I deliberately chose to have this manuscript in essentially completed form before consulting other published works on the subject, so that, for better or worse, it is my personal experience that is reflected here. It was, however, instructive for me to read the proceedings of the Hechtel conference on Carcinosin, as well as Jonathan Shore's valuable presentation to the 1989 IFH Professional Case Conference. I saw observations that I had recorded verified in the experience of others. I also saw one or more authors take agnostic positions on indications that are leading indicators in my experience. Of course, I also saw indications with which I had been unfamiliar. This article does not purport to be the final source on Carcinosin. Much material that is either my own experience or part of the general body of knowledge on the remedy is not represented here. I do hope eventually, however, to publish a definitive work on this nosode. Therefore, I actively solicit responses and cured cases, for I do not feel I have plumbed the depths of this remedy. Please respond via letters to the editor of Simillimum, by e-mail to the editor of Homeopathy Online, or via HomeoNet to dwebley.

Carcinosin: A Remedy of Polar Opposites

The Carcinosin remedy picture is difficult to summarize in a single all- encompassing keyword. There is no cowardice, as in Lycopodium, or fear of the universe, as in Arsenicum. It is also difficult to make any categorical assertion about the remedy, for the opposite of anything said about it might just as well be true. Perhaps more than any other in our homeopathic armamentarium, Carcinosin is a remedy of polar opposites. I have very often had a disbelieving mother walk out in a state of more than a little doubt because I gave her mild-mannered, introverted child the same remedy that I gave to her obstinate, hyperactive brat who bounces off the walls. Yet this very amorphousness and this bipolar character suggest the image of Carcinosin.

Carcinosin and Family History

It is commonly stated that the epidemic of cancer that now plagues the industrialized world is directly related to the suppression of tuberculosis. It would be difficult to prove this thesis beyond doubt, but a number of observations point strongly in this direction. First of all, one of the factors that alerts one to a possible need for the cancer nosode is tuberculosis in the family history. Carcinosin shares some noteworthy symptoms with Tuberculinum, for instance, the hair on the spine, blue sclerae, genupectoral sleep position, and the desire for travel. I have also observed the perspiration on the head during sleep with sufficient frequency to add it to the repertory.

I have had the opportunity to treat the parents of many children who have benefited from this nosode and have found more often than not the remedy has not been indicated in these people. What one typically observes is a very suggestive history on one side - usually the mother's - and a somewhat less tainted past on the other side. Often neither parent needs the nosode, even though it may be indicated in one or more of their children. It is as if the number of suggestive illnesses in the family tree needs to rise to a certain "critical mass" before the cancer miasm explodes into being. Thus a child will be a Carcinosin type, while the parents take other remedies. Significantly as well, I have rarely seen a case where parents need Carcinosin and the children do not. Taken together, these facts do not augur well for the future of humankind. We are, as it were, witnessing the unleashing of a new horseman of the apocalypse upon the world in this generation. We have seen this reflected in the steep increase in the occurrence of cancer over this same period, but the fact that the nosode is appearing, ex nihilo, as it were, in this generation, suggests that we have perhaps glimpsed the tip of this monstrous miasmatic iceberg. Carcinosin is destined to be the nosode of the age in much the same way that Tuberculinum-bovine was the star of Kent's day. There are shadows of Medorrhinum in this nosode, also. We see the hyperactivity in children, increased sexual desire, amelioration by the ocean, genupectoral sleep position, desire for salt, sweets and fats, and insomnia.

Carcinosin: The Great Masquerader

The other chief components of the Carcinosin picture come from the Natrum- muriaticum and Sepia family. We see the fastidiousness and a desire for salt indicative of Natrum-muriaticum, the worse with consolation (although the opposite is as often present), sensitivity to sea air, desire for chocolate, and aversion to fats and milk of both remedies. We see the love of dancing of Sepia, as well as its childhood hyperactivity. Like both remedies, it is very easily offended. Cancer has been called the great masquerader, and so it is with its nosode. One often sees a symptom picture which is a perfect example of, say, Tuberculinum-bovine, like case B.J.S. at the end of this article, but which has one or two symptoms that don't quite fit. As I have indicated, these "sore thumb" symptoms, and the family history, often lead to the use of Carcinosin.

