Hyoscyamus — Homeopathic Remedy Profile

Hyoscyamus niger, called henbane, hog-bean and stinking Roger, belongs to the Solanaceae, the same family as Belladonna and Stramonium, and stands with them among the great remedies of disturbed mind and inflamed brain. The tincture of the fresh plant is used across the full potency range. Its essence is a mania that mutters where Belladonna rages, a jealousy that watches, and a body that twitches and picks while the sensorium sinks toward stupor.

At a Glance

Source and Preparation

The remedy is made from the tincture of the fresh plant. Henbane is found along roadsides, around ruins and old refuse heaps, and now and then near the sea. The whole botanical family runs through the picture. Dilated pupils, dry mouth, delirium: this shapes what Boericke and Clarke recorded of the proving.

Two prescribing registers coexist under the same Latin name and must not be confused. Henbane in its herbal form, Ø and low decimals, carries the alkaloid load of the crude plant and the safety considerations that belong to it. The old domestic use for toothache, in which Henbane seeds were dropped on a hot penny and the fumes inhaled from an inverted wineglass, worked in that dosimetric register. As Lauder Brunton showed, the "worms" of toothache the fumes were said to expel were in fact the embryos of the seeds, pushed out when the heat split the seed coats. Classical prescribing sits elsewhere, at 30C and above, where no alkaloid remains. What acts there is the dynamic preparation, prescribed on the totality of the case, and the crude toxicity does not apply. The two registers meet the organism differently and are not interchangeable.

The Essence of Hyoscyamus

Belladonna inflames; Hyoscyamus disturbs. The line runs through everything Clarke wrote about the pair. Where Belladonna's face is dark red, hot and burning, Hyoscyamus is often pale or bluish. Where Belladonna rages and strikes and cries out, Hyoscyamus mutters, picks at the bedclothes and slips back into a stupor from which it can barely be roused. The delirium is low, obscene, ludicrous. The mania comes in bouts and ends in deep sleep.

Suspicion is the mental axis. Hyoscyamus is jealous, is afraid of being poisoned, refuses food and drink because the food has been tampered with. Lachesis shares that suspicion but not the sexual disinhibition. Platinum shares the erotic exposure but not the muttering stupor. Hyoscyamus draws them together and adds the twitching, subsultus tendinum and carphology that make its bedside picture unmistakable.

The causations are grief, disappointed love, jealousy and fright. A patient who has been humiliated in love, whose lochia or milk has been suppressed after childbirth, whose reason has snapped after a shock: this is the ground the remedy meets.

Clinical Portrait

Mind and Temperament

The mind is the centre of the remedy and the picture is unusually full here. Confusion runs first, "as if intoxicated," and the picture broadens from there. The patient sings, recites poetry, babbles, quarrels; bouts of great hilarity in which everything provokes laughter. Obscene gestures follow. The patient exposes themselves, fondles the genitals, persists in undressing. Modesty is entirely lost. In a woman the erotic mania takes the form of nymphomania, lasciviousness, amorous songs; in a man, impotence coexists with excessive desire and the desire to expose himself.

Beneath the hilarity the delirium is low and muttering rather than furious. The patient talks incessantly, to themselves, to imaginary persons, to the dead. They fear being alone, being pursued, being bitten by wild animals. Hydrophobia is marked: the sound of running water provokes anxiety. Syphilophobia appears. The patient thinks they are in the wrong place but does not want to go home.

Suspicion runs through all of it. The patient is convinced their food has been poisoned and will not eat or drink. They are jealous, of a spouse, of a rival, with the persistent brooding jealousy that Clarke placed alongside Lachesis in the great insanities.

Clarke's own case is the clinical picture in one paragraph. A clever lawyer suffered a nervous breakdown, had to abandon his business entirely, and then had "a kind of fit" in which he turned cold and insensible, with his features working. He fell asleep, and ninety minutes later a second attack followed. After this second attack he grew suspicious and accused his wife of poisoning him. A single dose of Hyoscyamus 1M, slipped into his food or drink without his knowing and repeated once a week, restored him to health in a few months. Every fibre of the case belongs to the remedy: the fit ending in sleep, the second attack, the suspicion of the person closest to him, the collapse from mental overwork and shock.

