Lycopodium, the club moss remedy

World Homeopathy Day: 10th April

I have been thinking about writing this blog for sometime now. What better day than today to post this? Today is Dr.Samuel Hahnemann’s birthday and celebrated as World Homeopathy Day. This is my humble tribute to the Great Master..

This being a significant day, I would like to share an experience of treating a child, a girl, now 6 years old. Being in the family circle, I never sat down with her for a professional case-take. However, I must say that I always like to engage her in some conversation or the other. The fact that she appears equally excited to speak to me has definitely helped me in my role as a Homeopathic practitioner.

Patient as a toddler:

In her younger days, I recall there was a lot of screaming, head banging, striking her own self, obstinate behaviour.  There was an aversion to meeting new people. She played a lot by herself, arranging her toys in a particular order. Her activities involved the simplest of toys, sometimes two of the same kind. An important observation was that she got extremely upset when anyone disturbed the order she had created, even slightly. She repeated her lines, nursery rhymes and songs from the movies. I have to say that she would just keep going until her parents told her a few times that it was good enough and successfully managed to distract her.

The patient is a very attractive child with intense facial expressions. She is quite intelligent, has a remarkable memory and remembers the lyrics of songs really well. When mum wore a particular dress, she would softly tell her dad that she needs a dress of the same colour too. She loved to look at herself in the mirror and make pretty moves. I have observed her enjoying dancing and I must say that it was a delight to watch her dance.

In 2019,  I had prescribed Stramonium particularly based on the timid nature, shrieking, screaming, striking, kicking, painlessness of complaints usually painful. Soon she stopped hurting herself.

Skin symptoms and the prescription that followed:

It was in 2021 that she developed some black spots on the soles of her feet. She did not complain of any pain. This time I felt she needed an animal remedy.
I came down to Cenchris contortrix, a fastidious snake remedy. I observed she had become really clingy to her father to the point that she is totally around him once he is back home from work. Interestingly, her mother remarked once that she could not find a single picture of just her and her husband after the birth of her younger daughter!

The remedy was prescribed infrequently in 200c and later in 1M potencies, however, the black spots refused to heal. It kept me thinking as to what I was missing in this case.

What did I really miss in this case?

I must have thought about this case a lot and on one fine day, it suddenly appeared to me, that I had missed a really striking, characteristic symptom that could perhaps pave the way to the similimum(the perfect remedy match to the patient).

The child wore shoes all the time, even while going to bed. She was so adamant that she had to put her shoes all the time. Her feet were always cold, clammy and moist. I only met her in person when she was five years old and I felt that she was uncomfortable with something. When you meet some children, you do get the feeling that something is bothering them and they don’t feel free like how a child should naturally be, happy and joyful.

That deeper sensitivity was the clue to the remedy and it unfolded in front of me as to how she connected so well to the soul of the remedy.

The Club moss magic:

The homeopathic remedy, Lycopodium worked like magic because, as soon as it was given the child got relieved of this obsession and the black spots on the soles disappeared completely. Even before the latter happened, she let the shoes go. It was as if there was never a problem with the shoes. It happened so effortlessly.

This is one of the many times, I have felt so much gratitude to know and understand homeopathy and essence of it, so well. The transformation it can bring to people’s lives cannot be explained in words, like, in this case. Honestly, with Homeopathy the happy space can be brought back to a child’s life from where the child will thrive naturally. However, a lot of support and understanding from the family is also needed.

The child is her happy, free self now, enjoys drawing, goes to school, has found a dear friend recently. Interestingly, she understands the relationship between emotions and physical symptoms. The other day she told me, “I know I got scared and then I had this..”, referring to some acute symptoms she had developed.  Every now and then we find proof of this, how when the little blocks are removed, the real, pure self is restored. What gets unravelled is undoubtedly a beautiful, happy soul.

I believe that the possibilities are always there, now I feel grateful that she has hooked herself to the higher possibilities of life.

About the source:-

Lycopodium clavatum, as you would know, is the common club moss. The plants grow well in cold, moist and shady areas, where the soil is loose, acidic with a good depth of humus. In short, the plant is moisture loving. The plants of Lycopodium do not survive in sub-tropical climates even in a glass house. Therefore, they should be grown in high altitudes, in shades where natural moisture is available in plenty.

The word Lycopodium originates from the greek words, lykos meaning wolf and pous meaning foot.

Lycopodium – some interesting features relevant to this case:

The timidity and cowardice of Lycopodium is best seen in children requiring the remedy. They have a fear of facing new situations and also meeting new people. The Lycopodium children try to avoid these. For example,  when the other kids were playing, the child in the above case was encouraged to ride a scooter. She kept talking about the scooter needing stabilisers but never once put her foot on it.

Last year, she developed a fever and a little cough the day before she was due to go for a school picnic. A dose of Lycopodium 200c helped her to get better. This year, she said she was excited to go for the excursion.

These children can be quite domineering. In this situation, for instance the child would get her elder sister to always play the games that she likes. To add, they are quite imaginative, intellectual and can easily theorize. Look at the child’s creation of the
London bus above. Isn’t that wonderful??