Mezereum Anhängsel

[M.L. Tyler]

It powerfully affects skin, bones, mucous membranes. Its action is characterized throughout by VIOLENCE (pain/itching/sudden/in face during sleep/sensations of hunger/burning in mouth/in stomach and oesophagus/inclination to cough/lower down than can be reached by cough/acute fever/at night);

And all its violence is more violent by night. It is one of the remedies that may be needed in the treatment of syphilis; also may be needed in a variety of skin conditions (very severe skin lesions), characterized by violent itching, and < at night/from heat of bed: the one drug that has go into the Repertory, as "eruptions itching, worse warmth of fire".

It has annoying twitchings (eyelid/twitchings and jerking of muscles of right cheek/twitching of muscles in pit of stomach).

It is one of the few remedies that love and crave fat ham; > drinking milk/bacon. (Tub.).

Some of its pains are violently burning:"peppery" burnings (Caps.) ; and it has fiery taste; salty and peppery taste; bitter and sour taste-especially beer tastes bitter (not water), and causes vomiting.

The stomach conditions (ulcer/induration/carcinoma) are curious. Without hunger, there may be constant desire to eat and take something into stomach, whereby he has less pain. Constant longing for food. Nausea disappears after eating. (Sep.).

In regard to its "skins", one never forgets a recurrent experience with Mezereum cm., when doing childrens and casualty works at the hospital during the War: children being ill-nourished, probably lent themselves to such miserable conditions. The experience was with the many cases of kerion (tinea kerion = ringworm), thus described in text-books: "marked inflammatory symptoms with circumscribed boggy tumefaction of the scalp, which is covered with pustules, or with gaping orifices from which exudes viscid pus". (abscess: incised, instead of a pocket of pus, a number of pus points merely exude, the individual hair cells being the seat of innumerable small abscesses).

As a matter of fact, it is. Hahnemann tells us, if we would only heed, that for "miasmatic" diseases, acute or chronic, i.e. for diseases caused by parasitic organisms, which have in each case the same origin, the same symptoms, the same course, "a specific should be found". And doubtless kerion is a specific parasitic infection, caused by micro-organisms, and having the same origin, the same symptoms and the same course; for which, so far as epidemic experience with a dozen or so cases is concerned, Mezereum is the specific; and it proved itself so by acting magnificently in the single dose of the highest potency one had been able to lay hands on. Therefore let us once again quote Hahnemann, in regard to "Infectious diseases, caused by a peculiar contagium (a miasm of tolerably fixed character such as small-pox, measles, true scarlet fever, etc. . . . These seem so fixed in their course as to be always recognized as old acquaintances. They can be named, and we can endeavour to lay down some fixed method of treatment suitable, as a rule, for each of them".

DUNHAM: lifelong deafness cured with Mez. He traced it back to a severe attack of just such tinea capitis, in childhood; and, by treating that ancient condition - all those years later - he managed to restore hearing, utility and happiness to a boy whose life had, till then, been blasted. It was a case, evidently, of what we may venture to call, "chronic kerion". It bears out explained that, in ill-health dating from some acute illness, where the patient, apparently recovered, has never been well since, we may be really dealing with Chronic Measles, Chronic Diphtheria, Chronic Vaccinosis (Burnett), Chronic Pneumonia, etc., and we may prove our case (to our own satisfaction, anyway) by seeing the rapid leap to better life and energy, after a dose or two of Diph., Morb., Pneumococcin, Scarl. or Strept., Vario. or Thuj. according to the "past history" of the sufferer.

BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS.

Hypochondriac and despondent. Takes no pleasure in anything.

Everything seems to him dead, and nothing makes a vivid impression upon his mind.

Very violent HEADACHE: head painful to slightest touch (after a slight vexation).

Bone pain in bones of skull, especially aggravated by contact.

Cranial bones pain,. are swollen and sensitive to cold and contact: worse from motion and in the evening. Caries.

Itching and burning of SCALP.

Head covered with a thick leather-like crust, under which thick white pus collects here and there, and hair is glued together.

