Tarentula

‘A Hysterical Remedy’
By
Dr Yashika Arora
B.H.M.S. (N.H.M.C.,D.U.)
M.D. (Hom.) Scholar, D.K.M.M.H.M.C. Aurangabad.
S.T.S.H. Research Scholarship Awardee (C.C.R.H.)
 Spider Group
• Class: Arachnida.
• Subclass: Aranidae.
• Spiders are solitary creatures as their mothers lay the eggs and die before they
hatch.
• Free spirits by nature, thus deep acting in nature.
 History: Greek Mythology
• Arachne, a Lydian girl, exceptionally skilled at weaving, in arrogance, challenged the
Goddess Athena & mocked the gods in the design of her woven cloth.
• Gods sought vengeance by turning her into a spider so she could weave to her heart’s
content. Spider species has been termed “arachnid” in honour of this myth.
• Remedy Picture:
 Notoriously industrious, workaholics.
 Women are often exceptionally good at knitting, weaving, tapestry and similar crafts.
 Men often pursue rock climbing.
 Very boastful and often have a vengeful streak.
 Revenge comes easily to a spider!
 Doctrine of Signature
• Restlessness: Spider has eight legs surrounding the whole body and they are in
constant motion.
• Cunning & Deceptive behaviour: Spider captures its prey in a very cunning
and deceptively woven web.
• Violent: Spider’s poison has a very violent action. Also, female spider kills her
mating partner, if she does not get the required space after mating.
• Desire to Dance, which ameliorates: Male spider is known to dance during the
mating season to attract the females.
 Theme
Traps Changeability
Jealousy High sexuality
Revenge
Power struggle
Vindictive
Periodicity
Possessiveness
Suddenness Productiveness
Intelligence Sensitivity to noise
Hurriedness Involuntary movements
Restlessness Manipulative relationship
 Important Remedies
• Aranea diadema (Spider papal cross)
• Aranea scinencia (Gray spider)
• Latrodectus hasselti (New South Wales black spider)
• Latrodectus kalipo (New Zealand and spider)
• Latrodectus mactans (American black widow)
• Mygale lasidora (Black Cuban spider)
• Tarentula cubensis (Cuban spider)
• Tarentula hispanica (Spanish spider)
• Tela aranearum (Spiders web)
• Theridion curassavicum (West Indian orange spider)
 Tarentula: Introduction
• Tarentula hispanica/Lycosa tarentula: Proved By Nunez.
• “Tarantella” is a dance named from the city of Tarentum.
• "Tarantism” is a dancing mania, set up in persons bitten by the Tarentula, or
in those who imagine themselves bitten. Cure of which is music and dancing.
• A patient dancing up and down, with fits of nervous laughter, then suddenly
screaming, may be Tarentula – Dr S.R. Phatak.
 Characteristics as per Doctrine of Signature
• Spiders hurriedly make their webs, similarly a patient of Tarentula hispanica are hurried, highly
industrious and productive in their work.
• Like an intelligent spider digs a vertical hole in the ground and covers it with the web so that
it resembles the surroundings to tempt the prey, Tarentula is extremely intelligent and
cunning.
• Spiders attack their prey suddenly and violently, such violence is seen in patients in the form
of violent movements like twitching, jerking, and epilepsy.
• Tarentula hispanica is the most dramatic of the spider remedies.
• Tarentula patient frequently imagines that she has been insulted.
• Full of excitement with singing, dancing and weeping.
• May see monsters, animals, faces, insects, ghosts or strangers in the room.
 Poisoning By Tarentula’s Bite
• Bitten part swollen and discolored.
• Lymphatic glands enlarged.
• Neck swelling of a dark red or purplish hue.
• Choking after epistaxis with discharge of dark clots.
• Cerebral congestion, violently throbbing carotid arteries.
• Pale, earthy hue to face.
• Fauces swollen and purplish.
• Difficulty in swallowing, of a paralytic origin.
 Ailments From
• Fall.
• Unrequited love.
• Bad news.
• Scolding.
• Punishment.
• Sepsis. (especially Tarentula cubensis)
 Constitution
• Hurried nature.
• Compelled to move about constantly.
• Great Manipulators prone to lying and deception, possess power of persuasion for benefit.
• Cunning, know how to get the things they want.
• Restlessness with great anxiety & apprehension.
• Industrious and highly productive in their work.
