Badiaga
Spongilla fluviatilis / Spongilla lacustris (freshwater sponge) · Animal
The Badiaga patient is characterised by extreme soreness and sensitivity of the entire surface as if beaten, with even the touch of clothing being painful. There is a syphilitic or scrofulous diathesis with chronic rheumatism, indurated glands, and buboes. Palpitation triggered by pleasurable emotions and a tendency to coryza with suffocative cough are characteristic features.
Key symptoms
- General soreness of muscles and integuments as if beaten worse from touch and clothes
- Headache from 2 pm to 7 pm with aching in backs of eyeballs
- Spasmodic cough ejecting viscid mucus flying forcibly from mouth worse afternoon
- Tremulous vibrative palpitation of heart worse lying on right side
- Profuse coryza coming with a gush with sneezing
- Scalp sore and itching with dry tetter-like eruption
- Syphilitic buboes and indurated glands
- Very stiff neck with soreness and lameness
Worse (aggravation)
- Cold air and cold weather
- Stormy weather
- Pressure and touch
- Motion
- Afternoon and evening (cough and coryza)
- Lying on right side (heart palpitation)
Better (amelioration)
- Heat and warm room
- After sleep (headache)
Fresh-water Sponge
Soreness of muscles and integuments; worse motion and friction of clothes, with sensitiveness to cold. Glands swollen. General paresis. Basedow's disease. Lues, bubo, roseola.
Head
Sensation of enlargement and fullness. Pain in forehead and temple, extending to eyeballs, worse in afternoon. Blueness under eyes. Dandruff; scalp sore, dry, tetter-like. Dull, dizzy feeling in head. Coryza, sneezing, watery discharge, with asthmatic breathing and suffocative cough. Influenza. Slight sounds are greatly accentuated.
Eyes
Twitching of left upper lid; eyeballs tender; aching in eyeballs. Intermittent sore pain in eyeball, coming on at 3 pm.
Respiratory
Cough; worse in afternoon, better in warm room. The mucus flies out of mouth and nostrils. Whooping-cough, with thick yellow expectoration; flies out. Hay-fever, with asthmatic breathing. Pleuritic stitches in chest, neck, and back.
Stomach
Mouth hot. Much thirst. Lancinating pain in pit of stomach extending to vertebra and scapula.
Female
Metrorrhagia; worse at night, with feeling of enlargement of head (Arg). Cancer of breast (Asterias; Con; Carbo an; Plumb iod).
Heart
Indescribable bad feeling about the heart with soreness and pain, flying stitches all over.
Skin
Sore to touch. Freckles. Rhagades.
Back
Stitches in nape, scapulæ. Pain in small of back, hips and lower limbs. Very stiff neck. Muscles and skin sore, as if beaten.
Modalities
Worse by cold. Better, by heat.
Relationship
Compare: Merc similar but opposite modalities. Spongia; Kali hyd; Phytol; Conium.
Complementary: Sulph; Merc; Iod.
Dose
First to sixth attenuation.
Spongilla fluviatilis. Fresh-water sponge. Trituration of the dried sponge gathered in autumn.
Clinical
Breast, cancer of. Bruises. Bubo. Catarrh. Chilblains. Coryza. Eyes, pains in. Glands, affections of. Hay-fever. Hæmorrhoids. Heart, affections of. Indurations. Ophthalmia. Palpitation. Rheumatism. Scrofula. Syphilis. Tibia, pain in. Whooping-cough.
Characteristics
Badiaga is the Russian name for the river sponge, which is a popular Russian remedy. Among the peculiar symptoms and indications are: Headache with aching in backs of eyeballs, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.; < motion. Severe headache in vertex > night, returning severely after breakfast. Headache with inflamed eyes. Pains in eyeballs extending to head. (J. A. Biegler cured a case with the following symptoms: A lady had for months off and on a severe pain in r. eyeball, which extended to forehead over this eye, then to temple; always < in afternoon.) Scalp sore; dry; itching; scurf; tetters. Soreness is one of the key-notes of the remedy; general soreness of …
Respiratory Organs
Cough, with expectoration of thick viscid mucus flying out of the mouth.
Phatak's chapter on Badiaga is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.
