Anacardium Orientale | Homeopathic Materia Medica | HDS

Anacardium is a homeopathic remedy derived from the nut of the cashew tree, Anacardium orientale. In homeopathy, it is primarily used to treat a range of physical, emotional, and mental symptoms. It is believed to be particularly useful for individuals who experience a combination of inner conflict, low self-esteem, and a sense of duality.

Common Name :  Marking Nut

Source :  Vegetable Kingdom

Family :  Anacardiaceae

Ailments :  Bad effects of mental excitement, excessive utilization of brain for purposeless thoughts, emotions, anger, fright, care, sedentary habits, mental exertion, over study, suppressed eruptions.

Constitution :  Suits better to the old people or nervous hysterical women where there is impaired memory, depression and irritability.

Mental Symptoms :

• Feels as though he had two wills, one commanding him to do what the other forbids.
• Fixed ideas.
• Sensation as if the mind were separated from the body.
• Hallucinations
•  Profound melancholy and hypochondriasis
• Delusion, that he is separated from the world.
• Unfeeling, hard-hearted.
• Delusion, of being double.
• Delusion, is under super-human control.
• Delusion, sees devils.
• Cruelty, inhumanity.
• Cursing.
• Hatred.
• Senile dementia.
• Moral feeling, want of.
• Kill, desire to.
• Kisses his companion’s hands.
• Sudden loss of memory.
• Timidity, bashful.
• Rage, leading to violent deeds.
• Feelings of indecision.
• self-doubt.
• lack of confidence.
• Irresistible desire to curse and swear .
• Suspiciousness.
• self-punishing behaviors.
• Strange temper, laughs at serious matters and is serious over laughable things.

Clinical Conditions :

Alcoholism. Apoplexy. Brain-fag. Constipation. Cough. Debility. Dysmenorrhea. Dyspepsia. Eczema. Elephantiasis. Examination funk. Hemorrhoids. Headache. Heart, affections of. Hypochondriasis. Hysteria. Insanity. Memory, loss of. Mental weakness. Nervous ailments. Palpitation. Paralysis. Pemphigus. Rheumatism. Self-abuse. Skin, diseases of. Smell, illusions of. Spine, affections of. Stiff-neck. Vomiting of pregnancy. Whooping-cough. Warts. Writer’s cramp.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms :

1. The Anacardium patient is found mostly among the neurasthenics; such have a type of nervous dyspepsia, relieved by food.
2. Soon forgets everything; consciousness of forgetfulness takes away appetite. Impaired memory.
3. Syphilitic patients often suffer with these conditions. Intermittency of symptoms.
4. A very characteristic sensation is a pressing or penetrating pain as from a plug, which may occur in any locality in connection with neuralgias.
5. Paralysed feeling in knees. Sensation as if knees were bandaged.
6. Aversion to work; lacks self-confidence; irresistible desire to swear and curse.

Particulars :

1. Head : 

• Head confused.
• Fits of giddiness.
• Vertigo on walking, as if all objects were too distant, or undulating.
• Whirling dizziness, with obscuration of the eyes on stooping.
• Congestion of blood to the head, with pain in the cerebellum. Vertigo.
• Pressing pain, as from a plug; worse after mental exertion-in forehead; occiput, temples, vertex; better during a meal.
• Itching and little boils on scalp.
• Pressive pain in the temple, as from a nail; < after eating, in the cold air, and from exertions of the mind.

2.  Eyes :

• Painful pressure on the eyes.
• Pressure in the eyes as from a plug.
• Objects appear too far off. Photophobia.
• Contraction of the pupils.
• Weakness and confusion of sight.
• Myopia.
• Threads and black spots appear before the eyes.
• A nimbus round the candle in the evening.
• Indistinct vision.

3. Ears :

• Pressing in the ears as from a plug.
• Hard of hearing.
• Shooting and tearing otalgia.
• Itching in the ears.
• Hardness of hearing.
• Buzzing and roaring in the ears.

