Spongia Anhang

POLARITIES: Expanding or Contracting. Pressed apart or Pinched together. Hardness or Flabbiness.
MIND: Haunted. Strong anxiety concerning health. Suicidal depression.
Loose [expansive mood: joking, witty, over-the-top, singing, as if drunk, wild fantasies, delirious] or Uptight/rigid [contracting mood: irritable, abusive, obstinate, argumentative, vindictive, rejects people].
SENSATIONS: Expanding or Contracting. Flabby or Hard. Burning. Pressed apart or Pinched together. As if something alive inside; foreign body sensation: plugged, corked, wedged. Itching and crawling. Pressure: as of a weight or stone, compressed. Pulsation. As if the contents of the skull would burst through the forehead.
SYSTEM AFFINITIES: Lymphatic, glands. Cardiovascular, heart valves, blood vessels. Respiratory, lungs. Skin. Musculoskeletal, joints.
CLINICAL AFFINITIES: Whooping cough. Asthma. Croup, membranous croup. Diphtheria. Problems with the heart valves. Complaints of blood vessels, varicose veins. Aneurysm. Arteriosclerosis. Cyanosis. Tissue death. Gangrene. Complaints of the glands. Abscesses. Tumours: benign, angioma [tumour consisting largely of blood vessels]. Cancer. Complications of TB. Ailments from worms. Catalepsy. Arthritis.
GENERALS: Aggravation: midnight, full moon, cold dry air, winter, menstruation, pressure. Amelioration: Eating a small amount, warmth, descending.

Remedy source
Common Mediterranean sea sponge, roasted until brown and then triturated. This differs from other sponges in that it does not contain spicules, (calcareous or siliceous skeletal forms), only spongin, a collagen protein. Dr Otto Leeser notes that, for preparation as a remedy, the sponge should be roasted to a brown colour and not burnt black.

H. conducted the original proving, resulting in 156 symptoms from provers under his own supervision and 235 symptoms extracted from papers by 10 other authors; H. considered his own account incomplete. Materia Medica Pura: Reine Arzneimittellehre, Volume VI. H. was said to be primarily interested to see the medicine's effects on goitre.

B. Finke MD: "A New Proving of Spongia Tosta", American Homeopathic Review, 1859, p. 317. Finke performed a clinical experiment on a patient who was displaying general indications for the remedy. This confirmed the remedy's affinities with the throat and larynx. The patient also had a history of a tumour in the left breast.

Relationships:
Porifera: Badiaga.
Marine invertebrates: Cor-r. Aster.

Vertebrate: Meph.
Plant: Fuc. Acon. Dros. Ip. Puls.

Mineral: Iod. Brom. Calc-i. Kali-i. Calc. Lapis-albus.
Nosode: Tub.

Senses: Pliny, in the first century AD observed that the sponges, like anemones and coral, were "neither beasts nor plants, but a third nature between or compounded of both," and "have yet a kind of sense with them". He observed the sponge to flinch and contract when his hand drew near to pull it from a rock - a surprising act for an animal with no obvious nervous system. No intracellular gaps or junctions have yet been found in sponges; these are present first in the Cnidaria and onwards in evolution, and allow electrical currents to be passed between cells. Spong. thought to react to touch and pass messages via chemical signalling, and may be able to pass calcium signals between cells via normal ion channels.

In 2005, researchers April and Malcolm Hill, at the University of Richmond, Virginia, USA, discovered that sponges carry sophisticated genes which would normally control the growth of eyes, the brain, central nervous system and sensory systems in other animals, including humans. They have the black box of sensory genes, but do not unpack it, remaining as simple bodies.

Clearing the Airways: Do Sponges Cough?
Spongia is perhaps best known as a cough remedy. Do sponges actually cough? It would appear so:

"Sponges exhibit contractile behaviors (reviewed by Leys and Meech 2006; Elliot and Leys 2003). In the small, freshwater sponge Ephydatia, an inhalant expansion phase precedes a coordinated contraction that forces water out of the osculum. This contractile activity generates high-velocity flow in the finer channel systems that then propagate toward the osculum. Effectively, this seems to be a ''coughing'' mechanism that eliminates unwanted material, chemicals, or organisms from the vasculature”.

Just like the Spongia patient, the sponge in nature 'coughs' to relieve the sympoms of blockage and suffocation. Sponges are hosts, acting like hotels to all sorts of creatures, such as crabs and worms. They have also formed symbiotic relationships with bacteria and algae. The proving of Spongia tosta has a strong sensation of a foreign body internally: a stone, something plugged, or especially something alive: itching and crawling or giving the feeling of 'fine digging,' internally.

