Here is the idea on Actea.

Actea is a remedy, which is not very extensively described in the homoeopathic literature, mainly because it is not often or extensively known. This is partly due to unfamiliarity with this great remedy and partly because there is not often need for this remedy, at least in the eyes of many. But it is much more often indicated than we think, because it displays a mixture of states, which are recognisable as the syphilitic miasm.
This remedy is made from the black snakeroot, and belongs in the natural order of Ranunculaceae. It is a native of the western USA and Canada and was widely used by the Native American Indians, for a number of female complaints, such as miscarriage, probably due to ergot or smut poisoning. Smut is a fungal disease of corn, which formed the staple food of the Indians and which causes miscarriage, both in cattle and in humans.

“One of the most marked symptoms of Actea rac. is found in the mental sphere: a sense of gloom and dejection, as if there was a black pall over everything; showing the appropriateness of the remedy in hysteria and hypochondriasis”
(Clarke J.H. Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica)

GLOOM AND DEPRESSION

These are women who let themselves be depressed by numerous things, because their state of mind does not allow them to be happy. They have a distinctly negative outlook on life, which they do not hesitate to proclaim to the world. Like Lachesis, they are very loquacious – they talk non-stop and change from subject to subject, without any apparent connection between the two. One moment they may be talking about the family and the next they have gone on to the price of wheat or cloth, without there ever being any indication how these two subjects may be connected. They also talk a great deal about the negative state of humanity, grumble about the lack of manners in modern youth and the appalling state of pollution, dirt in the street and the callousness of smokers, who foul the air for others with their filthy habit. And these subjects have at least some form of resemblance, which is used here as an illustrative point and not as an example of the subjects chosen by the speaker. They will see that everything is gloomy, predict dire consequences for both humanity and themselves and tell whoever wants to listen about the bad dreams they have.
A peculiarity they have is a waving sensation in the brain, which manifests as if the bones of the skull are like two trapdoors, which open and shut constantly. This is usually a prelude or a concomitant of their headaches, which are so severe that they feel that the pain is driving them crazy. These headaches are reflected from the pelvic organs and are due to uterine atony. These headaches settle in the forehead, or in the back of the head in the occipital region. The eyes are very sore with the headache and the eyeballs feel sore on the least movement.

They feel generally miserable, and there is a sensation as if there is no natural holding together. Like Ignatia they sigh a lot, feel grieved and troubled, irritable, taciturn and indifferent. They have the tendency to be troubled by disappointed love, like Ignatia and Natrum muriaticum. At the same time their troubles may stem from failure of business, or fright, which may have been caused by anything. In their negative state of mind they do not or cannot concentrate on anything that requires close attention, and this attitude can also be the cause of their business failure.

MISCARRIAGE

A miscarriage affects most women deeply and they may feel suicidal as a result. On the other hand, if the baby has been gestating full term the woman may develop childbed fever and become totally manic or depressive. In general these women do not carry a term beyond the third month, which is another indication of ergotism, regardless whether acute or inherited from previous generations. It is by no means sure whether this is due to ergotism but the correlative factor is here the third month abortion. This is also often the case with the syphilitic miasm, which is well entrenched in the world population, due to six centuries of suppression.
When a woman has lost many babies in this way, as I have often enough had the occasion to note in India, the suicidal tendency becomes stronger. These women have strong uterine and ovarian pains, swollen and painful breasts and an outlook on life, which is decidedly too negative for their own good. It is however quite understandable and rather than condemnation these sufferers need all the help they can get . A case in point was the wife of a friend, who had miscarried six times already and who was in constant hysterics, to the point where she could not be left alone, lest she commit suicide. Her headaches sent her shrieking and banging the head against the walls, which would get better only when she was allowed to sit on the veranda of the house. She complained about a cold brain, which was due to her headaches. Her periods were excruciating and she found relief only during her customary three months pregnancy, which always ended in miscarriage. Her prescription was three doses of Actea in three successive weeks, which settled her headaches, regulated her menses and relieved her gloomy outlook to the point of making her a quite happy person. Her next pregnancy lasted seven months and again ended in a stillbirth. Another three doses were prescribed, to be administered in the same manner as previous and her next pregnancy ended full term with a healthy baby. She now has four children and is a happy woman, no longer subject to doom and gloom, without painful periods and headaches.
With the gloomy aspect there is also an upset stomach, disordered digestion, with halitosis (bad breath) bad taste in the mouth and a coated tongue. The mouth is full of sticky saliva, which adheres to the throat, with a sinking feeling at the stomach, which unpleasant feeling only exacerbates the gloomy mental state.
But the bulk of the symptoms center on the mind and the female sphere, with its concomitant reflection in the physicals, not withstanding the opinion of Whitmont, that p[physical and mental are simultaneous. It is impossible for the body to become sick in a happy person. Hahnemann says in his Organon that disease is all too often the result of some shock, grief, anger, and other mental aberrations, after which the physical symptoms develop as a reflection of the mental sphere and in their turn ’fix’ the mentality ever deeper, which in turn exacerbates the physical frame.

