This paper was first presented at the Society of Homoeopaths Seventh International Conference at the University of Nottingham in September 1990. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.

INTRODUCTION

Folliculinum is made from Oestrone, a synthetic form of oestrogen. The source we are using today comes from Dr Donald Foubist (1). Although there have been no organised provings in the traditional method, millions of women have been proving it since the discovery of synthetic hormones in the 1940s. Dr Léa De Mattos has done exhaustive clinical studies on the remedy, and has published her work in French (2). You can also find a good picture in Julian's Materia Medica (3). Much of what I will be relating here, however, comes from my own experience with the remedy, especially the mental picture. I have been using it a great deal over the past four years, with remarkable success.

I wish to begin by explaining how and why I came to see the wide indications for Folliculinum. I feel that an inherited miasm is being created by the indiscriminate use of synthetic hormones. When I was a student I was going to write my thesis on the remedies with relationship to the moon. So about four years ago I started using moon menstrual calendars, asking my patients to fill in their symptoms on the chart. I am still using them today, because they are so incredibly useful. All sorts of interesting patterns emerge. It soon became clear that many women had symptoms between ovulation and menses, and most of them had been on the Pill at one time or another.

Another amazing thing to emerge was the fact that many young women were having these problems, who had not been on the Pill but their mothers had been on the Pill before they were conceived. Remember the Pill has been available for thirty years now. At first I confused the picture with Medorrhinum symptoms such as early sexuality, urinary infections, spaciness etc. but as I got to know the Folliculinum picture better, it begin to dawn on me what the causation might be. I have used it with both girls and boys in their teenage years, drained, slow, unable to identify with their selfhood. I have heard it said that children of the sixties often are a bit spacey, because of all the social drugs their parents were on. However there were many more women using the Pill than were ever using hash or marijuana. Studies have shown an increase in a rare type of chromosomal disorder in the aborted embryos of women who conceived within three months of stopping the Pill. I would like to see questions asked in the initial case taking, around these issues, so that we can see just how many children of Pill taking mothers have been effected. I am afraid the signs are increasing to show the inherited damage due to the Pill.

DIESTHYLSTILBESTROL

The other indicator towards inherited disease, through hormone abuse involves a drug called Diesthylstilbestrol (DES). This is a man made oestrogen. Beginning in 1940, it was given to pregnant women who had histories of miscarriages, premature births, diabetes or hypertension, or showed signs of bleeding in the early stages of pregnancy. We don't know how many women were given this drug in the UK, but in the US, it numbered well over a million. It was well known as early as 1953 that DES did not prevent miscarriage, but it's use for this purpose was continued into the 70's. A previously rare form of cancer, vaginal clear-cell adenocarcinoma, has been found in increasing numbers of daughters of women who were given DES. Over 500 cases have been diagnosed with a direct link to the hormone. Although these cancers can start as early as age eight, many are not triggered off until the girl is exposed to more hormones, i.e. the Pill, or other hormonal treatment. (Perhaps this is a case of an acquired miasm triggering off an inherited one?) There is growing evidence to show a sharp increase in breast cancer, and as much as a five-fold increase of cervical dysplasia, in DES daughters. A high percentage of those who have not yet developed cancer have a condition in which glandular type tissue is found in the vagina, which is normally found in the mouth, a matter of confusion in differentiation. They can have a whole range of abnormalities including incompetent cervix which prematurely dilates, causing miscarriage, a higher chance of having difficult menstrual problems, and a lower level of fertility. Abnormalities of the genitals have now been found in male children also together with small testes, infertility, subfertility; and as high as 40% of DES sons have low sperm counts or abnormally shaped sperm.

The 'morning after Pill' is made from DES, and is still administered quite freely, even though the effectiveness of preventing pregnancy is not established. Large doses of DES were given to animals to fatten them up for slaughter, and it is still used to dry up women's milk after childbirth. So, from these two facts alone, DES daughters and sons, and children whose mothers were on the Pill before they were conceived, we have a frightening idea of what we may be facing. Our regeneration is at stake, much less our health. Folliculinum is a remedy which expresses so much of what is out of order in our world today. So that we can see the whole picture of what is going on today, we need to go back in history and lift some of the mists of time. So I am going to tell you a little story. Let me call it a drama documentary. So settle back, relax, close your notebooks and open your eyes, your heart your mind or whatever you need to open when you read.

