# Lactuca Virosa

## Remedy Classification
- **Type:** Homeopathic Remedy
- **Miasm:** Tubercular Miasm
- **Temperament:** Hot
- **Aggravation Time:** Neutral/Anytime

## Keynote Indications
Brunton noted that Lact. has a soporific action and is used “instead of Opium to allay cough, 
quiet nervous ness and induce sleep in cases where from idiosyncrasy, Opium is not borne.” This use of 
lettuces has been known from very remote times and has not been added to by old -school observers. The

## Modalities (Aggravations / Ameliorations)
Better in open air, bending, sit ting up. Worse from touch, crossing legs, sneezing, in a warm 
room. Yawning and stretching helps pressure in chest.

## Symptoms by System

### Mind
- Stupefaction of sense.
- Difficulty in thinking.
- Loss of memory.
- Anxiety and dis turbed sleep.
- Great 
restlessness.
- Fear driving him from place to place.
- Negative thinking.
- Contrary.
- Excessive ill humor, provoked 
by slightest contradiction.
- Repulsive mood.
- Prolonged emotional suffering, resulting in emotional deadness orcoldness.
- Forsaken feeling.
- Disposition 
melancholy, fretful.
- Sadness with extravagant and exaggerated notions.
- Headache after grief.
- Foolish behavior.
- Plays antics.
- Jumping.
- Singing or sighing.
- Delusions, sees soldiers on his bed.
- Delusions, 
that he would be murdered.
- Vivid, exaggerated fancies.
- Stupefaction of sense.
- Difficulty in thinking.
- Loss of memory.
- Anxiety and dis turbed sleep.
- Great 
restlessness.
- Fear driving him from place to place.
- Negative thinking.
- Contrary.
- Excessive ill humor, provoked 
by slightest contradiction.
- Repulsive mood.
- Prolonged emotional suffering, resulting in emotional deadness orcoldness.
- Forsaken feeling.
- Disposition 
melancholy, fretful.
- Sadness with extravagant and exaggerated notions.
- Headache after grief.
- Foolish behavior.
- Plays antics.
- Jumping.
- Singing or sighing.
- Delusions, sees soldiers on his bed.
- Delusions, 
that he would be murdered.
- Vivid, exaggerated fancies.

### Vertigo
- Vertigo with heaviness of head and lower limbs.
- Vertigo with blackness before eyes.
- Vertigo with 
sensation as if head were too large and expanded.
- COMMENTS - There are several recorded instances of poisoning.
- A man, 25, ate Lact.
- in a salad, 7 p.m.
- and 
went to bed at 9.
- He woke at 11 with sharp, colicky pains, soon followed by nausea and vomiting that lasted 
all night.
- He fell asleep at 5 a.m., but in the morning was astonished to find himself unable to distinguish objects 
clearly.
- A boy of 10 who ate the same meal became affected with lively delirium at midnight that lasted until morning.
- He jumped about on the bed, played all sorts of pranks and nobody could quiet him.
- He had no colic or vomiting.
- His pupils were di lated until the iris was a mere rim.
- Trying to read he mistook M for P and O for V.
- In his 
 
 
delirium, he had hallucinations, saw on his bed a soldier, an inkstand, etc.
- Both these patients as well as 
another had liquid stools.
- The dilated pupils persisted some time.
- Keynote indescribable sensation of tight ness, affecting the whole body, but especially the chest.
- Intolerance 
to touch and pressure.
- Pain in spinal marrow even to cauda equina, streaming along coccyx.
- Right arm is 
much affected.
- Much yawning and stretching to relieve the squeezing of the lower chest.
- Squeezing in left breast.
- Feeling as 
if a hundredweight on chest.
- Feeling of relaxation in the chest.
- Angina pectoris.
- Asthma.
- Spasmodic cough in frequent par oxysms with feeling of suffocation.
- Atta cks come suddenly without 
any apparent cause, induced by a violent tickling in pharynx and roof of mouth.
- Whooping cough, paroxysms 
preceded by anxiety.
- Antispasmodic.
- Chest symptoms are better sitting up.
- Lactuca virosa 
Tightness in the liver region.
- Enlargements of the liver with tightness.
- Stomach pain, better bending.
- Pinching 
in umbilical region, better crossing the legs.
- Constipation and diarrhea with many concomitant anal symptoms.
- Sensation as of a drop continually passing 
along the urethra when seated.
- Urine smells like violets.
- Hering noted “painful gonorrhea in females.” Used as 
a galactagogue (Aven..
- Alf.).
- Extraordinary lightness of body, more pronounced in open air.
- Feels as if swimming in bed.
- Dreams of 
swimming in the air or of walking above the ground.
- The head feels light, empty.
- Sensation as if head too large, 
as if brain loose.
- Sensation as if looking through gauze.
- Mild sedative.
- Cured a case of hypertrophy of the ovaries in a woman of fifty as a consequence of a miscarriage twenty -five 
years before.
- The tumor was excessively large and the patient could get no rest because of the pain from the 
pressure.
- The rectum was contracted and feces evacuated with great pain.
- “Fatigue during stool,” and also “sleepi ness during stool” were pecu liar and may prove characteristic.
- Ebullitions rising up from abdomen suggest globus hystericus.

