For the mentals. It seems that we start out in the childhood with this precocity that George spoke of, an intellectual precocity and serious children, asking lots of philosophical questions so you may think of Calcarea. They carry on very adult conversations at an age where it is striking. But because of mental overstimulation, they go into this sort of overactive and restless state. It is because of this that we see the tremendous hyperactivity in Veratrum children. Where they can’t sit still to study. They have to get up and move around. Or they won’t even put a chair at the desk at all. They will study and stand up, and then they will walk away from the desk and be dancing around. So, that when they are brought into the office, they can be really uncontrolled, racing around, and when you see something where a child destroys the office, or when you hear that history, that is very frequently going to be Veratrum. It could be Arsenicum, Iodatum, Tarentula. And this is just from the sheer hyperactivity. If it were from maliciousness, we would think of a lot of other remedies. They can be mischievous and irritable and cursing and so forth; so don’t get the idea that they are always sweet and just revved up. They can get quite angry. They can be jealous. Even though it is not listed under jealousy. Want to throw things is a characteristic, like Staphysagria. Frequently, they will sit and they will tear things in the office. They will get a piece of paper and tear it into smaller and smaller pieces. Or cut things with scissors and just cut little small pieces. Aimless, repeated actions often. Stacking books or stacking coins and then unstacking them again. Things like that. It can be just fiddling, but it is more that they do some type of activity. It’s not just the fingers are restless or that kind of thing the way you may see with Hyoscyamus. They are doing something and they need to do something. Classically it is that they move something, they cut something. They perform some activity on the external environment. Repetitive behavior. Now, from this stage, the precocity and so forth, and the hyperactivity of the mind and so forth they can develop a state of hardness. They can be just hard children like Nux children with no love inside or there is a Veratrum type of hardness that develops in people who have gotten into many different types of behavior. It looks like Ignatia in a way because here is a type of hurt but it is more than that because they have expended their emotional energy getting into different relationships too soon, getting into too far out mental thinking and then becoming jaded and sort of alienated from life. A type of hardness and lack of feeling, internal feeling that comes about. So, it may look like Phosphoric Acid or Ignatia, something like that. A burn out where it is not visibly burned out; not that they walk around with this total apathy and weakness that Phosphoric Acid will show, but it is like there is a shell and inside they are hollow. This will be more like adolescence or young adults. This case was a young woman, maybe 20 or 21. She had been involved in many different relationships. She had been involved in different drug experiences. She was in a sense, you know the way Phosphoric Acid will be burned out after all these different experiences, disappointments and so forth, they will be apathetic. Here, it is not just that they won’t come in and complain of apathy or depression. It is as if they are too hardened to admit to something like that. They can’t admit to the alienation but they are totally devoid of a real connection to the world. They are acting like they are just right in there with the rest of everybody. They are acting like people and they are not inside. Because they have suffered. They have overextended and they realize that there is something wrong with them but they can’t put a finger on it. If you ask them if it is depression, the will say no, it’s not depression, but there is a type of emptiness. They have drained themselves of the hyperactivity of the mind and precocity. It’s a type of apathy but not, yeah, it is better that - they can’t care. It can look like Sepia or Phosphoric Acid. That is all I can say. But it is not so depressed. The energy will be fine, so you won’t get that sense of weakness, but there is this sense of maybe ennui or boredom maybe. No, no longer hyper at this point.

In a sense it is very close to sociopathic. It’s like there is no conscience in a way. There is no connection to society, so it would be easy for them to slip over into other types of deep mental pathology. If it doesn’t progress in that direction, let’s say, if the pathology doesn’t progress in that direction, then instead the hardness comes out in a type of criticalness and complaining. From that it goes a step further to a type of self-righteousness. You follow that progression? First, there is this hardness and it comes in terms of this criticalness, they get very critical of other people. They complain about how people act, and then there is a next step where it goes into self-righteousness and then haughtiness. You know, "Everybody does this wrong, but I know what is right." From there, the next step is that they know the truth and nobody else does and they know it why? Because God told them. Delusions of grandeur but in this religious sense. Where they think they are Christ. They think that they have a special message from God. They are a prophet. They are schizophrenic is what they are. Out in the streets shouting, "Repent. Repent." The loquacity is that they just talk in sort of a babbling prattling way, but usually they will be more gesticulating like "Yes. I know this." It’s kind of forceful, pointing and gestures with the fist and that sort of thing. So, they go into full-blown mania like that. Generally speaking, they are not as violent as the other mania remedies. They are also generally much less sexual than the other mania remedies. Out of the mania remedies, it is probably the least sexual. Although you can confuse it with Hyoscyamus because they will have states where they will expose themselves and that sort of thing. People who talk to themselves could be Hyoscyamus, could be Lachesis. Finally there comes a gloomy state in the end where they are brooding, gloomy.

For the generals, of course, Veratrum is one of the chilliest remedies. It can be local coldness or general coldness. They can have coldness in the belly or coldness in the head. Or the ears or the tip of the nose. Remember the thing that Kent mentions where they feel that cold water was running down their throat on the outside if they were drinking it? That is a keynote sensation. The sweat is usually cold. Icy cold perspiration and sometimes their breath is even cold. That is why it is sometimes described as breath as though it was coming from the cellar. Exhaustion. Collapsed states, especially collapsed states where there is intense perspiration, cold perspiration. Yet, they crave cold drinks. They crave ice and they crave cold food. Very strongly craving ice. Perspiration can be just on the forehead. So, you may be confused with Ignatia. In the head, the ears can alternate hot and cold. There can be neuralgias. Neuralgias with vomiting and exhaustion, pale face. Yet, the lips can be cold and blue often.

One of the most common places where Veratrum should be used acutely is in vomiting and diarrhea. Whenever, almost whenever you find vomiting and diarrhea which are simultaneous, Veratrum will work. Arsenicum also, but any time you hear the story that someone is on the toilet and vomiting at the same time. Can be exactly the same time or it can be just that they are coming and going from both ends. They don’t know which side to put down first. Arsenicum also can have that symptom. Usually nausea stays even after they vomit. The vomiting, projectile vomiting is a keynote for Veratrum. Sometimes they get diarrhea from fruit. Diarrhea from eggs, which remedy is that? China Arsenicosum. Even though they have diarrhea from fruit, they usually crave fruit, especially what? Green fruit. Unripe fruit or sour fruit, especially lemons and strong craving for salt. Salt, ice, sour, all those things.

Dysmenorrhea with coldness and prostration and tremendous nausea and vomiting during the menstrual period.

A fairly common thing I see is that you can find a case on the basis of a specific like Richard’s son presented a case and the big problem was these planter’s warts that the mother was bound and determined to go and have them cut out. So, we studied the case and studied the case. There were only two strong symptoms, craving pickles and these planter’s warts. So, I used those two symptoms, calluses on the feet and craving pickles and came up with Antimonium Crudum, and the warts fell off and the craving for pickles stayed exactly the same. I see that very commonly that one of your main guiding symptoms that will be there won’t go away and what that means is that there is another remedy underneath that simply also happens to have that symptom strongly. So, it helped that part of the case but maybe it changed slightly in complexion of the case, so you will find a deeper remedy.

Keynote: Violence.