[Lectures on Homeopathic Materia Medica - James Tyler Kent]

Tubercular miasm.

Mind: The mental symptoms of Spongia (anxiety, fear and dyspnoea) show that it is a heart remedy.

A remedy producing the anxiety, fear and dyspnoea of Spongia, it will most likely turn out to be a cardiac remedy, unless these conditions are connected with irritation and inflammatory

diseases of the brain.

Head: Any cerebral symptoms, marked anxiety, fear of death, and suffocation, associated with palpitation and uneasiness in the region of the heart (with pain and a sense of stuffiness and

fullness in the cardiac region, in the chest, with dyspnoea, anxiety, fear of death/of the future/something dreadful is going to happen).

Wakens at night in great fear and it takes some time before he recognizes his surroundings

The modality is common to its other complaints; violent, basilar headache forces him to sit up in bed and keep still. Holding the head upright > dull pressure in the occiput.

There are many headaches. In the occiput, in the forehead, congestive headaches, but most of them are associated with goitre, cardiac affections and asthma; they are due, probably, to sluggish circulation in the brain.

Face distressed in croup; anxious; livid; pale and bloated; blue, pale with sunken eyes; red with anxious expression; alternating red and pale; cold sweat.

These symptoms are the natural effects of difficult breathing and are, therefore, not essential in the selection of a remedy. As primary symptoms, they would probably indicate Ars., but when

due to cardiac difficulties, unimportant.

Adapted to diseases of children and women; light hair, lax fibre, fair complexion (Brom.).

Swelling and induration of glands; goitre (Brom.).

Throat: Enlargement of the tonsils. Difficult swallowing.

Sore throat, < after eating sweet things.

Thyroid gland swollen, comes even with chin: with suffocative paroxysms at night. Goitre.

Cough: dry, barking, croupy; rasping, ringing, wheezing, whistling; everything is perfectly dry, no mucous rale.

Cough: sibilant, like a saw driven through a pine board; < sweets/cold drinks/smoking/lying with head low/dry cold winds/reading/singing/talking/swallowing; > eating/drinking warm things.

Croup: anxious, wheezing, < during inspiration (< during expiration: Acon.); < before midnight (< before morning: Hep.).

Male organs: Spermatic cord swollen, painful; testicles swollen, bruised, squeezed; after suppressed gonorrhoea or maltreated orchitis.

Spong. closely related to Acon., which also excites the heart, brings on anxiety, fear, and restlessness, fear of death, predicts the hour of death, but this is associated with a marked febrile excitement. Spong. has febrile excitement in a minimum degree.

It is much deeper in its action than Aconite. Its cardiac diseases tend to develop slowly, with actual tissue changes, enlargement of the heart, it takes on a steady growth and the valves become changed, do not fit, hence, there are blowing and whizzing sounds, regurgitation with the mental symptoms. The two are similar in croup, but Spong. is deeper, slower in onset, taking several

days for its development.

Respitory: Palpitation: violent with pain and gasping respiration; awakened suddenly after midnight with suffocation and great anxiety; valvular insufficiency; before and during menses.

DRY mucous membranes of air passages: throat/larynx/trachea/bronchi. “dry as a horn.”

Spong. The whole respiratory apparatus is acted upon; cardiac dyspnoea and the most severe forms of asthma.

Cough: Acon. from exposure to a dry cold wind takes a cold today and, of course, comes down with croup to night in the first sleep. Before midnight has a dry spasmodic cough; hoarse cough; Spongia has taken a cold yesterday or the day before.

Every mental excitement < or increases the cough. First there is roughness and dryness of the mucous membranes, sneezing. Both remedies have croup before midnight with dry, hoarse, barking cough, sawing respiration and dry air passages.

They are so similar that when Aconite only partially controls the condition and it returns the next night, or lasts on beyond midnight, Spong. becomes its natural follower.

Spong. comes in because it was probably the remedy in the beginning.

Cases < each succeeding night, hoarse barking and crowing before midnight, though it also has a croup after midnight. A deep-acting remedy: its complaints sometimes come on suddenly.

Hep. < at night/in the morning. And when Acon. has apparently controlled, but the croup returns the next morning, Hep. comes in. Or if croup comes on again the next evening with rattling

Hep. will also be suitable.

Dry, with no rattling is Spong.

If the child wants to be covered or says that it is chilly: Hep.

Child says the room is too warm and kicks the covers off: Calc-s.

Spong < warm room/heat.

Wants to be cool: Iod.