• Nervous and hysterical temperament with tendency to chorea.
• Easily changeable; from happiness to melancholy, from calm and gentle behaviour to
violence easily.
• Destructiveness and aggressiveness.
 Mind
• Very sensitive.
• Hysteria and foxiness when she finds people observing her, she feigns all sort of sickness like
fainting and other manipulations.
• Feigning, demeanour, shy but actually very cunning.
• Destructiveness, insanity.
• All complaints are relieved by music.
• Express rhythm through dance.
• Energetic: Spot the Tarentula woman at the nightclub, dancing on the speakers! The rhythm is all-
important.
• Clairvoyance, usually in a “gut feeling” sense (not true visions of clairvoyance) as
• Great fear, especially of death.
 Characteristic Symptoms
• Burning thirst for large draughts of water.
• Dark and foetid stools.
• Scanty urine, voided with difficulty.
• Nervous symptoms & hysteria.
• Marked spinal irritation.
• Great excitability of nerve terminations.
• Hands in constant motion, trying to work off this over-excitability.
• Playing of a lively piece of music excites her, and starts her to acting like one crazy.
• No observers, No hysterical attacks.
• Attention = Twitching.
• Headache, better from boring the head into pillow and rubbing.
 Leading indications
• Restlessness, can never sit still.
• Mentally and physically, keeps in constant motion even though motion aggravates.
• Sensitive to music/better by music and rhythm, massaging, dancing and rubbing.
• Chorea and involuntary movements.
• Constant motion of different parts of body with special affinity to right arm and left leg. Movements stops only during
sleep.
• Chilly, yet desire for and relieved in open air.
• Aversion to colours red green and black.
• Hysterical disposition, feigns sickness when observed, better when alone, sudden changes in mood.
• Complaints recur at the same time or period annually.
• Hyperesthesia with sudden attacks of chorea.
• Nymphomania, increased sexual desire going to a state of mania.
 Remedy of Synalgias and Concomitants
• Neuralgia of inferior maxillary nerve accompanying pain with irritation in pit
of stomach.
• Snapping and pain in ear associated with hiccough.
• Heat of face with heat of palms.
• Faint feeling in stomach with frontal headache.
• Desire is excited in both sexes to the point of mania. Coitus only < the
sufferings of both.
 Hysterical Symptoms
• Restlessness, particularly in the lower extremities, with desire to cry: must keep
moving about though walking < all the symptoms.
• Mental symptoms, which almost exhaust the protean range of hysteria, in
connection with sexual disorders; sighing, yawning; laughing and crying; joking and
profound melancholy.
• Unceasing movements: twitching jerking, dancing.
• Hysterical hyperaesthesia: the least excitement irritates, followed by languid sadness;
great excitability of nerve endings; tips of fingers extremely sensitive; feels sore and
bruised all over, < moving about; spinal irritation, slightest touch along spine.
• Spasmodic pain in chest and heart regions.
 Peculiar Sensations
• As if head were knocked, in morning.
• As if thousands of needles were pricking into brain.
• As if occiput were struck with a hammer (this sensation as if hammered occurs in many parts
and may be considered a general indication).
• As of a hair in eye.
• Singing like a tea-kettle in left ear.
• As if lower teeth were going to fall out.
• As if a living body in stomach rising to throat.
• As if body were bruised.
• As if there were not sufficient space in hypogastrium.
 Peculiar Sensations
• Painful uneasiness in coccyx.
• Motion in uterus as of a foetus.
• As of something crawling up legs under skin from feet to uterus.
• As if heart turned and twisted round.
• Heart as if squeezed and compressed.
• As of needles sticking into muscle of neck when touched.
• As of insects creeping and crawling.
• Tickling, burning, scorching, and numbness are prominent sensations.
 Sexual Symptoms of Tarentula in a Proving
• Semen may be bloody, causing a sensation of heat in its passage.
• Sexual desire was so excited in one woman that when playing or dancing with men
she hugged them before everybody; and was angry when reproved, but did it again.
• The periods were scanty and pale with severe pains in teeth and buttocks; at times
she had a desire to take things which did not belong to her; the "Tarantella" played
on the violin produced no effect on her, but as soon as she took in her arms a little
girl, she began to cry until it was taken away.
• Cuttings and contractions in uterus; shootings in vagina; swelling and induration of
uterus; expulsion of gas from uterus; pains in other parts associated with uterine
pains; restlessness, hysteria.
