Does everyone remember George’s key word for Iodum? Combustion. Combustion like an engine running at top speed. Where there is tremendous energy, tremendous restlessness and can be equally as restless as Tarentula. That kind of restlessness, activity, need to move around. Compelled to move around. Can’t sit and study. Like some other remedies, the Iodum kids would be sitting and reading standing up so that they can move around and do things at the same time. Veratrum can do that or Tarentula. Now, to maintain this it is like a high octane situation. They need lots of energy, so they need to eat lots of food. It is like that cartoon of the kid that is driving one of these supped up cars with a TV and air-conditioning and radio and everything, and the guy is filling the tank and he says, "Better turn it off sonny, you’re gaining on me." That is Iodum. So, they are eating ravenously and they are losing weight at the same time. Like Phosphorus, like Tuberculinum, mostly those that are eating ravenously and emaciating at the same time. There are others that are listed. Since they are running at such a high speed, then there is going to be a lot of excess heat produced, so they are one of the hottest remedies. Now, the mind is very restless, just like the body. And yet, it is weak. So, like other remedies with weak minds, like Mercury or so forth, when the mind gets weak, then the impulses can come in and stick there, so Iodum has lots of impulses, violent impulses, impulses to kill. Especially if you make them sit still, it seems that the impulses come on more. As long as they are moving, they can relieve themselves through activity. But when they have to sit still, then come on the impulses. Another way that the weakness of the mind is shown is in compulsive thinking. Silly thoughts. You know how you talk about a remedy like Argentum Nitricum which is so expressive, so volatile, that that’s why their thoughts - there is so much energy inside them and so much extroversion that thoughts come in so much enthusiasm, the thoughts come out and then in the end stages it becomes an impulsive thing. Well, here they have silly thoughts but it is in a different way. They get thoughts into their mind and they can’t stop them and they have silly things that they want to do in almost a ritualistic way. So, it is one of the big remedies for ritualistic behavior. Like what? Ratanhia, Tuberculinum, Causticum. Mostly those I think. Chininum is generally more a superstitious... Don’t step on a crack or you will break your mother’s back. That kind of thing. Syphilinum can be quite ritualistic, but especially it has to do with germs and getting germs. Need to wash the hands a lot and can’t sit down in a seat because they think they will get germs on them. They may come into an interview and stand and you say, "Sit down," and they say, "No, that’s OK." Because they don’t want to sit down and turn the doorknob and the have to go and wash their hands, so it is the ritual of constantly washing their hands. That is mostly Syphilinum, but it can be also Sulphur. We don’t have enough on ritualistic behavior. There is bound to be more remedies than this that are involved.

It is ritualistic what we mean is somebody that gets into certain habits, but they feel that they have to do that thing. It is not just they do it out of habit; it is that they feel the need to do it. That means in different ways. Rhus Tox also has rituals. They want to, at night, they go to get ready for bed and they want first to take off their pants and they hang them very nicely on the thing and they put it in and they go and take off their shirt and then all of a sudden something happens. The telephone rings and they have to go and answer the telephone and they go and they talk on the phone and they come back and they button that last button on the shirt and they put their pants back on and then they take them off again so they can do everything in a perfect pattern. You see? Or otherwise they can’t sleep. They have to do everything just so.

Argentum Nitricum has superstitions too, but in a different way. Argentum Nitricum gets fixed ideas in the end stages when they are very deep into the pathology. They get fixed ideas about "can’t go past a certain corner". If I go past that corner, something is going to fall on me from above, and I will get killed. So, they will walk around three blocks to avoid that one corner. Or, they will get different kinds of fixed notions like that.

Ratanhia does religious ritualistic things where they feel if they don’t, every time they pass a church if they don’t make the cross, then something bad is going to happen to their family, so it’s like something bad is going to happen if they don’t keep praying or something like. That goes more towards Ratanhia.

Sulphur, you know, has this fear of infection and disgust with other people’s touch and things like that. So every time they shake hands, they want to go and wash their hands. Even though they are the dirtiest one around.

Now, Iodum comes with lots of lists to the office in the end stage. They do that because their mind is restless. They can’t concentrate on what they are doing and they go into really bizarre kinds of behavior. They feel the need to clean up their closet so they go. He sees everything and goes, "Oh, I’ve got to rearrange that." So, he goes and he takes this shirt out and he then takes this shirt and puts them down over here and then he thinks, "No, I’ve got to move the pants first. So, he takes the pants and then he says, "Oh my, all the jackets", and finally the closet is all over the floor and the bed. It is two hours that he is late to work. That kind of thing, but with this restlessness. He doesn’t know what to do. So, he has list and lists. Lists, which tell him where his other lists are. That kind of thing, so he won’t forget something important. He comes into the office and he has a list here and he has something written down on the matchbox cover and on his cuff he has two more symptoms or one written on his hands. Everywhere he has these lists. It is the listiest of the remedies. And the fear that he has forgotten something.

