Case 5 concerns a young boy of 12 who I had been seeing off and on since he was four years old. He had had frequent colds, sometimes turning into bronchitis. With various remedies over the years we managed to keep him free from allopathic medication, but the last years his breathing was becoming tighter, and he had to resort to Ventolin, due to asthma. He also developed allergies to several foods, and was becoming more and more sleepless. When he finally did manage to sleep he would often dream of war, of having to run and hide. For his age he looked very concerned, as though he took on the worries of the world. He had a fear which his parents could not explain, of being alone and having to fend for himself, abandonned by his parents. I had given him Magnesium Muriatium from time to time, which seemed to ease his sleeplessness for a few weeks at a time, but it kept recurring.
He had a strange fascination with the Second World War, strange in that his parents did not in any way encourage it, not had their family had much to do with it. He wanted to read everything he could find about this war (not about other wars). He read adult books on the subject, and was especially interested in the plight of the Jews. He wanted to become a policeman so that he could protect people from being hurt.
It was only after seeing the success with my other patients after taking similar dreams into consideration that I thought of giving him Hydrocyanic Acid. This time the sleeplessness stopped immediately, and did not return. The dreams of war stopped, and his desire to read war books ceased as well. (“I have dreamt it all out of me, it is over and done with now.” His asthma decreased, and he was able to discontinue the Ventolin. On asking about the food allergies, his mother said “He can eat anything these days, even things that used to make him wheezy. But the strange thing is that he refuses to eat bread that is not completely fresh. If it is a day old he won’t eat it, he would rather just have a cracker. He’s always sniffing at the bread to see if there is mold on it!” I don’t know if this last complaint has gone away since that time, but it made me think of someone who has only had moldy bread to eat, and now refuses to eat anything that would remind him of it.