Vol. 24 No. 2 April 2004

by Jeanette Hoffmann

I practice in a homœopathic pharmacy where our consultations are about 10 minutes long. A mother bought her child, Baby R., to see me. He was aged 19 months, fair haired and blue eyed. He started rocking as soon as he could sit at 6 months. When he learnt to crawl at 8 months, he started rocking on all fours. He would rock himself to sleep at night, and if he woke, he would rock on his hands and knees in his cot, banging his head on the cot. He would rock with any noise and would rock against the washing machine when it was going. As a small baby, he would sleep in the hand/knee position. At night, his parents were kept awake with the constant banging on the cot which would get so violent that he would move the cot across the floor. At 14 months he started biting, hitting and throwing things at his parents if he was not allowed something, or often he would do it for no reason at all.

Remedy given: Tuberculinum 1M split dose, at night and morning. Mother said, two weeks later, the rocking had improved but had started to return five days after Tuberculinum.

Remedy given: Scutellaria laterifolia 6c, 2 drops three times daily for 5 days. Mother returned two weeks later to report that the rocking/head banging and hitting had stopped. He was now content to sit in his pushchair where before he always screamed about being put in it. A later report was that Baby R. was still doing well and parents were delighted and could finally get some sleep!

Rubrics (from Murphy): Head, beats head against the bed: Apis, Ars, Con, Hyos, Mill, Prot, Rhus t, Scut, Stram, Tarent, Tub. Some of the characteristics of this remedy are irritability, they must move about. Nervous irritation and spasms of children during dentition, brain irritation. It has a calming effect on the nervous system.