03/08/2020
CARCINOSIN CHILD
by
Catherine Coulter
Even though in a child’s physical complaints the principal indication for Carcinosin (prepared from cancer cell
tissue) is a strong family history of cancer (in which case the mental-emotional symptoms described below are of
secondary importance), there does exist a Carcinosin personality picture, which most closely resembles
Arsenicum Album and Natrum Muriaticum.
The type often has difficulty dealing with authority; he either subjects himself too obediently to some strong
authority or too insistently takes charge himself. This tissue might have its roots in excessive parental control;
the child strives to live up to certain moral or intellectual demands placed on him and feels culpable when he
cannot do so. But the submission he displays is not his true nature – and later he will react to even reasonable
authority with too much aggression. On the other hand, there need not be any such a history. With his own
critical nature and Arsenicum like desire for high accomplishment and determinating himself to take on more
than he can comfortably (or healthily) handle.
Illustrating this characteristic was the exceptionally conscientious high school student who was prescribed the
seemingly obvious “similar remedy”, Arsenicum album, for his asthma, with no results what so ever. Only at the
school office visit was it ascertained that his worst time was not the Arsenicum one, around and after midnight,
but after school between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. The boy’s family and the physician thought, at first, that it was the
intense school curriculum as well as athletics that caused the aggravations. Perhaps these contributed. Even on
weekends and holidays, however, he seemed to be worse at that time. Carcinosin exhibits a 1:00 to 6:00 -p.m.
aggravation time and the remedy was accordingly administered – with success.
At times, the young Carcinosin’s strong self-motivation develops into an Arsenicum – like obsessive –
compulsive streak. One child must tie four or five knots in his shoelaces to feel secure in his sneakers; another
fearing contamination, insistently washes (several times) the already clean plate and cup he will be using at
meals; a third, to satisfy the type’s self-critical vein and fastidious taste, is compelled to go over a penmanship
assignment in school so many times that it ends up looking worse and worse. And all the while he grows more
and more frantic at his failure to achieve.
Like Natrum muriaticum, the Carcinosin youngster might present the picture of confusion and distress at the
discrepancy between the moral principles taught him (tolerance, kindness, truthfulness) and the inevitable lapses
in the daily lives of the authority figures who guide him. And the older child exhibits more than a trance of
Natrum muriaticum’s earnest, dutiful nature, which regards life as a series of hurdles to be surmounted and
hardships to be endured; for which reason he imposes on himself ethical strictures and then adheres to them
through thick and thin.
A teenage girl was suffering from lingering mononucleosis. She was of a thoughtful disposition, ultra-aware of
the perilous state of the planet and of man’s exploitation of it – and trying to live in a way commensurate with
this awareness. As a result, she often found herself depressed and wondering whether there was any meaning to
life. These heavy feelings (together with her physical complaints of headaches and fatigue) she kept largely to
herself, shunning attempts at sympathy and rejecting outside assistance. Yet all the while she was seeking
approval for her elevated moral standards and was aggrieved at not receiving the recognition she felt was her due
for her attempts to “live in the Truth” and lead an environmentally conscious existence. (Both Natrum
muriaticum and Carcinosin, torn between a self-isolating high-mindedness and the desire for worldly approval,
have yet to learn that virtue is its own reward.) First, Natrum muriaticum was administered for her attitude, but
helped only marginally. Then, because there was a history of cancer in the family, Carcinosin was prescribed.
Physically, she improved within few days and on the mental plane, the remedy helped lighten her somber outlook
on life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson worte, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you
please, you can never have both.” In view of the fact that the young Carcinosin tends to take life seriously (at
times too seriously: “Today is the tomorrow I agonized over yesterday – and here I’ve emerged just fine! Why
can’t I just take every day as it comes, instead of wasting all that emotional energy worrying about doing
right?”), this constitutional type usually opts for the former. Yet it is the remedy’s function and part of its benign
effect to offer to the overly conscientious or serious child a modicum of repose, even in the worthy pursuit of
truth.
Some physical symptoms and characteristics in children that suggest Carcinosin are: worms (when a more
specific remedy for this condition, like Cina, is of no avail); asthma (when Arsenicum, Nux vomica, Thuja, or
other remedies fail to act); poor sleep; liking of animal fats (Arsenicum album) and/or salt (Natrum muriaticum);
sensitivity to music; a Sepia – like marked love of rhythm and dance and liking of thunderstorms; aggravation
(Arsenicum album, Natrum muriaticum) or amelioration (Natrum muriaticum) by the seaside; pigmented naevi
and moles (Thuja); and children who contract a childhood disease more than once or during late adolescence.
