Let’s talk a little bit about Ignatia, even though everybody knows everything about Ignatia. I don’t have to tell you the main thing about Ignatia is the romantic disappointments. That’s the main thing. Everybody pretty much knows the personality of Ignatia, the young, idealistic. So, you pretty much know this image, this one image - the idealistic young woman, very cultured, very refined gets totally idealistically involved in a relationship, and then the breakdown of the relationship, and then the disappointment and the problems that follow that. But let me try and give you a little more background about the children. In the beginning, of course, they are not so much disappointed. They are very sensitive always. Excitable children. The emotions are very acute, very vivid with a lot of need for affection. And for proof that the child is loved. So, the child goes out into the world and has different stresses, conflicts with other kids at school, different problems in life, and is extremely sensitive to those. He gets easily hurt and then comes on and to compensate for that needs lots of extra attention from the parents or from other family members. That does compensate, and then she develops these very strong attachments to the grandmother who is always around comforting her or to the mother or whomever it is that is giving her a lot of attention and affection. So, that is true up until puberty, around that time. After puberty, it seems that the problem starts to mount up, so late teenage years, that is when this picture of the classic Ignatia type starts in with the hurts and the romantic disappointments, and their anger, storming out of rooms, all the hysterical elements. The jealousy and all of that. So, by this age, there is a transition phase between this oversensitive girl to one that appears more on the hard side more on the masculine side, and there can be masculinization, even to the point of facial hair or body hair and so forth. So here she seems, you know, it’s the young woman professional type, the liberated woman type where it is carried to an extreme, though, not where it is a healthy thing, where the woman just wants to be herself, but where she is making a show almost of it. That show, the hardness and so forth, breaks down under certain pressures into the hysteria again still. Now, still at this age, the younger age, 17, 18, or 19, don’t expect to see so much sighing. You don’t have to have the sighing, and especially in these ages, a lot of times you won’t have the sighing at all. What you get is this young woman who puts on a show of hardness, actually acts hard, and can be quite critical insulting of other people. Then the crying, you know, in the beginning it’s the hysterical easy weeping, weeping over all sorts of things. As the hardness comes on, now the crying stops being so normal and it becomes an awful kind of crying. The kind of crying that you get it in the interview and you wish you hadn’t. Pulsatilla or Staphysagria you really empathize. Ignatia when they cry, and even more so with Lachesis, it is an awful kind of crying with this sobbing and yet you don’t feel this absolute empathy for them so much. I don’t know if you see the distinction, but with Lachesis when they cry you wish you could get them out of your office. It is really offensive. The reasons behind it and what they say during it when they really breakdown you see the emotions behind the crying. This is extremely obvious, but the emotions behind it are things you really can’t relate to or feel sorry about at all. So, now all of this goes on and they start to build up this wall and they can become isolated as things go on and especially once they get deeper and deeper into the pathology and older and older. Once they reach age 30, 35, that’s when you start to see all the tremendous sighing coming on. Now as they become isolated, they become hard, they start having problems with becoming irresolute, they don’t know really. They start to lose touch with themselves. They become irresolute. They start having anxieties about their health about cancer and so forth, and even they can have panic attacks and the sighing then becomes something that is like as if they may present it as asthma. That’s the way they may walk in and they say, "I have asthma." They feel tightness in the chest and this feeling like they are going to suffocate from it. But if you probe, it is all started from around this grief or disappointment, so it is a tip off. Especially they can have that, you know, Ignatia is one of the remedies for claustrophobia, so they can get very much worse if they are in a close place in a movie theatre or something like that.

OK, now as the hardness goes on, it gets even to a deeper stage and you know here is this woman who tries to be professional, business like. Sees everything clearly, what is it that Kent says "quick to perceive and quick in actions", something like that. That sort of a young woman. Later they become the people that say that they are real pragmatists. Just the facts that’s the way they talk about themselves.

