Calcarea Carbonica. Calc Carb. Calcarea Ostrearum. Ostrea Edulis, the European Oyster.
Calcium Carbonate taken from the soft, snow-white calcareous substance found between the outer and inner harder shell of the oyster. Prepared by Trituration method, following Hahnemann’s Homoeopathic Proving.
Chief remedy of the calcium compounds and is one of the greatest of Hahnemann’s genius. This great anti-psoric remedy is a constitutional remedy par excellence. It is one of the great polychrest remedies and ranks with Sulphur and Lycopodium at the head of the anti-psorics.
Calc Carb is a chilly remedy and takes cold at every change of weather. The patient seeking warmth. Great sensitivity to cold weather. Sulphur by contrast is worse for heat and better for cold.
Calc Carb has cold, clammy feet ‘as if there were damp stockings on’. Sulphur by contrast has characteristically hot, sweaty feet.
The ‘sinking sensation’ is common to all three and most marked in Sulphur at 11am; with Lycopodium at 4pm; and in Calc Carb at any time.
Calc Carb has a sycotic and hydrogenoid constitution, with sensitivity to cold and damp and an early morning aggravation. Warts and polys may also suggest this sycotic aspect.
Defective assimilation of calcium gives rise to defective nutrition of glands, skin and bone; anaemia may be present. Calc Carb is a definite stimulant to the periosteum.
The Calc Carb patient is fair, fat (or thin), flabby, perspiring and cold, damp and sour. Children crave eggs, dirt or other indigestible things and are prone to diarrhoea. Nightmares, dreams of monsters. Great sensitivity to cold air, cold weather, the coming of a storm and when the weather changes from warm to cold it seems impossible for him to keep warm.
Children are slow in teething and walk late. Children tend not to put their feet down to the ground properly (may walk on tip toe or with heels barely touching the ground). Emaciated children with big bellies. Patients who is susceptible to cold. Cold moist air chills through and through, takes cold easily, especially in the chest. Dull, lethargic children who do not want to play.
Gets out of breath easily. A jaded mental state or physical state, due to over-work. Pituitary or thyroid dysfunction. Raised blood clotting factors; glandular swelling below jaw and neck. Muscles and skin become fat, flabby and patient grows heavy but not strong.
Sweating is easy, partial on the head, chest during sleep. Discharges are profuse often sour, stool, sweat, odour of body, saliva etc., There is chilliness, aggravation from contact with water and from cold, clammy feet and sinking sensations – all of which the person is worse for. And here Calcarea Carbonica will most likely prove to be the remedy.
Swelling and pain in the breasts before menstrual flow begins (cf. Con). But if the menses are scanty or absent and the Calc characteristics of chilliness and cold, clammy feet are present the remedy may well be indicated. Suppression of the menses from working in water. Normally one would consider that Calc Carb is indicated for a woman whose menstrual period flows too much, too long and of course this naturally brings her around too soon. Menstrual period ‘too soon, lasting too long, and profuse’. Bearing down pains. Fibroids and cysts. Ovarian and uterine pains, right side, extending down the thighs, worse on reading or writing.
Tendency to strain the muscles and joints easily. Parts lain on, become numb. Tendency to gallstones and kidney stones. Defective nutrition and indigestion. Malnutrition. The Calc Carb patient generally feels better when constipated. Diarrhoea is generally worse in the afternoon. Painless hoarseness of voice, worse in the morning. Great weakness on ascending the stairs, on walking, from talking, from excitement.
In epilepsy, the aura spreads up from the solar plexus or as from a mouse running up the arm or down the epigastrium to uterus or limbs. Abscesses in deep muscles. Polyps and exostoses, uterine cysts.
In the mental sphere, there is a sense of great weakness. Becomes very tired from mental work. Full of anxiety and tired mentally. Great disturbance of the emotions; from worrying, from vexation. An inability to apply himself. Complaints lasting days or weeks from excitement of the emotions. It is a very useful remedy for complaints due to prolonged worry, from prolonged application to business, from excitement. The patient ‘feels his exhaustion of mind, and it seems to him that this weakness, and this inability to do and think connectedly, must be going towards insanity, he broods over it’[i]. ‘He thinks that he is going insane and that other people are observing his state of mind… He lies awake late at night thinking… He cannot calculate, he cannot do deep thinking, he cannot dwell upon deep things; he may have been a philosopher, but he has lost his ability to think things out in philosophy’[ii].
‘He cannot go to sleep because his thoughts trouble him, and he sees all sorts of things… He lies in bed, or sits, when he is alone, and carries on a general conversation with every conceivable individual he has had to do with, on every conceivable subject; and it multiplies and grows, and he imagines it is all real’[iii].
Modalities: Better from a dry climate, dry weather. Lying on the painful side, on back. Sneezing, rubbing, scratching. Wiping and soothing with hands. After breakfast. Inspiring fresh air and during fevers, uncovers.
