Zincum Metallicum: The Ultimate Homeopathic Remedy for Brain Fag & Nervous Exhaustion

Classification: An antipsoric medicine

General Profile & Constitution

• Suitability: Best suited for broken-down and feeble constitutions, especially in feeble children and girls. Suitable for overworked and excitable persons (similar to Nux Vomica).

• Not Suitable For: Naturally feeble-minded individuals or children in a state bordering on idiocy (compare Baryta carb.).

• Core Characteristic: Enfeeblement characterizes the whole drug. The entire economy is tired and feeble, accompanied by anaemia, prostration, and emaciation throughout the body.

• Slowness: All bodily functions are slow. Eruptions appear slowly, the mind is slow, and digestion is slow.

• Sensitivities:

  • Extremely sensitive and excitable. This extreme over-sensitiveness is like Nux Vomica (which is inimical to Zincum).

  • Over-sensitiveness in one part of the body, accompanied by a lack of feeling in another.

  • Highly sensitive to noise: every little noise, people talking in the room, or even the crumpling of paper.

  • Always chilly and extremely sensitive to the cold (exposure to a draft causes tearing pains in all parts of the body).

• Physical Appearance: Face is pallid, wrinkled, unhealthy, and sickly. The skin looks withered.

Nervous System & Musculoskeletal

• General Nerves: The patient is nervous, trembling, quivering, and experiences twitching of muscles. Full of brain and spinal symptoms.

• Pains: Neuralgic and tearing pains along the course of the nerves. Screaming out in pain (compare Apis).

• Tension & Drawing: Tension and drawing felt everywhere: in the muscles, the neck (drawn back), and various other places.

  • Modalities: When coming to rest, the limbs draw up (hysterical contractures, drawing fingers all out of shape).

• Weakness & Paralysis: Tingling excited on the least provocation. Paralytic weakness progressing to paresis, and finally paralysis of one or both sides (e.g., paralysis of one hand or one foot).

• Spine & Back:

  • Aching in the dorsal, lumbar, and sacral regions.

  • Modalities: Better (>) when walking, worse (<) from rising from a seat.

  • Remedy Comparisons: Rhus has aching in the sacral region that is better (>) when walking and comes on while sitting (along with Calc., Rhus, Phos., Sulph., and Sepia). Worse (<) when rising from a seat belongs to Zinc., Petr., and Ledum.

• Extremities: Numbness in the soles of the feet. The heel has cutting pain and soreness when stepping. Jerking, trembling, and drawing in the extremities.

• Fidgety Feet: Great nervousness in the feet; the patient keeps one foot going all the time and cannot keep it still.

• Sleep: Shocks and jerking occur during sleep.

Mental & Emotional Symptoms

• Memory & Cognition: Poor, weak, and forgetful memory. The patient repeats questions before answering to make the mind comprehend (often seen in typhoid or after brain affections).

• Demeanor: Tendency to be docile, but highly irascible when aroused.

• Consciousness: Semi-slumber state where the patient stares for a moment without answering.

Brain Affections & Acute Diseases

• Stupor Progression: Stupor aroused by every little noise -> startles -> twitches all over -> becomes less and less excitable -> slowly and gradually passes into complete unconsciousness (cannot be aroused).

• Severe Brain Symptoms: Rolling of the head from side to side (often for days). Eyes are lusterless, body is emaciated, tongue is dry and parched. Involuntary discharges of faeces and urine in bed.

• In Children (Scarlatina / Measles): Eruptions do not come out (inability to throw eruptions to the surface). Leads to stupor, convulsions, drawing in extremities, suppressed urine, rolling of the head, and ultimately complete unconsciousness.

• Spinal Meningitis Remedy Comparisons:

  • Belladonna: Flushed face, hot head, rolling of the head, flashing eyes, throbbing carotids.

  • Bryonia: Docile, stupid, purple, sleepy; ameliorated by quiet.

  • Helleborus: Little fever, cold extremities, tossing of the head, dilated pupils, unconsciousness, can hardly be aroused; rolling head from side to side.

  • Zincum: Comes in when the reflexes are abolished. It is used after the relief from Gels., Bell., or Bry.

Women’s Health (Puberty & Menses)

• Delayed Puberty: When a girl approaches puberty and it is time for menses to establish but the flow does not appear, she goes into a decline. Manifests as choreic symptoms, jerking, twitching, soreness in the back of the neck, burning of the whole spine, creeping/crawling in extremities, and all sorts of hysterical manifestations.

• Menstruation: Dysmenorrhea with violent pains in the ovaries and uterus, accompanied by hysterical excitement.

• Relief Modality: As soon as the menstrual flow appears, there is relief (better by the flow).

• Remedy Comparisons:

  • Lachesis and Zincum are both worse (<) before and better (>) with the flow. However, in Lachesis, the pains all return when the flow slacks up again.

  • Cimicifuga has nervous excitement and hysteria during the flow; the more copious the flow, the more violent the pains. It also has times of intermittent flow, with pain ceasing during each intermission and returning when the flow appears again.

Gastrointestinal & Urinary Systems

• Stomach: Slow in digesting, sour vomiting.

• Intestines & Bowels: Sluggish intestines, impacted rectum. Tedious constipation associated with spinal symptoms.

• Urinary: Suppression of urine. Difficult expulsion due to paralysis of the bladder. Urine is slow in starting and the patient can only pass it when sitting, or when sitting leaning back against the seat with hard pressure.

Eye Symptoms

• Vision & Sensation: Strange drawing about the eyes, as if strabismus would come on. Violent photophobia (feels as if the light would blind them).

• Physical Eye Changes: Thickening and opacity of the conjunctiva (thickened like pterygium). Distressing thickening of the lids (ectropion and entropion).

• Strabismus: Occurs after brain troubles or scarlet fever.

Clinical Indications

Zincum Metallicum is useful in treating the following conditions:

• Alcoholism

• Amblyopia

• Asthma

• Brain-fag

• Brain, paralysis of

• Breasts, affections of

• Cataract

• Chilblains

• Chin, eruption on

• Chlorosis

• Cholera

• Chorea

• Constipation

• Cracks

• Dentition

• Diarrhœa, nervous (with stupor)

• Diphtheria

• Dysentery

• Dysuria

• Earache

• Eczema

• Enuresis

• Eruptions (suppressed)

• Eyes, affections of (granular lids)

• Fag

• Foot-sweat (suppressed)

• Gastralgia

• Headache (nervous, chlorotic)

• Heels, pains in

• Hernia, inguinal

• Hiccough

• Hydrocephalus

• Hyperpyrexia, nervous

• Hypochondriasis

• Hysteria

• Inframammary pain

• Joints, creaking in

• Lips, affections of

• Lochia (suppressed)

• Malar bones, neuralgia in

• Masturbation

• Memory, weak

• Meningitis

• Mental weakness

• Milk, defective (suppressed)

• Neuralgia (intercostal, subcostal)

• Neurasthenia

• Nipples, sore

• Nose, redness of

• Nymphomania

• Œsophagus, spasm of

• Otorrhœa

• Photopsia

• Prostatorrhœa

• Ptosis

• Reaction, defective

• Rheumatism

• Screaming

• Sleepiness

• Somnambulism

• Spermatorrhœa

• Spinal irritation

• Spine, affections of

• Spleen, neuralgia of

• Strabismus

• Suppressions

• Tarsal tumours

• Throat, sore

• Tibia, burning in

• Typhoid fever

• Ulcers

• Urine, hysterical retention of

• Varicosis (during pregnancy, of external genitals)

• Whooping-cough

• Worms