She thinks that she is seeing facts, but actually she is seeing the distorted kind of life, especially later stages, middle-aged, that kind of thing. They start to feel. You see, they created all these scenes and they get so hurt by different things and then they start isolating and then they feel isolated. They think, "Nobody loves me." But the way they present it when they come in is that this is just the facts, I don’t have anybody that cares for me. You may think, well this is just her situation, this is an abnormal situation and she is unfortunate, but it is not anything that homeopathy is going to affect. Then, the crying goes away in this stage. There is no crying, not even the hysterical crying, and she becomes harder and it is sort of like, "why should I cry? Nobody cares. What’s the point of crying?" and "Let’s face facts." There comes a state when she is very closed up and she starts examining everything in her life. She thinks about her mother, and she says, "No, my mother doesn’t really care about me" and she thinks of her children and they have left home, "Oh, they don’t care about me." Thinks about her relationship with her husband. "He never cared about me." And their life seems empty. So, at this point, they start to look like Aurum. Because of the hardness and the feeling that there is no attachments, nobody that cares about them. There is sort of this stoniness about it. So, you may confuse it with Aurum. They may even talk about suicidal tendencies just to complicate matters worse. Now, the good thing is that in these late stages the sighing can become absolutely tremendous. Especially at night in bed when they are alone it comes on even more and it becomes almost like moaning, and then it is the "uhhhh" and they have to vocalize it almost in these late stages and it can be really noisy where someone in another room might hear them. There are lots of other remedies that sigh. The three capitals are Ignatia, Cimicifuga, and Calcarea Phosphorica. Aurum is moaning during sleep. They are still awake in this. Ignatia, I don’t think, has moaning during sleep. Moaning during sleep is Aurum, Calc-phos and lots of other remedies. Aurum is the biggest. It is a really pitiful kind of wailing.

So, Ignatia also has moaning during sleep, but this sighing that we are talking about this is while they are awake. This state that we talked about with the sense of suffocation and so forth, you will have trouble differentiating that from Lobelia. It is hysterical. It is the sense of oppression or suffocation around the chest. So, that becomes a differential diagnosis between Lobelia and Ignatia. The confirmations for Ignatia: there is the sighing, like we said. Perspiration on the face. It is best if they say they perspire only on the face. That is the very best, but if you ask them, "If you’re running, where do you perspire first" or "If you are hot where do you perspire first" and they say, "the face", at least that gives you a little bit of help for a diagnosis of Ignatia. The best is if they say, "only on the face." Now, in about 70% there will be an aversion to fruit. In 30%, there is a craving for fruit. So, a lot of times, if you hear the history of a romantic disappointment or grief, followed by strong craving for fruit, it is the differential between what two remedies? Phos-ac and Ignatia.

But if you see more apathy coming, then it is Phos-ac. If you see more grief coming and hardness coming and bitterness, then it is Ignatia. Phos-ac, I don’t think, has got to be all that extreme, you know, the apathy can be sometimes it is not all that end stage, you know, totally blank. But, if it goes towards apathy and there is a strong history of problems following a disappointment or a grief, and strong craving for fruit, that’s enough.

For Phos-ac you either have to have the fruit or else you have to have real apathy. If it is just a little bit of apathy and there is no fruit, you probably wouldn’t think of that. You would think of something else. Besides the craving for fruit, and in Ignatia, it is not always one thing or the other for fruit. It is not in every case. But, it doesn’t have to be an aversion. Sometimes it can be an allergy for fruit or aggravation from fruit. I had one case that came in Greece that every time she ate fruit, she had these hypersensitivity reactions. Dizzy headed and all that. That is the way she expressed it so there was an aversion to fruit somehow that was expressed through this idea that she was having allergy symptoms.

Besides the craving for fruit, there is also craving for cheese. Lump in the throat. And constriction in the chest. Lump in the throat associated with crying or wanting to cry, or they come in and they start talking to you about their story, and they start to get a little bit of tears in their eyes and they choke it back and their voice starts to get strained and you say, "Do you feel sort of a lump in your throat?" they say yes, that’s Ignatia. But it can be a permanent feeling of a lump in the throat as well.

