Understanding Iodium

Dr. Claudio C. Araujo M.D., F.F.Hom. (Lon.)

If we combine and assemble all the very different aspects present in the proving of Iodium, we can first expect to find a very restless and confused patient. He is as restless as someone can be. It is very unexpected to find an Iodium patient quiet and relaxed.

Kent: He cannot keep still and so he walks night and day. This remedy carries the same feature with it into the Iodide of Potassium, so that it makes the Iodide of Potassium patient walk. But there is this difference, the Kali iod. patient can walk long distances without fatigue, and the walking only seems to wear off his anxiety, whereas in Iodine there is great exhaustion; he becomes extremely exhausted from walking and sweats copiously even from slight exertion.

Anxiety: This remedy in all its complaints whether acute or chronic, has a peculiar kind of anxiety that is felt both in mind and body.

It seems also that this state of anxiety is attended with a thrill that goes throughout his frame unless he removes it by motion or change of position. The anxiety comes on when trying to keep still, and the more he tries to keep still the more the anxious state increases.

The mental state of this patient is that of excitement, anxiety, impulses, melancholy; he

wants to do something, wants to hurry; he has impulses to kill. In this it is very closely related to Arsenicum and Hepar.

Many symptoms are detailing our patient the way he feels inside himself. Iodium will bring to the patient´s life a strong sensation of mental tiredness, an incapacity to think, to reason, a confused tiredness of the brain.

Mind feels tired, and does not care to work, [14]. 

Fixed immovable thoughts (twenty-first day), [1]. 

It constantly seems as though he ought to think about something, but he does not know what; he falls in with nothing, [11]. 

It is difficult to collect his senses, and he is irresolute, [21]. 

The consequences of this tiredness can be felt in the next group of symptoms:

Feels stupid and careless, [14]. 

Feels stupid; is cross and irascible, [14]. 

Feels unfitted for everything, [1]. [40.] 

He is also more inclined to manual work, as any mental activity may tires him out.

Mind feels tired, and does not care to work, [14]. 

Sluggishness of mind; he is inclined to mechanical labor, [11]. 

These must the general aspects of our patient: restless, warm-blooded, unable to any intellectual activity and besides showing strong affinities with manual work. He also may present some confused attitudes towards the solution of the most common practical daily problems and it might suggests that  he is unfitted to any complex intellectual activity. 

Fixed immovable thoughts (twenty-first day), [1]. 

It constantly seems as though he ought to think about something, but he does not know what; he falls in with nothing, [11]. 

It is difficult to collect his senses, and he is irresolute, [21]. 

Feels stupid; is cross and irascible, [14]. 

Feels stupid and careless, [14]. 

Feels unfitted for everything, [1]. 

Another important aspect is a tendency of becoming impulsive at the point of killing someone. Kent suggests that the Iodine killing impulses are coming out of nothing, it´s just an impulse. It doesn´t comes out of anger or an extreme irritability, although our patient is someone very irritable.

Kent: While attempting to keep still, he is overwhelmed with impulses, impulses to tear things, to kill himself, to commit murder, to do violence.

Iodine corresponds to those cases in which it seems that there is some dreadful thing coming on; the mind threatens to give out. Insanity threatens, Or the graver forms of disease are threatening, such as are present in the advanced stages of suppressed malaria, in old cases of chills, in threatened phtysie, especially abdominal.

He may become irritable, aggressive to the point of killing a friend. Present amongst the proving symptoms are those representatives of his killing deranged attitudes:  he has impulses to kill a woman that is helping him acting as his guide.

At night, especially when thinking of real or imaginary wrongs, heart palpitates "like lightning," pulsations being felt also at pit of stomach and in petrous portion of temporal bone, being especially violent in latter locality ; the violent palpitation and accompanying arterial excitement drives him out of bed ; by use of cold baths and friction obtains temporary relief ; at times most terrible thoughts take possession of him, and he hardly dares go home for fear of doing some dreadful deed ; on one occasion was seized with an almost irresistible impulse to murder a woman who was acting as a guide for him, he having lost his way ; these attacks of mania come on at most unexpected times ; troubles all < by quiet and meditation ; must be constantly in action, in some laborious occupation. θ Mania.

