| |
by Frank Kraft, M.D.
from The Homeopathic Recorder, Vol. LIII, No. 3, March 1938, pp. 16-22, reprinted from the Hahnemannian Monthly, July, 1899.
In the street vernacular of the day, the Nux patient, ain't no fool. He is rather more of a conscious and malicious liar than the Veratrum or the Anacardium patient. We say Belladonna is rarely indicated in idiots, so we say that Nux is rarely indicated in stupids. Indeed, it is one of the leading characteristics of Nux that he is bright and conscious even to the last. He knows what's what. As a rule, he is gifted with good horse-sense; but at times, owing to troubles below the belt, it gets severely twisted. He is a fine workman, working in fine and delicate things. Engraving, for instance; hence, look for Nux patients among forgers and counterfeiters. He has the conscience of the City Editor recently described in Scribner's Magazine, who governs by turns of acerbity and irritability, then remorse. He will give sarcastic directions, distorted instructions, and then, in the next fifteen minutes, try to undo his meanness in some way, but never apologizing to the victim. He is a great planner and plotter. Needless to add that his plannings and plottings are not always governed by sentiment or love.
There is very little of the coward about him physically. He is a fighter. He has the two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage. He is the little dog which attacks the biggest mastiff that comes in the front yard. He is pretty often the under-dog. But he doesn't know when he is whipped--just as some people, in the profession and out, don't know when they are dead. He is capable of love, but mostly with a string tied to it. He is fond of the dear people, but his pro patria may be due to fleshpots of embalmed beef. And his love may be built on the same order--for revenue only. He is a great specialist for tabular and statistical greatness only. Yet he may be honest about it, and believe he is a moon-struck lover, or a mouth-of-the-cannon patriot, or a disinterested, unselfish hysterectomer, with no special eye single to the glory of No. 1.
He goes by contraries. He must not be crossed, else he becomes the crossest of the cross. The quickest way to incite him to trouble is to oppose him, no matter how good the friend, nor how transparently wholesome the counsel. He wants his ENEMY to tell him the truth. He hardeneth his forehead against reproof.
He is not usually a tall person. He may be but a few inches above five feet, but he will swim with his command across a river in the face of a rain of bullets and dislodge and rout the enemy. He is neither fat nor sluggish. If he were, He would be more likely to be Bryonia, with surly stupidity; or Capsicum, dropping grease and sweat at every step; or Pulsatilla, crying because he feels bad, or because he feels good, or because he doesn't feel at all. He is a race-horse, and tireless, and, therefore, lean and lank and hungry-looking. But he gets there. His great card is his adaptability. He always alights on his feet.
On the law of homogeneity--oneness--he is as angular in body as in nature. He may have a broad head, but his disposition, when he is sick, is apt to be narrow and mean. He is restless, but not with the itching of Rhus, nor the desire to stretch and be in motion. It is likely his liver. The liver is the biggest part of him.
He drinks like a fish (although I have often wondered whether a fish drank, any more than a dog worked). And his drinks are of all kinds-except water. He partakes of the latter element as sparingly as does the much maligned Kentucky colonel. Water does not set well with him. He drinks liquors because he is dry, because he is warm, because he is cold, because he feels bad, because he feels good, because his wife has a new baby, because his mother-in-law is sick unto death--but mostly at the other fellow's expense. He rarely gets full. He can hold a good deal. His mind will be active in the midst of bodily debauch. He may not be able to raise a finger, nor articulate a word, but he is still conscious. And long before you can touch his limit he will get sick, emulate the poor Indian, go out, come back, and drink more--at your expense. Therefore, beware of this fellow if you are inclined to take him out to have some fun with him. He eats in the same way that he drinks--everything that comes along from angel cake to limburger. He gets in trouble shortly after eating. He will then drink more and eat more, just to see if it will make any change in his feeling. He eats in a railway hurry, without appetite and upon the slightest provocation. He goes to the table with a book or the morning paper. He is always ready to eat or drink--principally the latter.
His liver is thickened and enlarged. So he takes the liver-color, or rather, the coffee-color, for his skin's decoration. He is very fond of coffee. Because of his gross irregularities in eating and drinking, and in all the other good things forbidden in the Decalogue, he has dyspepsia, and becomes a large user of Lady Somebody's After-Dinner Pill; then the patent medicines--tonics, bitters, sarsaparilla, celery compounds, saw palmetto, lost manhood dopes, blood rectifiers and reconcilers, Lydia Pinkham, Garfield tea to overcome his habitual constipation and give him a thorough house-cleaning. He uses tobacco in some form and mostly in excess--not because he really craves it, but because it allays his nervousness. There are some forms of Nux patients who are thoroughly saturated with offensive pipe, dog-legtobacco and turned-up trousers; but the better class of Nux patients, as a rule, smoke but little and that mostly for company or because the cigar is given. Rarely a cigarette smoker; he has too much brains for that.
Notwithstanding his ordinary commonsense, he has spells of innocence and gullibility that mark the inconsistency of the patient. He will buy a gold brick or invest in green goods. He will guzzle patent medicines by the gallon, then give his picture and certificate for all the Saturday morning papers of this broad land. He may be an ex-Governor or ex-Secretary of State, or ex-seventeeth assistant cook at the White House in 1845; or they may be any number of hysterical preachers, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw, but always ready to give a certificate of character for anything from veracity to cucumbers.
Look at the pictures in the Saturday morning papers, and out of every ten, mark seven Nux patients.
