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Introduction
All carbon group remedies belong to the chronic metabolic remedies. We find animal charcoals are more effective than vegetable charcoals. In general Carbons has absorbant properties by which it can purify the atmosphere or substances that are undergoing decomposition and they exert the similar effects on the human systems
Our Master Samuel Hahnemann used principally three carbons, CARBO ANIMALIS, CARBO VEGETABILIS and GRAPHITES. The first he derived from the animal kingdom, the second from the vegetable, while the last was an artificial product found principally lining the interior of large iron retorts.
- Carbo animalis (contains phosphate of lime).
- Carbo vegetabilis (contains carbonate of potash).
- Graphites (contains iron).
Mental Symptoms of the group
- Sluggishness: Carbon slows down the mental activities and causes marked sluggishness. Patient is slow to think, stupid, lazy and there occurs stagnation of thoughts with slow grasping
- Hard Working: Carbons are hard workers. They have social standing and are quite unselfish. They do not believe in materialism, and they try to find a meaning for their existence, through their work. They know what they wants and gets on with it. They know what they are intended to do or what is their aim and purpose.
- Or they are personalities to the other end very unstable who gets upset by very little incident.
- Main feature is that they give meanings and values to life which is most important to them.
- They give more to the spiritual aspect of the life. Carbons always try to find father figures or authorities. For them finding father figure means finding their own characters and destinations.
- It is said that one inherit character from his father and his body, and often his mind from his mother.
- They want the right to enforce obedience, to act and to command.
- There is a state of mental confusion and irritability.
- Fixed Ideas: There are sudden changes in the mind, has either fixed ideas or the mind is continuously changing.
- Carbons have main characteristics as giving meaning and stating values.
- They go for extreme ends in their life.
- Self respect and Dignity: All carbons have value of self worth, dignity and self-respect.
- Aristocratic: They are people who are aristocratic; they believe they have the quality of being excellent, worthy and honorable.
- They have stately manner and nobility.
- Shyness: Though all carbons have self-worth, they quite easily take form of shyness. And timidity is the feature of all carbon.
- They are timid and easily frightened.
- They start suddenly aside as in fear or draw back as from doubt or caution and are easily frightened. They show tendency to shrink back from danger or risk. And this leads to lack of confidence.
CARBO-VEGATABILIS
The whole mental state, like the physical, is slow. The mental operations are slow. Slow to think; sluggish; stupid; lazy. Cannot whip himself into activity, or rouse a desire to do anything. Wants to lie down and doze.
The picture of constitutional Carbo veg is completely different. Charcoal when put into a fire produces lots of heat for a very long time. Similarly Carbo veg is one with excessive vitality. Suits for a business man who works late night occasionally goes to home at dawn take shower and, put a new shirt and have breakfast before returning to the office again. Thus he is very hard working and successful at his job. As an exception Phatak says Carbo veg is needed for a fat, sluggish and lazy.
Carbo veg is materialistic, extravagant like Nux vomica. Feels uncomfortable among strangers. A female Carbo veg does not have any difficulty to impose herself among men therefore is doing well in business.
“You know he is sick because the bright, sparkling look has gone out of his eyes. If he could only get somewhere by himself and lie down – provided it was not dark – he would be comfortable. He wants to be let alone; he is tired; his days work wears him out…He dreams of fire, burglars, fearful and horrible things” (Lectures on Materia Medica) – James T Kent
The state of Carbo-veg is known for being low-spirited, near death with no restlessness no motivation, the person seems to be not getting enough air. They are going cold, going blue. The natural tendency of vital reaction is severely compromised.
CARBO ANIMALIS
Extremely melancholy mood, with a sensation of being deserted.
He feels, in the morning, as if he was deserted, and full of homesickness.
Great disposition to sadness.
Pusillanimous and sad; everything seems to her so lonely and sad, that she would like to weep.
Inclination to solitude, sad and introverted, she always only wishes to be alone, and she shuns every conversation.
The objects on the street seem to him changed, e.g., farther apart and brighter than usual, as in an empty abandoned city. (The Chronic Diseases)
Edward Whitmont mentions Carbo animalis as ‘discarded’ person’ in “Psyche and Substances”
“The Materia Medica describes a state of isolation, rejection of people, withdrawal and withering. These people become slaves to their own rigid views and routine; they respond with anxiety to the threat of any disturbance of their accustomed way of thinking or living. The personality type may be described as introverted, indrawn, thin, dark, sometimes heavy set, rigid, retiring, antisocial with an aversion to people, desiring to be alone”.
We know how the ‘carbonate’ trait in people takes the tendency of a retiring, quiet, yet straight forward, honest and reliable kind of person. Here, however Edward Whitmont shows the decline into being ‘anti-social’ ‘rigid’ ‘taciturn’ etc.
Jan Scholten : ‘abandoned’ feeling of Carbo-animalis is more to do with the ‘animalis’ than the carbon, in which the central theme is one of displacement. They are like a lonely cowboy who finds himself in a ghost town.”
GRAPHITES
These important symptoms of Graphites show the fighting oppositional spirit of Ferrrum metallicum.
Forebodings of some imaginary accident or mishap makes her anxious and restless; impelling her to move about from place to place.
Graphites is very much an ‘anxious apprehensiveness’. Insecurity with restlessness as of Ferrum met. And tendency to rush of blood to the head with flushing of the face,
Graphites shows lack of sensitivity to any stimulus – body, emotional and intellect…Eventually, the mind becomes empty…In Graphites it is an emptiness of thinking itself. It is an absence of thoughts. They feel that nothing is happening inside…Because of the dullness of mind, there is also irresolution.
In Mental sphere she has, for whatever reasons, never explored her own strengths and, hence, she is restless, discouraged, discontented, and apprehensive about the future (“feeling of impending misfortune”: Hahnemann). She has hitherto found meaning and challenge in her family life – also a legitimate outlet for her emotions in caring for the needs of others. when grown children leave home (and these days, more likely than not, the husband follows suit thereafter), she is suddenly thrown back on herself and forced to confront total emptiness. Explained by Catherine