Worse from cold air, raw air, bathing. Working in water or bathing. Cooling off, change of weather. Walking in the open air, cold air, wet weather. Exertion, mental or physical. Ascending or standing. Lifting or stooping. Dentition, milk or worry. Puberty, menopause. Full moon, at new moon, at solstice. After midnight, early morning or on waking. Pressure of clothes. Letting limbs hang down. Eyestrain, light, looking fixedly at any object, looking upward, from turning the head.
Mind: an overwhelmed mental and physical state due to over-work or worry. Rumination and worrying. Over-worked and exhausted. Sits and thinks about little affairs. Averse to work or exertion. Inability to apply himself. Learns poorly. Low spirited. Apathetic. Apprehensive, worse toward evening. Depressed. Melancholic or doubting moods. Feelings of hopelessness, of ever getting well.
Forgetful, confused, misplaces words and expresses himself wrongly. Fears of being observed. Easily frightened or offended. Cautious. Fears loss of reason. Fears of misery, disaster, insanity. Fears excited by reports of cruelities. Fear of misfortune, contagious disease. Anxiety with palpitations. Desires to weep, to go home. Suspicious. Children are self-willed, obstinate. Child is afraid of everything he sees. Nightmares and poor sleep. Imagines someone in their room. Fears of monsters. Irritable, cries about trifles, borrows trouble.
Abdomen: large and hard abdomen. Sensitive to the slightest pressure. Cannot bear tight clothing around the waist. Distention with hardness. Cutting pain in the swollen abdomen. Colic and coldness of thighs, after stopped coryza or cold feeling in the abdomen. Twisting or cramps about umbilicus. Inguinal and mesenteric glands are swollen and painful. Umbilical hernia.
Back: Pain as if sprained, can scarcely rise from over-lifting. Neck pain worse lifting. Pain between the shoulders, impeded breathing. Unable to sit upright in chair from weakness of back. Curvature of dorsal vertebrae. Neck stiff and rigid.
Female: Before menses, headache, colic, chilliness and leaucorrhoea. Cutting pains I uterus during menses. Menses too eraly, too profuse, too long, with vertigo, toothache, and cold damp feet. Least excitement causes the return of menstrual flow (cf. Ambra grisea).
Food: Poor diet and nutrition. Loss of appetite, but when he begins to eat, he relishes it. Loss of appetite when overworked. Thirst, longing for cold drinks. Dislike of fat. Ravenous appetite. Aversion to meat, milk, boile things. Milk disagrees. Repugnance for hot food. Craving for eggs, ice-cream, sweets, salt. Worse after eating, smoked meats, milk. Worse when fasting (unlike Nat Mur, better for fasting).
Head: Hot head with mental exertion with pale face. Headache with cold hands and feet. Headache from over-lifting, from mental exertion, with nausea. Much perspiration, wets the pillow with perspiration during sleep. Sweat with palpitations. Falling of hair.
Lungs: Painless hoarseness, worse mornings. Short of breath. Tickling cough, as from dust, or feather in throat. Difficulty breathing, worse ascending, climbing stairs. Expectoration only during the day; thick yellow sour mucous.
Sleep: Insomnia due to worry. Some disagreeable idea rouses from light sleep. Night terros. Nightmares in children who scream after midnight and cannot be pacified. Dreams of monsters. Fearful and fantastic dreams. Horrible visions on closing the eyes. Ideas crowding in her mind, preventing sleep. Starts at every noise, fears she will go crazy. Drowsy in early part of the evening. Frequent waking at night.
Stomach: Heartburn and loud belching. Frequent sour belching, sour vomiting of curdled milk. Cramps in the stomach, worse pressure, cold water. Pain in epigastric region to touch. Aggravation while eating. Water drunk, if ever so little, causes nausea, but not if iced.
Stools: Chalky, grey, green watery stools. Stools at first hard, then pasty, then liquid. Stools, worse eating and drinking. Undigested stools.
Temperature: Chill with thirst. Chill at 2pm, begins internally in the stomach. Coldness, icy in different parts of the body or affected part. Fever with sweat. Internal heat with external coldness and sweat.
Throat: Swelling of tonsils and submaxillary glands, with stitches on swallowing. Hawks salty mucous. Difficult swallowing. Stitching pain on swallowing. Small ulcers spreading up to palate. Uvula swollen, oedematous. Goitre. Parotid fistula.
Vertigo: Vertigo, tendency to fall to the left, to either side, backward. Vertigo occurs on turning the head. Worse looking upward, going upstairs, especially running upstairs. Vertigo on ascending. Vertigo with many conditions, worse scratching the head. Worse scratching the head, after epilepsy.
Sources: Boericke. Clarke. Phatak. Kent. Murphy.
[i] James Tyler Kent. Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Remedies. Homoeopathic Book Service, 2000.
[ii] James Tyler Kent. Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Remedies. Homoeopathic Book Service, 2000.
[iii] James Tyler Kent. Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Remedies. Homoeopathic Book Service, 2000.