On the head, great elevated white scabs,under which ichor collects in quantity, and which begins to be offensive and to breed vermin.

Eyes: sensation of dryness.

Obstinate jerking of the muscles of left upper lid.

Ears: Sensation of air distending the external meatus. (Then left.).

Teeth: feel blunt and elongated: painful on biting or from fresh air.

Violent burning in mouth.

Heat and scraping in fauces.

Throat and pharynx: Burning, dryness in fauces, hacking cough; anxious oppression of breath, loosening of scanty mucus on coughing.

Stomach: Vomits BEER, which has a bitter taste (not water).

Pain in periosteum of long BONES, especially tibia: worse at night in bed ; least touch is intolerable. Worse in damp weather.

Bones inflamed, swollen (shafts of cylindrical bones); after abuse of Mercury and venereal disease.

Eczema, itching intolerably, copious serous exudation.

Neuralgia and burning after zona.

Face: Skin is of a deep inflammatory redness, and the eruption is "fat" and moist.

Child scratches the face continually; it becomes covered with blood.

In the night the child scratches its face so that the bed is covered with blood in the morning; and the face is covered with a scab which the child keeps constantly tearing off anew, and on the spots thus left raw, large (fat) pustules form.

Ulcers covered with thick whitish-yellow scabs, under which thick, yellow pus collects.

Vesicles appear around the ulcers, itching, violently and burning like fire. After eight days these vesicles dry up, leaving scabs, the tearing off of which causes great pain and retards healing.

SOME QUEER, OR ITALIC SYMPTOMS .

Irritable; averse to everything; desire to run away. (Bell., etc).

Apprehensiveness in pit of stomach (Kali-c.) as when expecting some very unpleasant news.

Everything vexes him; he wants to say all kinds of annoying and vexatious things.

Unable to recollect: or understand. Every intercurrent remark of others disturbed and confused his ideas.

Head dull, as if intoxicated: as of he had been up all night.

Headache from root of nose into forehead as if everything would press asunder.

On pressing frontal bone it pains and draws down to the feet.

Heat and perspiration on head; chilliness and coldness in rest of body (morning).

Sensation upper part of head, as if pithy.

Pressing pains as if skull would split.

On head, great elevated white scabs: chalky scabs, extend to eyebrows and nape of neck.

Violent biting on head,m as if from lice.

Pressure in eyeballs, as if too large.

Moist, itching eruption on head and behind ears. (Graph.).

Dry eruption on head, with intolerable itching, as if head was in an ants nest. (Favus.)

Eczema of lids and head; thick hard scabs, from which pus exudes on pressure.

Ears feel „As if too open“/“As if air was pouring into them“; or „As if tympanum was exposed to cold air“; with desire to bore with finger into ear.

Oozing eruption behind ears.

Fluent coryza, scabs in nose-soreness. Constant excoriation of nose. (Compare Aur., Sulph.).

Facial muscles drawn tense: troublesome twitching of muscles of right cheek.

Feeling „As if eyes were drawn backward into head“. „As if wind blowing into r. ear“.

Honey-like scabs about mouth.

„As if tooth was being lifted out of socket“.

Teeth decay suddenly above gums; crowns remain intact.

Decaying roots.

Peppery sensation on palate and in fauces.

Canine hunger noon and evening. Loss of appetite.

Desire for ham fat, coffee, wine.

Beer tastes bitter and causes vomiting.

Burning in whole mouth as from pepper.

Ulcer of stomach.

Induration of stomach.

Burning, corroding pains in stomach, „As if it were raw inside“.

Stool contains glistening bodies. Small, white, shining grains in brown faces.

Anus becomes painful and constricted about fallen rectum.

Stools hard as a stone and large; as if they would split anus.

Sticking in kidney, and pain as if torn.

Corroding leucorrhoea.

Dyspnoea as if from adhesions or contraction of lungs.

Cough spasmodic: yellow viscid mucus: tastes saltish.

Cough: when eating or drinking anything hot must cough till he vomits: from beer.

Intercostal neuralgia, follows herpes zoster. (Ran. bulb., Ars.).

Limbs feel as if shortened. Right is cold, left warm; or both cold.