Fear of birds and chickens. It is not as rare as you might think. A lot of times people won’t say it. You go through your standard questioning. Do you have fear of dark, heights, thunderstorms, anything like that? "No, no fears." Do you have the fear of birds? I have that happen in a couple of different cases. It is just — sometimes they are afraid even to see a bird. They are afraid of stuffed birds, seeing stuffed birds one of these cases was that they had a friend that had stuffed birds by the door — couldn’t look at the stuffed birds as she would come in. She would have to rush by them. It is not like they are going to be pecked to death. But, that Alfred Hitchcock movie, forget it. Somehow, I don’t know how it is maybe it’s just since that movie that this all started. You can see how that would really freak out an Ignatia though because of the claustrophobia as well as the birds so.

There can be the classical hysterical symptoms with numbness, paresthesias, unexplained paralyses that come on suddenly after grief and that kind of thing. Or, another hysterical physical complaint that Ignatia will get is coughing. Fits of coughing so bad that they can’t stop. The specific about this cough usually is that nothing makes it better. They drink. They gag. It like they can’t breath. They are coughing so hard they can hardly take a breath. It just keeps going.

I had a case one time that came in that that was definitely the way we got it. There was a history of grief, separation with the husband and big turmoil and everything and every time she had to talk with him on the phone, she started to get this cough, this hacking cough and she couldn’t stop while she was on the phone with him. She couldn’t stop coughing. She would hang up and it would get better after a few days or a few hours.

Paradoxical thing, e.g. that they would be better swallowing solids than liquids. Whatever complaints they have something paradoxical helps them. In other words, they have a big inflamed thumb, and they are better when you yank on it, or turn it around, or they have a sore throat and it’s better when they are eating or something like that. And it looks really bad.

The compliments are Natrum Mur, Sepia, Apis, and Sulphur. And inimical is Nux Vomica. You can have trouble differentiating between Nux and Ignatia. A lot of times they will look like each other.

1. Nervous, hysterical women; dark hair and complexion; pale, wan, drawn appearance; disposition mild but easily excited; quick in perception, rapid in execution (ctr. Puls.).

2. Rapid alternation of mental states (Crocus. Puls.) with underlying condition of melancholy; moodiness; full of silent grief, sits and sighs; overdelicate conscience; sometimes angry but never ill-natured (see Cham., Nux v.); > alone but does not resent consolation.

3. Mental and physical exhaustion from long-concentrated grief, from worry or strain; from disappointed love, etc.

4. Hypersensitiveness, mental and physical; easily offended, intolerant of pain, etc.

5. Spasmodic affections originating in mental causes, < touch; chorea, convulsions, etc., in children, from fright, punishment or worms; globus hystericus.

6. Penetrating pains in small circumscribed spots, e.g. headache as of nail being driven in. > hard pressure, profuse urination, < movement.

7. Gastro-intestinal disorders; capricious appetite; sense of weakness and emptiness in stomach; dislikes stimulants; craves sour things; prefers cold food.

8. Constipation with excessive ineffectual urging felt more in upper abdomen; tendency to haemorrhoids and prolapse; sharp stitches shoot up the rectum.

9. Great contradictoriness of symptoms, e.g. (a) grief excites laughter; (b) "sore" throat > swallowing especially solids; (c) sinking in stomach not > eating; (d) piles > walking; (e) cough < coughing; (f) fevers with thirst only during chill; (g) headache > lying on the painful spot.

10. Patient chilly < out of doors, > heat except stomach symptoms; < mental emotion, excitement; stimulants especially coffee and tobacco; all strong sensory stimuli; pains gen. < movement.

Notes: Chronic: Natrum mur, Zinc.

Keynotes: Contradictions.

Coffee and tobacco inimical to its action.