Lyme Disease and Homeopathy

Taking the Case by Will Taylor, M.D.

Installment 11
of a series on case analysis
© Will Taylor, MD 2002 [bio]Index of All Installments

An Anamnesis of Lyme Disease

Applying the process of determining the
Genus Epidemicus to a Subacute Miasm

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Section 6

A search similar to that above, can be made for the "extending" symptoms of these remedies:

Fever in Lyme disease - extended search

137 rubrics are found in this search; 32 listing Ledum, 41 listing Rhododendron, and 78 listing Kalmia. A repertorization of this list, restricted to the Family Ericaceae - similar to the repertorization of Ericaceaid neuralgic pains, above - will allow a ready comparison of the traveling/shifting/migrating pains of this family of remedies.

Ledum most characteristically affects the small joints, especially in the feet. It may involve the knees and shoulders, but characteristically begins in the lower limbs and ascends. Kalmia's peripheral arthralgias more characteristically involve the shoulders or hips, and descend from shoulder to elbow and hand, or from hip to knees and feet. Rhododendron may involve large or small joints, with pains shifting about and wandering from one joint to another, but has a predilection for the great toe, wrist, shoulder, Achilles tendon, and the long bones of the forearms and lower legs.

Modalities
Modalities of the rheumatic and neuralgic pains also differ between these remedies. All are sensitive to weather and temperature, but in rather differing ways. Ledum has a characteristic aggravation from warmth of covers, air, or radiant heat sources, and amelioration from cold and cold bathing. Rhododendron is well known for its keynote symptoms of aggravation by approaching storm, and from windy and cold/wet weather. Kalmia is worse cold, but also worse heat of sun and better in cloudy weather.

Gaultheria's preference for locality and extension, and its modalities, are not well defined in our literature; however, clinical experience tends to suggest more suddenness in its pace, appropriate to more acute inflammatory arthralgias and neuralgias. Ledum, Rhododendron and Kalmia all appear in the rubric:

EXTREMITIES - PAIN - rheumatic - acute

While only Ledum and Rhododendron appear in:

EXTREMITIES - PAIN - rheumatic - chronic

An analysis of the Fever rubrics listing these remedies can also offer us a measure of the pace of their pathogeneses, which we can apply as well by analogy to aspects of pathogenesis other than fever. This can easily be done by asking RADAR to perform a comparative extraction of the Fever, Chills and Perspiration sections of the repertory for this group of remedies:

Fever search extraction

The rubrics addressing the pace or succession of stages of fever can then be selected and transferred to a symptom clipboard, for repertorization restricted to the family Ericaceae:

Fever stages

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