A STORY

Once in the very first times, there was a land where women were respected ... where women's business was women's business, and they loved and respected themselves and each other. The women lived a bit separate from the men at times, in order to carry out this business. They were in charge of their own religion, and their own bodies. They celebrated the monthly ritual of bleeding by the moon, and they all menstruated together. It was a time of high energy and creativity, and the Great mother Goddess was worshipped. She was earth centred and life giving. The celebrations took place in the Women's House that was called TAPUU, which meant magic. When a girl had her first menstruation, the women welcomed her into the magic of being a woman. Her expectations were to celebrate being a woman. Her health and well being belonged to her sisters and herself and she felt powerful.

To leave the story for a moment - and say that we know of course that this story is true. From archeological remains, but mostly from the fact that these things still happen with First Nation People all over the globe, in America, Africa, Australia and the Pacific. People who have not lost their land connection. Early anthropologists, and missionaries, white men from European cultures, interpreted these separations as being a banning and turned the magical word TAPUU into TABOO, which has become an everyday word in our language with quite a different meaning. We also know that women living together in groups; nuns, nurses and others, synchronise their periods. There is an energy between them, the meaning of which we have long since forgotten.So let us get back to our story. Back to the land where time was told by the moon, and where a girl learned of the tides within her body which matched the two great monthly heart beats of the earth - beats of balance between the full and the new moon and the mother earth. [picture] Time was told according to these beats, ovulation and menstruation, thirteen lunar months, regulating the planting and the harvest; the conceiving and the birthing.

Then things began to change, and more father-centred religions took over the women's business, and elite groups of men began to dictate how things should be. Many people migrated and lost their connection with the land, and women were separated from each other, and the father religions called the bleeding unclean, and the father religions took the new born children and baptised them in deep cleansing rituals, to wash away the mother blood from them. Father healers began to take over the management and control of women's business. At first it was only the women of the ruling groups who were controlled. Poor women continued to be healers and midwives. Then the father religions began to burn the women healers and the earth religion was termed Devil worship, and the women were called witches. Nine million witches were burned, and after those nine million murders, much of the knowledge of our healing died. After that, women's knowledge was derided and called 'Old Wives Tales', or 'Idle Gossip'. The father doctors passed laws to make sure that other healers would never be as powerful as themselves. Women's bodies became the property of the father doctors and father priests, and women forgot their rhythms and their tides, and their earth connections. Women were now seeing their menstruation as a curse, not a blessing. The father doctors had finally got control. But they were not yet finished.The first surgical removal of ovaries was performed in 1809, and marked the beginning of a long and brutal history of excision as the answer to women's ever increasing bad health. And then Hallelujah! the father doctors discovered hormones.

HORMONES

What a panacea of control they had uncovered. They regulate our periods and fecundity with the oral contraceptive, which totally blocks our ovaries from working properly and tricks them each month with a false message. The very delicate and complex pattern between pituitary, ovary, hypothalamus, and uterus, is deceived and jangled. Just look at the picture of the reproductive cycle and see the intricate rhythms of the oestrogen, the follicle stimulating hormone, progesterone, and the luteinising hormone. It is an awesomely elegant rhythm which has evolved over millions of years, and now, that rhythm is tricked and fooled with like a toy.

THE CONTRACEPTIVE PILL

The Pill of course, which this year had its thirtieth birthday, makes us sexually accessible at all times with no fear of fertilisation, in fact it often ends our periods altogether. There are no more eggs. When we are not fertile enough we are given hormones in the form of fertility drugs to produce more eggs. They induce our babies with hormones, often only for convenience sake, which is effectively injecting our babies with hormones, before they see the light of day.

