AGARICUS MUSCARIUS

Key Symptoms:

• Jerking, twitching, trembling, and itching are strong indications.
• Incipient phthisis; related to the tubercular diathesis, anemia, chorea; twitchings cease during sleep.
• Various forms of neuralgias and spasmodic affections.
• Neurotic skin problems depicted in the symptomatology of this remedy.
• Corresponds to various forms of cerebral excitement rather than congestion.
• Indicated in delirium of fevers, alcoholism (delirium tremens), etc.
• General paralysis.
• Sensation as if pierced by needles of ice.
• Sensitive to pressure and cold air.
• Violent bearing down pains.
• Symptoms appear diagonally like the right arm and left leg.
• Pains are accompanied by sensation of coldness, numbness, and tingling.

Mind:

• Sings, talks, but does not answer.
• Loquacity.
• Aversion to work.
• Indifference.
• Fearless.
• Delirium characterized by singing, shouting, and muttering; rhymes and prophesies.
• Begins with a paroxysm of yawning.

Four Phases of Cerebral Excitement:

1. Slight stimulation: increased cheerfulness, courage, loquacity, and exalted fancy.
2. More decided intoxication: heightened mental excitement, incoherent talking, alternation between immoderate gaiety and melancholy.
3. Third stage produces furious or raging delirium, screaming, raving, wants to injure himself, etc.
4. Fourth stage: mental depression, languor, indifference, confusion, disinclination to work.

Head:

• Vertigo from sunlight, and on walking.
• Head in constant motion (epilepsy).
• Falling backward, as if a weight was put on the occiput (meningitis).
• Lateral headache, as if from a nail (Coff., Ign.).
• Dull headache from prolonged desk work.
• Icy coldness, like icy needles, or splinters.
• Neuralgia with an icy cold head.

Eyes:

• Reading difficult, as type seems move, swim.
• Vibrating specters.
• Diplopia (Gels.), dim and flickering.
• Asthenopia from prolonged strain, spasm of accommodation.
• Twitching of lids and eyeballs (Cod.).
• Margins of lids red; very red. Itch, burn and agglutinate (blepharitis). Inner canthi

Ears:

• Burn and itch, as if frozen (frost bite).
• Twitching of muscles around the ear and noises (tinnitus).

Nose:

• Nervous nasal disturbances.
• Itching internally and externally.
• Spasmodic sneezing after coughing; sensitiveness; watery non-inflammatory discharge.
• Inner angles very red.
• Fetid, dark, bloody discharge.
• Epistaxis in old people.
• Sensation of soreness in the nose and mouth.

Face:

• Facial muscles feel stiff; twitch; face itches and burns.
• Lancinating, tearing pain in cheeks, as of splinters.
• Neuralgia, as if cold needles ran through the nerves or sharp pieces of ice touched them.

Mouth:

• Burning and smarting of lips.
• Herpes labialis.
• Twitching.
• Taste sweet.
• Aphthae at the roof of the mouth.
• Splinter-like pains in the tongue.
• Thirsty all the time.
• Tremulous tongue (Lach.).
• Tongue white.

Throat:

• Stitches along the eustachian tube to the ear.
• Feels contracted.
• Small solid balls of phlegm thrown up.
• Dryness of pharynx, dysphagia.
• Scratching in the throat; cannot sing a note.

Stomach:

• Empty eructations, tasting of apples.
• Nervous disturbances, with spasmodic contractions, hiccough.
• Unnatural hunger.
• Flatulent distention of the stomach and abdomen.
• Profuse inodorous flatus.
• Burning in the stomach, about three hours after a meal, followed by a dull pressure.
• Gastric disturbance with sharp pains in the liver region.

Abdomen:

• Stitching pains in the liver, spleen (Cean.) and abdomen.
• Stitches under the short ribs, left side.
• Diarrhea with much fetid flatus.
• Fetid stools.

Urinary:

• Stitches in urethra.
• Sudden and violent urge to micturate.
• Frequent micturition.

Female:

• Menses, profuse and early.
• Itching and tearing, pressing pains in genitals and back.
• Spasmodic dysmenorrhea.
• Severe bearing down pains, especially after menopause.
• Sexual excitement.
• Nipples itch, burn.
• Complaints following parturition and coitus.
• Leucorrhea, with severe itching.

