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Homeopathic Treatment of Difficult Breathing

I was called one afternoon to see one of my students’ brothers, who had been having a difficulty in breathing for the previous three days. He had already started allopathic (conventional) treatment and was on bronchodilators. He had no past or family history of breathlessness, or of asthma, allergies or eczema.

I found him so breathless that he could not even speak a full sentence. I got the history from his family, who said that it all started with a feeling that he needed to take deep breaths. Then he started getting breathless every afternoon at exactly 3.00 p.m. He was worse on lying down and after sleep. He was also aggravated on sitting, but was relieved a little, after eating.

I noticed that he had been standing all this time. When I asked him to sit down, so that I could examine him, he said that he would prefer to stand as it made him breathe easier. His lungs revealed scattered, sonorous rhonchi, on auscultation.
The following rubrics (from Kent’s repertory) were selected:

1. Generalities- Periodicity, complaints return at same hour
2. Respiration- Deep, desire to breathe
3. Respiration- Difficult, eating, ameliorates
4. Respiration- Difficult, lying while, aggravates
5. Respiration- Difficult, sleep after
6. Respiration- Difficult, sitting on
7. Respiration- Difficult, stand, compelled to

On the basis of the above repertorization, the drug Cedron was selected. He was asked to take 3 doses daily of the 200C potency. The patient had immediate relief- after 2 doses, and has remained symptom free for the past seven years.

Discussion: Lachesis and Phosphorus were two drugs that scored more marks than Cedron, on repertorization. However, they did not cover all the rubrics.

Cedron covered two characteristic symptoms of the patient: a) Complaints return every day at the same hour. This is an important guiding symptom of the remedy. b) Must stand to breathe. This was a characteristic particular symptom that was peculiar to the patient and is peculiar to the remedy.