Cuprum metallicum
Copper · Copper · Mineral
Emotions tend to be both rigidly suppressed and intensely felt in those for whom Cuprum met. is best suited. Adolescents may suppress their sexual urges as being too strong to cope with, so that any later release of tension may appear extreme. Psychological contrasts can also be extreme, ranging from yielding to headstrong, or from closed-down mental dullness to destructive anger or even violent insanity.
Typical physical symptoms include a pale, drawn face, with blue lips and cold hands and feet. Symptoms may be violent, becoming worse if menstruation is late, or if any eruptions and bodily discharges are suppressed by medication, being chilled, or getting wet.
The remedy is associated primarily with problems of the nervous, respiratory, and digestive systems. Cramping, which may be extreme, may affect the fingers, toes, legs, and stomach. A common feature is exhaustion, perhaps following illness, lack of sleep, or exhausting mental strain.
Key symptoms
- spasms and cramps
- suppression of emotions
- ailments that are triggered by suppression of rashes and discharges
- person feels better for cold drinks
Worse (aggravation)
- before menses
- from vomiting
- contact
Better (amelioration)
- during perspiration
- drinking cold water
Copper
Spasmodic affections, cramps, convulsions, beginning in fingers and toes, violent, contractive, and intermittent pain, are some of the more marked expressions of the action of Cuprum; and its curative range therefore includes tonic and clonic spasms, convulsions, and epileptic attacks. Chorea brought on by fright. Nausea greater than in any other remedy. In epilepsy, aura begins at knees, ascends to hypogastrium; then unconsciousness, foaming, and falling. Symptoms disposed to appear periodically and in groups. Complaints begin in left side (Laches). Tape worm (colloidal Cuprum 3x).
Where eruptions trike in, as in scarlet fever, complaints may result, such as excessive vomiting, stupor, convulsions, which come within the sphere of this remedy. The pains are increased by movement and touch.
Head
Fixed ideas, malicious and morose. Uses words not intended. Fearful. Empty feeling. Purple, red swelling of head, with convulsions. Bruised pain in brain and eyes on turning them. Meningitis. Sensation as if water were poured over head. Giddiness accompanies many ailments, head falls forward on chest.
Eyes
Aching over eyes. Fixed, stary, sunken, glistening, turned upward. Crossed. Quick rolling of eyeballs, with closed eyes.
Face
Distorted, pale bluish, with blue lips. Contraction of jaws, with foam at mouth.
Nose
Sensation of violent congestion of blood to nose (Melilot).
Mouth
Strong metallic, slimy taste, with flow of saliva. Constant protrusion and retraction of the tongue, like a snake (Lach). Paralysis of tongue. Stammering speech.
Stomach
Hiccough preceding the spasms. Nausea. Vomiting, relieved by drinking cold water; with colic, diarrhœa, spasms. Strong metallic taste (Rhus). When drinking, the fluid descends with gurgling sound (Laur). Craves cool drink.
Abdomen
Tense, hot and tender to touch; contracted. Neuralgia of abdominal viscera. Colic, violent and intermittent. Intussusception.
Stool
Black, painful, bloody, with tenesmus and weakness. Cholera; with cramps in abdomen and calves.
Female
Menses too late, protracted. Cramps, extending into chest, before, during, or after suppression of menses. Also, from suppressed foot sweats (Sil). Ebullition of blood; palpitation. Chlorosis. After-pains.
Heart
Angina pectoris. Slow pulse; or hard, full and quick. Palpitation, præcordial anxiety and pain. Fatty degeneration (Phytol).
Respiratory
Cough as a gurgling sound, better by drinking cold water. Suffocative attacks, worse 3 am (Am c). Spasm and constriction of chest; spasmodic asthma, alternating with spasmodic vomiting. Whooping-cough, better, swallow water, with vomiting and spasms and purple face. Spasm of the glottis. Dyspnœa with epigastric uneasiness. Spasmodic dyspnœa before menstruation. Angina with asthmatic symptoms and cramps (Clarke).
Extremities
Jerking, twitching of muscles. Coldness of hands. Cramps in palms. Great weariness of limbs. Cramps in calves and soles. Epilepsy; auro begins in knees. Clenched thumbs. Clonic spasms, beginning in fingers and toes.
Skin
Bluish, marbled. Ulcers, itching spots, and pimples at the folds of joints. Chronic psoriasis and lepra (Hughes).
Sleep
Profound, with shocks in body. During sleep constant rumbling in abdomen.
Modalities
Worse, before menses; from vomiting, contact. Better, during perspiration, drinking cold water.
Relationship
Antidotes: Bell; Hepar; Camph. Copper is found in Dulcam, Staphisag, Conium and some other plants. Also in King-crab (Limulus).
