We tend to think of the modern electronic communication systems as being the best thing since sliced bread but like all new technologies we have to take the good with the ‘not so good’, and with emails the ‘not so good’ is getting unwanted ones from nutters, people who are deranged or just plain nasty. I don’t mean spam emails but emails from people you actually know.
I received one the other day from someone who told me that he and his cohorts had decided that I needed a remedy and that remedy was to be Fel Tauri, - a remedy made from ox gall bile – fel = bile, tauri = bull. If the email hadn’t been so offensive I would have found this quite funny but at best it was completely inaccurate and in true Fel tauri style I thought I would have a little purge about this,- Fel Tauri being a purgative type remedy.
Ox gall has a fascinating and ancient history. The ancient Egyptians used it for making contraceptive pessaries, probably because the bile had a sticky constituent to it and it provided excellent binding material. Bile also has a significant colour to it and thus it has been used for hair dye, marbling effects in paints and as a wetting agent in present day water colour painting. The function of the wetting agent is to reduce the surface tension of a liquid so that it spreads more easily and can fill pin holes in surfaces.
Bile is a complex, thick digestive fluid, secreted by the liver and stored in the gall bladder and it contains water, copper and other metals, electrolytes and a battery of organic molecules including bile acids, cholesterol, phospholipids and bilirubin that flows through the biliary tract into the small intestine. There are two fundamentally important functions of bile in all species:
Bile acids are critical for digestion and absorption of fats and fat-soluble vitamins in the small intestine. Here you can see the thinking behind the digestion and absorption qualities that would lend themselves to functioning as a wetting agent.
Many waste products are eliminated from the body by secretion into bile and elimination in feces.
The process of bile production is a biochemical process. The body has developed the gall bladder to store bile that has been recovered from the bowel to be recycled - thus saving the liver from having to produce new batches. Therefore, the gall bladder is vitally important as it takes a lot of workload off the liver. If the gall bladder is diseased and dysfunctional - it is often due to the fact that the liver is under stress and is also dysfunctional. A dysfunctional liver will tend to produce toxic unhealthy bile.
So, if like me, you do not have a gall bladder, what happens to all that bile? It either disperses erratically throughout the body or it gets piled back into the liver putting a greater strain on this large and already overworked organ. But do you rush out and take a dose of Fel Tauri? Is it the only remedy available for a dysfunctional liver? Are all those who have a problem with their liver diseased in their minds and personalities as well? I think not! There are many, many remedies that can address a liver that is not functioning as well as it should.
Primarily Fel Tauri is all about elimination. It stimulates duodenal secretion and keeps the bowels active by liquefying the bile appropriately. You will see a great deal of constipation with those that need this remedy as well as chronic catarrh throughout all the mucous membranes – chronic in the sense that it cannot be shifted. In this sense Fel Tauri is a purgative remedy intent in keeping the flow (of bile) moving as creatively as possible.
This creativity comes in the form of being busy all the time – a bit like Nux vomica, another well known ‘liver’ remedy. In Nux Vomica being busy is a form of stimulation but in Fel Tauri it is a distractive activity in the sense that mentally they are not entirely ‘keyed in’ to what they are doing. They are preoccupied to the point of not being able to realize that something unpleasant is happening to them. But they do not like to be ‘obstructed’ = not flowing, thus this remedy is always about movement = peristalsis, which is a series of coordinated, rhythmic muscle contractions that also aids elimination. However the peristalsis in this remedy can be violent and painful.
This vying between movement and constriction is also seen in the limbs – rheumatic conditions, mainly cramps, especially in the joints that limits movement and there is also a sense of constriction in the chest leading to asthmatic states based on anxiety with a feeling of suffocation coming from tightness within the throat. There is also a great tendency to sleep after eating = lack of motion as opposed to being busy.
Typically those who do need Fel Tauri are extremely irritable and true, many people with liver problems tend to be easily irritated. Fel Tauri specifically has pains in the nape of the neck (rising upwards from the left shoulder – unusual as the gall bladder is on the right side), so being a ‘pain in the neck’ is associated with this remedy. The gall bladder acts as a little reservoir, storing all that gall, so maybe I am better off without mine, although I have enough bile left in me to say to the obnoxious emailers and the Fel Tauri fan club to say I think they are less about bull gall and more about bull poo.