4. Nose :

• Epistaxis.
• Diminution of the sense of smell.
• Anosmia.
• The sense of smell is too acute or illusory.
• Constant smell before the nose, as of pigeon’s dung or burning tinder.
• Stoppage of the nose, with sensation of dryness in the nostrils.
• Coryza (sneezing and lachrymation), and discharge of mucus from the nose.
• Coryza with palpitation, especially in the aged.

5. Face :

• Blue rings around eyes.
• Face pale.
• Rough spots, scurfy and mealy, round the mouth and on the cheeks, with crawling-like itching.
• Burning sensation round the chin.
• Eczema of face and neck, with eruption of small blisters, intensely itching.

6. Stomach :

• Weak digestion, with fullness and distention.
• Empty feeling in stomach.
• Eructation, nausea, vomiting.
• Eating relieves the Anacardium dyspepsia.
• Apt to choke when eating or drinking.
• Swallows food and drinks hastily.
• In the evening, water-brash and vomiting, followed by acidity in the mouth.
• Shootings in the pit of the stomach, chiefly on breathing.

7. Stool and Anus :

• Fruitless inclination to go to stool.
• Urgent desire which passes away with effort to expel.
• Difficult evacuation even of soft stools, from inactivity of the rectum.
• Stools of a pale colour.
• Evacuation of blood with the stools.
• Painful piles (both blind and bleeding) in the anus.
• spasmodic constriction of sphincter ani; even soft stool passes with difficulty.

8. Male :

• Voluptuous itching; Increased or inexcitable sexual desire, seminal emissions without dreams.
• Prostatic discharge during stool.
• Voluptuous itching in the scrotum.

9. Female :

• Leucorrhœa, with soreness and itching.
• Menses scanty.
• Nausea during pregnancy, > whilst eating.

10. Respiratory Organs :

• Hoarseness and sensation of excoriation in the throat, principally after a meal.
• Cough, with tickling in the throat and choking.
• Cough after meals (with loss of smell and taste) with vomiting of what has been taken, or in the evening, in bed, with congestion of blood to the head.
• Oppression of chest, with internal heat and anxiety, driving him into open air.
• Cough excited by talking, in children, after fit of temper.
• Expectoration of blood with the cough.
• On coughing, pain in the head.
• Yawning after a violent fit of coughing.

11. Extremities :

• Neuralgia in thumb.
• Paralytic weakness.
• Cramps in calves.
• Pressure as from a plug in the glutei.
• Warts on palms of hands.
• Fingers swollen with vesicular eruption.
• Trembling, drawing, and jerking in the knees and in the thighs, as if the legs were fatigued by walking.
• Quivering pressure in the thighs.
• Sensation of paralysis in the knees.
• Itchy eruption round the knee, as far as the calves of the legs.
• Jerking and cramp-like pressure in the calves of the legs, and in the legs.

12. Sleep :

• Comatose somnolency, night and day. Spells of sleeplessness lasting for several nights.
• Anxious dreams. Dreams of projects, of fire, of diseases, of deaths, and of dangers.
• At night, toothache; pains in the limbs and in the bones, diarrhœa, cramps in the calves of the legs, and twitching of the mouth and of the fingers during sleep.

13. Skin :

• Burning itching, increased by scratching.
• Covered with blisters, from the size of a pin’s head to a pea, often scarlet red, and sometimes sense of burning.
• Skin not easily excited by irritants.
• swelling, urticaria; eruption like that of Poison-Oak. Lichen planus; neurotic eczema.
• Warts on hands.
• Ulcer formation on forearm.

General Modalities :

Aggravation –

• Mental and emotional strain
• Mental effort
• Suppression of emotions
• Cold weather
• on application of hot water

Amelioration –

• Eating
• Warmth
• Rest
• When lying on side.
• from rubbing.

Worked By : Sunitha Asir (Final BHMS)