Everyone knows the homeopathic remedy Graphites. It’s included in most first aid kits and, physically, it’s particularly known for weeping eczema at the bends of joints. Constitutionally, the Graphites type is most often depicted as a slow-but-sure, basic, calloused obese person. This picture comes from our lauded 19th Century authors when life was simpler. And although that image can be seen in our clinics, in practice these anachronistic images make it hard to spot in modern times. Yet I have found Graphites one of the most useful of remedies with a wide range of action.
Graphites is pure carbon, one of a number of forms including Diamond (see my previous blog), Coal, Fullerene. Unlike Diamond, the hardest substance we know, Graphites is incredibly soft, soft enough to be used in pencils. That softness is reflected in the ‘flaccidity’ of the remedy picture.
Jan Scholten brilliantly opened up another image of Graphites in his development of the periodic table for homeopathic use.
Themes include:
STABILITY, SELF WORTH, NORMALITY, BALANCE, RIGIDITY, FATHER, GOD.
What we see in the clinic is a person with tremendous anxiety and irresolution. Carbon is the main building block of our existence and a person needing Graphites often feels that their whole existence is in jeopardy. Their anxiety makes them launch into a telling of their troubles with no preamble. They feel as if they are on the edge of extinction. In fact Graphites as a remedy is often confused with Pulsatilla which also exhibits a weepy helpless picture.
The Graphites person has lost their STABILITY. But don’t for one moment believe that the Graphites patient is a chronically nervous, helpless individual. Quite often the patient needing Graphites will be a seemingly successful, stable, balanced person, in charge of himself and others. But something happens which makes them ‘wobble’. They lose their job or a relationship and they feel like their whole life is crumbling. They then lose their natural instincts, will need a huge amount of guidance even for the simplistic of issues.
So Graphites can be used as an acute or intercurrent remedy. It can be useful after another remedy has been prescribed successfully but which forces the patient into having to make some important choices. However, there is a ‘chronic’ graphites picture where the patient has had to deal with an absent father (the person who typically gives meaning and stability in a family) and is faced with having to make too many personal choices at a young age. A Graphites child can actually appear very confident to the point of disrespecting any boundaries established for him and laughing at reprimands.
Other physical aspects of Graphites as a remedy: Aversion to ‘fancy’ foreign food, ameliorated after sunset in the evening, slow thyroid with weight gain, thickened skin, abscesses, infected wounds, itching worse in bed (like Sulphur), Gastritis better for milk, laughing before a seizure or epileptic fit, diarrhoea after breakfast.
Remedies Graphites can be confused with: Carbo Veg, Carbo Animalis, Petroleum, Calc carb, Pulsatilla, Medorrhinum, Arsenicum
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