Understanding Secale cornutum

Dr. Claudio C. Araujo MD, FFHom (Lon) et al.

From Wikipedia on Claviceps purpurea:

The disease cycle of the ergot fungus was first described in 1853,[12] but the connection with ergot and epidemics among people and animals was reported already in a scientific text in 1676.[13] The ergot sclerotium contains high concentrations (up to 2% of dry mass) of the alkaloid ergotamine, a complex molecule consisting of a tripeptide-derived cyclol-lactam ring connected via amide linkage to a lysergic acid (ergoline) moiety, and other alkaloids of the ergoline group that are biosynthesized by the fungus.[14] Ergot alkaloids have a wide range of biological activities including effects on circulationand neurotransmission.[15]

Ergotism is the name for sometimes severe pathological syndromes affecting humans or animals that have ingested ergot alkaloid-containing plant material, such as ergot-contaminated grains. Monks of the order of St. Anthony the Great specialized in treating ergotism victims[16] with balms containing tranquilizing and circulation-stimulating plant extracts; they were also skilled in amputations.[citation needed] The common name for ergotism is "St. Anthony's Fire",[16] in reference to monks who cared for victims as well as symptoms, such as severe burning sensations in the limbs.[17] These are caused by effects of ergot alkaloids on the vascular system due to vasoconstriction of blood vessels, sometimes leading to gangrene and loss of limbs due to severely restricted blood circulation.

The neurotropic activities of the ergot alkaloids may also cause hallucinations and attendant irrational behaviour, convulsions, and even death.[14][15] Other symptoms include strong uterine contractions, nausea, seizures, and unconsciousness. Since the Middle Ages, controlled doses of ergot were used to induce abortions and to stop maternal bleeding after childbirth.[18] Ergot alkaloids are also used in products such as Cafergot (containing caffeine and ergotamine[18] or ergoline) to treat migraine headaches. Ergot extract is no longer used as a pharmaceutical preparation.[citation needed]

 

The understanding: 

Present amongst Secale corn proving are symptoms probably related by to  one of its components,  the precursor of lysergic acid (LSD)

Ergot contains no lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) but rather ergotamine, which is used to synthesize lysergic acid, an analog of and precursor for synthesis of LSD. Moreover, ergot sclerotia naturally contain some amounts of lysergic acid.

Some of its symptoms may remind us the description related to the use of LSD:

Decomposition of shape.

Delusions: he is disgraced; being double; far off as if in head; as if intoxicated; visions. 

But many clinical cases described in our MM are pointing to a different direction. Secale was extensively used as a homeopathic treatment in cases related to miscarriage, uterine infections, complications after an abortion and puerperal symptoms, pointing to female clinical conditions. Secale (as ergot) has being used to provoke abortion due to its tendency to affect the circulatory system, but also producing nasty consequences upon it´s user. There are described many complications due to the use of ergot as an abortive substance. But searching for a general understanding of this remedy, a symptom called our attention:

Nymphomania, menses; during; metrorrhagia, during.

We may assume that to avoid pregnancy nowadays women will use contraceptive pills. With female patients during the XIX century, having sex during menses could be a very safe way to avoiding the risk of getting pregnant. But there´s something else: the intensity of the sexual desire. Described in the text there´s an excessive longing, a nymphomaniac behavior. Our remedy has many symptoms related to a maniac condition associated to female sexuality:

Active manias with great excitement; exposes her body and tears at the genitals; puts her finger in the vagina and scratches until the lips bleed; all idea of modesty lost.

Dancing and jumping.

Mania: puerperal; rage, with;

Dress indecently

Indifferent, to exposure of her person.

Shameless, exposing the person.

Delirium, erotic. 

Desire for satire, 

Our patient has also another important group of symptoms, pointing to a deeply affect mental state. Her affections towards her family are represented in these symptoms:

Memory, weakness, names, members of the family.

 Delirium: abandon her relatives. 

Forsaking his relations

Mocking: at his relatives; sarcasm.