EXHAUSTION

The reflection on the uterine organs causes immense suffering, with terrible pains that shoot from side to side, while during her period this woman goes through the hell of epileptic attacks, going completely hysterical and cannot restrain herself. She feels strange, suffers from pains like electric shocks here and there, ovarian pains that shoot upward, while simultaneously she suffers intensely from the uterine pains that shoot from hip to hip. Migraines and total weakness are the result. All too often the heart is involved and this oversensitive woman becomes more and more depressed in her mind and can no longer face the world. She is exhausted from the slightest work and her household generally looks like a mess, which only adds to the feeling of gloom. She is unkempt simply because she has no energy to even pay too much attention to her external appearance. She is the overworked housewife, who has too much on her plate and slovenly drags herself through her days. She is somewhat plump, is delicate, sensitive, nervous and chilly; she complains about her back pain, the ache in her neck or in other places and her negative outlook cannot find any positive redeeming feature.
She feels as if there is a cloud on everything and that cloud has no silver lining, the gloom and doom of everyday life in either the suburbs, the slums or among the more affluent, although the mess in the latter household is often taken care of by a servant. We will, in contrast to other remedies, concentrate here on the lower classes, mainly because few homoeopaths have the opportunity to treat the poorer classes of people.

If we go into the poorer suburbs, we see this type of woman more often as among the richer burghers of the land, merely because life for them is so much harder. Often she pines to have children, but her womb fails her every time. She will get pregnant, hope that this time it will come to term and be deceived when the third month is completed. She then is in bed with fever, much bleeding and exhaustion. She feels trapped, because she cannot change anything about her situation.

“Sees wires encaging her”
(Vermeulen F. Concordant Materia Medica)

This feeling of being trapped enhances the black pall over everything. She has vertigo and is often unable to think, cannot find the right word and cannot fix her attention on anything for a prolonged period of time. Scattered in this way she can no longer hold on to her sanity and the anxiety takes over fully. The husband may be a gentleman but all too often he does not understand what is happening. He is confronted by a moaning woman who goes crazy every month and has a completely fractured personality. More often than not she becomes suicidal with her bleak outlook on life. Unlike Ignatia who is so preoccupied with her grief, anger or disappointment that it blots out the suicidal tendency, Actea comes to a point where she seriously thinks about killing herself, where it not for the tediousness of having to prepare everything. She has no longer the energy to even think about the proper way to go about it. She is also too tired to summon up the energy to set the whole thing in motion. In this way she passes her days staring at the television, where the equally bleak programs add to her woes. Watching shows of other people being in situations of betrayal, murder and mayhem make her realise all the more what a gloomy existence life is. And so she is caught in a vicious circle of bleak outlook, exacerbated by pain, crazy feelings, epileptic attacks, miscarriages and boring entertainment, inducing her to the final solution, which she cannot execute because she lacks the energy and the mental stamina to properly think how to do it.

