Lac Caninum (Dog's Milk)

The Animal Kingdom in Homeopathy: General Characteristics

Animal remedies correspond to affections that have a destructive tendency. They are suited for deep-seated diseases, poisoned blood, and severe nerve depression. Mentally, they produce a "poisoned" condition, making them highly valuable in treating insanity and organic cerebral diseases.

Lac Caninum (Dog's Milk)

Keynote Characteristic: Symptoms rapidly alternate sides (e.g., left to right, then back to left).

Throat & Diphtheria

• Alternating sides: Soreness, swelling, and diphtheritic membranes rapidly change sides or form on one side and move to the other.

• Sensations: Tickling causing constant cough; sensation of a lump causing constant swallowing. Empty swallowing is painful.

• Appearance: Throat and inflamed surfaces appear glistening (a leading indication for this remedy). The membrane is mother-of-pearl-like. Discharges are fetid.

• Timing: Sore throats often begin and end with menstruation. Cold water provides momentary relief; warm rooms ameliorate.

Mental Symptoms

• Memory & Speech: Cannot remember what she reads (but remembers other things). Absent-minded. In writing, uses too many words or incorrect ones.

• Delusions: Imagines she is surrounded by snakes, afraid to close her eyes at night for fear of being bitten, or wakes feeling she is lying on a snake (especially after menses). Imagines he wears someone else's nose.

• Sensation of Levitation: Feels as if walking on air, or not touching the bed when lying down.

Physical Symptoms & Sensations

• Hyperesthesia: Cannot bear one part of the body to touch another (must keep fingers apart). Breasts and throat are highly sensitive to external touch.

• Breasts: Sore, enlarged, and feel full of hard lumps; very painful when walking up and down stairs. Touch causes sexual excitement.

• Nasal/Facial: Ozena; corners of the mouth and alae nasi are cracked. Nose feels bad with feared destruction of bones (sore to pressure) and bloody pus discharges. Eczema of the eyelids (alternating sides).

• Stomach/Abdomen: Empty, weak feeling in the stomach pit, or a pain like a stone/undigested food. Right ovarian pain. Flatus from the vagina.

Modalities (Aggravations & Ameliorations)

• Worse from: Night, cold winds/sharp air, motion, extension, walking, going down stairs, after sleep, and touch. Periodicity is marked (e.g., worse in the morning one day, worse in the afternoon the next).

• Better from: Warmth, rest, lying down, and flexion.

Clinical Indications

Useful in: Affections of eyes, stomach, ovaries, and uterus; Varicose veins (arms); Painful breasts; Chancre; Croup; Diphtheria; Dysmenorrhea; Epulis; Gonorrhea; Headache; Ichthyosis; Leucorrhea; Neuralgia; Ranula; Rheumatism; Sciatica; Spinal irritation; Syphilis; Sore throat; Ulcers; Vaccinosis; Warts.

Moschus (Musk Deer)

• Primary Action: Hysteria and nervous palpitations.

• Symptoms: The patient faints from the least excitement. Hysterical spasms are ushered in by a contractive feeling about the throat (globus hystericus) and suffocation.

• Spasms about the chest with alternate laughing and crying.

Valeriana (Valerian Root)

• Primary Action: Hysteria characterized by general nervous and vascular excitement.

• Symptoms: Patients must keep constantly on the move. The slightest exertion causes headache, and the slightest pain causes fainting.

• Sensations: Severe flatulence which may press on the solar plexus, causing fainting. Spasmodic asthma and sudden dyspnea. Wandering pains in the limbs are better by walking about.

Castoreum (Beaver)

• Primary Action: Nervous, irritable women who do not react or recover well after severe diseases.

• Symptoms: Suited for women who are constantly on the verge of hysterics.

Mephitis Putorius (Skunk)

• Primary Action: Whooping cough.

• Symptoms: Marked laryngeal spasm with a distinctive whoop. The child has a suffocative feeling and cannot exhale.

• Modalities: Cough is worse at night upon lying down.

Corallium Rubrum (Red Coral)

• Primary Action: Whooping cough.

• Symptoms: "Minute gun" cough—short, quick, and ringing. There is smothering before the cough and great exhaustion afterwards. The child gasps and becomes black in the face.

• Modalities: The whooping is worse at night.

Coccus Cacti (Cochineal Insect)

• Primary Action: Spasmodic coughs.

• Symptoms: Paroxysms of cough ending with the vomiting of clear, ropy, albuminous mucus that extends in great long strings, even down to the feet.

• Sensations: Shortness of breath and a sensation of a thread in the throat. (Note: Kali Bichromicum also has ropy mucus, but it is yellow, not clear).

Bufo Rana (Toad)

• Primary Action: Sexual nervous system disorders.

• Symptoms: Indicated for masturbation where the patient actively seeks solitude to perform the act. Epilepsy caused by sexual intercourse, where the aura seems to start from the sexual organs.

Sepia Succus (Cuttlefish Ink)

Keynote Profile: Tall, slim females with narrow pelvises. (Homeopathic adage: "Tall women, Sepia; tall men, Phosphorus".) Causes venous stasis, first in the portal system, then throughout the body.

Mental Symptoms

• Weak memory, a sense of helplessness, and great susceptibility to excitement and terror.

• Indifference: Averse to her own friends and loved ones, and indifferent to her household affairs.

• Dreads being alone and wants company, yet feels despair and sadness (tearful).

Physical Symptoms

• Face & Digestion: A yellow saddle across the nose. Yellow complexion. White-coated tongue; sour/putrid taste. An "all-gone" feeling in the stomach not relieved by eating. Nausea at the sight or smell of food. Great longing for acids or pickles.