Indifference, to relations

Forsaken feeling

Extending these feelings, now towards people around and friends:

Conversation, aversion

Answering, abrupt, aversion; refusing

Contemptuous

Cruelty

Defiant

Malicious

Rage: biting, with; kill people, wants to; malicious; mischievous 

Dwindling of the mammae. 

Absence of milk after confinement.

Thin, scrawny children with shrivelled skin, spasmodic twitchings, sudden cries, feverishness.

Secale has an elemental primitive  form of  “destructiviness” at one´s personality, the part of the mind that has been turned against oneserlf and the others, ending up with killing, suicidal impulses, tearing up of her genitals  and death:

Kill, desire to

Destructiveness.

Cruelty

Madness and inclination to bite.

Delirium, does absurd things; escapes, jump out suddenly from bed; erotic; with exaltation of strength; laughing; maniacal; wants to be naked; raging; rambling; violent, jumping into the water; wild. 

Mania.

Mania: with inclination to bite; with inclination to drown. 

Mania: with rage; violence, with deeds of violence.

Rage, biting, with; must be chained; mischievous, malicious; with suicidal disposition.
Furor, with desire to jump into the water.

Tearing himself; his genitals; things in general.

Present among the proving symptoms is Secale´s internal personal division; but we might suspect that the actual division being only a consequence of the social conflicts when facing the moral standards of the XIX century,  

Confusion of mind: identity, as to his; duality, sense of 

Delusions, disgraced. 

Delusion, being double.

Delusion, as if head was far off. 

Delusion: two sick people were in bed, one of whom got well ant the other not. 

 

 

Secale corn. Groups

Symptoms from Allen, Kent, Hering, Clarke & Synthesis repertory.

Dr Claudio C Araujo MD, FFHom (Lon)

With the Environment

Burning: in all parts of body as if sparks of fire were falling on them. 
Painless flooding in feeble, cachectic, dyscratic women, or such as have long resided in tropical climates. 
Confusion, loses his way in well-known streets

Decomposition of shape

Delusions: jump into the water

Delusion: animals

Delusions: sinking into the bed;  is sinking.

Delusions: Far off, as if

Del, seeing figures

Del., phantoms, sees

Del., room is like the foam of a troubled sea.

Del., visions

Del., walking on a velvet

Indifferent, to everything

Sensitive to noise

With Oneself

Discouragement and timidity.

Great anxiety.

Sadness and melancholy.

Great anguish.

Loathing of life

Insanity: behaves like crazy person; delivery, during; menses, suppressed; puerperal; violent; 

Laughing; clap hands over her head; sardonic

Mania puerperal; with rage; with deeds of violence

Mutilating her body

Naked, wants to be naked

Furor, with desire to jump into the water.

Madness and inclination to bite.

Delirium, does absurd things; escapes, jump out suddenly from bed; erotic; with exaltation of strength; laughing; maniacal; wants to be naked; raging; rambling; violent, jumping into the water; wild. 

Mania.

Mania: with inclination to bite; with inclination to drown. 
Laughs, claps her hands over her head, seems beside herself. θ After miscarriage. 
Active manias with great excitement; exposes her body and tears at the genitals; puts her finger in the vagina and scratches until the lips bleed; all idea of modesty lost.

Dancing and jumping

Excessive sadness, gradually changes to cheerfulness; talks and acts foolishly; rage, followed by continuous deep sleep. 

Weakness of the intellectual faculties (stupid, half-sleepy condition; moaning).

Mental alienation.

Delirium.

Loss of consciousness.

Sensation of soreness in abdomen; formation of large lumps and swellings in abdomen; right hand very weak, particularly fingers, so that she could hold nothing, nor sew with that hand; when placing open hand to side and taking it away a spasm of hand occurs, the fingers are spread apart and she cannot close the hand; rapid alternations of heat and cold in hands and feet; cramps in legs; icy coldness of knees; trembling of right arm and hand while eating, must use the left; sensation of coldness in stomach, > for a short time by warm drinks; habitual constipation. θ Hysteria. 

Delirium: quiet; wandering. 
Destructiveness

Rage, biting, with; chained, has to be; mischievous, malicious; with suicidal disposition.

Tearing himself; his genitals; things in general

Excitement, feverish; nervous

Mania: puerperal; rage, with; violence, with deeds of violence.