In its late forms Hyoscyamus covers senility and Alzheimer's disease with bizarre, ludicrous behaviour; passive insanity. There is unconsciousness from which the patient can hardly be roused, with coma and involuntary loss of urine and stool. Speechlessness from fright belongs here. So does manic depression after grief and disappointed love.

Nervous System, Spasms and Twitching

Every muscle twitches. Restlessness is great. The tendons show subsultus, the small involuntary jerks seen in septic and typhoid states. The hands are busy with what is not there: picking at the air, at the bedclothes, clutching at objects. When the patient reaches, the reach is angular and the object is missed. Walking is a totter.

Convulsions come, alternate with sopor, end in sopor again. Upper and lower limbs convulse alternately. The fists clench with the thumbs drawn in, the same picture Cuprum shares. The face becomes dark and bloated after an attack. Epilepsy with vertigo before the attack, falling suddenly to the ground with cries, is strongly marked. Children convulse from fright and from worms; the child sobs and weeps in its sleep but does not wake. Chorea appears as twitchings of solitary muscles, squinting, stammering.

The sensation of walking on air, or through air, is recorded. The brain feels loose and fluctuating and shakes when the patient walks or stoops. In inflammation of the brain the head is rolled or shaken to and fro. Stupor follows concussion.

Speech and Tongue

Speech is low and muttering, with stammering and stuttering; it becomes impaired, laboured and hard to understand. Speech lost from suppression of urination or from fright. The patient bites the tongue while talking. The tongue itself is dry, red, cracked, stiff, immovable; it looks like burnt leather, parched, and rattles in the mouth. It is protruded with difficulty and can hardly be drawn in. When it is protruded, the muscles of the face twitch.

Digestion, Stomach and Abdomen

Bulimia with violent thirst but inability to swallow. Thirsty, but drinks only small amounts at once; averse to water. Afraid to eat or drink lest the food be poisoned. Eating is followed by headache with a drunken feeling, deep anguish and sadness; drinking is followed by convulsions.

The stomach burns. Cramps are better after vomiting and worse after irritating food. Retching, and bloody mucus is vomited. Nausea and vomiting with vertigo and convulsions. Hematemesis with violent cramps relieved by vomiting.

The abdomen distends. Colic feels as if the abdomen would burst, and the patient presses the fists into the sides. Colic comes with vomiting, belching, hiccough and screaming, and is better from vomiting. Hiccough from concussion of the brain is a keynote; so is hiccough of nursing children. Tympanites appears in typhoid and enteric fever.

Cough, Chest and Larynx

The cough is one of the great confirming symptoms. Dry, hacking, spasmodic, from a dry spot in the larynx, worse at night. It shakes the chest, the abdomen and the entire body as in whooping cough. Itching in the throat that sets off the cough, as though the uvula were too long, is characteristic; elongation of the uvula is an actual finding of the remedy. The cough is worse on lying down and worse from eating, drinking, talking or singing; sitting up relieves it. That modality has decided the prescription in many a night-cough case where nothing else would fit.

Spasms accompany the coughing up of bright red blood. Suffocating fits at night on lying, forcing the patient to jump up. In pneumonia with cerebral symptoms of delirium, sopor and slow rattling breathing, the remedy stands high.

Sleep

The patient lies sleepless all night, restless, twitching and starting. Nervous wakefulness in which the patient lies awake for hours. Sleeplessness after serious disease. The patient starts out of sleep frightened. Children wake in fright after twitching, crying out and trembling in their sleep. Coma vigil, the sleepless coma of typhoid and septic states, belongs here. Falls asleep while answering a question. Sits up in bed and then goes back to sleep. Epileptic attacks end in deep sleep. Sleeps for days without interruption. Laughs during sleep. When sleeping, carphology, or a smiling countenance, or sudden fright.

