individuals. Rather, Belladonna people look healthy and robust. They seem to be people without deep miasmatic illness, without many layers of sickness. Consequently, there is frequently a paucity of mental and emotional symptoms in the first stages of pathology of these patients. Furthermore, they almost invariably have clear aggravations after taking the remedy and generally require little long-term management.
In most homeopathic materia medica great emphasis is placed on the ‘suddenness’ of Belladonna conditions. This ‘sudden’ quality certainly pertains to acute conditions and also to some of the individual crises of chronic conditions, but in the typical chronic cases one very frequently sees a slow steady intensification of symptomatology over the years. Thus, it is usual to find a history where the symptoms began rather innocuously but have been progressing steadily, such that within the last year or so the condition has become unbearable, driving the patient to seek treatment.
The pathology of the constitutional Belladonna patient generally confines itself to the physical level; this contrasts with the usual patient course seen in other remedies. Typically, a patient will initially manifest only physical symptoms, but, with added stress or suppressive medical therapies, the disease penetrates to involve deeper levels of the organism, i.e., the mental-emotional sphere. Consequently, in most cases, one sees a mixture of both psychological and physical symptoms.
Belladonna constitutions, however, seem to ‘quarantine’ the pathology to but some specific physical disorder, perhaps because of their relatively higher vitality. In these patients one usually encounters a history of a progressive intensification of the physical disorder and little evidence of mental or emotional affect. For example, one often hears a patient relate a history of migraine headaches which originally were infrequent and rather mild but