Paralysis of flexors of fingers; finger-ends powerless, cannot hold anything.

Violent pain in tibia as if beaten, or as if periosteum were torn off, after midnight.

Leg, from knee to instep, covered with thick yellow scab, from cracks of which thick, yellow matter oozes on pressure.

Scabs fall of in pieces, leaving skin deep-red, sore, itching violently and exuding a thin, clear, fluid, forming a thin scab under which pus again collects; skin round scab dark-red, tense, hot, itching. At night intolerable itching and burning in eruption. Foul odour. (Herpes crustaceous).

Violent nightly pains in bones of feet.

Feeling of great lightness of body.

Especially indicated in January and February.

Worse from heat and cold.

Head especially worse cold: cranial bones, pains in scalp, etc.

Yet worse heat of bed: of fire: itching of scalp and feet. (Like Puls.), is chilly and drowsy in a warm room.

Hands and feet cold: nails blue. With hot spot on top of head.

Sensations: as if drunk. As if upper part of head were pithy. As if skull would split. As if top of head were gone.

Eyes drawn backward: ears open.

Teeth too long: ants running over chest.

As if skull would split: stools would split anus: kidneys as of torn. Periosteum torn.

Throat narrowing. Chest too tight: limbs too short.

Sticking like needles: Millions of insects crawling on him.

Twitching pains: in hollow teeth; from hip joint to knee; in cheek: in eyelid.

Like fire darting through muscles.

Constriction, throat, stomach, round prolapsed anus.

Bones feel distended.

HUGHES (Pharmacodynamics) tells us that Mezereum was one of the vegetable substances. . . with which it was attempted to replace mercury in the treatment of syphilis. He refers to its influence over nodes and nocturnal pains. He says, Hahnemanns pathogenesis in the Fragmenta, mentions such pains as caused by it in the cranium, clavicle and thighs, and several of the later provers report the same experience: in homoeopathic practice we use it with much confidence in these affections, and in simple or rheumatic periostitis. "Whether it acts on the bones themselves, I hesitate to say." But he says there is on re cord a case in which it seemed to check the necrosis of jaw produced by phosphorus.

The Homoeopathic method, he says, has added another valuable application of Mezereum-to cutaneous affections. The plant is a violent acrid, and irritates the skin when externally applied, and the throat, stomach and intestines when swallowed. He tells of intolerable itching over the whole body caused by the internal use of the drug; and of the reputation of Mez. as "about the best medicine for shingles; and not only for the eruption, but also for the consecutive neuralgia." He also quotes Dunham: "These symptoms suggest at once the applicability of Mez. to crusta lactea, to various forms of pure impetigo; and to some of those mercurial or mercurio-syphilitic ulcers on the lower extremities which are often so difficult to cure. I have frequently had occasion to witness the prompt curative action of Mezereum in these affections, in which I have generally used the 200th potency. This has proved efficacious in cases in which the lower dilutions have been inert. The characteristics of the Mezereum skin diseases are well defined in the above symptoms, viz. itching occurring in the evening in bed., aggravated and turned to burning by touch or by scratching; sensitiveness to touch; ulcers with an areola, sensitive and easily bleeding, painful at night; the pus tends to form an adherent scab, under which a quantity of pus collects." Hughes also quotes Pareira, "The urinary organs are sometimes affected by it, an irritation similar to that of Canth. being set up".

NASH gives, pain in long bones (tibia).

Facial neuralgia or toothache, when pains are greatly worse by eating or motions of jaw: better by radiate heat.

Nose: vesicular eruption, with excoriations, formation of thick scabs, worse at night: Zona.

He says, "I once cured a very obstinate case of facial neuralgia with it: worse by eating: only relief was to hold face as near as he could to a hot stove: no other heat applied wet or dry, relieved. (This is interesting,because Mez. is, in "skins" anyway, markedly < from heat of fire. ED).

GUERNSEY, Keynotes: Often useful in cases of very violent neuralgic pains about teeth or face, (l. bone) running towards the ear. Also neuralgic pains at night in teeth: teeth left side. Shin bone.

