, "Are you anxious?" "Mmm, I, I, don’t feel well." Yeah, back to that. But they can’t describe it. Now, in a person that is like that, don’t ask them to hurry. This is a keynote for this remedy. They cannot be hurried. They can have all the time in the world to do something, and if they can do it slowly and methodically they can do it OK without problems. But, you say, "OK, we’re leaving in 15 minutes. Come on." All of a sudden it’s panic, and they have 5 minutes of work to do and if they didn’t know they were leaving in 15 minutes, they could get it done in 5 minutes. But, all of a sudden they get this "hurry" thing. Hurried is a sensation they feel, the Alumina. They go over there and they pick this up and they start doing this thing, and then they rush over here, and they drop back because they realize that they have to do something else and they rush over and they get totally flustered and disorganized. Forget it. They can’t do it. They become actually hurried in their movement, but mostly it’s a sensation. They feel hurried. They feel they don’t have enough time to do things. That’s what it comes from, so they may do things in a hurried way, but the hurry is mostly internal rather than external. It is a sense of being hurried. Mostly though, they appear slow rather than hurried. Your impression is going to be that they are slow. They get very slow in their thinking, and this slowness, the weakness of mind, they start to lose their identity. So, that’s the keynote that the people write about. Speaks and thinks that someone else is speaking, like the mind says slow down, and they’re not sure, "Did I say that or did you say that?" More often, though, they won’t say it that way. That is something that they won’t say themselves. Sometimes they will say it themselves. Rarely. I mean, I did see a case that said that exact thing. "I speak and it seems like somebody else is speaking." It’s like a case that come in, "You know, sometimes I get the impression that I’m really big and everybody else is small." Thank you very much. But don’t expect that very often. They will say things that will lead you to believe that they have got a loss of identity. "I don’t know who I am." "I feel like I can’t tell who I am." Or, another common thing that they will say is "I feel like a robot, going through the motions, but not really participating."

Of course, there is aggravation in the morning. There can be a lot of anxiety in the morning, like Arsenicurn, like Graphites. They are better in the evening usually.

Now, they have a whole thing with knives. Knives is a sort of a keynote for Alumina. They can be afraid of a knife. Just to see a knife sitting on a table can be frightening, or it may make them uncomfortable, or they may see it and may have an impulse, either to kill themselves or to kill someone else with it. Related to that is a fear of seeing blood. They are the remedy that has a fear of seeing blood, but there is another remedy that has fainting at the sight of blood. That is Nux Moschata. So probably these people that faint when they have blood drawn - some of them are going to be Nux Moschata. They have vertigo very frequently with a feeling of fainting when they stand up. That’s a keynote. Faintness on standing. The other keynote to it is when standing with the eyes shut, they tend to fall over. So, the people who are up on their neurology will realize that that is a sign of degeneration of the posterior columns. Lots of times in tabes, so we can suspect. Pernicious anemia. They have frequent colds and the colds usually settle in the throats and stay for a long time. Of course, there are a lot of remedies that get frequent colds. This is one of them.

Now, the food cravings can be helpful. They crave dry things and that is very strange considering the fact that they are dry: dry mouths, dry mucus membranes, dry rectum, but they crave dry things like dry rice and dry starch. Just starch out of a box. They can have craving for potatoes or aversion to potatoes, but the main thing is aggravation from potatoes. If you see that think Alumina right there. Like we said, it is constipation. It’s a terrible constipation, although not many cases coming in complaining of constipation obviously are going to be Alumina. It’s not that big a remedy, but it’s a very severe constipation, where they want to do what? Reach in with their fingers to scoop it out. It is usually a soft stool, although it can be a hard lumpy stool and there can be constipation from dryness of the rectum. Especially if you see someone, a woman who comes in and says that they have, during pregnancy, great dryness of the rectum and constipation from that and they notice a slowing down of the mental processes and any other little hints of Alumina. Of course, paralysis is a retention. It’s confusion of motor function. They go to paralysis, a slow evolution of paralysis that starts just with heavy legs, and then progresses to paralysis. Dry skin and with the characteristic in all of the skin conditions that there are no eruptions but great itching that leads then to bleed. Which leads them to scratch until they bleed.

There is a fear of insanity as well. You can add it to fear of cockroaches. That’s Alumina. Not a huge remedy, but a very useful one when seen in a situation like that. You mostly see it in neurological cases and slowed mental state cases, even to the point of imbecility and this foggy mental state. Usually neurological or constipation, severe constipations, or this mental state. One of those three things. Neurological disorders.

1. Dark, spare withered-looking subjects; disposition gen. mild and cheerful.

2. Attacks of depression. Loss of memory; time passes slowly.

3. Great dryness of all mucous membranes (except female genitalia) with sense of constriction.

4. Abnormal appetite, craving for indigestible things; potatoes disagree.

5. Inactivity of the rectum; no desire and no ability until large accumulation, even soft stool requires great straining; stool hard and knotty or soft, clayey and adhesive,

6. Leucorrhoea, acrid, transparent, profuse, running down to the heels (Syph.) < daytime; gen. assoc. delayed, scanty menses after which patient physically and mentally exhausted.

7. Paralytic weakness of lower limbs with great heaviness and lack of co-ordination; "must sit down"; also with burning pain especially in the back.

8. Chronic throat conditions, "every cold settles in the throat".

9. Skin eruptions < winter; intolerable itching < warmth of bed; < starchy foods and all irritating things (salt, pepper, etc.).

10. Modalities: Patient chilly < cold except headache; at new and full moon; on alternate days; > eating.

Notes: A chronic of Bryonia.

Slow but long-acting chronic remedy.