Tuberculinum also has that fear that they have forgotten something. Where you can’t get them out the door is the Tuberculinum trait. They come up and you get the case, and they are getting ready to leave. You say, "OK, I will study the case, and will let you know on Monday." "OK, good." And you’re waiting for them to leave and they are just standing there. "Did I tell you about so and so?" "Yeah, you told me." Iodum also will do it, but they will call up with more lists and things. But this thing where you can’t quite shove them out the door because they feel this anxiety. They haven’t told you everything. That is Tuberculinum and then you are sitting down with your next patient, and five minutes later, back they come again.

Causticum has a fear, that they have forgotten something, but not so much in terms of lists. What they do is they think they have left the stove on, and they go back and check and then they leave and they’re halfway out the house and they say, "Wait a minute, did I check that right? Let me check that again." So, they go back and double check and triple check. They always think. Vasilis went into a Causticum state for a while and he would be on the way out of the office after work and he would say, "Did I put out that cigarette? Wait a second." And he would go back in and check and make sure it was out. We would be out a way to the door and he would say, "But I think I dumped some other ones in the garbage." You couldn’t get him out. He had to go back and check two or three different times.

Now, the physical things with Iodum, like we said there is emaciation with greatly increased appetite. Everything seems to emaciate except the glands which swell up real big. Cervical, glands, thyroid swells up. Anywhere. The spleen swells up. The testes can swell up or they can shrivel. The gonads seem to shrivel more than they swell. But the rest of the glands will swell up.

There is amelioration by eating. The restlessness and so forth will get better while they are eating like Anacardium has amelioration from eating. I was going to say, we were talking about Glonoine with the pulsation, Iodum has a pulsation that feel all the way to the ends of the fingers and the toes. They are hot. They perspire on slight exertion. Of course it’s a real good remedy for goiters and hyperthyroidism conditions in general. I think that’s all on Iodum.

But just remember like all the other remedies. I am giving you all the characteristics. You are never going to see a case that has all those characteristics, right? You are never going to see any case that has every one of these things. If that’s the way our cases came in, we wouldn’t have any problem. It would be real easy. So, what I see a tendency for people to say, "Well, he had everything. Restless. Hot. Big glands. But he didn’t have ritualistic behavior so I didn’t give him Iodum" or "He wasn’t perspiring" or "He wasn’t emaciated." In most of the case, you don’t have to feel even in the small remedies it has to be everything. If most of the main symptoms of the case are covered.

Q. What you just said now seems like physical manifestations are fine but not as important as the behavioral kinds of physical. The essence is found in the behavior rather than in the physical.

A. The most important symptoms are the psychological symptoms, if they exist. If they don’t exist, then you work just from the physical symptoms. But, don’t feel that you have to, you know, you may have a case that you look at the psychological symptoms and George does this quite repeatedly, and is used to make me tear my hair out, where you have a case where there are certain psychological symptoms there but it doesn’t fit with any particular remedy, and you can’t make anything out of it, or it fits with three different remedies and you can’t put it together. Then there is a strong physical characteristic for Ruta. And he gives Ruta and ignores the psychological things because they don’t make a picture. So, what we’re always doing is looking for a remedy that covers the case the best and if the case isn’t covered, if the psychological features and there is just no way to handle that, you can look at it just from this other perspective. You have to be totally flexible.

1. Scrofulous subjects; dark hair and eyes; dirty yellow skin; never fat; especially children.

2. Patient excitable, restless, impulsive.

3. General sluggishness of patient and symptoms.

4. Great debility and emaciation in spite of voracious appetite; after shock or emotional strain; unaccountable sense of weakness and loss of breath on going upstairs.

5. Hypertrophy or atrophy of glandular tissues; usually painless; thyroid and mammae specially affected.

6. Catarrhal affections of the mucous membranes especially of the upper air passages. Membranous croup, early stage with feverishness, dry, hot skin, dry cough and dyspnoea (follows Acon.). Also tuberculous infections.

7. Heart troubles with palpitation < least exertion, heart feels squeezed.

8. Chronic arthritic conditions after acute affections; intense pains at night; no swelling; after syphilis or mercury.

9. Salivation (Ipecac., Merc.).

10. Patient < warmth; wet weather; always > out of doors; after or while eating.