BELLADONNA

WILLAM BOERICKE

Patient lives in a world of his own, engrossed by specters and

visions and oblivious to surrounding realities. While the retina is
insensible to actual objects, a host of visual hallucinations throng
about him and come to him from within. He is acutely alive and
crazed by a flood of subjective visual impressions and fantastic
illusions. Hallucinations; sees monsters, hideous faces. Delirium;
frightful images; furious; rages, bites, strikes; desire to escape.
Loss of consciousness. Disinclined to talk. Perversity, with tears.
Acuteness of all senses. Changeableness.

J.H.CLARKE

Melancholy, with grief, hypochondriac humor, moral dejection, and

discouragement.Great agitation, with continual tossing about,
inquietude, and anguish, chiefly at night, and in the afternoon,
sometimes with headache and redness of face. Desire to die, and
inclination for suicide. Lamentations, groans, cries, and tears.
Perversity, with tears (in children). Timidity, disposition fearful,
mistrustful, and suspicious; apprehension and inclination to run
away. Fear of approaching death. Mental excitation, with too great
sensibility to every impression, immoderate gaiety, and disposition
to be easily frightened. Nervous anxiety, restlessness, desire to
escape. Dotage, delirium, and mania, with groaning, disposition to
dance, to laugh, to sing, and to whistle; mania, with groans, or
with involuntary laughter; nocturnal delirium; delirium with
murmuring; delirium, during which are seen wolves, dogs, fires,
&c.; delirium by fits, and sometimes with fixedness of look.
Stupefaction, with congestion to the head; pupils enlarged.
Delirium. Great apathy and indifference, desire for solitude, dread
of society and of all noise.Repugnance to
conversation.Disinclination to talk, or very fast talking. Ill-humor,
disposition irritable and sensitive, with an inclination to be angry
and to give offence.Folly, with ridiculous jesting, gesticulations,
acts of insanity, impudent manners. Fury and rage, with desire to
strike, to spit, to bite, and to tear everything, and sometimes with
growling and barking like a dog. Dejection and weakness of mind
and body.Dread of all exertion and motion. Loss of
consciousness.Fantastic illusions (when closing the eyes).
Dementia, to such an extent as no longer to know one's friends,
illusions of the senses and frightful visions.Complete loss of
reason, stupidity, inadvertence, and distraction, ineptitude for
thought, and great weakness of memory. Memory: quick; weak;
lost.

S.r.PHATAK

Acuteness of senses. Wildly Delirious. Excited ferocious; noisy;

cries out. Talks fast; VERY RESTLESS. Biting, striking; tearing
mania. Spits on faces of other persons. Sees monsters, hideous
faces. Fear of imaginary things. Desire to escape or hide himself.
Perversity, with tears (children). Excitable, easily weeps.
Quarrelsome. Tendency to dance, laugh, sing, whistle. Starts in
fright at the approach of others. Constant moaning. Craving for
snuff. An angel when well and a devil when sick. Sits and breaks
pins. Mental symptoms amel. taking light food. Patient lives in his
own world.

J.T.KENT

The mental symptoms of Bell. are delightful to study, but dreadful

to look upon. The mental symptoms are such as come on in
intense fevers, such as are observed in maniacal excitement, in
delirium. Excitement runs all through. Violence runs all through the
mental symptoms. The mental symptoms are all active, never
passive. There is no passive delirium in Bell. It is a wild state. He is
wild; striking, biting, tearing things; doing unusual things; doing
strange things; doing unexpected things. He is in a state of
excitability. These mental symptoms that come on during fevers,
the delirium and excitement, are very commonly ameliorated by
eating a little light food. That is not generally known in Bell., but it
is quite a strong feature. But remember the violence, and with it, if
you go to the bedside where there is this violent delirium, keep in
mind the heat, redness and burning. Full of imaginations. Sees
ghosts, and spirits, and officers, and wild things. In the early part
of the fever the delirium is very violent and excitable; but as it
passes on he goes into a sleep, a sort of half-slumber a semi-
comatose state. Apparently in a dream, and he screams out.
Dreams horrible things. Sees in his dreams the things that he talks
about. When he has real sleep, or resting, as near as it is for him
to rest, he has violent dreams; night-mare. Sees things on fire. He
is in a delirium, and in torment. He becomes stupid at times,
appears to lose consciousness. Loses the memory of all things and
then becomes wild. His delirium goes rot when he appears to be
sleeping. These symptoms often occur with cerebral congestion,
the violent cerebral congestion of the infant. If they are old enough
to talk they will talk about the hammering in the head. In Bell. the
infant also commonly remains in a profound stupor, the profound
stupor that goes with congestion of the brain pupils dilated; skin
hot and dry; face red, throbbing carotids. Finally the child becomes
pale as the stupor increases and the neck is drawn back, because
as it progresses the base of the brain and spine become involved,
and the muscles of the neck contract; drawing the head
-backwards; and he rolls the head; eyes staring, pupils dilated.
This mental state is associated with scarlet fever and with cerebro-
spinal meningitis. Again, these mental states take the form of
acute mania, when the patient will bite the spoon; will bark like a
dog; will do all sorts of violent things; even jump out of the
window. He has to be restrained, put in a strait-jacket. The face is
red, and the skin is hot, and the patient at times says that he
burns all over, or that the head burns, and the head is very hot.
During all this time the feet are cold. Head hot, feet cold, or feet
and hands cold as ice. It seems all the blood is being hurried to the
head. All sorts of delusions and hallucinations are mingled with the
acute mania; ghosts; horrid monsters; strange things, and
deformed subjects. Fear of imaginary things, and wants to run
away. In the delirium of Bell. he wants to jump out of the window,
wants to run, wants to get away from his attendants. He thinks
they are doing him injury. Throughout the acute mania, and
throughout the delirious state, all the manifestations partake of
violence. Destructiveness. The Bell. patient in the most acute state
must be watched, controlled, handled, and sometimes tied. In the
text it describes these states as "rage, fury." He wants to do
violence. "Moaning. Instead of eating, bit wooden spoon in two,
gnawed plate, and growled and barked like a dog. A boy violently
sick ran around the room laughing immoderately." It has an insane
laughter. A loud, boisterous laughter. "A piece of bread, which he
took to be a stone, he threw far from him. He turns and rolls in
bed in a perfect rage. Aversion to noise and company." Aversion to
light; is better in the dark. At times a more passive state
intervenes between these attacks of violence. The active time is
always that of violence; but there is sometimes a more passive
state when the patient will sit or lie in bed and tear the bed
clothing, or break anything that she can get her hands on. If it is a
stick, she will break it up. Running all through the complaints,
whether delirium, fever, or pains, there is starting. Starting in
sleep like an electric shock. just as soon as he falls asleep a
sensation like an electric shock throughout the body. "Starts in
fright at approach of others. Fear of imaginary things, wants to run
away from them." "Great anxiety" runs through the remedy. As a
patient comes out of these attacks of delirium, as he comes out of
convulsions, fear is depicted upon the face. The patient is in great
excitement; the circulation is in a state of great excitement; the
heart is in great excitement; motion and emotion increase the
beating of the heart. It may have been gleaned that Bell. is a
remedy that is over sensitive; a state of hyperesthesia extreme
irritability of tissues. This is said to be an increased irritability of
the nerve centers. This develops a state of increased ability to
taste, and to smell and to feel; excitability of the censorious.