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY

They inject depo-provera with its horrible side-effects into women whom they consider not bright enough to follow the instructions on the Pill packets - and the side effects are devastating, often causing flooding and pain. They give us the morning after Pill - they can abort us with hormones, and now they have discovered Hormone Replacement Therapy, which they say will keep us young and feminine and save us from ageing naturally. But the major boon to this latest 'revolutionary medical technique', is that studies have shown that they will save packets of money on us when we are old, because osteoporosis is costing over £500 million a year in treating fractures in old women. There are ten million post-menopausal women in Britain, and they wish to see the majority of these women on HRT. It is seen as a 'cheap and safe preventative medicine'. In fact it is being suggested that all women over forty be given it. They administer hormones to both sexes of animals to plump up their breasts and flesh them out, to produce more meat- they regulate the female animals - chickens, whose ovulation gives us eggs, and cows whose yearly calving gives us milk. They put hormones in pesticides to spray our grains and vegetables with, and now these hormones are excreted through our kidneys and back into the water supply. In London, by the time we drink the water it has been through seven pairs of kidneys and the hormones are in the water and can't be filtered out. The tyranny of hormone abuse is complete, from conception to old age, it is part of our life and a risk to our future. The rise in cancer in the reproductive systems in young women is only the first sign of what is to come.

THE PICTURE OF FOLLICULINUM

So now you have the picture of Folliculinum:

• She feels she is controlled by another
• she is out of sorts with her rhythms
• she is living out someone else's expectations
• she feels she is being fed off emotionally or psychologically
• she loses her will
• she over estimates her energy reserves
• she is full of self-denial
• she becomes a rescuer, addicted to rescuing people
• she becomes drained
• she has become a doormat
• she has forgotten who she is
• she has no individuality.

There is a very strong link here with Carcinosin, and it is not surprising that Folliculinum works well when Carcinosin is indicated but does not act. Cancer cells after all are cells which have lost their identity, lost their ability to differentiate themselves, to individualise. They revert to primitive cells with no selfhood.

• she loses sense of herself
• she may totally lose herself in her relationships

Folliculinum can help restore the will and re-empower. Folliculinum comes up over and over again in cases where women have been abused sexually, psychically or physically, either now or at any time in the past. (This can be true whether she remembers it or not.) She may be tied so strongly to the abuser, as in early childhood when the abuser was a parent or a loved carer. She may never have been allowed to say NO. She may have evaded the process of her own growing up. Folliculinum can help her to break the control. Folliculinum is a link breaker, and can give extra vitality when having to face heavy rememberings. It can be useful for those with emerging psychic abilities who can find no boundaries. The ovary is such an organ of creativity. It simply seethes with life and activity. When it isn't functioning well creativity can be blocked.

Maybe it is blocked by a domineering parent or spouse. Maybe it is blocked by the way our society views women's creativity. If the energy is blocked, and suppressed and tricked, where is it going to go? It goes into disease, depression, anxiety, hypersensitivity and instability. She gets easily upset, easily hurt and unsure of herself. She does not want to be alone, gets restless, goes hyper, gets allergies. It appears like an oestrogen allergy. The body gets confused and rejects the things that nourish it. The mind gets confused and can't make decisions. Folliculinum helps to restore clarity. There may be panic attacks, dizziness faintness, she can become aggressive, then depressed, put on weight without over eating, can gain up to seven pounds before periods, can get into compulsive eating and have huge food cravings, especially before periods but it can be at anytime. There can be both fat and water retention.