Mouth waters.

Urine with red flakes which float on top of urine.

Subsultus tendinum. When fingers are put on wrist or on other parts of body, the tendons are felt to jump and jerk.

Burning: darting in muscles, like fire darting through them.

Let us seek final enlightenment and emphasis from KENT, that graphic painter of symptomatology.

Eruptive complaints: eruptions and ulcerations.

The outer surfaces of the body are in a constant state of irritation: nervous feelings, biting, tingling, itching, changing from place to place on scratching. The part becomes cold after scratching.

Itching begins as soon as he gets warm in bed,or into a warm room.

KENT: thick, tough, leathery crusts ; with fluctuation beneath the crusts, where pressure causes the oozing of thick white pus . . . vermin often found among the crusts. Acrid pus, eats away the hair . . . Cases with a history of suppressed eczema or syphilis. Eruptions, red cicatrices about face and eyes: fissures in corners of eyes.

Ear trouble from suppressed eruptions. . . . atrophic catarrh: degeneration of mucous membranes, ear, nose, throat. Has all the catarrhal states, the ulcerations and patches of copper-coloured eruptions found in syphilis.

It tends to manifest the sufferings of the body in the skin ; it throws the physical evils to the surface. The Mezereum patient is in fairly good health when the eruptions are out. When suppressed, catarrhal affections, nervous disorders, strange mental symptoms, constipation, rheumatism, joint-symptoms appear ; he becomes a mental wreck.

Religious or financial melancholy: melancholy in regard to his business: indifference to everybody and everything. . . . Insanity with melancholy, sadness, and a history of eruptions that have called for Mezereum. . . .

Sensation of goneness, fear, apprehension, faintness in stomach, as if something would happen. Every shock, pain, bad news, when the door bell rings, when he expects the postman, or a friend, or when introduced to someone,he experiences a thrill beginning in stomach: he is frightened in the stomach". "These solar plexus individuals have often a deep cracked tongue“.

[Susan Drury, RSHom]

A remedy in the Thymelaceae Family, of the Malvales superorder. It is a deciduous plant with bright lilac-purple, neon pink or white flowers appearing on bare twigs in late January, February or March, followed by thin soft green leaves in summer and brilliant scarlet berries in September. By flowering in winter or very early spring, it makes a striking, noticeable appearance - new life quickening, even as everything around it is still dormant and bare. It likes more sun than other variety of Daphne plants and needs summer irrigation to stay healthy. Due to its extreme toxicity, it has been used sparingly in medicine.

Although Rajan Sankaran writes about the Malvales in his “An Insight to Plants,” he doesn’t include the Thymelaceae despite there being three homeopathic remedies (Daphne Mezereum, Daphne Indica and Dirca Palustris) in the family. The sensation and reaction he attributes to the Malvales is one of “Together and then Separated, Joined and then Separated, Attached and then Detached.” From my own experience and that of my patient, Mezereum shares this sensation, with its own unique sensitivity as to what triggers the sensation and reactions thereafter.

Along with being an excellent remedy for neuralgias, Mezereum has a powerful effect on skin eruptions which can be severe. Vermeulen: “A powerful irritant to skin and gastrointestinal tract and has caused numerous fatal accidents. One of the oldest plants recognized as poisonous… Daphne Mezereum is the deadliest of them all. Mezerein in the seeds creates great inflammation, ulceration and vesication.” It is the only remedy listed in the rubric “Generals - History, personal, eruptions of.”

My Mezereum patient came to me to resolve her persistent, severe, weeping, itching, burning eczema which she had had for many years: “My skin can get itching, burning, hot, can get moist if you scratch it. Scratching the head off the bumps, they would ooze and then harden. If I’m in a vulnerable situation, it goes crazy - swollen skin, red, hot, puffy, itchy and then slowly it forms a dried out crust.”

History: A terrible case of impetigo on my chin as a teenager, and as an adult would periodically get sudden, itchy blisters on my lower back, as well periodic sore, herpetic-type eruptions on the palm of my right hand. If I didn’t break the vesicles, a painful systemic infection would ensue with a red streak up my arm so I learned to be meticulous about opening the blisters and draining them over the course of a few days until they healed.

