IGNATIA AMARA

Ignatia Amara

(St. Ignatius Bean)

Ign.

Produces heightened sensitivity of all senses and a tendency to clonic spasms. Emotionally driven, it disrupts coordination, making it a key remedy for hysteria. Best suited for nervous, sensitive, excitable women with a dark, mild disposition, quick perception, and rapid action. Characterized by rapid mental and physical changes, contradictory symptoms, alertness, nervousness, apprehensiveness, rigidity, and trembling, worsened by coffee. Symptoms are superficial and erratic. Notable for effects of grief and worry, intolerance to tobacco, and localized pain. Also treats hiccough and hysterical vomiting.

Mind: Changeable mood; introspective; silently brooding; melancholic, sad, tearful; not communicative; sighing and sobbing; after shocks, grief, disappointment.

Head: Feels hollow and heavy; worse with stooping. Headache like a nail driven through the side. Cramp-like pains over the nose. Congestive headaches from anger or grief; worse with smoking or tobacco smell; inclines head forward.

Eyes: Asthenopia with eyelid spasms and neuralgic pain around the eyes; flickering zigzags.

Face: Twitching facial muscles and lips; color changes at rest.

Mouth: Sour taste; easily bites cheeks; full of saliva; toothache worse after coffee and smoking.

Throat: Lump sensation, choking tendency, globus hystericus, sore throat with stitches when not swallowing, better with solid food, stitches extending to the ear, inflamed tonsils with small ulcers, follicular tonsillitis.

Stomach: Sour eructation, all gone feeling, flatulence, hiccough, cramps worsened by slight contact, aversion to ordinary diet, craving for acidic foods, stomach sinking relieved by deep breath.

Abdomen: Rumbling; weak feeling in upper abdomen; throbbing; colicky pain in sides.

Rectum: Itching, stitching pains, prolapse, difficult stool, painful constriction after stool, hemorrhoid stitches during cough, diarrhea from fright, stitches from anus to rectum, hemorrhage, and pain worsened by loose stool, sharp internal pressure.

Urinary: Profuse, watery urine.

Female: Early, black, heavy, or scanty menses; spasmodic pain during menses; sexual frigidity; suppression from grief.

Respiratory: Dry, spasmodic cough; spasm of the glottis; reflex cough; much sighing; hollow cough worse in the evening, with little expectoration, leaving trachea pain.

Extremities: Jerking limbs; pain in Achilles tendon and calf; ulcerative pain in soles.

Sleep: Very light; limb jerking before sleep; insomnia from grief; dreams that linger.

Fever: Chill with thirst; not relieved by external heat; itching and nettle rash during fever.

Skin: Itching and nettle rash; sensitive to air drafts; excoriation around vagina and mouth.

Modalities: Worse in the morning, open air, after meals, coffee, smoking, liquids, external warmth; better while eating, changing position.

Relationships: Compare with Zinc., Kali-p., Sep., Cimic. Panacea arvensis – Poor man’s mercury (sensitivity over the gastric region with hunger but aversion to food). Complementary: Nat-m. Incompatible: Coff., Nux-v., Tab. Antidotes: Puls., Cham., Cocc.