HORMONE IMBALANCE

I got really excited when I came across a piece of research done by Dr Katharina Dalton, which helps to explain why we find allergic reactions in cases of hormone imbalance. Under normal conditions, the ovaries produce the progesterone needed for proper reproductive function and the adrenal glands produce chemicals that are eventually transformed into a group of hormones known as corticosteroids. During the process of chemical transformation, progesterone is manufactured. As the chain continues, the adrenal progesterone is altered and eventually, corticosteroids are produced. Under normal conditions, then, it has nothing directly to do with the sex hormone cycle of the pituitary-ovary-hypothalamus. However when the corpus luteum produces less progesterone than usual, the reproductive system appropriates progesterone from the adrenal chain. The feedback system of the sex hormones is then able to continue and the menstrual cycle is completed. It is almost like an extra back up system to ensure the survival of the species. So despite a lack of ovarian progesterone production, the menstrual cycle remains unbroken, but this occurs at the expense of the corticosteroid production in the adrenal glands. The chain leading to their production is broken, when progesterone is borrowed, and as a result fewer corticosteroids are produced. A little hormone snatching leads to a large number of repercussions. The adrenal gland produces many corticosteroids, each with a different function. Some are responsible for the water balance in the tissues of the body, regulating the sodium and potassium in the cells, some prevent allergic reactions, some regulate the level of blood sugar and others mobilize parts of the immune system response. So we can see that this imbalance happening at the stage of the cycle before the menses, would cause much disruption at this time.

SPECIFIC SYMPTOMS

Folliculinum is fairly well known. for having symptoms from ovulation to menses:

• all symptoms < ovulation to menses
• all symptoms > menses except specific menstrual symptoms
• worse from heat, noise, touch, resting
• better from fresh air. So there are ovulation problems such as:
• drawing, burning, gripping pains,
• spotting
• ovarian cysts
• polycystic ovaries

PREMENSTRUAL SYMPTOMS

Reading down the list we can see how it covers the majority of symptoms found under the umbrella of the premenstrual syndrome:

• breasts swollen and painful < touch (Lac caninum)
• migraines (Natrum muriaticum)
• nausea and vomiting diarrhoea alternating with constipation (both Pulsatilla)
• diarrhoea ten days before menses
• very low or high libido
• weepy and depressed
• hyperactive,
• indecisive, with
• panic attacks. with
• huge mood swings from aggression to
• apathy, and
• unable to tolerate noise, touch or heat

CANDIDA ALBICANS

We can also see a group of symptoms which might be categorized as Candida albicans infestation:

• cravings especially for sugar and wheat
• rumblings, bloating, weight gain and itching
• and recurrent cystitis which returns at this time.

This candida picture may tie into the body's inability to regulate sugar, due to the adrenal system not functioning properly, as I have already shown with the previous diagram.

MENSTRUAL PROBLEMS

• painful periods centred in ovaries
• prolonged and heavy bleeding with
• bright red blood and dark dots
• all sorts of cycle problems,
• either too short
• too long
• or none at all.

MENOPAUSE

Folliculinum is a really brilliant remedy around menopause, for which it is well known. It pretty well covers the whole range of physical and mental symptoms we might find at this time. Let's have a look:

• cycle irregularities
• flooding
• hot flushes
• hyperactive < rest (hot and bothered)
• - night sweats
• air hunger
• dizziness and faintness
• abdominal heaviness
• fibroids
• folliculaemia (4)
• vaginal dryness
• slow movement and spacey chinking
• hypersensitive to noise, heat and touch

And of course, this covers any of these symptoms arising from a hysterectomy which is like premature menopause.

CLINICAL SITUATIONS

There are too many here to go over each one, but there are some special areas of interest here:

• history of abuse whether, sexual, physical or psychological.
• Myalgic encephalomyelitis; this is an obvious one when we consider the overall picture of feeling drained and exhausted;
• fibroids; Folliculinum will help to regulate the cycle while the tumour is shrinking. This of course is very important as there are often frequent periods with very heavy bleeding accompanying fibroids;
• Raynaud's disease, a vascular disorder where the fingers go cold and numb and lose their ability to circulate properly. Horrifyingly enough it has been treated allopathically with the birth control Pill. Most of us are aware of the dangers when there are vascular problems and the Pill is known to be responsible for causing thrombosis;
• Cardio vascular problems: this aspect shows up in our Folliculinum picture in angina, palpitations, tachycardia, and other heart irregularities;
• Eating disorders; it is not surprising that Folliculinum is useful in eating disorders considering the mental picture of the remedy. Self-abuse with substances which should nourish. Self-denial, but that is such a huge subject in itself that I cannot elaborate here.
• Post-natal problems; another very interesting connection is that of post-natal depression, difficulty bonding with the baby and children unable to separate from their mother; all of these are about unbalanced connections. When our babies are born it is such a poignant reminder of the unresolved hurts from our pasts. As for the child, if the connections are not secure enough, or too tightly bound, the terror of separation is too painful to contemplate.

