| LATRODECTUS MACTANS "The black widow spider" - A pediatric case. - Dr Patricia Le Roux (January 1999) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| d'autres articles... | I have started taking an
interest in this spider after hearing J. Shore speaking in Paris where he gave his very
interesting views of the different animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms. I join attached to this article a brief synthesis of his ideas (table joined), as its appears to me to be truly artistic approach to the patient. Being in one of my second lives an artist, I find it very interesting to approach the patient artistically, finding in this way the spirit of his disease and the spirit of his remedy. This is how I would like to present Latrodectus along with one of my clinical pediatric cases. Coming back to artistic prescription, I would like to quote the French Dr Demangeat and Kent himself; they both talk about artistic and mechanical prescriptions. They both insist on pointing out that if a prescription remains too mechanical (over using, or staying dependant on the repertory for example), the doctor cannot approach the patient as a whole. If he uses his intuition and feelings to understand the meaning of the patient’s disease, then his prescription will really be artistic and have results: he will then be practising the "Art of healing".... So let us come to my subject in this way, and first study a clinical case in my personal practice (with little follow-up but it has given me the opportunity to study the remedy), then give a short review of the materia medica, followed by my personal artistic synthesis of Latrodectus Mactans. 1°) CLINICAL CASE This patient is a child, brought in by his mother in the autumn of 1998. He is one of my patients who is really badly affected by disease. He is 3 years old. He suffers from a neurological disease (severe epilepsy), treated by neuro-pediatricians in our sick children teaching hospital in Marseille (CHU). His symptoms started when he was 9 months old, with sleeping problems. (Complete, Sleep restless) very quickly diagnosed as convulsions during sleep. This epilepsy is treated at present with three heavy anti-epileptic drugs:Tegretol, Sabryl, Rivotril.. This child presents important developmental trouble, hardly speaks (Complete, Mind speech hesitating), and a very agitated attitude. In a few minutes he tips upside down, everything that can be moved in my office. He never stops moving... it is exhausting and to add to it all the mother puts in front of me a huge medical dossier. It is the first time I am seeing this child and I have little time to spare as we are in a very busy epidemic season. I feel that if I open this dossier I will be there for the rest of the day. I put it gently aside and try to start with the best of my artistic potential! The first thing that strikes me is that this child is an "animal’; the way he behaves, he moves (see table). I start examining him; just to try and keep him still a few moments. He then does what quite a lot of children to do me and is often a sign of an animal: he pulls violently on the stethoscope, virtually tearing my ears off... The mother immediately says to me: "Sorry Doctor but he loves strings, tubes and pipes..." It is then obvious to me: this child is a spider. I then ask about his attitude to music. Not much to say, but she say’s he has a passion for birds. She also has a problem with birds. She is phobic about them, and she says she has dreamed of birds a lot while she was pregnant. She wanted to be a pilot as a youngster and had to forget about it, as her eye sight was really bad. This was said to her shortly before the pregnancy (" dreams of flying"). The next thing he does is a sign of Latrodectus and its odd web. He takes hold of the box of paper clips on my desk and starts sliding them into each other. They are now securely fixed so that I can take them around and not lose any of them. ( I have kept the lot and shown it to a few groups all ready...). The rest of the consultation is then very calm, as he fixes them all one after the other. ( Complete, Improved sitting down quietly). The mother then tells me that the heavy drug treatment is not well tolerated, that he has really put on weight. She would like to stop some of the drugs and come out of this hell they are both in. After confirming by repertorisation, I prescribe "LATRODECTUS MACTANS, 9CH, 12CH, 15CH, 30CH and isotherapy of the three remedies he takes. She phones me 10 days later saying that convulsions have reappeared. I explain to her that it is a homeopathic aggravation, that it shouldn’t last and is good sign, and tell her to stop isotherapy and phone me if things get worse . She phones a month later saying that the child is amazingly better and that the neurologists are thinking of stopping one of the drugs. I am regularly in touch with the neuro-pediatricians. They are slowly decreasing the drugs. He his actually only on one drug, Sabryl, and his EEG during his sleep is slowly coming back to normal. He has had since the first time I saw him 2 more doses of LATRODECTUS, one in 1000K, then in 10000K...He is much calmer and can concentrate longer. Follow up to come.... 2°) Materia medica, Vermeulen and Boericke
3°) Synthesis and personal interpretation: I will briefly recall the habits of this North American spider. The female can be recognised because of its very black velvet colour and the red mark on its back. This red patch has a shape and size that depends of the age of the spider.The female bite only, is toxic for man, and the female spends her time in her web. The male wanders around looking for females. This spider spins a very untidy and odd looking web. It is not a nice looking web and it is very resistant. The spider spends her time waiting for her victim to come so she can inject it with tetanic poison. These spiders don’t like getting near man and bite when they have to defend themselves. They seem to be more and more found in houses where as they used to prefer garages, or dumps.This of course frightens a lot the North American population. So now let us try and understand with Latrodectus mactans, the symbolism of the spider, who dreams of flying and inversely what he does to his victims: a tetanic wound that goes straight to the heart...
Let us now try to interpret the remedy by
applying it to my clinical case and artistically understand the situation. Of course it is the repertory that has helped me to confirm his remedy. But what was more interesting was to understand the meaning of this child’s symptoms.This is why it seems important to consider the affective background of my patient. It is obvious that there was a fusional relation between mother and child. The mother had suffered from a really deep frustration just before the pregnancy. In this way it seems to me that this little boy could not leap from his sycotis stage to his luetic stage. Shortly I will quote Didier Grandgeorge who compares homeopathic miasms, to the different Freudian stages (Psora to the oral stage, Sycosis to the anal stage, and Luesa to the phallic stage). I must say, having worked in this way with Didier, and as a pediatrician, it is extremely useful to use this comparison to understand the homeopathic miasms and disease in children. Coming back to my case, here is the key to the problem: the spider is stuck in her sycosis. She spins her web to control around her, her affective relationships. She has a real desire to go towards the other. She is stuck in her web, and the only way she has to approach the other is to catch him in her web, to eat him and destroy him.
For Latrodectus Mactans to fly is to accede to freedom, to others and then to divinity. Her freedom is her healing. She will not have to stay hours in her web waiting for the other to kill him. She will then accede to a superior artistic state, by joining higher sights, instead of hiding in her murderous web in garages and dumps... My little patient is like this spider. He has spun himself into his state of epilepsy. He does it regularly, with ropes, tubes and even paper clips. He is tied up in his sycosis. His mother has gone through a period of great frustration just before the pregnancy and has projected on him her desire to fly. Because of this impossible vocation of his mother and the necessity for the child to break away from maternal fusional love, Latrodectus Mactans is going to help him to accede to altruistic love, leaving his web, to go towards the sky and realise his artistic personality and his liberation and of course his healing. Conclusion We can conclude this way for Latrodectus Mactans: The Latrodectus patient cannot leave his interior cannibal feminity. He prefers to control and conserve everything (this is masculine side) by staying in his web. He can become paralysed, numb, he stops breathing and his heart stops beating with tetanic effects. When he takes the remedy, the patient will then still want to fly and to rise above the world to enable him to accept with confidence his internal feminity, not like an enemy capable of eating and killing but like a friend who will help him to reveal his creativity by linking up naturally with his masculine side and so help him then to come out of his web...
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Docteur Patricia le Roux, Pediatrician
- 09/01/99 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ecole Hahnemannienne de Fréjus-St. Raphaël - 362 Rue du Suveret - 83600 Fréjus - FRANCE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||