Complementary: Calc.
Compare: Cupr sulph (burning at vertex; incessant, spasmodic cough; worse at night; tongue and lips bluish; locally, Cupr sulph in 1-3 per cent sol in inoperable sarcoma). Cupr cyan (meningitis basilaris); Cholas terrapina (cramps in calves and feet; rheumatism, with cramp-like pains); Plumb; Nux; Veratr. Cuprum oxydatum nigrum 1x (all kinds of worms, including tapeworms and trichinosis according to Zopfy's 60 years' experience).
Dose
Sixth to thirtieth potency.
Convulsions
Cuprum is pre-eminently a convulsivemedicine. The convulsive tendency associates itself with almost every complaint that, Cuprum creates and cures.
It has convulsions in every degree of violence, from the mere twitching of little muscles and of single muscles to convulsions of all the muscles of the body. When these are coming on the earliest threatenings are drawings in the fingers, clenching of the thumbs or twitching of the muscles. It has twitching, quivering, trembling, and it has also tonic contractions, so that the hands are closed violently.
In this condition the thumbs are first affected; they are drawn into the palms and then the fingers close down over them with great violence. In the fingers and toes and in the extremities the spasmodic condition increases and extends until the limbs are in a state of great exhaustion. Tonic contractions, the limbs being drawn up with great violence and it seems as if the frame would be torn to pieces by the violent contractions of the muscles everywhere.
Copper. Cu. (A. W. 63). Trituration.
Clinical
After-pains. Angina pectoris. Asthma. Asthma millari. Cardialgia. Catarrh. Chlorosis. Cholera. Chorea. Convulsions. Cough. Cramps. Croup. Cyanosis. Dentition. Dyspnœa. Emissions. Epilepsy. Eruptions. Erysipelas. Fainting. Gastric disturbance. Gout. Hæmatemesis. Herpes. Hysteria. Inflammations. Larynx, spasm of. Mania. Measles. Meningitis. Neuralgia. Palpitation. Paralysis. Pneumonia. Psoriasis. Ringworm. Sleeplessness. Spasms. Spinal irritation. Ulcers. Whooping-cough. Yellow fever.
Characteristics
Metallic copper is an antipsoric remedy, working from within outwards. It ranks with the most important of those which relieve states arising from the "striking inward" of diseases or the failure of eruptions or discharges to appear. It is this power to relieve internal spasm which renders it appropriate to the collapse stage of cholera, of which it is also, like Sulphur, a prophylactic either when worn next the skin, or when taken internally. Cuprum …
Copper (CN)
Spasms and cramps: symptoms disposed to appear periodically and in groups. Mental and physical exhaustion from over-exertion of mind and loss of sleep (Coc., Nux); attacks of unconquerable anxiety. A strong, sweetish, metallic, copper taste in the mouth with flow of saliva (Rhus). Constant prostration and retraction of the tongue, like a snake (Lach.). When drinking, the fluid descends with a gurgling sound (Ars., Thuja). Cholera morbus or Asiatic cholera, with cramps in abdomen and calves of legs. Bad effects of re-percussed eruptions (of non-developed, Zinc.), resulting in brain affections, spasms, convulsions, vomiting; of suppressed foot-sweat (Sil., Zinc.). Convulsions, with blue face and clenched thumbs. Cramps in the extremeties; pains, soles, calves with great weariness of limbs. Clonic spasms, beginning in fingers and toes, and spreading over entire body; during pregnancy; puerperal convulsions; after fright or vexation; from metastasis from other organs to brain (Zinc.). Paralysis of …
Mind
Delirium, with biting in the bed clothes, their own hands, or the hands of others.
Head
Affections of the brain in children with catarrhal fever; difficult dentition or exanthematic disease.
Head
Vertigo with weariness; the head has a tendency to sink forward; increased by motion; lessened by lying down.
Head
Metastais to the brain from the other organs.
Stomach
Violent pressure at the stomach, with cramping pain, coming on in paroxysyms.
Abdomen
Spasmodic movements of the abdominal muscles, cramp.
Respiratory Organs
Spasmodic cough violent; patient gets stiff, breathing ceases; spasmodic twitchings; after a while consciousness returns, he vomits and slowly recovers.
-
Audible gurgling of the drink passing from the esophagus.
-
Epileptiform convulsions; trembling, tottering, and falling unconscious without a scream; frothing from the mouth; followed by a headache.
-
Brain affections, convulsions, etc., from suppressed eruptions, or during dentition.
Phatak's chapter on Cuprum metallicum is available in the app.
Read Phatak in the appClassical texts are in the public domain. Educational reference only — not medical advice.
