USE OF CARCINOSIN IN  PAEDIATRIC PRACTICE

Carcinosin is a nosode of very grave disease as cancer. Its use in paediatrics fills one with forebodings. But it’s the greatness of homeopathy that it transforms deadly poisons and fatal extracts of diseases, such as cancer and tuberculosis, into most benevolent curative agents. The same trepidation must have been felt when these were first used for little children and infants. In fact they turned out to be great friends of children, and a potent tool in the hand of the pediatrician. He finds that these agents rectify childhood anomalies and growth problems. It is owing to these benefits that these nosodes are being used now in daily practice with impunity. Sometimes it is one of these nosodes that is the sole medicine prescribed in a case to the end. We used to use Tuberculinum for the insomniac and hyperactive children, when Cypripedium or Coffea, for example, did not produce desired effects. Now we can use Carcinosin for this pediatric complaint, with satisfactory results. In sleeplessness after vaccination, Carcinosin vies conspicuously with Thuja and Silicea. Incidentally, in the rubric of Burnett’s Vaccinosis, Carcinosin stands out in black letters with Malandrinum, Vaccinum, Tuberculinum, Thuja and Variolinum.  In the nightmare of children Carcinosin is a ‘must think’ remedy.

THE PERSONALITY OF CARCINOSIN (The Carcinosin child)

The personality of carcinosin, especially as regards children is comparable to Sulphur.

• Like Sulphur he has intellectual bend of mind. Like him he is keen to be able to read alphabets.
• Like Sulphur he is precocious. And intelligent.
• Like Sulphur he has religious bent of mind.
• Like Sulphur he bears a responsible looks. One finds him imbued in the feeling of earnestness. (Medorrhinum, irresponsible)
• Like Sulphur he is conscientious about trifles.

The psychological makeup of Carcinosin child is as under:

He is a depressed child; frightened on seeing cruelties, which may create in him a want of confidence.

• Capricious and hyperactive
• Fastidiousness
• Seeking consolation  and appreciation
• Fearful
• Excitable, and also dull, sometimes.
• Obstinate and screaming.
• Even a short nap refreshes: an irritable, crying child gets up frolicking and happy after a short nap.
• Biting finger-nails.
• Sympathetic and compassionate.
• Crying, weeping mood, tearful.
• Weeping in sympathy with others.
• Weeping telling her own sickness.
• Seeker of appreciation; it creates impetus in him.
• Reprimand disturbs him to the core, and puts him off the track.

Physical traits and ailments:

The Carcinosin child will be found in two hues: intelligent and sharp like Sulphur; and also, at time, a dull retarded look, with many physical and genetic drawbacks. So, we find, Carcinosin indicated in such imperfections as:

• Autistic child.
• Mongol child
• Dwarfish children.
• Weak, puny look.
• Birth-marks (Naevi); and a crop of moles.
• Tendency to keloid formation.
• Diseases like Hemophilia, and
• Thalassemia

AS REGARDS PHYSICAL AILMENTS, we can retail the following:

• Adenoid vegetation.
• Hypertrophy of tonsils and other glands.
• Children’s asthma and other permanent catarrhal conditions.
• Intestinal worm infestation.
• Ailments from abuse
• Ill health dating back to whooping cough or pneumonia.
• Tendency to inflammatory diseases.
• Cyclic vomiting of infants.
• Anorexic child; (here Tuberculinum vies with Carcinosin).