  TIMING AND POTENCY

  I have found that an optimum time to use Folliculinum is on the tenth to fourteenth day of the cycle. This of course is not always the case. It would not be so for men or for amenorrhoea where ovulation is unknown or indeed for postmenopausal women. I have used it a few days before the period, usually five days or so. Léa de Mattos found that different potencies worked in quite different ways, and I have found this to be true. The 3x or 4c stimulates and can bring on menstruation; the 7c is a balancer, and the 9c is a menstrual retardant, where there may be very frequent periods. There is a myth about not repeating Folliculinum to which I have not taken heed. I have given it repeatedly every month, or on five consecutive nights and in many other variations. As with any remedy it is important to be creative in its use. I have used Folliculinum from 3C up to 10M.

  COMPARISONS

  Folliculinum is related to quite a few other remedies:

  Sepia is very close, but the cycle modalities are stronger in Folliculinum.
  Pulsatilla; but Folliculinum cannot stand contact.
  Lachesis does the draining, Folliculinum get drained.
  Zincum shares many symptoms but is > hard pressure and warm air.
  Thyroidinum has a different focus but can look alike.
  Hypothalamus shares characteristics of appetite.
  Aristolochia clematis has never been well since the Pill and recurrent cystitis.
  Natrum muriaticum re-establishes periodicity of the cycles.
  Luna is out of tune with the world, and it's cycles.
  Other remedies to consider include Staphysagria, Carcinosin, Thuja and Lac humanum,(made from mother's milk.)

  THE GREAT MOTHER

  One of the reasons why I love homoeopathy, so much; because something with all the sinister possibilities of synthetic oestrogen can be turned around and used in such a powerful way. It is almost as if we can use it like a metaphor, to reach back through our mother, and our mother's mother and her mother to our self determined beginnings, to the first revered mother, The great mother Goddess. We can use it to reconnect, retune ourselves to a sense of the pure feminine which has not yet been colonised. The pure creative potential of all female energy in every human creation. Before I finish, I want to share with you something which has given me great inspiration in my work in homoeopathy. Perhaps some of you have heard of the sculpture, by the American artist Judy Chicago. It is an amazing celebration of women through history. It's called the Dinner Party; a giant triangular table set for thirty-nine guests. In the entrance to the room which holds the triangle, she hung six embroidered banners, giving them the collective name She and wrote about them that: 'She, the Goddess, that is, the feminine principle and the spirit within each human being which affirms life, gathers all people before her to witness a vision of an equalized world (symbolized by the equilateral triangle) where disparities of difference are erased, and people live in peace and harmony on Earth.'

  So here are the six banners:

  And She gathered all before her
  And She made for them a sign to see
  And Lo they saw a vision
  From this day forth like to like in all things
  And then all that divided them merged
  And then everywhere was Eden once again

  REFERENCES

  1 - Donald Foubister, Tutorials in Homoeopathy, Beaconsfield Publishers 1989.
  2 - Léa de Mattos, Homéopathie et Gynécologie, Librarie Le François, Paris 1978.
  3 - 0 A Julian, Materia Medica of New Homoeopathic Remedies, Beaconsfield Publishers 1979.
  4 - Folliculaemia. hyperfolliculinaemia or hypereserogenaemia is simply thc over secretion of oestrogen. The oestrogen half of the cycle works, but ovulation does not happen, so there is not enough progesterone produced. So periods happen every two weeks, or are delayed or may then not occur for several cycles. Bleeding may be heavier than normal - a characteristic of menstruation without ovulation. This happens in menopause, and in ovarian disorders like polycystic ovaries. It can occur in endometriosis. The orthodox treatment is to use Danazol. Danazol actually prohibits all the pituitary hormones! Goddess forbid! Danazol is also used to treat what they call benign breast disorders and precocious puberty.
  5 - Dorothy Cooper, Folliculinum. British Homoeopathic Journal 79:4, ppl00-103.