Well, that’s my new year resolution activated (in the face of adversity, don’t take it sitting down). Joy
I received one the other day from someone who told me that he and his cohorts had decided that I needed a remedy and that remedy was to be Fel Tauri, - a remedy made from ox gall bile – fel = bile, tauri = bull. If the email hadn’t been so offensive I would have found this quite funny but at best it was completely inaccurate and in true Fel tauri style I thought I would have a little purge about this,- Fel Tauri being a purgative type remedy.
Ox gall has a fascinating and ancient history. The ancient Egyptians used it for making contraceptive pessaries, probably because the bile had a sticky constituent to it and it provided excellent binding material. Bile also has a significant colour to it and thus it has been used for hair dye, marbling effects in paints and as a wetting agent in present day water colour painting. The function of the wetting agent is to reduce the surface tension of a liquid so that it spreads more easily and can fill pin holes in surfaces.
Bile is a complex, thick digestive fluid, secreted by the liver and stored in the gall bladder and it contains water, copper and other metals, electrolytes and a battery of organic molecules including bile acids, cholesterol, phospholipids and bilirubin that flows through the biliary tract into the small intestine. There are two fundamentally important functions of bile in all species:
Bile acids are critical for digestion and absorption of fats and fat-soluble vitamins in the small intestine. Here you can see the thinking behind the digestion and absorption qualities that would lend themselves to functioning as a wetting agent.
Many waste products are eliminated from the body by secretion into bile and elimination in feces.
The process of bile production is a biochemical process. The body has developed the gall bladder to store bile that has been recovered from the bowel to be recycled - thus saving the liver from having to produce new batches. Therefore, the gall bladder is vitally important as it takes a lot of workload off the liver. If the gall bladder is diseased and dysfunctional - it is often due to the fact that the liver is under stress and is also dysfunctional. A dysfunctional liver will tend to produce toxic unhealthy bile.
So, if like me, you do not have a gall bladder, what happens to all that bile? It either disperses erratically throughout the body or it gets piled back into the liver putting a greater strain on this large and already overworked organ. But do you rush out and take a dose of Fel Tauri? Is it the only remedy available for a dysfunctional liver? Are all those who have a problem with their liver diseased in their minds and personalities as well? I think not! There are many, many remedies that can address a liver that is not functioning as well as it should.
Primarily Fel Tauri is all about elimination. It stimulates duodenal secretion and keeps the bowels active by liquefying the bile appropriately. You will see a great deal of constipation with those that need this remedy as well as chronic catarrh throughout all the mucous membranes – chronic in the sense that it cannot be shifted. In this sense Fel Tauri is a purgative remedy intent in keeping the flow (of bile) moving as creatively as possible.
This creativity comes in the form of being busy all the time – a bit like Nux vomica, another well known ‘liver’ remedy. In Nux Vomica being busy is a form of stimulation but in Fel Tauri it is a distractive activity in the sense that mentally they are not entirely ‘keyed in’ to what they are doing. They are preoccupied to the point of not being able to realize that something unpleasant is happening to them. But they do not like to be ‘obstructed’ = not flowing, thus this remedy is always about movement = peristalsis, which is a series of coordinated, rhythmic muscle contractions that also aids elimination. However the peristalsis in this remedy can be violent and painful.
This vying between movement and constriction is also seen in the limbs – rheumatic conditions, mainly cramps, especially in the joints that limits movement and there is also a sense of constriction in the chest leading to asthmatic states based on anxiety with a feeling of suffocation coming from tightness within the throat. There is also a great tendency to sleep after eating = lack of motion as opposed to being busy.
Typically those who do need Fel Tauri are extremely irritable and true, many people with liver problems tend to be easily irritated. Fel Tauri specifically has pains in the nape of the neck (rising upwards from the left shoulder – unusual as the gall bladder is on the right side), so being a ‘pain in the neck’ is associated with this remedy. The gall bladder acts as a little reservoir, storing all that gall, so maybe I am better off without mine, although I have enough bile left in me to say to the obnoxious emailers and the Fel Tauri fan club to say I think they are less about bull gall and more about bull poo.
Well, that’s my new year resolution activated (in the face of adversity, don’t take it sitting down). Joy