He is not encumbered with the fatal gift of beauty. His hair was black or very dark, but it whitens early. he is rarely red-headed--as to hair--and much more rarely bald-headed. In this latter respect he is like the Phosphorus patient with consumption.
He is a ladies' man, but from selfish motives--I might say from sensual motives. At times he is a very animalish person. He does not lie awake at night plotting how to trap some innocent girl, but he will not often go over to the other side of the street if there is something on this side that catches his lustful eye. But it is not love. He began his sexual perversion early in life as a boy, in the seclusion which the cabin grants.
His nerves--and he seems a bundle of nerves--like a crab's bones, are all on the outside. Therefore, he is always at hair-trigger. Every little word offends; even a hurt look makes him fighting mad.
Every little draft makes him cold. He wants the windows and doors closed. He isn't cold, but chilly. Because of his perfect adaptability, he can stand lots of real cold and lots of real heat. He can wait for a street-car in a driving storm for twenty minutes, shoe-mouth deep in snow, with no worse effect on his health than increasing his desire to be ruler of the universe for about ten minutes. But when he gets thawed out, his nose and lips and fingers, his swearing capacity is also thawed out and augmented. He can live in the tropics with equanimity and maliciousness. He can live anywhere where he can make himself unhappy and his neighbors uncomfortable.
He is quick in everything except calling the doctor and afterward paying his bill. He is quick-motioned, quick-thinking, quick-walking, quick-speaking, and stutters there and becomes impotent. He gets into a great sweat at times from excitement or anger, but he rarely sweats.
He has real fear of but one thing, and that is death. Every little ailment brings him quickly to death's door--apparently--just as it brings him to a consciousness of his latter end, both spiritually and earthly. He has a great deal of trouble with his in'ards, especially the lower end. Piles, and piles of it.
Remember this patient when you must chloroform him. He will take a great amount of it. Don't begin to operate on him until you are absolutely sure he is under. His mind remains bright long after the usual reflexes are abolished. This is that lady patient who, after having taken chloroform or vitalized air, or other anesthetic, and been operated on by the surgeon or dentist, accuses the operator with improper conduct. And the testimony of half a dozen bystanders, her husband and her mother, will in but little remove the impression of an assult and a subsequent conspiracy to hide the crime. Don't be tempted to flirt with a Nux patient in the privacy of your office. Don't give her an opportunity to blackmail you. She may not do so from malice, but from a distorted and twisted brain. You know she wants to get her husband alone so she can kill him, though she loves him dearly.
The sexual instinct in her is large, and at times imperious--as it is usual with all constipated people. But it seems to be more mental than sensual. It is more the lust of gratification than the satisfaction of love. But she will afterward complain of disappointment, incompleteness and disgust. She is not very bloody in her monthly periods--cold and malicious people rarely are. Abundance of blood means flesh and plumpness, pink skin, red cheeks, red lips, sparkling eyes and an infectious ha! ha! or he! he!
He is inconsistent in almost everything, money matters and business matters as in love matters. He is made of that wooden-headed and sometimes heroic stuff which will die at the stake for opinion's sake, though palpably and demonstrably wrong. He will wear a faded rose in his inside vest pocket to commemorate a long-ago misfit love affair, while at the same time he will carouse and drink to excess--at some other fellow's expense--and yet cry maudlin tears of love and constancy over his rose.
He is not a good sleeper. He may fall asleep in the early evening while reading his book or paper; but you won't have to wake and call him early, mother dear, for he does that himself. Then he goes to sleep again, to wake with the sun shining in his face and a nut-brown taste in his mouth. Then keep away from him! Nothing will be right. He would quarrel with Gabriel about the size of his halo.
He is predominantly worse in the morning; therefore, give Nux in the evening.
He is a bookworm and a hard student, and when well-balanced otherwise will make a great man. Nux people, as a rule, have some little vice that they are anxious to keep from the public. It may be simply in the inclination to cause pain in others. He fights very shy of pain for himself. The Medicis and the Duc de Guise and old Torquemada must have been Nux patients. All warriors and spillers of warm blood in cold blood are allied to Nux patients. There is a good bit of the cat about them.
This Nux patient is your typical actor, author, poet, artist, editor, musician. Erratic and erotic. He will live in a garret for an ideal's sake. Live like an uncrowned king for a few weeks after making a raise on his last curtain-raiser or pot-boiler or grand operation, then return to his garret and his mansard. He writes as he talks, as he paints, as he fights, as he marries (if an actor), by fits and starts--when the spirit moves. Jealous as Othello. Treacherous as Iago. Quarrelsome as Katherine in Taming of the Shrew. Biggity as a recent graduate. Sarcastic and polished as a Frenchman.
In conclusion, Nux is a wonderful remedy. It fits the king on his throne and the tomato-can tramp in the hay-mow, the ruler and destroyer of dynasties, as it does the man behind the anvil and the plow. The bespectacled Lady Principal at the head of the seminary who wets her lips and says graws for grass, down to the weeping Cinderella sitting by the potsherd. Youth and age, male and female, cold and warm, all colors and nationalities. It is, truly, a polychrest. There isn't a prettier remedy in the homeopathic materia medica to lecture upon than Nux, unless it is Belladonna. It has both form and color. A teacher with a little knowledge of drawing or color can put the Nux face on the blackboard or white paper, and thus impress it indelibly upon the student's mind. And there are other of our remedies that can easily be visualized.
CLEVELAND, OHIO
