• Changeability of sides; right to left, back again or reverse
• Hypersensitivity, cannot bear slightest touch, especially of sexual organs
• Cannot bear one part of body to touch another
• Very forgetful and absentminded; makes purchases and walks away without taking them
• Hopeless, despondent

Source: Sarcode
Synonyms: Bitch’s milk
Prover: Reisig, Bayrard, Swan and Berridge
Duration of Action: Not Definite
Miasmatic Background: Psora as a background

Introduction and History: Lac caninum is not a novelty in medicine. Sammonicus and Sextus (in ancient times) praised it in photophobia and otitis, Pliny claims that it cures ulceration of the uterine cervical os. It was considered an antidote to deadly poisons, Dr Hering states, ‘Dioscorides, Rhasis, Pliny and Sextus recommended it for the removal of dead foetus.’ Hering adds that the remedy was revised by Reisig of New York, who used it successfully in the treatment of diphtheria.

After Reisig, the remedy was used by Bayard and Swan to whose indefatigable exertions we owe the present status of this medicine. Swan’s potencies were prepared from Reisig’s 17c. The provings were made with 30c and upwards and were published in a little volume by Swan and Berridge. As in the case of Bufo, Castor equi and other remedies of ancient times, homeopathy has stepped in to confirm the accuracy of the old observers.

During the proving, a number of symptoms were manifested in the region of the throat. It is in diphtheria, both as curative and prophylactic that Lac caninum has won its greatest fame. The provings and clinical experience have come across another grand characteristic in this drug which is an alteration of sides, often very rapidly.

Preparation: It is prepared from bitch’s milk by trituration and then potentization

Constitution and Physiognomy: Suited to nervous, restless, highly sensitive people.

Ailments From: Result of fall, diphtheria.

Seat of Action (Pharmacodynamics): It mainly acts on the throat, locomotor system, joints, breasts, kidneys and rectum.

Characteristic Mental Symptoms (Psychology)

1. Full of imaginations, and harassing, tormenting thoughts.
2. Wandering and alternating states. Cannot collect the thoughts.
3. Wants to leave everything as soon as it commences, a condition of irresolution common to quiet a number of remedies.
4. Patient is impressed with the idea that she is a liar, as if there is no reality in the things that exist.
5. Every time a symptom appears, the patient thinks, that it is the onset of a chronic disease like tuberculosis heart disease, etc.
6. Fear and anxiety that some horrible disease has come upon them.
7. A delusion that she is suppurating and is in a loathsome state, infested with snakes.
8. Horrible visionary delusions, fears that some object will take a scary form. Delusions not always of snakes or vermin.
9. Imagines she wears someone else’s nose. Imagines she is not herself and her features are not her own.
10. She cannot bear to be alone.
11. Patient has strange feelings, yet she goes around all day about her business, no one knows them unless she confesses them.
12. Chronic sadness; everything is so dark, irritable, ugly, hateful.
13. Very forgetful, absentminded, makes purchases and walks away without them.
14. In writing, uses too many words or not the right ones, omits final letter in a word, cannot concentrate the mind to read or study, becomes nervous.
15. Patient is cross, irritable; child cries and screams all the time especially at
    night.

Characteristic Physical Guiding Symptoms

Erratic symptoms: Symptoms are erratic; pains flying from one part to another, changing from side to side every few hours or days.

Depression: Suits the chronic blue condition; everything seems so dark that it can grow no darker.

Hunger: Patient is very hungry, cannot eat enough to satisfy himself, as hungry after eating as before eating.

Sensation: When walking seems to be walking on air; when lying, does not seem to touch the bed. Sensation as if breath would leave her when lying down; must get up and walk.

Coryza: Coryza with discharge of thick white mucous. One nostril stuffed up, the other free and discharging; these conditions alternate.

Discharge: Discharges are acrid, of thick white mucous. Nose and lip raw.

Sore throat: Sore throat and cough begin and end with menstruation, Yellow or white patches in throat. Pain shoots from throat to ears. Throat is very sensitive to touch externally, worse on empty swallowing; constant inclination to swallow, Painful swallowing: Swallowing is painful, almost impossible. Pain begins on the left side and extends to the ear.

Diphtheria and tonsillitis: Shiny, glazed appearance of diptheritic deposits, chancres and ulcers; symptoms change repeatedly from side to side.

Faintness: Sinking at the epigastrium and faintness in the stomach.

Palpitations: Violent palpitations when lying on the left side, better turning to the right side.

Sexual excitement: Sexual organs easily excited from touch, sitting, friction and by walking.

Menses: Menses are too early, too profuse, Flow in gushes, bright red, viscid and stringy.

Breast swelling: Breasts are swollen, inflamed, painful, sensitive before and during menses; worse on least jar and towards, evening: must hold them firmly when going up or down the stairs,

Flatus: Discharge of flatus from vagina or physomeira.

Loss of milk: Loss of milk while nursing without any known cause. This
remedy is used to dry up milk.

Backache: Intense, unbearable pain across the super-sacral region extending to the right nate and right sciatic nerve. Spine aches from base of brain to coccyx, very sensitive to touch or pressure.

Aggravation: Worse by rest and on first moving.

Important Characteristic Features

Throat: It is a very useful medicine for paralysis of throat with diphtheria; fluid returns by the nose when drinking. Coryza with sore throat and sneezing. Throat appears shiny and glazed due to ashy-gray or silvery deposits, Diphtheria alternating sides. Pain in the throat radiates towards the left ear, Pain also on sides. It is especially indicated in a glazed, shiny red appearance of the throat. Alternating states with first patch on the right tonsil, then on the left tonsil. Worse empty swallowing. Better cold or warm drinks.

Breast troubles: Much trouble with the mammae. Feels as if it would suppurate. Suited to those cases where the mother has lost her infant and it is necessary to dry up the milk, Breasts are sensitive to touch and external surroundings. Painful to touch.

Female genitalia: A very useful remedy for affections of the female reproductive organs in which there is severe pain in the right ovary, better by the flow of bright red blood. Membranous dysmenorrhoea, Pain in the throat radiates. Sore throat beginning and ending with menstrual period. Also, escape of gas from the vagina.

General Modalities

Aggravation: Morning of one day and evening of the next, from cold, mercury, jar, coughing, sneezing, night, cold air.

Amelioration: From cold, cold drinks, from nosebleed, mental symptoms.

Comparison

illusion of a mouse running from under her chair: Aeth, Cimic, Lac-c.

Imagines he is hovering in the air like a spirit: Asar, Lac-c, Valer.

Diphtheria from the onset tends to malignancy: Diph. Lac-c, Merc-cy.

Great prostration in epidemic influenza: Eup-per, Lac-c.

Breasts swollen, ripples painful and tender: Con, Helon, Lac-c,

Sore throat with a constant desire to swallow: Lac-c, Lil-t, Murx, Sep.

Menses – preceded by sore throat: Mag-c, Lac-c.

Passes gas from vagina: Lac-c, Lyc, Nux-m.

Constant desire to move but motion aggravates pain: Lac-c, Merc, Phyt.

Symptoms constantly charging: Lac-c, Puls, Sanic.

Dosage: 30 and highest potencies.

Repetition: It generally acts best in a single dose of high potency.

Therapeutic Value: Arthritis, Chancre, Diphtheria, Ichthyosis, Leucorrhoea, Rheumatism, Sciatica, Sore throat, Syphilis, Varicose veins, Warts.