Mezereum’s toxic principles are absorbed not only by the skin, but also by the gastrointestinal tract. The remedy can have great stomach pains, often + with anxiety.

As a child “used to have terrible stomach pains, it was a big upheaval for me, we had just moved, mother went back to university, everything was different, cold and wet, mother not home all the time. Had terrible stomach pain, anxiety felt in stomach; cramping, doubling over would help. Now if I’m anxious, get stomach pains but not so bad.” While I never suffered from stomach pain per se, many times I would get an overall sick feeling of anxiety, usually when I perceived I had made a mistake or done something wrong. (Mind - fear, stomach arising from; Stomach - Anxiety)

The remedy can also be good for sinus congestion or sinusitis.

Grandgeorge: “It produces dramatic results in cases of bilateral maxillary sinusitis… the key to the remedy is found here. The maxillary sinuses are hollow facial organs which contain anatomical structures sensitive to the magnetic field in the environment. These organs give migratory birds, for example, a sense of direction and orientation. Following a move, travel in a foreign country, a resort vacation etc., Mezereum subjects’ maxillary sinuses become blocked and they “lose their bearings.”

This idea of a loss of bearings points to a major theme and potential etiology for the Mezereum state. Vermeulen: “Temperamental in the garden, it has a strong aversion to being moved once established and has a sudden propensity to die for little or no apparent reason.” For those with a Mezereum sensitivity, moving can be a trigger for the disease state.

My own disease arose after just such an event. No stranger to moving, I grew up living around the world as my father worked internationally. As a shy only child, changing countries and schools was never easy however my mother especially provided comfort and support with each move and overseas communities were fluid and welcoming. Coming to Vancouver, however, was a different story.

I had moved to New York City after experiencing a mystical inner calling, and as an aspiring opera singer, it was wonderful, fertile ground; I felt I had finally come home. While in New York I met and married my Canadian husband whose dream was to get back to Vancouver. Soon we had a baby girl and life was rich and fulfilling. So when he announced that the time had come to move back to Vancouver, I was struck both dumb and numb - although I’d known it would happen “some time,” the reality had never sunk in. In the face of his decision, there were no words to speak otherwise. My own feelings of dismay were suppressed and just as through my childhood, I was carried along by someone else’s momentum.

The price of such acquiescence, however, was a high one. I was adrift and alone in Vancouver. This was my husband’s dream and everything was his - his home town, his family, his friends, his job. While I had felt conflicted about the move, suddenly being plunked down into this foreign world brought home all I had lost. Torn from the vibrant life I knew and loved, here I only felt dullness. While my husband was off at his new job, my life shrunk to taking my daughter to a park where for hours I would sit, watching her chase pigeons, numbness occasionally broken with spells of weeping (Mind - dullness, looking out the window lasting for hours; Mind - Indifference, dead to him everything seems).

My sensations clearly fit into the “attachment and then detachment” of Sankaran’s Malvales description and I expressed the passive reaction state - feelings of estrangement and indifference. Before I had been attached to a home and life where I flourished; now I was separated from everything. My response was to lose my sense of self, as if I was now nothing (Mind - delusion, dead, everything is). Had I been the plant, surely I would have died. Instead, I began to experience sudden shooting stabs of excruciating, overwhelming pain in my face.

In flower language, Daphne Mezereum means “desire to please” and this is perhaps the central theme of the remedy - pleasing others, even if at your own expense. Highly attuned to those they are attached to, Mezereum will feel compelled to please, even when counter to their own needs or instincts:

When was your skin really bad? “That was around my mother. I had to separate from her in a way that was hard for me and she wasn’t participating in. She was attached to me, could infantilize me so it was hard when I had to move out from that… I have a tendency to be drawn in, I wanted to please her so I did be that person.”

If they lose too much contact with their own desires and sense of self, their physical pathology may become their sole experience of self-differentiation:

What did you experience? “Sense of being taken over by the other person’s agenda, diminished, my own needs diminished and the other person’s agenda having to be accommodated. I felt like nothing, I had no sense of myself at all. I was no different than a stone on the beach… covered in eczema, I didn’t exist except for this burning skin. Burning, oozing, hot, itchy, but I couldn’t tell anyone, I had to hide it.”