• Pelvic/Female: Severe bearing-down sensation, as if everything would protrude from the vulva, compelling the patient to sit with legs crossed. Sharp, clutching uterine pains. Menses are irregular (mostly late and scanty).

• Bowel & Bladder: Inactivity of the rectum with no urge for days; stools are hard and large with a sensation of a ball in the rectum. Irritable bladder; involuntary urination during the first sleep. Red, acid, fetid sediment in urine.

• Male: Gleet with scanty morning discharge; weakness of sexual organs.

• Skin & Nerves: Sciatica (lancinating stitches, worse sitting or rising, must get out of bed for relief). Ringworm, liver spots on abdomen/chest, vesicular eruptions around the mouth/chin, and herpetic conditions on knees/ankles.

• Respiratory: Cough seems to come from the stomach/abdomen with salty expectoration. Whooping cough with bilious vomiting.

Modalities (Aggravations & Ameliorations)

• Worse: Mornings (headaches).

• Better: Violent motion, middle of the day, open air, and sleep.

Murex Purpurea (Purple Snail)

• Comparison: Very similar to Sepia, but clearly differentiated by great sexual excitement and profuse secretions (menses, urination).

• Symptoms: Sensation as if something were pressing on a sore part in the pelvis.

Spongia Tosta (Roasted Sponge)

Keynote Profile: Acts powerfully on the glandular system (causing enlargement) and mucous membranes (causing inflammation, especially larynx/trachea). Suited for fair, light-complexioned people with light blue eyes.

Respiratory Symptoms

• Croup & Laryngitis: Breathing is harsh and hard, as if breathing through a sponge. Hard, barking, ringing, metallic cough with scanty expectoration. Cough feels tighter every minute with threatened suffocation.

• Sensations: Suffocative spells during sleep; arouses feeling smothered. External throat is sensitive to touch.

• Phthisis (Tuberculosis): Weakness as if falling. Flashes of heat that return when thinking of them. Cough is worse from deep breathing, talking, and dry, cold winds.

Heart & Glandular Symptoms

• Heart: Organic affections. Patient cannot lie on the back with the head low without suffocating. Wakes smothering with blowing sounds over heart valves.

• Male: Orchitis with great enlargement of the testicles. Hardness and squeezing pains in testicles and spermatic cord, worse from any motion.

Badiaga (Freshwater Sponge)

• Primary Action: Glandular induration and cardiac nerves.

• Symptoms: Indurated buboes. Palpitation of the heart specifically brought on by hearing unpleasant news.

Apis Mellifica (Honeybee)

Keynote Profile: Rapid swellings with redness, burning, and stinging pains. Severe edema, serous inflammations, and dropsy. Thirstless and intolerant of heat.

Mental Symptoms

• Fidgety, clumsy, and awkward (drops things constantly).

• Can be silly, laughing, or highly jealous.

• In meningitis, characterized by the "cephalic cry" (shrill outcries in sleep), especially if due to a suppressed eruption.

Physical Symptoms

• Eyes: Puffiness of the conjunctiva (chemosis). Edematous swelling of the eyelids, especially bag-like swellings under the eyes. (Less tendency to form pus than Rhus Tox).

• Mouth & Throat (Diphtheria): Glossitis (swollen, dry, sore tongue with vesicles on tips/sides). Great edema of the throat with stinging pains. Uvula and tonsils are elongated and water-logged. Throat has a red, varnished appearance.

• Respiratory: Edema of the glottis. Difficult breathing ("doesn't see how he can get another breath"). Cough starts from a little spot in the larynx.

• Gastrointestinal: Thin, watery, yellow morning diarrhea with great debility. Anus feels constantly open (involuntary stools with movement).

• Urinary & Genital: Urine is scanty or suppressed, albuminous with tube casts. Edematous swelling of scrotum, testicles, or labia. Right-sided ovarian troubles (burning, stinging, tumefaction, numbness down the thigh).

• Skin & Joints: Waxy, transparent, alabaster-like skin in dropsy. Urticaria (hives) appearing as pinkish-white welts that itch and sting intolerably. Rosy, pinkish erysipelas that turns livid/purple. Joints are swollen, skin feels tightly stretched over them.

Modalities (Aggravations & Ameliorations)

• Worse: Afternoon (specifically 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM), and from heat.

• Better: Cold applications.

• Fever: Chill without thirst, followed by burning heat and oppression of the chest. Sweats partially without thirst.

Cantharis (Spanish Fly)

Keynote Profile: Violent, intense, rapid inflammation of the mucous membranes, especially the genito-urinary and gastrointestinal tracts.

Genito-Urinary Symptoms

• Urination: Persistent, violent urging to urinate with extreme tenesmus. Urine passes only in drops and feels like molten lead passing through the urethra. Intense burning and aching in the small of the back.

• Sexual: Intense sexual excitement. Nymphomania associated with bladder symptoms. Gonorrhea with purulent/bloody discharge and persistent erections.

• Female: Menses too black, early, and profuse. Favors the expulsion of moles and hydatids.

Gastrointestinal & Respiratory Symptoms

• Burning from the mouth to the stomach. Throat highly inflamed, covered with plastic lymph, with intense spasm and constriction.

• Dysentery: Discharge of blood-streaked mucus looking like scrapings of the intestines. Cutting/burning in the anus, but the bladder tenesmus predominates over the intestinal tenesmus.

Skin & Neurological Symptoms

• Skin: Produces large blisters and bullae filled with excoriating fluid. The skin burns like fire. An excellent remedy for burns and scalds (when blebs form on a yellowish base) and almost specific for Herpes Zoster (shingles).

• Vision: Objects appear yellow.

• Face: Facial erysipelas beginning on the bridge of the nose and spreading to the right cheek, forming large vesicles that break and discharge excoriating fluid.