Sometimes one sees a case which seems to have, for example, a Phosphorus symptom group. Then a Sepia aspect and finally a Natrum-muriaticum set of symptoms. Knowing this remedy, one sees its aspect as the unifying thread running through the case. Such an instance is patient C.D., whose case is quoted later on. Whitmont calls cancer, "The penalty for the unlived life," and Wilhelm Reich referred to it as the end result of the "Carcinomatous Shrinking Biopathy." Natrum- muriaticum and Sepia reflect these tendencies perhaps more than any other remedies, and it is significant that they should be so closely related to this nosode. The tubercular and gonorrheal tendencies provide the groundwork or, perhaps more accurately, the miasmatic sod upon which the poisonous seeds may germinate into the cancer miasm. It is for this reason that Carcinosin has all these remedies hinted at in its picture. Unless one has a clear feeling for the essential process occurring in Carcinosin, one will tend to be confused, because the remedy appears as one type then another, and then yet another. Consider the disease itself, for a moment. Cancer may manifest in any organ, and, as a result, show itself by a wide variety of symptoms. Yet what is common to all cancers is unrestrained, chaotic growth, wherein the limitless generative energy that animates the life of the body and its cells is freed from the normal controls and results in the chaotic growth and spread of a malignant and consuming tumor throughout the affected system. Here we begin to see the process that underlies the remedy.

Carcinosin and Intensity

Rudolf Steiner once characterized cancer as having two phases, that of fever, heat, or inflammation, and that of tumor formation. This heat, this intensity, this fire kept barely within check, suggests something of the essence of Carcinosin. Carcinosin is the name we give to the pathological picture that arises when the life force itself, present in an individual with great intensity, is thwarted and turns upon its host organism, consuming it in its mad search for outflow and resolution. The Carcinosin child, therefore, has frequent and often very high fevers, is often hyperactive, and has a difficult time going to sleep and staying asleep. He has "exceedingly strong food cravings which often alternate with aversions," so that frequently one hears, "I used to LOVE eggs, but now I hate them." In the Carcinosin family history, and in the personal history of the patient, this intensity is also present as addiction to alcohol, or to drugs, cigarettes, and particularly to caffeine, and great sensitivity to foods. It likewise manifests as great passion and sexual intensity, beginning often at a young age, love of dancing and music, desire for travel, and exhilaration in a thunderstorm. I have also observed very early eruption of both deciduous and permanent teeth in a number of cases. It would, of course, be very difficult to add this to the repertory, as, by its very nature, it is not a symptom that can be cured. But I have seen it on a few occasions. This chaotic energy also sometimes manifests as alternation of symptoms from one side of the body to the other. I have seen this in a sore throat, but it is not a symptom that I can otherwise vouch for from experience, although others make much of it.

How then do we distinguish the Carcinosin energy and intensity from that of Medorrhinum or Tuberculinum? In cancer, no poison or foreign principle causes the cells to begin their destructive and unrestrained growth. What is occurring is simply a stepped up, if chaotic, version of the growth process of normal tissue. In the gonorrheal and tubercular miasms on the other hand, there is the introduction of a foreign principle which intensifies, but also perverts, the energy. Cruelty and hardness are everywhere manifest in these remedies, the result, if you will, of this perverse external principle. Thus, the Tuberculinum or Medorrhinum child is often cruel, or mean, though sensitivity to reprimand and to others is not foreign to some Medorrhinum children. A full-blown or typical adult belonging to either of these types is not someone with whom you would easily leave your children and pets for a weekend. There is a darkness about the energy of both these types that is completely absent in Carcinosin. About the only categorical assertion one can make about this type is that it will never manifest malicious cruelty. Two very important facts to bear in mind about the Carcinosin picture is that the remedy is listed under "sympathetic" and "anxiety for others" in second type in the Synthetic Repertory. Concern and regard for others is fundamental to these cases, and, as we will see, is the source of some of its pathology. Thus, even the obstinate kid whose mother says has a terrible temper and hits his brothers and sisters walks into the office looking so sweet and pleasant you can hardly believe that she is speaking of the one who sits in front of you. One is immediately drawn to the Carcinosin child, and likewise to the adult, before onset of deep pathology. There is something attractive and magnetic about their energy. It is light and warmth without the dark shadow of the other two nosodes.

In the young adult case - "young" really referring to an early stage of pathology - this energy is often tangibly sexual: Carcinosin takes a back seat to few remedies as regards the intensity of its libido. A recent female patient, when asked about how often she and her lover engaged in sexual intimacy replied: "Once a week, but that's down from the first year we were married, when we made love three times a day." One sometimes finds a history of promiscuity, but just as often a few long- term relationships, characterized as well by this same intensity. The Carcinosin patient's relationship to sexuality is emotional rather than genital, more refined and less coarse, and less emotionally complicated than that of Medorrhinum or Lachesis, for example. The sexual urge is simply the adult manifestation of the energetic intensity with which the patient has lived since childhood. Eventually, therefore, the individual realizes that casual sex is not what he or she really wants. Thus the promiscuity tends to develop into a long-term commitment, or becomes complicated by coffee, drugs, and chocolate to ease the pain of disappointment. Therefore, although one feels the sexual intensity of the Carcinosin patient sitting across the table, it is not the kind of energy that puts one on guard. Although the intensity is evident, one does not feel that the patient is going to make a proposition. As evidence that the high sexual drive is usually non- pathological, it rarely declines after a prescription.