Another group of symptoms may shed some light into the fact that Iodium male patients may develop a desire to have sexual relations with other men. If we may transport ourselves to the time when this remedy was proved, we might understand – or imagine – why Iodium wants to kill the guiding woman by his side: he may probable feeling stopped – by her - to follow his homo affective impulses and passions. Nowadays this conflict about male desires towards other men may not happen, men can follow their instincts and are free to establish relationships with other men. But during the XVIII or the XIX centuries there were strong morals or even political-social laws forbidden men to have any sexual contact with other men; we got to know or read many histories from the recent past about imprisonment, chemical castration (when the subject was to face trial) and many other stories on the same subject.

Kent states that there was no apparent reason why Iodium suddenly has an outburst of violence and kills someone near him being his wife or his friends. Are these outbursts linked to the repression of his refrained passions? Why does he wants to kill -“a woman who is his guide”? For becoming free to follow his passions, and then feeling free to establish a relationship to another man? Was this guiding woman a representation of his conscience or a “cultural voice” of his time?

At night, especially when thinking of real or imaginary wrongs, heart palpitates "like lightning," pulsations being felt also at pit of stomach and in petrous portion of temporal bone, being especially violent in latter locality ; the violent palpitation and accompanying arterial excitement drives him out of bed ; by use of cold baths and friction obtains temporary relief ; at times most terrible thoughts take possession of him, and he hardly dares go home for fear of doing some dreadful deed ; on one occasion was seized with an almost irresistible impulse to murder a woman who was acting as a guide for him, he having lost his way ; these attacks of mania come on at most unexpected times ; troubles all < by quiet and meditation ; must be constantly in action, in some laborious occupation. θ Mania.

Dreams of having unsuccessful intercourse with men; no emissions, [14]. 

Dreams that he is about to have connection with a man, but, for some unknown reason, the dream changed before the act was accomplished; no emission, [14]. 

And in the end? After feeling mentally tired and unable to lead an intellectual life, after living his live feeling unprepared for any more distinguished work, after experience conflict between his conscience and his sexual impulses, confused an unable to take a decision, feeling restless and unprepared to stop one´s mind and one´s anxiety – what do we may expect from the Iodium patient, how he would be?

Sat all day with her head leaning on her hand and hardly answering when spoken to, [57]. 

Disposition mild, scrupulous, and timid, with blunted sensibilities, [63]. 

Sadness. 

Low spirits, [27a]. 

Entire dejection of spirits, able to read a little, to write very little, with much effort, but taking no interest in anything in life and though accustomed to the labor of authorship, was quite unable to fix her thoughts on any subject, for many days, [62]. 

Greatest depression of spirits, [41]. 

Gloomy mood, [4]. 

Hypochondriac mood, [15]. 

Feels stupid; is cross and irascible, [14]. 

Melancholy mood, low spirited.
Despondency, with disposition to weep.

We shall consider that our patient might have been taken to jail before, due to his outbursts of violence. He may be an impulsive and violent fellow, unable to have any kind of intellectual life. He´s unprepared for study, being himself unable to develop mankind intellectual possibilities, uncapable to go to college, to learn an educated way of living, being also prone to do violent deeds and impulses to the brink of killing someone near and at last feeling himself an outlaw due to his “forbidden” sexual instincts towards other men.

 

Iodium groups

Dr. Claudio C. Araujo M.D., F.F.Hom. (Lon.)

With one´s surroundings

Dreams every night of swimming in water, of walking in mire, that her daughter had fallen into a brook, etc., [4]. 

Apprehends an accident from every trifle.
Fear of evil, with over-carefulness.

