• Head sweats profusely while sleeping, wetting pillow far around
• During sickness or convalescence, great longing for eggs or indigestible things
• Menses with cold damp feet, as if they had a cold damp stocking on
• The least mental excitement causes profuse return of menstrual flow
• Painless hoarseness
• Feels better in every way when constipated
• Desire to be magnetized.

Source: Mineral kingdom
Synonyms: Calcium carbonate, Calcarea ostrearum, Carbonate of lime
Formula: Caco3
Prover: Dr Hahnemann
Duration of Action: Upto 60 days
Miasmatic Background: Psora
Temperament: Irritable and nervous
Diathesis: Scrofulous and tubercular
Thermal Relationship: Very chilly patient

Introduction and History: It is a great polychrest, antipsoric, deep and long acting remedy. It is one of the greatest monuments of Hahnemann’s work. Calcarea is one of the greatest constitutional remedies. It is also a nutritional remedy and acts from infancy to old age.

Description: The substance used by Hahnemann was impure carbonate of lime as it exists in oyster shells. He prepared it from the snow white portion of the soft middle layer of the shell. It differs from the pure chemical manufacture of calcium carbonate of modern age. It is a fine white crystalline powder, tasteless, odourless, almost insoluble in water.

Preparation: Trituration is prepared with sugar of milk upto 3c from which alcoholic potencies are prepared.

Constitution and Physiognomy

• It is best suited to people having a ‘leucophlegmatic’ constitution.
• Patient is fat, flabby, fair, catches a cold very easily, is weak and debilitated. easily fatigued and out of breath. The patient is also slow in movement.
• Much sweating with cold extremities.
• Children are fat, flabby, scrofulous, with a large head, open fontanelles and sutures. Sweats easily; glands of neck and head are swollen. Red face, chalky look and a big belly.
• Girls who are fleshy, plethoric and grow too rapidly. However, they are easily fatigued and out of breath. They desire to be magnetized.

Ailments From: Alcohol, overlifting, strains, suppressed sweat, cold moist wind, loss of vital fluids, mental strains, fright, suppressed eruptions, self-abuse, suppressed menses, imperfect ossification, injury to lower spine, defective assimilation, etc.

Seat of Action (Pharmacodynamics): Nutrition, glands, bones, blood, lungs, skin, heart, female genital organs, mind, breast, lungs, digestive system, teeth, etc.

Physiological Action

1. When taken in quantities over a long period of time, it produces a cachectic or depressed state which may lead to the development of various chronic disorders.
2. Functions of several organs are disturbed. However, lymphatics are most prominently affected with resultant enlargement of the glands. Bones may soften or they may become more brittle.
3. Generally the crude substance, carbonate of lime, is considered inert.

Physio-pathological Changes (Pathology)

1. It acts upon the vegetative system, exciting moderately the function of secretion and absorption, resulting in a condition of impaired nutrition of all organs.
2. It acts on glands causing induration and swelling.
3. It has a special affinity for the mucous membranes, fibrous system, nervous and lymphatic systems of the abdomen.
4. It acts on blood and alters the composition of blood. It raises the coagulation of blood.
5. It acts on skin producing ulceration with burning and itching.
6. It acts on deep muscles, producing abscesses.
7. It acts on bones producing swelling, softening and bending of bones. It is a definite stimulant to the periosteum.

Characteristic Mental Symptoms (Psychology)

1. Slight mental effort produces heat.
2. Aversion to every kind of work.
3. Great anxiety and palpitation of heart.
4. Mental confusion, very forgetful, confused and low spirited.
5. Least mental excitement causes a copious return of menstrual flow.
6. Irritable without cause; peevishness and obstinacy.
7. Fears she will lose her understanding and that people will observe her mental confusion.
8. Delusions, hallucinations of fire, rats, mice; night terror.
9. Foetid odour before the nose, as if from dunghill, rotten eggs or gunpowder.
10. Melancholy, sad, disposed to weep, even about trifles.
11. Child wakes at 2 or 3 am screaming, cannot understand why; remembers nothing of it in the morning.
12. Apprehensive of some impending misfortune, which becomes worse towards the evening.
13. Patient is restless and timid as if a ghost was impending over her.
14. Great desire to be magnetized. Thinking is difficult.
15. Fear of darkness, disposed to be easily frightened.
16. Child is peevish, obstinate, selfish, has an aversion to work.
17. Mental confusion, very forgetful, dejected, low spirited, melancholic and confused.
18. Forgetful, misplaces words and tendency to express himself wrongly.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms

Coldness: Coldness general or of a single part – head, abdomen, leg, stomach, foot and leg. Sensitive to cold, damp air.

Weakness: Great weakness and prostration, both mentally and physically. Weakness runs all through the remedy.

Sensitiveness: Great sensitiveness to take cold and coryza; cannot tolerate cold in any form. Coryza is psoric in origin and chronic in nature.

Craving: Great desire for eggs; craves undigestible things.

Perspiration: Profuse sweating from the head during sleep, mostly at the back of the head and neck or chest. Sour smelling perspiration.

Malassimilation: Malnutrition and malassimilation causes emaciation; pit of stomach swollen like an inverted saucer.

Defective bone development: Imperfect ossification, defective formation of bones, swelling and softening of bones. Difficulty in learning to walk or stand, difficult dentition.

Congestion: Congestion of head; sometimes head is hot, external coldness and internal heat.

Glandular affection: Inflammation and induration of glands – parotid, facial, cervical, inguinal, maxillary, etc.

Ulceration: Ulcers with induration; cancerous ulcers which burn and sting. Every injury tends to ulcerate.

Right-sidedness: It is a right sided remedy; affects the right side first and then the left side.

Stiffness and cramps: Stiffness all over the body, stiffness in joints, cramps and contraction of limbs.

Periodicity: Aggravation at full moon, at new moon and at sunrise.

Sleep: Sleeplessness, retarded sleep, frightful dreams, sleeplessness from activity of mind.

Excoriation: Skin excoriated at several places; all discharges excoriate.

Body tendency: Disposed to grow fat, corpulent; children have a red face, flabby muscles and take cold very easily.

Dentition: Difficult and delayed dentition with characteristic head sweat and open fontanelles.

Menses: Menses too early, profuse, long lasting with subsequent amenorrhoea.

Rawness: Rawness of soles of feet from perspiration, blisters and offensive foot sweat.

Smell: All discharges are sour smelling, for example, diarrhoea, Sweat, vomitus, eructations. Sour odour from the whole body.

Feeling: Feels better whenever constipated.

Cough: Tickling cough, troublesome at night. Dry and free expectoration in the morning. Persistent, irritating cough.

Hunger: Hunger and feeling of emptiness immediately after a meal and early in the morning.

Leucorrhoea: Milky white with burning and itching in the vulva; before puberty and in infants.

Fever: Intermittent type of fever. Chill with thirst, chill at 2 pm, begins internally in the stomach region.

Important Characteristic Features

Child: Child is fair and flabby. Has a red face; the abdomen is swollen and “looks like an inverted saucer.” Child is self-willed, obstinate and cries persistently. The head is large and the bones are weak and soft. They develop slowly so that there is late learning to walk. The fontanelles and sutures remain open for a long time. Skin excoriates in several places. Scrofulous swelling, especially of upper lip. Cramps and contractions of fingers and toes; easily sprained. Child craves eggs, has an aversion to milk, meat, chews and swallows in sleep. Extreme photophobia.

Curvature of bones, especially long bones and spine with delayed ossification. Sour and offensive diarrhoea during dentition with sour vomiting but usually, the child is constipated. The whole body smells sour and sweats profusely, takes cold readily as a consequence. Sweat is well marked on the back of the head and upper part of the body. Head sweats profusely while sleeping, wetting the pillow far around.

Baby has a tubercular diathesis with enlarged glands and irregular growth. Weak heart with shortness of breath, especially on ascending.