Dress indecently

Indifferent, to exposure of her person.

Shameless, exposing the person

Stupid, half-sleepy state. 
Impaired power of thinking. 
Uncomfortableness and depression. 
Fear of death. 

Constant moaning and fear of death. 
Anxiety, sadness, melancholy. 
Great anguish; wild with anxiety. 

Great anxiety and difficult respiration. 

Apathy, indifference. 
Paralytic mental diseases; wandering talk and hallucinations; apathy and complete disappearance of the senses. 
Unconsciousness, with heavy sleep, preceded by tingling in head and limbs. 
Diminution and loss of senses, sight, hearing, etc. 
All the senses benumbed. 

Stupefaction; stupor. 
Vertigo: constantly increasing; with stupefaction and heaviness of head; reeling, inability to stand erect; peculiar feeling of lightness of head, particularly in occiput; as from intoxication;
Convulsions first occurring after a fright when a little girl, returned after each confinement. 
Suddenly fell to ground, but without loss of consciousness; on every attempt to walk the knees would sink from under him, especially right; while sitting cannot bend forward or backward without losing his equilibrium; arms slightly weak, sensation of touch not affected; general dulness; difficult speech; inclination to weep; complains of headache and pain in lumbar region; sleep poor; urine and feces escape involuntarily; no stool for several days; at times oppression of breathing. θ Paralysis. 

The spasms, nervous, and mental symptoms are worse while she is flowing, so that a puerperal convulsion comes on in the midst of a hemorrhage.
Consciousness seems to continue until the last breath, and just before death it seems as if patient would improve. 
Sensation of intoxication while undressing. 
Putrescence of uterus; abdomen distended, not very painful; discharge from vagina, brownish, offensive; ulcers on external genitals discolored and rapidly spreading; burning hot fever, interrupted by shaking chills; small, sometimes intermittent pulse; great anguish, pain in pit of stomach, vomiting decomposed matter; offensive diarrhœa; suppressed secretion of urine; skin covered with petechial and miliary eruptions or shows discolored, inflamed places, with a tendency to mortification; the patient lies either in quiet delirium or grows wild with great anxiety and a constant desire to get out of bed. θ Metritis. 

Mind, Abrupt

Ailments from: anger; fright; mental shock; sexual excesses.

Anxiety: threatening abortion; with fear; during fever; hypochondriacal; menses during and after; during stool. 

Bulimia

Capriciousness, rejecting things…

Confusion of mind: identity, as to his; duality, sense of

Decomposition of shape

Delusions, disgraced; being double; far off as if in head; intoxicated, as if; visions. 

Delusion: two sick people were in bed, one of whom got well ant the other not. 

Death, desires

Fear, Death; abortion, in; menses, after, before, during; impending. 

Fear: evil; insanity, misfortune, losing something of great value; poverty

Delivery, after

Sleeplessness, pleasure, during. 

Sadness, from fear. 

Senses, confused; vanishing of

Suicidal disposition, drowning; throwing himself from a high place; into the river

Unconscientious, delivery, during; pregnancy, during.               

With the Others

Paralytic mental diseases; treats his relations contemptuously and sarcastically; wandering talk and hallucinations; apathy and complete disappearance of the senses. 

Company, aversion
Hemorrhage from uterus; apparent death of newborn child. 

Dwindling of the mammae. 

Absence of milk after confinement.

"Thin, scrawny children with shrivelled skin, spasmodic twitchings, sudden cries, feverishness."

Answering, abrupt

Ailments from sexual excesses

Nymphomania, menses; during; metrorrhagia, during

Forgetful, sexual excesses, after

Delirium: abandon her relatives; erotic.

Forsaking his relations

Memory, weakness, names, members of the family

Mocking: relatives, at his; sarcasm; satire, desire for.

Indifference, to relations

Forsaken feeling

Answering, abrupt, aversion; refusing

Contemptuous

Conversation, aversion

Cruelty

Defiant

Kill, desire to

Malicious

Rage: biting, with; kill people, wants to; malicious; mischievous 

Biting

Delusion: poisoned, he has been.