Fever and Perspiration

High fever with delirium, stupor, sopor. Burning heat over the whole body, yet the skin is not red: the blood burns in the veins. The patient keeps flinging off all the covers, not from feeling too hot but simply because they will not stay covered. Warm or cold sweat. Sour, weakening perspiration. Sweats in brief naps and is clammy while asleep. Slides down in bed, the classical picture of prostration in septic fevers.

Urinary, Rectal and Female

The bladder is paralyzed, the sphincter weak; urination is involuntary. There is no urge to urinate. Urination is frequent, scanty, painful and nocturnal. After childbirth the urine is retained. Children with brain troubles suffer from enuresis. In the rectum the sphincter is likewise weak; stools are involuntary, worse from mental excitement or during sleep.

In women the picture is dense. Hysterical or epileptic spasms before menses. During the menses the hands and feet tremble convulsively, and there is bedwetting. Metrorrhagia with bright red blood. Colds that settle in the uterus and produce labor-like pains. Excited sexual desire and nymphomania; lasciviousness with uncovering. Convulsions in pregnancy. The milk and the lochia are suppressed. Mania in the puerperium; painless diarrhea after delivery. Among the causations are complaints following suppression of the milk or lochia.

Toothache and Face

Hyoscyamus is one of the best remedies for toothache, with well-defined symptoms in that field. The pain drives the patient to despair. It comes on after taking cold or in the open air. Violent toothache with the muscles of the face and hands twitching is highly characteristic; the toothache does not stay in the tooth. Tearing in teeth. Children grind the teeth during convulsions until the teeth become loose. During dentition the gums are pressed together.

The face is red and hot in fever, but distorted, with a stupid expression and dry lips. It becomes red during paroxysms of coughing and dark and bloated after an epileptic attack. The muscles twitch when the tongue is protruded. Ridiculous gestures and grimaces come and go. The lower jaw drops with muttering. Lockjaw appears with consciousness preserved.

Modalities

Worse:

• from emotions: jealousy, fright, unhappy love
• from touch
• from cold and cold air
• in the evening and at night
• before and during menstruation
• when lying down
• after eating

Better:

• sitting up
• from motion
• from warmth
• from stooping

Prescribed at 30C and 200C for acute delirium and cough; at 1M and higher for the deeper mental cases, following Clarke's practice with the lawyer. Repetition is guided by response, not by clock.

Relationships

Antidotes: Belladonna, Camphor, Stramonium.

Compare: Belladonna is the closest. Same family, same fever with delirium, but a violent and furious delirium against Hyoscyamus's muttering, a face dark red rather than pale or bluish, a rage sustained rather than a mania that comes and ends in stupor. Stramonium shares the terrors and the visual hallucinations but lacks the sexual mania and the low muttering. Gelsemium shares the paralytic weakness and the trembling but not the erotic disinhibition. Lachesis stands beside Hyoscyamus in the great insanities of jealousy and suspicion; Lachesis's loquacity is coherent and cutting, where Hyoscyamus mutters. Platinum shares the erotic exposure and the sexual mania but is proud and haughty; Hyoscyamus is obscene and ludicrous. Causticum shares the absent urge to urinate. Cuprum shares the clenched fists with retracted thumbs during convulsions. Agaricus shares the twitching and the chorea.

Hyoscine, the alkaloid, and Scopolia, the Japanese Belladonna chemically identical with hyoscine, present a related picture: a joyous delirium with lip-licking and smacking of the mouth, sleeplessness, attempts to get out of bed, seeing cats, picking imaginary hairs, warming the hands before an imaginary fire. Clarke records these in his Relations.

Clinical Uses

Delirium in acute infectious disease

Hyoscyamus meets the septic and typhoid delirium in which the patient mutters low, picks at the bedclothes, slides down in bed, and the tendons twitch. Coma vigil belongs here. The face is pale or bluish, not red. The bedclothes will not remain in place. Clarke used the remedy in influenza that took the typhoid form, and he cured a boy in whom influenza attacked the meninges with pain in the head, the forehead piercing to the brain. In pneumonia with cerebral symptoms of delirium, sopor and slow rattling breathing, the remedy stands with Belladonna and often above it when the face is pale and the muttering low.