 Clinical tip: Action on Uterus & Ovaries
• As a palliative in uterine and ovarian enlargement.
• Pain in uterine region, with constrictive headache.
• Burning pain in hypogastrium and hips, with sensation as of a great weight in
the pelvis.
• Profuse menses, followed by pruritus vulvae.
• Soreness and bruised all over, particularly when moving about.
• Longing for sleep, but so nervous that she cannot sleep.
 Generals
• Like spiders drink the blood of their prey, hence there is thirst and lack of
appetite.
• In extreme cases, this may develop into anorexia nervosa or bulimia.
• Desire for fruit, sour things, or very cold drinks.
• Aversion to colours like red, green and black.
 Particular Symptoms
• Marked Emaciation, as if flesh falls off from him.
• Creeping and crawling in the skin all over the body.
• Paralysis of any part of the body, or of all the limbs.
• Trembling and jerking convulsions like St. Vitus' Dance, cure chorea when
better from music, and also cure when worse from music.
• Full of pains in the body and limbs.
• Chill in the evening followed by fever without sweat.
 Peculiar Features
• Stools occur immediately the head is washed.
• Wetting hands in cold water = symptoms.
• One pupil dilated, the other contracted.
• Extreme restlessness of the limbs is like Ars., and it is a deep acting medicine
like Ars., and it sometimes has cured where Ars. has failed, although it seemed well
selected.
• Anxiety, restlessness, constant motion of the arms, legs, trunk and head.
• Restlessness of the limbs in the evening, in bed before going to sleep, like Ars.
and Lyc.
 Modalities
• Aggravation: Periodicity, touch, cold, noise, damp, evening, night, hands in
cold water, after menses and after coitus.
• Amelioration: Riding in a carriage, rubbing, pressure, relaxation, sweating,
rhythmic music, warm water, open air.
• Antidotes: Lach.
• Complementary: Arsenicum album
 According to Dr Farrington
• "When there are no observers there is no hysteria; when attention is directed to her
she begins to twitch"; and "cunning attempts to feign paroxysms of wild dancing."
• The chorea of Trn. is most marked on right side.
• The neuralgias of Trn. may be anywhere; in the head they are of great intensity: "as
if thousands of needles were pricking to the brain.
• They are < by noise, touch, strong light, > by rubbing head against pillow. ("> By
rubbing" is a keynote condition of Trn.
• "Termini of nerves become so irritated that some kind of friction is necessary in
order to obtain relief."
• Constrictive headache with pain in uterus.
 Few Quoted Cases
• Dr Farrington relates a case of typhoid in a child cured by Trn. The child
rolled its head and bit its nightgown. Apis. and Agn. improved. Trn. slightly
aggravated at first, then rapidly improved.
 Few Quoted Cases
• A Girl, three months old, was bitten by a tarentula. She appeared at first
uneasy, then exhibited dyspnoea, and complained, showed signs of
suffocation, vomited, was agitated and much convulsed. Music was played;
movements of the limbs were set up, whence resulted profuse sweat,
followed by sleep and complete recovery.
 Few Quoted Cases
• Francis Mustel, a peasant, was bitten by a tarentula on the left hand, about the middle of
July, as he was gathering corn. He went home with his companions but on the way fell as if
struck by apoplexy. Dyspnoea followed, and face, hands, and feet became dark. Knowing the
remedy, his companions fetched musicians. When the patient heard their playing he began to
revive, to sigh, to move first his feet, then his hands, and then the whole body; at last getting
on his feet he took to dancing violently, with sighing so laboured that the bystanders were
almost frightened. At times he rolled himself on the ground and struck it vehemently with
his feet. Two hours after the music began the blackness of his face and hands went off, he
sweated freely, and regained perfect health. Every succeeding year at the same season the
pain and attending symptoms returned, but less violently; and they could always be averted
by music. But if the imminent paroxysm was not averted in time, he was found by his
friends struck down as at first and was restored in the same way.
 Few Quoted Cases
• C. M. Boger (Hahn. Ad., xxxviii. 40) cured a case of irritative cough with
Trn. 30: Mr. B., 41, sore all over, throat feels dry, cough lying down at night
and in morning after rising; dry with tearing pain in chest; excited by pressure
of phlegm in chest feels short of breath for at least an hour after each
coughing attack only > from smoking. Bad taste evening. Three doses cured.
