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Materia Medica Viva Volume 9 – page 1990

Colchicum first, and pretty soon he will want something to eat’.
The proving symptoms quoted above demonstrate that Colchicum is sensitive to other stimuli as well. Besides vision, the sense of touch is very much affected. ‘By touching the affected part, the comp¬laints excited by Colchicum seem to be greatly aggravated in many cases’.
The sensitivity to pain is also markedly increased: ‘His sufferings seem intolerable to him’. And, very character¬istic: the pain seems to be quite intolerable in the evening; he wants to rave against himself, if he only had the strength. Actually the intolerance to pain is such that sometimes it can lead to a state of acute psychosis.
From Weakness to Paralysis
A prominent feature of Colchicum is extreme excitability with physical and mental weakness. A characteristic symptom from the proving: ‘Such a depression of mind and such a lassi¬tude, painfulness, and sensitiveness of the whole body that he can hardly move without whimpering’.
It may refer to the extremities: ‘She feels so intense a weakness in the muscles of her extremities that she thinks they will fall off’. Or the digestive system may be paralysed, with tremendous diarr¬hoea and utter inability to take any nutritive substances in. The whole system is at the verge of collapse: ‘Rapid sinking of strength, after ten hours he is hardly able to speak or to walk’.
The Colchicum patient needs rest more than anything else. A ‘great desire for rest’ is noted in the provings, also ‘mental disinclination to work’, although there is ‘continuous physical excitability’.