> from warm drinks: Ars., Nux-v., Lyc.

The whole respiratory apparatus is acted upon; cardiac dyspnoea and the most severe forms of asthma.

Dryness of the air passages with whistling and wheezing, seldom rattling, must sit up and bend forward; at times after great dyspnoea, white, tough mucus forms in the air passages, difficult to expectorate; it comes up and often has to be swallowed (Arn., Caust., Lach., Kali c., Kali s., Nux-m., Sep., Staph.)

Glands: The tendency to affect the glands is striking. All glands are affected; they gradually enlarge and become increasingly hard. Glands that have undergone inflammation and, are increased in size become hard, or they take on hypertrophy.

Chest: Angina pectoris; contracting pain, heat, faintness, suffocation, anxiety and sweat; < after midnight.

Hypertrophy of the heart (Kalmia, Sepia, Naja). Spongia has cured endocarditis, cardiac croup and many other inflammatory diseases of the heart resulting from rheuma.

Hypertrophy of the thyroid, goitre, when the heart is affected and the eyes protruding.

Chest: Dyspnoea < lying down.

In cardiac and asthmatic troubles it resembles Lach., in the rousing up from sleep in suffocation; after the sleep the dyspnoea is worse.

Sore throat < after eating sweet things.

Thyroid gland swollen even with the chin; at night, suffocating spells, barking cough, with stinging in the throat and soreness in the abdomen.

Spong. dyspnoea and cough > warm food; may be > warm drinks.

Laryngeal troubles with great hoarseness, in individuals tending towards phthisis, with tubercular heredity, cachectic aspect, weak lungs, but no deposit of tubercle. All at once hoarseness sets in.

Tendency for the larynx to become involved in phthisical patients that need Spong.. This patient takes an acute cold and it settles in the larynx with hoarseness. Look out for that patient,

for there is a tendency for tubercles to deposit where there is inflammation, and the infiltration instead of being fibrinous may become tubercular. Tendency for the larynx to be first involved in phthisical patients.

In Spong. do not look for the exudative, but the infiltrative form of croup. Hoarseness with loss of voice, great dryness of the larynx from a cold; coryza, sneezing, the whole chest rings, is as dry as a horn; voice hissing, croupy, nose dry.

There is very little accumulation of mucus, but at a late date ulceration begins and then there may be a copious expectoration of mucus. In proportion to the extent of rattling, this remedy is decreasingly indicated. Hep. has the coarse rattling with much mucus.

At times an adult takes cold and rawness of the larynx and trachea is the result. On going to bed she is taken with a spasmodic constriction of the larynx.

Dry, spasmodic cough, troublesome cough; cold things taken into the stomach aggravate. (Verat.> cold water, but the cough is <) If the room becomes too warm, there is a dry, tickling, teasing, croupy spasmodic cough.

Laryngismus stridulous is commonly found in women. Ign., Gels., and Spong.. Ign. and Gels. will cure 8 out of 10 cases.

The larynx is sensitive to touch in croup, etc., like Phos.

The Phos. dyspnoea is often increased after sleeping, with suffocation. Lach. has it in a marked degree; in phthisis when the patient is about to die, there is sweat on going to sleep; dyspnoea on going to sleep and on waking. Lach. palliates and must be repeated.

Cardiac affections accompanied with thick, green or yellow expectoration like pus and dyspnoea on falling to sleep so that he must keep awake as long as he can, fear of sleep in advanced chest troubles. Grind. will palliate such a case and if the condition is only catarrhal and not tuberculous, it will cure.

Study especially the cardiac symptoms.

“The symptoms of circulation < from mental lassitude, from coughing, from lying on the right side, before menses, after lying down, sitting bent forward, from smoking, from going up stairs.

Awakens in fright and feels as if suffocating. Falling asleep early at night, suffocation awakens.”

Ebullitions, distended veins; dropsy in cavities of the body. Especially suits young persons of tubercular parents, who remain weak, are pallid and do not thrive. Tubercular diathesis.

Itching but no eruption. Seems always ready for an eruption to appear. Has only simplest herpetic eruptions. Itching all over and no visible eruption.

In acute endocarditis, the principal remedies are Spongia, Abrot., Sepia, and Kalmia. Naja in valvular diseases.

Neck: Cervical glands enlarged; inveterate cases of enlarged testes; orchitis from a suppressed gonorrhea, a cold or other causes; gradually increasing hardness.

Sleep: Sleeps into < or < after sleep (Lach.).

Awakens in fright and feels “As if suffocating”; “As if head to breathe thru a sponge”.

Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum