Pulsatilla pratensis – Windflower.

Remedy picture as described in traditional homoeopathic texts.

Pulsatilla is used in home prescribing to treat issues surrounding hormonal imbalance. A key indicator for Pulsatilla is where symptoms change and shift, wander, rise and cease rapidly. Mucous discharge is often thick, bland and yellowish green.

Mental/Emotional Symptoms:

A tendency towards an oversensitive nature. They may seem bashful or shy and need constant attention and affection as emotional security to an underlying fear of abandonment. Mild, gentle and yielding personality. Timid, weepy, with a tendency to inner grief and silent peevishness. Sad, cries readily, weeps when talking. Changeable moods. Children love to be carried.

Physical Symptoms:

Ears: Earaches which begin after exposure to cold, dry wind or playing in the rain. The external ear maybe red, hot and swollen. Severe throbbing pains becoming worse at night with the warmth of the bed. Sensations as if ’something crawling in the ear’ or ‘pressure pushing outwards from the inside of the ear’. Very useful in swimmer’s ears along with Silica and Hepar sulph.

Eyes: Inflamed, burn and itch especially at night or they may describe the sensation as if ‘sand in the eyes’.

Colds which produce a thick yellow-green discharge. Eyelids stick together due to discharge. Styes that recur. Eye symptoms are better for cold air or cold bathing.

Face: Very red, dry, cracked lips which they lick often. Acne in young girls.

Head: Headaches from over-work, indigestion, ice-cream, better for the open air. One-sided headaches which are described as pulsating or bursting, in girls at puberty. Head feels heavy, cannot hold it upright, wandering pains.

Mouth: A dry mouth yet the lack of thirst is classic. Offensive morning breathe. Blisters on the tip of the tongue. Yellow or white covered tongue.

Chest: Pulsatilla people are prone to many chest symptoms. Dry, tickly coughs aggravated at night or becoming overheated with a sensation as if ’throat closing off at the larynx’ forces then to sit up during a coughing attack. Dry cough all day and night but wet on waking accompanied with expectoration. Environmental sensitivities such as dust mites, pollen, allergens.

Stomach: Craves or is adverse to the foods that disagree – pork, fats, eggs, cheese, pastries, ice-cream. Slow digestion. May develop ulcers from strong emotions that are unresolved. Infants who hiccup after they eat. Motion sickness. Stomach pains where the abdomen is bloated with audible rumbling and gurgling.

Female: Never well since puberty. Menses irregular or late. Amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhea, menses late and scanty. Worse for stress or anaemia. Weepy before menses. Menopause. Weepy and morose before menses. Facial, breast and abdominal swelling, excessive yawning and diarrhoea just before menses.

Urinary: Recurrent urinary symptoms in those who may have a history of kidney infections. Bed wetting aggravated by the child lying on their back.

Pains: Pains which are shifting rapidly, worse from letting the limb hang down. Joints swollen and red. Chilliness with pains. Pains worse for hot/warm applications.

Sleep: Lies in bed without sleep at the beginning of the night.

Temperature: Chilliness, even in a warm room without thirst. Chilly with pains in spots, worse evening. Chills about 4 pm; intolerable burning heat at night, with distended veins. Heat in parts of body, coldness in other. One-sided sweats. Childhood fevers.

Keywords:

Changeable, erratic, wandering symptoms

Thirstless, peevish, weepy, cold

Discharges thick, bland, yellowish-green

Shortness of breath

Exciting causes:

Consumption of pork

Ice-cream, fats, eggs

Abandonment

Grief

Getting chilled or wetting feet

Puberty, pregnancy, motherhood, menopause

Modalities:

Better: Open air; gentle motion; cold applications; cold drinks, though not thirsty; erect posture; lying with head high; sympathy and attention.

Worse: Evening and night; warm stuffy air; after eating rich fatty foods; puberty; pregnancy; menopause

Desires: Creamy foods which disagree; cold food; eggs; ice-cream; peanut butter

Aversions: Butter; eggs; fruit; meat; fatty food; pork

Compare: Coffea, Nux vomica, Chamomilla