### Head
- Empty sensation.
- Sensation of loose ness of brain.
- Dull, heavy, confused, dizzy.
- Heat of face and 
headache with general coldness.
- Pain, stupefying headache, after grief.
- Headache with disorders of respira -
tory organs.
- Kidneys - Dragging pressure in region of bladder, as from urgency to urinate.
- Burning in urethra.
- Urine smells 
of violets.
- Urine clear as water, copious.
- Sensation as of a drop continuously passing along the urethra when 
seated.
- Empty sensation.
- Sensation of loose ness of brain.
- Dull, heavy, confused, dizzy.
- Heat of face and 
headache with general coldness.
- Pain, stupefying headache, after grief.
- Headache with disorders of respira -
tory organs.
- Kidneys - Dragging pressure in region of bladder, as from urgency to urinate.
- Burning in urethra.
- Urine smells 
of violets.
- Urine clear as water, copious.
- Sensation as of a drop continuously passing along the urethra when 
seated.

### Eyes
- Biting in the eyes.
- Burning in eyes, especially in the lids.
- Redness of conjunctiva with increased mucus 
 
 
secretion in elderly persons.
- Pupils dilated.
- Cloudiness of vision, weakness of sight.
- Hemiopia.
- Flying 
insects before eyes, on stooping after a meal.
- Itching above the eyebrows.

### Ears
- Drawing pains in ears, shootings followed by tension in left ear.
- Buzzing in ears, ringing sound before 
ears, in evening, in bed.

### Face
- Pale.
- Heat of face with trembling and sensation of swelling of lips.
- Quiver ing in lips.
- Tingling with a 
feeling of tightness on face.
- Lancinations in chin at extremity of sub-maxillary nerve.
- Swelling of the lymphatic 
glands.

### Mouth
- Dry mouth, without thirst.
- White coating on tongue, thick mucus, sore, as if burned at tip.
- Contraction 
under tongue.
- Sharp pain in molars on left side of lower jaw, as if they were being twisted.
- Soreness of gums, 
on an empty socket on masticating.
- Nose - Sensation as though end of nose were distended.
- Peculiar smell before nose and a similar taste in 
mouth.
- Coryza, followed by excoriation and dryness in nose.
- Frequent sneezing.

### Throat
- Slight burning in throat.
- Difficult swallowing with sensation as if uvula were raw with burning.
- Sensation 
of coldness in esophagus from eructations.
- Accumulation of mucus in throat, viscid mucus in throat in morning.

### Chest
- Constriction.
- Sense of oppression of chest.
- Squeezing sensation in lower chest.
- Sensation of warmth.
- Pain on bending forward.
- Shaking of chest during cough.
- Cough - Cough as from dust.
- Must hold chest with both hands.
- Difficult breathing.
- Suffocative breathing from dropsy of the chest.
- Irritat ing, suffocating cough.
- Constant tickling cough.
- Incessant, spasmodic cough, as if chest would fly to pieces.

### Stomach & Abdomen
- Sensation of icy coldness in stomach.
- Sensation of retraction.
- Pains in stomach with contraction of 
pit of stomach, worse by pressure.
- After a meal, sensation of fullness in stomach with pres sure downwards.
- Pain better passing flatus.
- Loathing, nausea, vomiting, sometimes with uneasiness at pit of stomach.
- Temperature - Slight shivering chill.
- Frequent coldness over back and head, with heat in face.
- Chilliness in a 
warm room with coldness of hands and feet.
- Dry heat of upper part of body, with icy coldness of feet.
- Sensation of weight, fullness.
- Movements in abdomen.
- Borborygmi, abundant emission of wind.
- Colic i n early morning, tense abdomen, 
relieved somewhat by evacuation and passing of wind.
- Cramping pain, better passing flatus.
- Dull shocks or 
else lancinations in right hypochondrium.
- Contusive pain in liver region, in morning.
- Want of appetite, food is repugnant, no appetite for bread and meat.
- Food tastes sickly, bitter.
- Appetite 
and thirst increased.
- Desires milk, pickles, sour.
- Aversion to bread, meat, wine.
- Better from bread, cof fee, 
vegetable acids, worse from milk.

### Urinary & Genital
- Drawing pains at root of penis, in right spermatic cord and along internal surface of thigh.
- Diminished 
sexual appetite, chases away lasciviousness and voluptuous fancies.
- Painful erections during morning sle ep.
- Swelling of a lym- 
phatic vessel in penis, following morning erections.
- Promotes menses.
- Menses too early.
- Bearing down and weak feeling about pelvic organs and 
general relaxed feeling.
- Painful gonorrhea.

### Extremities
- Cramp-like pains.
- Rush of blood to lower limbs.
- Sensation as if circulation in legs were suspended.
- Numbness while sitting.
- Coldness and numbness of feet and legs.
- Lame hip down left side, worse walking.
- Cramps in shin bones, extending to toes and side of leg involvi ng calves.
- Tension in hollow of knee on rising 
from a seat, while walking.
- Tremor of hands and arms.

### Neck & Back
- Tension in muscles of neck or right side, sometimes spasmodic.
- Lancinations under right armpit.
- Pains 
in spinal marrow, as far as the cauda equina and extending to sacrum.
- Contusive pain in lumbar region.
- Drawing pains in loins towards the groins.
- Breasts - Milk absent.
- Increase of milk in breasts (Asaf.).

### Skin
- Subcutaneous lancinating and pinching in various places.
- Inflammation and eruptions.

### Sleep
- Irresistible drowsiness in daytime.
- Frequent yawning and stretching of limbs.
- Restless, impossible to 
get to sleep.
- Insomnia.
- Disturbed sleep from anxiety, cough.
- Position, lying on back impossible.
- Sound, 
refreshing sleep.
- Deep, comatose sleep.

### Generalities
- As if chest would fly to pieces.
- As if circulation in legs was suspended.
- Coldness of stomach, 
throat, chest, feet.