Why does Mezereum so need to please others? While some authors put this remedy in the sycotic miasm as there is the feeling of needing to hide, I suggest it belongs more to the contemporary understanding of the Leprosy or even Syphillitic miasm: while the sensation of separation feels like torture and exile, attachment to others at your own expense is equally oppressive, leading to self-alienation and despair: “ I Felt the sense of impossibility of changing or affecting anything. Disappearance, diminishment of me, vulnerable, helpless, hopeless. My brain was gone. Numbness, like under a bell jar, numb emotionally, everything shut down. So highly attuned to my mother’s comments, voice, opinions, whatever.”

Being so attuned to pleasing, they are easily overcome with feelings of shame and guilt, especially when something happens to upset or anger the person/people they need to please - whether they were responsible for it, or not. They can experience the delusion of having done something terrible or of being wrongly blamed for something they haven’t done. I had several minor car incidents that most people would have shrugged off but which left me feeling sick with guilt and shame, as if I would never be forgiven. I had a series of dreams of innocently doing something perceived as wrong - or being prevented from carrying out a duty to people I wanted to please - and the feeling of having done something unforgiveable for which I would be punished forever was so horribly real that when I finally woke up, I had trouble accepting it having truly been a dream. Even imaginary scenarios of something for which I could be blamed would fill me with dread and guilt. In the repertory there are rubrics such as “Mind - Anxiety, Salvation about; and Mind - Despair, Religious despair of salvation;” these rubrics need not refer to a religious God but instead reflect the fear of being cast out and forever unforgiven by whatever authority the person feels themselves to be under.

During the trigeminal neuralgia years, I had a powerful shamanic vision in a cranial sacral session: I experienced myself being alone, naked and staked out in a flat, endless desert under a hot sun. I was spread-eagled, my arms and legs tied to stakes and my belly had been split open, leaving my entrails exposed to birds and other creatures. This was done to me by others without reason, I was innocent of any wrongdoing - and yet they staked and abandoned me, exposed, ripped open, to be slowly picked away at and die, in the endless, barren desert under a burning, relentless sky.

My patient also spoke of the sensation of helplessly being attacked or split open in the stomach and chest: “I feel guilty, as far as my sisters are concerned, I abandoned my mother, had to get distance from her - I did turn away from her in order to save myself. Comments from sisters can make me feel guilty because mother was very hurt. It was life or death for me. (It feels as if) you were attacked in the chest, stomach, something shameful feels trapped, caught in the chest area. (I feel) revulsion at the attack and inability to stand up for myself. You don’t feel you are in the wrong, but (feel burning) shame and you are caught, no way out.”

The name Daphne comes from Greek mythology; Daphne was the beautiful nymph of the Peneios river and had resolved to spend her life in perpetual virginity. Apollo loved and wanted her but she ran from him until in exhaustion, she begged the gods for help and was changed into a laurel tree. Apollo loved her, even in her tree form. Embracing the branches as though they were still limbs, he kissed the wood but even as wood, she shrank from his kisses. Imagine this as a metaphor for Mezereum’s delusional state - someone else’s desire for you conflicting with your own sense of destiny, your shape becomes changed in a last-ditch effort to preserve basic integrity. However although the core is preserved, you are now rooted in place, helpless to escape. Reduced to being a piece of wood, you suffer the loss of your unique human expression while still, although not able to fullfill their desires, subject to their attention and influence.

Nymphs in Greek mythology were depicted as beautiful minor female deities connected to a particular place in nature such as a spring, river or mountain. Daphne was a river nymph who wanted the independence of virginity - perhaps so she could devote her existence to exploring the depths of water’s intuitive knowledge and feelings. (Mind - absorbed; Mind - Meditating; Mind - Introspection).

