They are one of the few plants and flowers that can engage all the senses in such an engrossing way. This evocative absorption can also be found in the disposition of certain kinds of patients we as homeopaths are now seeing in our practices. We are being challenged by new presentations, particularly in children, and an epidemic of autism and other related problems. In this article, I will comment on what I term the "new" child, and also on one part of the homeopathic solution- homeopathic remedies made from orchids.

As an example of both, in 2003 I first saw a five- year old girl who had been

diagnosed with autism.

Here is a description of her case:

When she entered my office, the first thing that struck me was that she had such a happy and even ecstatic expression on her face, yet made very little direct connection. She spent the first part of the interview in one corner of the office, jumping up and down, making clicking noises, and squealing as if she was delighted.

The parents looked exhausted but were organized. They started by conveying

that their child had a large vocabulary up until the age of two at which point there was a steady decline in verbal abilities over a period of a few months. As we were talking, the child was for the most part in her own world, and occasionally seemed to tentatively interact with the father but did not respond to any gentlequestioning by me. The parents said that the child usually engaged with the father but I noticed that the father had to verbally prod her three or four times to get her attention, and only then she responded with a few noises in a very primitive manner. As the interview progressed, the child became aggressively more disruptive and began dropping and then throwing some cereal that she wasgiven to eat.

The parents continued, saying that the child's behavior started to change at the end of her second year. After the family had moved to a new house, she began to have difficulty in falling asleep. At bedtime, she would recite whole books (one in particular about Cinderella) while being in a "crazily happy" mood. She would also frequently wake at night- they would hear her giggling, and when they went into her bedroom she would be ecstatically happy. Also around this time, she started to get frequent low- grade fevers.

It was at this time in her life that she started to regress both verbally and

behaviorally. Eventually her verbal skills became almost completely nonexistent and the behavior I saw in the office started to become a daily routine. The parents talked about the possibility of a vaccine causing the problem although they had no direct correlation between any of the vaccines and her state. They also mentioned that at one point she had slipped on some ice, banging her chin, and that this may have caused some sort of concussion. Their main theory, though, tended to be the food allergy one- she had difficulty having bowelmovements all her life, and they seemed to think she had "stomach issues". Themother also has food allergies. They felt that by limiting her milk and wheat intake she seemed to be slightly better. As a result, she had been on a milk and wheat free diet for many months now.

The parents said that she puts everything in her mouth, including pebbles and

stones. She has a very large appetite and a varied diet, except for the exclusion of wheat and milk products. She can also stuff large quantities of food into her mouth as she demonstrated for me in the interview. She frequently had a hot head and sweaty feet. She also has a tendency to masturbation. The pregnancy was uneventful but the delivery was precipitous. The mother dilated from 1 cm to fully in 45 minutes and gave birth to her in the toilet of the hospital room.

The parents have done a number of expensive therapy programs with only

minimal progress, and the father decided to work from home to help care for the child. They were both concerned and caring parents. On the father's side, the grandmother had breast cancer and the grandfather had bladder cancer.

After careful consideration, I prescribed the orchid, Cypripedium pubescens

prepared to a 200c potency. My reasoning for prescribing Cypripedium was the general state and also the symptom of waking at night "happy and giggling" and the cerebral stimulation. Boericke describes this by saying Cypripedium is a remedy for "cerebral hyperesthesia in young children often the result of over stimulation of the brain."

 

Choudhuri amplifies this in The Study of MateriaMedica:

 

Little babies are often seen to wake up in the middle of the night and laugh

and gambol in the bright light; if this continues night after night, the parents should take warning, as often such functional irritability and cerebral hyperaesthesia end in convulsions. A few doses of Cypripedium

will avert the impending danger. In respect of sleeplessness it compares

well with Coffee and Scutellaria.

Cypripedium is in the rubric, "ecstasy at night on waking", "ecstasy: brain

complaints, preliminary to incipient". Children needing this remedy can also have a tendency to masturbation. Cypripedium is in the Orchidaceae family, which has recently been reclassified into the Asparagales order and many of the symptoms and themes of this remedy can be found in other orchids as well.

I gave Cypripedium 200c every month for three months and later gave a dose of the 1m. After the remedy, this child started to communicate with her parents and came out of her "autistic" shell. There was a big shift in the way she made contact and I confirmed that in the office. Eventually she would even initiate conversations with me!

But this case was only the beginning of my search for remedies in the

Orchideaceae for treating problems for what I term, the "new child".