He fears that from every trifle some misfortune would arise, [1]. 
Mind feels tired, and does not care to work, [14]. 

Sluggishness of mind; he is inclined to mechanical labor, [11]. 

Aversion to work, [1]. 

Apprehensiveness after some manual labor, which disappears while sitting, [15]. 

With oneself

Excitement, together with unusual heaviness, indolence, and ill-humor, [11]. 

Excitement in the afternoon; more sleepy than usual, in the evening, [11]. 

Remarkably lively and talkative, no one else is able to get in a word, [3]. 

Must keep in motion day and night, brain felt as if it was stirred up, felt as if going crazy.

Restless, inclined to move about, not permitting to sit or sleep ; thought she could tear everything to pieces.

Delirium (before death), [58]. 

Troublesome and unreasonable mental impressions, easily developed into fixed ideas, [56]. 

Illusions of sensation, [15]. 

Fixed, immovable thoughts.

Sat all day with her head leaning on her hand and hardly answering when spoken to, [57]. 

Disposition mild, scrupulous, and timid, with blunted sensibilities, [63]. 

Sadness, [50], [56]. [10.] 

Low spirits, [27a]. 

Entire dejection of spirits, able to read a little, to write very little, with much effort, but taking no interest in anything in life and though accustomed to the labor of authorship, was quite unable to fix her thoughts on any subject, for many days, [62]. 

Greatest depression of spirits, [41]. 

Gloomy mood, [4]. 

Hypochondriac mood, [15]. 

Anxiety, [38], [50]. 

Anxiety and prostration; the patients busy themselves for the most part with the present rather than with the future, [15]. 

Great anxiety, [27]. 

Great anxiety and depression, [15]. 

Disposed to fright and vexation, [27a]. [20.] 

Mental disquietude; fright; feelings easily disturbed, [50]. 

Irritability, [58]. 

Unusually great irritability, amounting to anger, [1]. 

Ill-humor, [8]. 

Very ill-humored, and sensitive through the whole period of digestion, from noon till evening, with an oppressed sensation in the throat and chest as if about to weep, [2]. 

Is cross and irascible; feels stupid, [14]. 

Peevish, fretful; nothing is done right, [4]. 

Morbid sensitiveness; he is easily and frequently moved to tears, [56]. [30.] 

Extreme sensitiveness, [27a]. 

Mind feels tired, and does not care to work, [14]. 

Sluggishness of mind; he is inclined to mechanical labor, [11]. 

Fixed immovable thoughts (twenty-first day), [1]. 

It constantly seems as though he ought to think about something, but he does not know what; he falls in with nothing, [11]. 

It is difficult to collect his senses, and he is irresolute, [21]. 

Feels stupid; is cross and irascible, [14]. 

Feels stupid and careless, [14]. 

Feels unfitted for everything, [1]. [40.] 

Confusion of the head, making thought difficult 

Confusion of the head, with great aversion, to earnest work, [2]. 

Confusion of the head, which seems to come from the back through the nape of the neck into the head. 

Confusion of the head becoming a pressing pain, especially in the temples; this headache recurred from time to time, till late in the evening (first day), [10]. 

Slight confusion of the head, with some pressure in the right half of the forehead 

Feeling as of having forgotten something and does not know what.

Melancholy mood, low spirited.
Despondency, with disposition to weep.
Apprehends an accident from every trifle.

Fear and anxiety, shuns even the doctor.
Mind very sensitive during digestion, felt like crying.
Irritability and sensitiveness.
Cross, with excessive nervous excitability.
Excessive kind of impatience, she is running about all the time and never sits down or sleeps at night.
Kent: Anxiety: This remedy in all its complaints whether acute or chronic, has a peculiar kind of anxiety that is felt both in mind and body.

It seems also that this state of anxiety is attended with a thrill that goes throughout his frame unless he removes it by motion or change of position. The anxiety comes on when trying to keep still, and the more he tries to keep still the more the anxious state increases. While attempting to keep still, he is overwhelmed with impulses, impulses to tear things, to kill himself, to commit murder, to do violence.