Diphtheria; tonsillitis of an intensity to threaten suffocation; cystitis; septic
and intermittent fevers have been successfully met in Trn. on its indications.
 Few Quoted Cases

• P. C. Majumdar (Ind. H. R., v. 43) reports this case: Girl, 18, had oppression
of chest, suffocating sensation, continued jerking and movement of hands,
foam at mouth, complete insensibility, profuse and delaying menses; very
sleepy. Hystero-epilepsy was diagnosed. Ign. 30 did nothing. Trn., high,
brought her out of the fit and restored her completely in a few minutes. But
Trn. is not a hysteric remedy only.
 Few Quoted Cases
• In M. A., xvii. 568 a case of hyperaesthesia of finger-tips is mentioned. The
patient, a lady, 33, could not dress herself without gloves. The irritation
caused at once a sensation in the teeth as if set on edge by a strong acid. The
pain was not in the fingers. Trn. gave relief after Asar., Gels., and Sul. ac. had
failed.
 Tarentula Cubensis
• C.N. Mygale Cubensis. Arana peluda. Cuban Tarantula.
• N. O. Araneideae.
• Tincture of whole spider.
• Prepared from a decomposed specimen.
• Has a pyogenic effect on the body.
• Clinical utility: Carbuncle. Chorea. Intermittents.
• "The Mygale Cubensis, which may be called the Cuban Tarentula, also found in
South Carolina and Texas, is a larger spider, of a dark brown colour, less poisonous,
and covered with more hairs than the Tarentula Hispanica" (Hering).
 Leading indications
• Remedy for pains of death, soothes the last struggle.
• Haemotoxic: Malignant suppurative conditions like carbuncles, felons, abscess and anthrax. (most severe).
• Periodicity: troubles occur at the same time every year.
• Atrocious burning and stinging pains, violent, aggravated at night, patient is forced to get up and walk about.
• Bluish purple hue of affected parts.
• Early and persistent prostration in septic conditions and diphtheria.
• Pthisis, especially about the genitals.
• Restless feet.
• Intermittent fever aggravated at night with septic chills.
• Left sided chorea.
• Whooping cough violence with dryness & hoarseness & and rawness of chest. After paroxysm gets out of breath.
• Malignant suppurative conditions like anthrax, carbuncle, Felons, abscess gangrene, especially where pain and inflammation
predominates, Scirrhus cancer of breast, senile ulcers.
 Characteristic Symptoms
• Carbuncle, even to sloughing; with great prostration and diarrhoea.
• Intermittent fever, with evening exacerbation.
• Keynote symptom is "atrocious pains."
• Compare: In intermittents, Aran. d. Carbuncle, Anthrac., Lach., Sil.
 Few Quoted Cases
• A case of chorea in a girl of twelve is reported (H. M., March, 1901) cured
with Trn. c. 6. The movements were confined to the left side, and occurred
chiefly at night, when Trn. c. was prescribed.
 A Case of Hysteria Cured By
Tarentula
• A Father came with his son of 9 years, having complaints of recurrent episodes of
symptoms like nervous coughing and headache since 6 months, which sometimes often led
to irritability, extreme restlessness. The child also used to gasp for breath during the episode.
• The Episode used to occur once in a week, mostly in evening or night.
• He used to become more highly irritable at once when touched, and suddenly laughs at the
same moment.
• No relief after medications even.
• Parents reported that they feel that he used to exaggerate the cough or his pain, showing off
he is gasping for breath. As whenever they used to give him medicine and leave him aside
for a moment. He started shouting, moving here and there.
• Also, he used to eat food hurriedly during that time.
 More About The Case….
• Keynote symptom: Parents explained that if there is music around or we
start the music, the child used to forget the pain or breathlessness and used
to become calm listening to music.
• Generals: Desire for cold drinks.
• Mentals: H/o an episode of scolded by teacher without his mistake in school
aorund 7-8 months back.
 Prescription
• Tarentula hispanica 200/1 dose.
• PL 30/TDS/2 weeks.
WHY?
 Follow up
• After 2 weeks, 1 Episode in 2 weeks. Prescribed Placebo for 1 week.
• After 1 week, no such episode. PL 30/TDS/2 weeks.
• Patient called in between after 9 days, as the episode recurred. Tarentula
200/1 dose repeated again.
• No episode since past 3 months.
• Patient is on PL 30 till date.
 Thank You!
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