Likewise Mezereum’s inner life is a deep source of rich creativity and other-worldly insights, and can give rise to unique and unprecedented realizations. My own life has been punctuated by a number of unexpected transcendental spiritual experiences. The plant’s beautiful, early flowering suggests spontaneous inspiration and unprecedented expression perhaps not yet understood by the outer world.

For Mezereum individuals to commune with their inner inspiration, a lot of solitary time dedicated to experiencing and plumbing their depths is required. Being so highly attuned to the needs and desires of others, however, is again the conflict that separates them from themselves: “If I’m too over-exposed to others… I can’t be aware of my own needs. Everybody else’s needs are way more important and I attend to them and don’t know what it is I could possibly really want myself. My creativity seems to need a huge amount of space and time. Takes a lot of quiet and solitude for that process to occur which is a process that I enjoy and need.” (Mind - Concentration difficult, if interrupted)

Without that time for solitude and reflection, especially when around too many people or demands on them, there can be a feeling of exhaustion or fragility. Too much exposure to others can sap their life forces: “Invaded is another way to describe it. Invaded right into your inner self and no protective (hand gesture like an outer cover)… able to be invaded.” Even too much exposure to the outer world or television can be difficult: “I’m sensitive to things that are going to make me sad or depressed, too many children lost in snow, pedophile ring, whatever. I feel I need to filter out, I’m too thin skinned. Thicker skin would be nice!”

When in a healthy state, Mezereum’s sense of stamina and thicker skin around others and events in the world can improve. After the remedy my client said “I found I was more relaxed when talking with people. One friend is extremely talkative, sometimes I find it unbearably exhausting but I seemed to keep my energy up. I feel a lot more resilience, not so much sensitivity, a bit more drive and determination.”

Harry Van der Zee’s “Miasms in Labour” was my original source of Mezereum information and his description is a “conflict in loyalty where they are torn apart between two conflicting emotions, resulting in ambivalent and suppressed impulses.” This is another way of expressing Mezereum’s conflict between the desire/obligation to please someone else while continuing to heed one’s inner desires and truth. When pleasing the other means suppressing your own desires, you lose the sense of what you want; should something happen which displeases the other, terrible guilt, fear and the delusion of having done something unforgiveable weighs heavily. Over time, either side of the conflict can lead to illness, which for Mezereum will be of a painful, burning, violent nature.

A partial list of Mezereum characteristics includes:

Physical feeling of coldness, iciness (despite many sensations of burning);

Neuralgic symptoms - neuralgic headaches extending to the eye or trigeminal neuralgia; herpes zoster with burning, neuralgic pain; neuralgia after shingles;

Burning symptoms - violent burning, often in mucus membranes such as the mouth or stomach; burning neuralgic pains, burning skin eruptions;

One-sided symptoms;

Violently itching, weeping eruptions, often disfiguring - eczema, itching, burning, thick crusts with cracks, oozing thick, white pus; itching eruptions after vaccination; itching changes place on scratching;

Issues around disfigurement, disfigured face; or conversely, deceiving appearances, outward show or glamour;

Being stigmatized or wrongly blamed for things;

Anger, followed by quick repentance;

Bad effects from history of suppressed eruptions or in eruptions following vaccination;

Bone pain - affects long bones, and also bones of face and head; also can affect the teeth.

The price of an unhealthy Mezereum state is a high one; feeling obligated to follow the desires of others, they no longer are in touch with their own inner direction and desires. If anything goes wrong for the others, they suffer tremendous guilt as if having done something unforgiveable for which they will be punished and outcast. As their individuality becomes stunted in response to the demands of others, this psychic annihilation will be expressed through violent, often disfiguring pathology.

However without the illness, one cannot find the cure. Under Mezereum’s healing influence, the terrible conflict gradually dissolves and they are no longer in bondage to the desires /influences of others or under the threat of exile and damnation. As the focus of attention moves away from the people and the environment around them and turns to attending one’s own inner treasure trove of inspiration, they are able to experience their deeper truth and have the freedom to embody their uniqueness. Through the remedy, their potential is finally accessible to them and allowed to flower, bringing their individual beauty of expression to the world.

Vorwort/Suchen. Zeichen/Abkürzungen. Impressum.