Diarrhoea: White stools (like chalk) in children during dentition. Tendency to diarrhoea and acid stomach. Prolapse of rectum with burning pains during stool. Offensive stools. Almost white stools, sour stools, frequent stools, undigested stools. Precursory to tuberculosis of lungs.

Worms: Calcarea has a kind of indigestion, a fermentation that favours the formation of worms, so that Calcarea babies are sometimes wormy; pass worms in the stool and vomit worms. What becomes of them when Calcarea is given, we do not know. The symptoms disappear. Worms disappear. They may pass with the stool or they may be destroyed. There is no use of merely driving worms with worm remedies. Calcarea is also useful for tapeworms.

Bone affections: Bones are soft and weak, and they develop very slowly. The bones are unable to hold the weight of the bulky, flabby body and therefore, often curvatures of bones, especially of spine and long bones occur. Extremities are crooked, deformed and bones are irregularly developed. Pathological fracture of bones. Since the bones are weak, there is late learning to walk. The head is large and the fontanelles and sutures remain open with delayed ossification. Teeth do not appear in time and consequently there is difficult and delayed dentition in children. Calcium and phosphorus are deficient in bones.

General Modalities

Aggravation: In the morning, evening, after midnight, from cold air, during full moon, from wet weather, from washing, cold water, dry fruits, milk, stretching the affected part, after eating.

Amelioration: Dry weather, lying on the painful side, after rising, after breakfast.

Remedy Relationships

Complementary: Rhus-t, Bell.

Follows well: Lyc, Phos, Nux-v, Kali-c, Sil, Cham, Cupr.

Inimical: Bry, Nit-ac, Sulph, Bar-c.

Antidotes: Chin, Nit-ac, Camph, Ip.

Antidotal to: Dig, Nux-v, Nit-ac.

Compare: Lyc, Sil, Puls, Cham.

Comparison

Head sweats profusely while sleeping: Calc, Sil, Sanic.

Coldness of single parts: Calc, Kali-bi.

Rawness of soles of feet from perspiration: Calc, Graph, Sanic.

Sensation of coldness in abdomen: Calc, Ambr.

Children slow in learning to walk: Calc, Calc-p, Sil.

Glandular swelling: Calc, Con, Psor.

Stools almost white: Calc, Dig, Chin.

Burning spots on vertex: Calc, Graph, Sulph.

Cold spot: Sep, Calc, Verat.

Diarrhoea of children with a sour smell: Calc, Hep, Mag-c.

Clay coloured stools: Calc Hep, Podo.

Great weakness and loss of breath ongoing upstairs: Calc, Iod.

Complaints from standing in cold water or working in cold places: Calc, Mag-p.

Headache worse from ascending: Calc, Meny.

Leucorrhoea of children from atony: Calc, Mill.

Great liability to take cold: Calc, Kali-c, Nat-m.

Imperfect assimilation of food: Calc, Bar-c, Sil.

Spraining of muscles or tendons: Calc, Nux-v, Rhus-t.

Potency: 3x, 6x, 12x, 30x, 200, 1000.

Calcarea Carb Dosage: Low potency is given in acute diseases, and high and highest potencies may be given when the constitutional symptoms call for the remedy.

Repetition: Repetition may is borne well only in low potencies. Maybe repeated.

Therapeutic Value: Abdominal disorders, Acidity, Anaemia, Bone affections, Breast affections, Cancer; Corneal opacity, Cough, Dentition, Diabetes, Diarrhoea, Dropsy, Dyspepsia, Epilepsy, Fatty cyst, Fever, Glandular affection, Headache, Leucorrhoea, Lung affection, Menstrual disorders, Miscarriage, Pregnancy disorders, Rickets, Tuberculosis Ulcer, Uterine affections, Vertigo, Worm troubles.

Note

1. Calcarea carbonica is the chronic of Belladonna.
2. Calcarea carbonica should never be used before Sulphur.
3. It acts very well after Sulphur.
4. Calcarea carbonica should not be repeated, but in children it can be repeated in low potency.