PRACTICAL HINTS AND STRONG POINTS:

• When Carcinosin is among two or three medicines that come out after the analysis of the full case, Carcinosin should be given due thought.
• When desires and aversions intermingle, or alternate, in the same patient, with reference to one particular item of food, Carcinosin must be thought of.
• Craving for chocolate at very tender age, more particularly when he has aversion to other sweets.
• When there is marked aggravation and also amelioration by the same modality.
• Another guiding symptom of Carcinosin is the instability, or fluctuation of the symptoms. The mother of the child will tell you that he likes something very much for few days, and want to relish it all the times; then anon we find him having a total aversion to it for many days. For some days, for instance, he would be mad for sweets, and then will become quite averse to it; and you will find him gagging if you try to put anything sweet into his mouth. Similar reactions you will find with respect to milk, eggs, and meat etc.
• Chocolate craze is rather permanent with him.
• Blue sclera of infants, is a marked symptom. [Also in Tuberculinum]
• Unusually hairy physique; especially back, and along the spine.
• Knee-chest posture during sleep, even in infants, is no less marked symptom. Cf. Medorrhinum.  [A child’s specialist, in allopathy, thinks that this genu-pectoral sleep posture the child develops when it has a sort of lesion or soreness in rectum, or of the sphincter ani, caused by dry or hard stool.]
• A stable tripod of symptoms for a Cacinosin child is: Constipation (or troublesome stool), insomnia (or difficulty in falling asleep, owing to hyperactive brain), and frequent ENT infections with unusually high fever. You can add a fourth leg, to turn the tripod into four-legged table, i.e. his abiding craving for Chocolate.
• Another characteristic symptom of Carcinosin is that the case goes on responding to careful homeopathic prescribing, but not towards solution or cure, but towards some other set of symptoms. For example you treated a case of very tedious and prolonged winter cough with, e.g. Rumex; but, to your surprise you find the patient complaining, in a few days, a severe and intolerable pain in the left hypopchondrium, and you find, on examining, that there is swelling and tenderness on the floating ribs. You suppose it as a common consequence and a residue symptom of muscular soreness, caused by the prolonged, inordinate cough; and you treat it with routine medicines that are used for soreness of hypochondria caused by the stress and jar of coughing. But you find that the indicated remedies, such as Bryonia, Belladona, Pulsatilla, etc., do not touch the case. But after few days you find that the case is of Ranunculus-bulbosus. The pain settled down; but only to create another set of symptom. This time a similar and very severe pain in right iliac or ileo-caecal region. Here also the patient suffered very much. No remedy alleviated the suffering unless the patient gave a tip of not being able to turn in bed, without once sitting up or raising the back off the bed and then turning. Nux.vomica put the case right. The red strand that ran through and through this whole case was sharp aggravation by lying down. The cough was worse on lying down; the left hypochondriac pain was aggravated by lying down, amounting to inability to lie down; and last of all, the pain in right flank was severely aggravated by lying down. So much so that the patient started dreading lying down or the onset of the night. A few days later, one finds that the patient is beginning to have a reawakening of a light cough, giving a frightful alarm to the patient. Retaking the case and considering the personality of the patient Carcinosin came out.  We saw that instead of going ‘cure ward’, the patient’s complaints go on metamorphosing into another set of symptoms. And that is Carcinosin.
• History of prolonged suffering, injustice, fright and mortification.

Like all nosodes, Carcinosin should not be prescribed for the ‘frank’ pathologic symptoms of the relevant pathology. That means that the nosodes are medicines for the relevant diatheses, and not the actual pathology. As I’ve elsewhere said that the diathesis is full of symptoms, and the pathology has paucity of them.

The Personality and Psychological makeup of Carcinosin child is as under:

• A merciful character, never malicious or cruel (like Tuberculinum and Medorrhinum).

• Sympathetic, and caring.
• Depressed on seeing cruelties.
• Anxiety for others.
• Concern and regards for others.
• Polite and amicable look.
• Intellectual bend of mind, and keen for things intellectual.
• Precocious and intelligent.
• Having religious bent of mind.
• Bears a responsible look. Feeling of earnestness. (Medorrhinum, irresponsible)
• Conscientious about trifles.
• Want to please the concerned people. as, for example, parents, teacher and, later on, husband or boss.
• Compassionate.
• Weeping in sympathy with others.

What a personality! A flower of humanity! One wonders how it could be that a person with such fine sensibilities and benevolent nature be ‘cancer prone’, or sprouts forth from a cancerous soil!! Or begotten of cancerous miasm!!! That is the irony of Nature.