CRAZINESS

Because she is so full of agony, her mental faculties are even more depleted and there appears no way out. She complains bitterly about her lot, but cannot express it coherently and all too often she is dismissed as crazy by her neighbours, despised by her family and deserted by her spouse. Generally she does not know about homoeopathy and also lacks the funds to go see one who can help her. It for such cases that the fraternity should open a joint clinic, where everyone can come for free treatment and which can be run fairly easy, when each of a group of homoeopaths works a day a week, or, if this is asking too much, once a fortnight.

In the slums this type is found even more often. Clarke says that she miscarries for no apparent reason, but careful scrutiny reveals that either ergotism or smut has some role to play, even if only in previous generations or that the syphilitic miasm is to blame in some previous generation. It is one thing to be able to treat the richer part of the population. It is quite another to relieve the poorer sections of humanity. Besides providing relief for them homoeopathic physicians can learn a great deal from treating them as well. It is a stimulant for learning more materia medica, help in better understanding of the same and a challenge for every self-respecting homoeopath. We should never look down on these poor sufferers and adopt a bourgeois attitude towards suffering humanity, for we have been placed here to relieve everyone.
Her dreams at night are of more trouble ahead and the whole of her life seems to weigh her down as if she had a weight of lead on her head. She is confused, depressed and cannot visit anywhere further than she can walk, which is not further than the corner shop. She has great fear of riding in cars, buses or trams, so she will never venture further than she can manage on foot She has visions of rodents about the house, which often is true, especially in the slums and in the face of her messy surroundings. Nonetheless these visions are also real visions, especially at night, when she is lying in bed. She has the tendency to injure herself deliberately, is nervous and fidgety very excitable and desires to wander from place to place. With her confusion she makes many mistakes which drive her crazy.

SUSPICION

Approaching her is difficult, because she has a suspicious nature, which does not allow her to take medicine; hence to get her to visit a doctor is doubly difficult. Once she has overcome her fears, she just sits there, mopes and when questioned, she will break into tears She often portrays her husband or others who live in the same set of units is out to kill her. She also has a deadly fear of rats. She has the tendency to drink, to help her forget her plight, as she is too weak willed to do something about her situation. During her period the mental symptoms sometimes get better and it is in such moments that she may consider treatment, if she is not subject to one of her menstrual epileptic attacks. She does not like to answer questions, while when she is not asked anything she will talk incessantly. She will hop from subject to subject, oblivious to the fact that they have nothing to do with each other. Thus her neighbours and her spouse believe she is mad. At times she will be ready to answer questions but will be evasive in her answers and talk as fast as she can. She is restless; she can read a bit and then must get up to walk around, which soon exhausts her.
Her headaches come on after too much worry, which means practically that they hardly ever leave her. They feel as if a bolt is driven in the brain, as if the top of her head would fly off or as if the head is opening and shutting, with a feeling as if cold wind was blowing on the brain. She likes to sit in the open air as this makes her feel better. she has a wild look in her eyes, another reason why she is thought to be crazy she looks pale, fearful and when still fairly young, has a pimply skin. Her upper lip is often cracked, (Natrum mur), while her jaw is sunken, which gives a besotted look to her face. Sometimes the face looks bluish, with the same features as when pale, blue rings under the eyes, which look large She gets rheumatic with a stiff back, sore neck and often spinal sclerosis, which prevents her from turning her head. There are very few remedies that suffer as much as the Actea type She generally cannot sleep and if she does, she either wakes very scared at 11 p.m. sleeps restless or falls in a comatose sleep. She dreams about gloomy things, of being in trouble, of impending evil or being in a sad plight, thus perpetuating her daily sufferings which cannot leave her alone even during sleep.
Summarising we can say that this is a sensitive woman, who has neither physical nor mental stamina, is gloomy, and suffers intensely both in mind and body. She is confused, talkative without making sense, either to herself or others, is thought to be crazy and thinks so herself suffers anxiety, fright, disappointed love and business failures, as well as miscarriages. This is one of the types that need homoeopathy more than most other remedies.
Actea being so confused and ignorant of her true nature, suffers from hysteria because she cannot find any fulfillment in the material world. She cannot develop herself, lives without a sense of law and knowledge and a total lack of control, which is consequently taken over by Nature.