PULSATILLA PRATENSIS

PULSATILLA PRATENSIS

(Pulsatilla Nigricans)

(Wind Flower)

Puls.

This remedy is often compared to a weather vane due to its ever-changing nature. It is primarily used for individuals with a gentle, yielding disposition, especially in females. These patients are typically sad, cry easily, and are prone to mood swings. They seek fresh air and feel better outdoors, despite feeling chilly. Pulsatilla affects all mucous membranes, leading to thick, bland, yellow-green discharges. It is frequently recommended after misuse of iron tonics or poorly managed cases of measles. The symptoms are constantly changing. The patient is often thirsty, irritable, and chilly, particularly when their health first declines during puberty. They are highly sensitive, prefer to hold their head high, feel uncomfortable with only one pillow, and tend to lie with their hands above their head.

Mind: The patient weeps easily, is timid and indecisive, and experiences fears in the evening, particularly of being alone or of ghosts. They crave sympathy, and children especially respond well to fuss and caresses. These individuals are easily discouraged, have a morbid dread of the opposite sex, and may experience religious melancholy. Their emotions fluctuate greatly, akin to an April day.

Head: The patient experiences wandering stitches around the head, with pain extending to the face and teeth, and vertigo that improves in fresh air. They suffer from frontal and supra-orbital pain, neuralgic pain starting in the right temporal region (migraine) with burning tears on the affected side, and headaches from overwork. There is also pressure on the vertex.

Eyes: The eyes may produce thick, profuse, yellow, bland discharges, with itching and burning. Profuse tearing and mucus secretion are common, along with inflamed, stuck-together eyelids (blepharitis), styes, and enlarged veins in the fundus oculi. Ophthalmia neonatorum and subacute conjunctivitis, particularly with dyspepsia, worsen in a warm room.

Ears: The patient may feel as if something is being forced outward in the ear, have difficulty hearing as if the ear were stuffed, and experience otorrhea with thick, bland discharge and offensive odor. The external ear may be swollen and red, and catarrhal otitis and otalgia, which worsen at night, are common. Hearing acuity may be diminished.

Nose: Symptoms include coryza with right nostril blockage, pressing pain at the root of the nose, anosmia, large green fetid nasal scales, evening blockage, yellow mucus, and bad smells resembling old catarrh. The nasal bones may be sore.

Face: Right-sided neuralgia with profuse tearing, swelling of the lower lip with a crack in the middle, and prosopalgia from evening until midnight, accompanied by chills and pain.

Mouth: The patient may have a greasy taste, dry mouth without thirst but with a frequent need to wash it, and a tendency to lick their lips dry. They may have a crack in the middle of the lower lip, a yellow or white-coated tongue covered with tenacious mucus, and toothache that is relieved by holding cold water in the mouth. Halitosis, altered taste (bitter, bilious, greasy, salty, foul), loss of taste, and a desire for tonics are also noted.

Stomach: There is an aversion to fatty foods, warm foods, and drinks. The patient may experience eructations with a lingering taste of food, flatulence, heartburn, dyspepsia with tightness after meals requiring them to loosen clothing, and thirstlessness with nearly all complaints. Vomiting of previously eaten food, stomach pain an hour after eating, a feeling of weight like a stone (especially in the morning), a gnawing, hungry sensation, perceptible pulsations in the pit of the stomach, a sense of emptiness, and waterbrash with a foul taste in the morning are common.

Abdomen: The abdomen may be painful, distended, with loud rumbling, and the patient may feel pressure as if from a stone. Colic with evening chilliness is also noted.

Rectum: Symptoms include rumbling and watery stools that worsen at night, with no two stools alike, especially after eating fruit. The patient may suffer from blind hemorrhoids with itching and sticking pains, dysentery with mucus and blood accompanied by chilliness, and may have two or three normal stools daily.

Urinary: There is an increased desire to urinate, particularly when lying down, with burning in the urethral orifice during and after micturition. Involuntary urination at night, while coughing or passing gas, and spasmodic pain in the bladder after urination are also present.

Male: Symptoms include orchitis with pain extending from the abdomen to the testicles, a thick yellow discharge from the urethra in the late stage of gonorrhea, stricture with urine passed only in drops, interrupted stream, acute prostatitis, pain and tenesmus during urination, which worsens when lying on the back.

Female: Pulsatilla is indicated for amenorrhea, suppressed menses from wet feet, nervous debility, or chlorosis, tardy menses, and menstrual flow that is too late, scanty, thick, dark, clotted, changeable, and intermittent. The patient may experience chilliness, nausea with downward pressure and pain, intermitting flow, acrid, burning, creamy leucorrhea, back pain, and a tired feeling. Diarrhea during or after menses is also common.

Respiratory: Symptoms include capricious hoarseness that comes and goes, a dry cough in the evening and at night that requires sitting up in bed for relief, a loose cough in the morning with copious mucoid expectoration, pressure on the chest with soreness, great soreness in the epigastrium, urine emitted with cough, and pain as if from an ulcer in the middle of the chest. The expectoration is bland, thick, bitter, and greenish. The patient may experience shortness of breath, anxiety, and palpitations when lying on the left side, with a smothering sensation when lying down.

Back: Shooting pain in the nape and back, between the shoulders, and in the sacrum after sitting.

Extremities: The patient may experience drawing, tensive pain in the thighs and legs with restlessness, sleeplessness, and chilliness, pain in the limbs that shifts rapidly, tensive pain that lets up with a snap, numbness around the elbow, pain in the hip joint, swollen knees with tearing, drawing pains, boring pain in the heels towards the evening, worse when letting the affected limb hang down, swollen veins in the forearms and hands, and red, inflamed, swollen feet.

Sleep: The patient is wide awake in the evening, with restless first sleep, waking up languid and unrefreshed. There is irresistible sleepiness in the afternoon, and the patient sleeps with their hands over their head.

Fever: The patient may feel chilly even in a warm room, with pain in spots that worsens in the evening, chills around 4 p.m., intolerable burning heat at night with distended veins, heat in parts of the body with coldness in others, and one-sided sweat with pain during sweating. External heat is intolerable, with distended veins, and during apyrexia, the patient may experience headaches, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and nausea.

Skin: The patient may suffer from urticaria after eating rich food, with diarrhea, delayed menses, worsened by undressing, measles, acne at puberty, and varicose veins.

Modalities: Symptoms worsen from heat, rich fatty food, eating, in the evening, in a warm room, lying on the left or painless side, and when allowing the feet to hang down. The patient feels better in open air, with motion, cold applications, and cold food and drinks, though they are not thirsty.

Relationship: Pentas is often indicated after Pulsatilla in later colds. Janosia asoca-Saraca indica is used for amenorrhea and menorrhagia, acting powerfully on the female organs, abdominal pain. Atriplex hortensis is used for uterine symptoms, amenorrhea, hysteria, coldness between the shoulders, dislike for warm food, craving strange foods, palpitations, and sleeplessness. Pulsatilla nuttaliana has identical effects.

Compare: Cyclamen, Kali-bichromicum, Kali-sulphuricum, Sulphur, Pimenta officinalis-Allspice (for one-sided neuralgias, parts of the body hot and cold). Anagyris foetida (headache, amenorrhea).

Antidotes: Coffea, Chamomilla, Nux-vomica.

Dose: Third to thirtieth attenuation.