Subsequently I have confirmed that remedies from the orchid family can be very good for autism, other brain disorders and neurobehavioral developmental disorders including ADHD. As a result, along with students and colleagues, I started the "Orchid Project" which is an attempt at introducing more orchids into our materia medica as well as developing a general grasp and understanding of homeopathically prepared orchids. Considering the large number of plants in this family (estimated at 25,000- 30,000 species) and also the intrigue, aesthetic beauty and mystery associate with orchids, there were surprisingly very few orchids in our materia medica. Orchids also represent a refined sensuality that, in spite of being cut off from their surroundings, many autistic children exhibit. We have subsequently introduced and proven many new orchids. Before continuing with orchids, I want to discuss the "new child". In observing my own practice and after discussions with other practitioners, I feel that children we are seeing today are much different than the children thirty years ago. It has to partially do with the rapid pace of change in our society as well as the amount of material focus in our society. One strong feature is very active cerebral activity.

There are positive aspects to this- right from a very young age they have a very strong aptitude for technology and information gathering that we did not see thirty years ago that is essential to survival in our current technological society. But along with this cerebral activity, we are seeing more brain disorders including profound Autism, which is at epidemic levels in North America. The brain disorders also include learning and neurobehavioral disorders such as dyslexia and ADHD.

Thirty years ago, a particular group of polycrest remedies seemed to be indicated and acted well for children, including the Solonaceae plant family such as Belladonna, for clearly defined acutes, fevers and even chronic states- I see that these are now less indicated. The fevers are less intense and less easily identifiable from a homeopathic perspective. The disposition of the new child also seems more complex and less easy to identify.

 

The new child is vaccinated with an unprecedented number of vaccines and also is now the child of parents that have been vaccinated and treated allopathically in an unprecedented manner. The family history of chronic disease is more replete with serious disease on both sides. The new children are also exposed to more negative environmental influences- both chemical, pharmaceutical and radiation sourced such as microwaves, ultrasound, cell phones, televisions and electromagnetic sources. They experience colors through the prism of televisions and LCD screens resulting in a different reality experience and perspective.

The result is that this "new child" has a susceptibility to developing autistic and

Asperger syndrome which has become so prevalent. And what is paradoxically evident, particularly in autistic children, is a kind of de-evolution exhibited by their behavior. Many children suffering with this condition act almost animal-like in their conduct but not precisely so. The autistic child, as much as having this animal -like quality and even aggressive behavior, can also have a certain ethereal sensitivity and they evoke a desire to be sheltered and taken care of byothers.

As a homeopathic solution, I wanted to find a group of remedies that had

"animal-like" behavior as well as for wounds that are inflicted by vaccines and

other toxic influences. I found that specific animal remedies that seemed to

match the behavior were not so effective in a long-term way. You could also say that after giving remedies for the effects of vaccines and other toxic influences we are also still left with a fundamental and unusual dispositional state.

I came to the conclusion that the Orchidaceae family had much promise since

many of the common names of the orchids have to do with animals: elephant ear orchid, monkey orchid, leopard orchid etc. This is a plant family that exhibits dispositional features such as a closed off sensitivity-a delicate sensitivity to the touch and feel of the environment. Orchids had also been shown to be good for cerebral over-stimulation and problems.

I started by proving the most commonly used orchid in the world, Vanilla

planifolia. Not so surprisingly, I found that Vanilla planifolia is an important

remedy for injuries to the feet considering that many orchids have references to the feet. I have used Vanilla planifolia for both acute foot injuries and chronic problems such plantar fascitis with great success. The "pedium" in Cypripedium means foot and the common name for Cypripedium is "lady slipper" or "moccasin slipper" orchid. You could also say that the feet have to do with the connection to the earth or the world. Patients who need orchids can have a greatly refined oncern about the aesthetic and feel of their environment and material possessions. The connection to the material world in autism is problematic and tenuous at best.

After this proving, I encouraged other students and associates to gather and to prove more orchids in homeopathic form. After both the provings and clinical experience, we found that many orchids have many of the symptoms similar to Cypripedium in terms of an ecstatic, joyful outlook as well as cerebral overstimulation and inflammation.

 

In some orchid provings, the provers experienced temporary but dramatic

memory and comprehension problems. This was very prominent in the

homeopathic proving of elephant ear orchid, Phalaenopsis gigantea. Not only

was there confusion and difficulty in concentrating but also difficulty learning,

writing and spelling. The provers had many misspellings in their journals. One

prover said it succinctly; "I noticed many writing mistakes, letters, missing or

wrong, exchanging of letters." In this same proving, another prover declared, "I make writing mistakes all the time. I make a lot of mistakes, missing letters and changing letters". Phalaenopsis gigantea has subsequently clinically proven to be an important remedy for Attention Deficit Disorders and we have seen encouraging results in many children who have dysgraphia, dyslexia and other learning disorders.

There are other themes and broader concepts that will help to identify when a

patient needs a homeopathic remedy from the intriguing Orchidaceae plant

family. We are currently collating both the provings and our clinical experience, and these will be published in a book on Homeopathic Orchids.

An edited version of this was published in the German Homeopathy Journal

"Spectrum".

© Louis Klein 2010