He cannot keep still and so he walks night and day. This remedy carries the same feature with it into the Iodide of Potassium, so that it makes the Iodide of Potassium patient walk. But there is this difference, the Kali iod. patient can walk long distances without fatigue, and the walking only seems to wear off his anxiety, whereas in Iodine there is great exhaustion; he becomes extremely exhausted from walking and sweats copiously even from slight exertion.

Iodine corresponds to those cases in which it seems that there is some dreadful thing coming on; the mind threatens to give out. Insanity threatens, Or the graver forms of disease are threatening, such as are present in the advanced stages of suppressed malaria, in old cases of chills, in threatened phtysie, especially abdominal.

The mental state of this patient is that of excitement, anxiety, impulses, melancholy; he

wants to do something, wants to hurry; he has impulses to kill. In this it is very closely related to Arsenicum and Hepar.

The Arsenicum and Hepar patients also have impulses to commit murder without being offended and without cause. The sensitiveness to heat will at once decide, for while Iodine is warm-blooded the Arsenicum and Hepar patients are always chilly.

The impulse to do violence is sudden. There are remedies that have peculiar impulses, impulses without any cause. These impulses are seen in cases of impulsive insanity; an insanity in which there is an impulse to do violence and strange things, and when the patient is asked why he does these things he says he does not know.

The patient may not be known to be insane in anything else; he may be a good business man. Remedies also have this. These things are forerunners. It is recorded under Hepar that a barber had an impulse to cut the throat of his patron with the razor while shaving him.

The Nux vomica patient has an impulse to throw her child into the fire, or to kill her husband whom she dearly loves. The thought comes into her mind and increases until she becomes actually insane and beyond control and the impulse is carried into action.

A Natrum sulph. patient will say: "Doctor, you do not know how I have to resist killing myself.

An impulse to do it comes into my mind."

Iodine has the impulse to kill, not from anger, not from any sense of justice, but without any cause. An overwhelming anger is often a cause for violence but the impulses are not of that sort in Iodine.

While reading; or thinking placidly at times a patient may have an impulse to do himself violence, and this finally grows until the end is a form of impulsive insanity.

The Iodine patient becomes weak in mind as well as in body; he is forgetful, cannot remember the little things, they pass out of the mind. He forgets what he was about to say or do; goes off and leaves packages he has purchased.

The forgetfulness is extensive. But with all these states, do not forget one thing, that the patient is compelled to keep doing something in order to drive away his impulses and anxiety.

The anxiety is wearing and distressing unless be keeps busy. Though mentally prostrated, he is compelled to keep busy and to continue the work, which increases the prostration of mind. You tell a man who is threatened with softening of the brain, from overwork, from anxiety and labor in literary work,

"You must stop working, you must rest."

"Why? " he will say, "If I do I would die or go mad."

With the others

Dreams of having unsuccessful intercourse with men; no emissions, [14]. [860.] 

Dreams that he is about to have connection with a man, but, for some unknown reason, the dream changed before the act was accomplished; no emission, [14]. 

Anxious, restless dreams, [4]. 

Anxious dreams of dead people, [4]. 

Consequences of amorousness.

At night, especially when thinking of real or imaginary wrongs, heart palpitates "like lightning," pulsations being felt also at pit of stomach and in petrous portion of temporal bone, being especially violent in latter locality ; the violent palpitation and accompanying arterial excitement drives him out of bed ; by use of cold baths and friction obtains temporary relief ; at times most terrible thoughts take possession of him, and he hardly dares go home for fear of doing some dreadful deed ; on one occasion was seized with an almost irresistible impulse to murder a woman who was acting as a guide for him, he having lost his way ; these attacks of mania come on at most unexpected times ; troubles all < by quiet and meditation ; must be constantly in action, in some laborious occupation. θ Mania.