Respiratory:

• Violent attacks of cough that can be suppressed by effort of will.
• Worse eating, pain in the head while cough lasts.
• Spasmodic cough at night after falling asleep, with expectoration of little balls of mucus.
• Labored, oppressed breathing.
• Cough ends in a sneeze.

Heart:

• Irregular, tumultuous palpitations, after tobacco.
• Pulse intermittent and irregular.
• Cardiac region oppressed, as if the thorax was too narrow.
• Palpitations with hyperemia of the face.

Back:

• Pain, spine sensitive to touch; worse in the dorsal region.
• Lumbago; worse in open air.
• Crick in the back.
• Twitching of cervical muscles.

Extremities:

• Stiff all over.
• Pain over the hips.
• Rheumatism, better motion.
• Weakness in loins.
• Uncertain gait.
• Trembling.
• Itching of toes and feet as if frozen or as if from chilblains.
• Cramps in the soles.
• Pain in the shin bone.
• Neuralgia in locomotor ataxia.
• Paralysis of lower limbs, with spasmodic condition of arms.
• Numbness of legs on crossing them.
• Paralytic pain in the left arm followed by palpitations.
• Tearing, painful contractions in the calves.

Sleep:

• Paroxysms of yawning.
• Restless from violent itching and burning.
• On falling asleep, starts, twitches, and wakes up often.
• Vivid dreams.
• Drowsy during the day.
• Yawning, followed by involuntary laughter.

Fever:

• Very sensitive to cool air.
• Violent attacks of heat in the evening.
• Copious sweat.
• Burning spots.

Skin:

• Burning, itching, hyperemia, and swelling, as from frostbites.
• Pimples, hard, like flea bites.
• Miliary eruption, with intolerable itching and burning.
• Chilblains.
• Angioneurotic edema; acne, rosacea.
• Swollen veins (phlebismus) with cold skin.
• Circumscribed erythematous, papular, pustular, and edematous lesions.

Modalities:

• • Worse, open cold air, after eating, after coitus.
  • In cold weather, before a thunderstorm.
  • Worse, pressure on dorsal spine, which causes involuntary laughter.
  • Better, moving about slowly.

Relationship:

• Compare: Muscarinum, the alkaloid of Agar. (has much power over secretions, increasing lachrymal, salivary and hepatic secretions but diminishes renal secretions; probably neurotic in origin, stimulating the terminal fibres of the secretory nerves of all these structures, hence salivation, lachrymation and excessive perspiration. Atropinum exactly opposes Muscarinum. Resembles Pilocarpinum in action).
• Amanita verna-Spring mushroom-a variety of Agaricus phalloides-Death cup-active principle is Phallin, active like Muscarinum. The poison is a toxalbumin, resembling the poison of rattle snake and the poison excreted by the cholera and diphtheria germs. It acts on the red blood corpuscles, dissolving them so that blood escapes into the alimentary canal and the entire system is drained. The amount of this toxic principle is small, even handling of specimens and breathing of spores can be harmful to affect some people. The effects of poison develop slowly. Even 12 to 20 hours after taking it, the patient feels all right, but vertigo, violent cholera-like symptoms with rapid loss of strength and death by the second or third day, preceded by stupor and spasms occur. Fatty degeneration of liver, heart and kidneys, hemorrhages in the lungs, pleura and skin (Dr. J. Schier). Vomiting and purging. Continuous urging to stool, but no gastric, abdominal or rectal pain. Intense thirst for cold water, dry skin. Lethargic but mentally clear. Sharp changes from rapid to slow and from slow to rapid breathing, extreme collapse, suppressed urine, but no cold extremities or cramps).
• Agaricus emeticus (severe vertigo; all symptoms better, cold water; longing for ice cold water; gastritis, cold sweat, vomiting, sensation as if stomach was suspended by a string).
• Tamus communis (chilblains and freckles).
• Cimic., Cann-i., Hyos., Tarantula hispanica.

Antidotes:

• Absin., Coff., Camph.