Insanity, mania and manic depression after grief

The remedy covers a great variety of mental cases whose picture shows suspicion, jealousy, obscenity, exposure and low muttering delirium. Manic depression after grief, disappointed love, jealousy and fright is its own ground. Puerperal mania, the delirium of the newly delivered woman when the lochia have been suppressed, is one of its classical uses. Alzheimer's disease with bizarre, ludicrous behavior and passive insanity in the aged also belong here. Alcoholism, binge drinking, drug addiction and drunken rages: all sit inside the remedy's range. Clarke's lawyer, who came to believe his wife was poisoning him, is the archetype.

Spasmodic night cough

The cough that is worse on lying, worse eating, drinking, talking, singing, and almost completely removed by sitting up is one of the surest indications for the remedy. It shakes the chest and abdomen like whooping cough. It comes from a dry spot in the larynx. It appears in bronchitis, in whooping cough, in the residual cough after acute illness, and in the cough from an elongated uvula.

Epilepsy and convulsions in children

Epilepsy with vertigo before the attack, falling suddenly with cries, followed by deep sleep, meets the remedy. Convulsions in children from fright or from worms; the child that sobs and cries without waking; twitching in sleep; alternate convulsions of the upper and lower limbs; fists clenched with thumbs drawn in: all belong here.

Toothache

The pain drives the patient to despair, comes on from cold or open air, and the muscles of the hands and face twitch along with it. The old domestic use of the seeds on the hot penny worked at the crude alkaloid dose. Classical prescribing at 30C and above meets the same picture without the alkaloid load, when the mental and general modalities confirm.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between Hyoscyamus and Belladonna?

Both are Solanaceae and both cover fever with delirium. Belladonna is red-faced, hot, burning, violent and furious; the rage is sustained. Hyoscyamus is pale or bluish, muttering, obscene and ludicrous; the mania comes in bouts and ends in sopor. Belladonna strikes. Hyoscyamus picks at the bedclothes. When the face is dark red and the delirium furious, Belladonna. When the face is pale and the delirium low, with suspicion and exposure, Hyoscyamus.

Does the herbal safety warning for henbane apply to homeopathic Hyoscyamus?

The alkaloid load of the crude plant belongs to the herbal register, at tincture and low decimals, and any dosimetric caution belongs there with it. That register was the one used in the old fumes-and-hot-penny toothache remedy, and it sits inside a dosimetric prescribing tradition. Classical homeopathic prescribing at 30C and above works on the totality of the case and does not carry the crude alkaloids, so the herbal caution does not apply to that form. Both registers exist under the same Latin name and must be distinguished before any safety claim is made.

What causations most often bring the Hyoscyamus picture?

Grief, disappointed love, unhappy love, jealousy and fright stand first, without qualification. Suppressed lochia or suppressed milk after childbirth is another. A shock to reason, followed by suspicion of the trusted person and by fits of mania that end in stupor, is the classical opening. Clarke's lawyer is the archetype.

How does Hyoscyamus differ from Lachesis in jealousy?

Both share suspicion and jealousy in mental illness. Lachesis is loquacious and coherent, the speech cutting and sarcastic, the flow constant. Hyoscyamus mutters and picks; the speech is low, difficult, unintelligible, and the mania is interrupted by sopor. Lachesis is worse from sleep; Hyoscyamus is worse from emotions and worse lying down. The face and the tongue tell them apart at the bedside: Lachesis with its dark, purplish, congested tissues; Hyoscyamus with the tongue like burnt leather that rattles in the mouth.

References

• Boericke, W. Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica. Entry: Hyoscyamus niger.
• Clarke, J. H. A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica. Entry: Hyoscyamus.
• Phatak, S. R. A Concise Repertory of Homoeopathic Medicines. Entry: Hyoscyamus.