– TESTE A, GROUP REMEDIES, GROUP VII,CAUSTICUM
Raw coffee.
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| Coffea cruda |
– Seed of the coffea Arabica, a bush of the family rubiaceae ; the Arabs name it quahoueh or cahoue.
– The history of coffee is very generally known.
– It comes originally from the East, where it has been known from time immemorial, and was imported in France in the year 1664.
– Hahnemann’s treatise on the “effects of coffee,” has been so universally read, that I can dispense with the trouble of going into extensive details in reference to this subject.
– Alloeopathic and even homoeopathic physicians have accused Hahnemann of exaggeration in drawing a picture of the pernicious effects of coffee.
– As far as I am concerned, I am entirely of Hahnemann’s causes of a number of chronic affections, and more particularly of a variety of nervous derangements, which it is so very difficult to cure.
– Hence it is that I look upon coffee as one of the most valuable agents of our art.
– I am inclined to think, from a number of trails which I have made, that there is very little, if any, essential difference between the effects of raw and roasted coffee.
– It is certain, however, that the raw coffee, after having been rendered more diffusible by the process of comminution adopted by Hahnemann, acts much more promptly, and more pervasively, than any infusion of roasted coffee.
– This is so true, that in our provings with the crude coffee, the secondary effects, which always constitute the true and permanent effects of the drug, develope themselves so rapidly that we might almost feel tempted to take them for symptoms of the primary action of the drug.*
– Empirical Applications.
– Some Alloeopathic physicians, (generally they only notice the primary or immediate action of a drug) have discovered that, among the effects of coffee, its anaphrodisiac properties are particularly striking.
– It does indeed possess such an effect on the sexual organs, but this is bot its primary, but its secondary effect.
– But coffee is very seldom used in alloeopathic practice, except as an antidote to belladonna and opium.
– G. Musgrave, U. Pringle, and some other authors, recommend it as a remedy for true asthma, when characterized by periodical nocturnal paroxysms.
– Professor Grindel, of Dorpat, in Russia, says that he has used it with success in certain forms of intermittent fever, which is a very vague statement ;* Dr. Arnati, in a pamphlet published at Naples, in 1823, praises an infusion of crude coffee, and the vapor of roast coffee in chronic ophthalmia.
– It is worthy of remark, that the dynamised coffee, as I can affirm from long experience, prevents or neutralizes in many person, the secondary effects of roast coffee.
– This would seem confirmatory of the idiopathic method of treatment.
– In some, stramonium, or tabacum had to be resorted to in the place of the coffee-globules, to antidote the effects of strong coffee.
– This might have been owing to a variety of physiological or other circumstances, which I am unable to account for.
– This might have been owing to a variety of physiological or other circumstances, which I am unable to account for.
– This idiopathic property is not, however, by any means an exclusive property of coffee, for I have had many opportunities of convincing myself that the dynamisation of opium, belladonna, cannabis, cinchona, lead, mercurius, etc., are possessed, in many cases, of antidotal virtues against the seconds effects of massive doses of the crude drug.
– Homoeopathic applications.
– According to Hahnemann’s own observation, as well as according to my own experience, coffee produces the following symptoms, which it is therefore, capable of curing.
– Primary symptoms
– More or less agreeable exaltation of the vital action; increase of heat, especially in the upper part of the body ; slight increase and fullness of the pulse, which, however, remains soft, without ever assuming a feverish state ; exaltation of all the intellectual and moral faculties, increasing to the degree of enthusiasm ; the memory is more tenacious ; increased facility of conception ; liveliness of spirits ; expansive tenderness ; contentment with one’s self, and every thing else ; forgetfulness of one’s grief ; crowd of idea ; desire to communicate one’s ideas and emotions ; talkativeness, witty remarks, puns, foolish gaiety ; absence of sleep ; fantastic visions (this symptom occurs rarely, I have experienced it twice) ; animated eyes and countenance ; slight tension in the eyes ; circumscribed redness of the cheeks, which does not lose itself gradually, but terminates abruptly like a spot ; uniform rose-color of the face (in persons having a white skin, and who are habitually pale ); warm moisture on the forehead, and in the palms of the hands ; will sweat all over ; agreeable taste of nuts or almonds in the mouth ; smokers have an increased desire for tobacco ; suspension of the appetite and thirst ; the digestion takes place more rapidly ; greater facility of stool ; soft stool shortly after a meal ; profuse and clear urine ; the sexual appetite is easily excited, with orgasm (although transitory) ; premature menses ; the lungs are more completely and more readily dilated ; ease and rapidity of the bodily movements; muscular mobility ; exaggerated gestures ; slight trembling of the extremities ; swelling of the veins on he back of the hands ; cold feet.
– Secondary symptoms.
– A sort of relaxation of all the faculties of the organism ; disagreeable sensation of life ; excessive moral and physical sensitiveness, which renders all the sensations, as it were, painful ; dullness of the mental faculties ; stoppage of one’s thoughts ; weak memory ; complete absence of imagination ; sombre, gloomy, irascible mood ; quarrelsome ; irresolute ; timid ; fitful ; hare-hearted ; indifferent ; apathetic ; disposed to weeping ; nervous in every part of the organism ; loathing of life ; aversion to exercise ; chilliness ; depression, an almost complete collapse of the pulse ; constant yawning ; stretching ;desire to lie down ; desire to sleep, at every moment of the day ; inability to go to sleep ; a sort of slumber in the place of sleep ; startings, waking one at the moment when one is on the point of going to sleep ; light, unrefreshing sleep, full of frightful or painful dreams ; frequent waking; waking with a start ; panic fright at night, on hearing the least noise ; anxious beating of the heart at night ; illusions of hearing, which wake or frighten one ; thirst at night; pungent heat of the skin, followed by profuse sweat ; irresistible desire to sleep in the morning ; sadness on waking ; unhealthy skin, sensitiveness to cool air, and easily becoming sore ; pricking itching, which ceases sometimes, but not always, by scratching ; small vesicles here and there, with red areolae all around ; vertigo with cloudiness, and sometimes with nausea ; stupefying headache ; headache in the morning, with pressure in the forehead and occiput, which does not allow one to attend to mental labor, and increases on making the least effort towards it; constrictive headache, as if the head were tied by a band which passes over the forehead, and compresses the sides of the head ; hemicrania ; violent megrim ;* slight pressure in the temples, with rapid stitches, which are felt at times in the right, at others (and more frequently) in the left side, they do not penetrate deeply, but are sometimes so acute that they extort cries from the patient ; similar stitches in the occipital protuberances ; involuntary twitching of the head, as in delirium tremens ; formicating itching of the hairy scalp ; falling off of the hair ; itching in the eyes ; pressure at the eyes ; redness of the eyes ; acute ophthalmia ; chronic ophthalmia (especially in children) with an eruption of the face ; lameness and sinking of the upper eye-lids, which does not allow one to open the eyes, and excessive photophobia ; congested condition of the vessels of the cornea ; blisters and ulcers on the cornea ; dimness of sight which prevents one from reading or writing at candle-light, and sometimes even by day-light ; diplopia to such a degree that objects can only be seen by closing one eye ; whizzing in the ears ; stitch in the ears ; weakness of hearing ; small red pimples around the wings of the nose ; flashes of heat in the face ; yellowish, livid complexion, with languid look and blueish lips ; acute tearing pains in the cheeks ; generally in one only ; eruption in the face resembling varioloid ; erysipelas of the face ; chronic ulcers in the face ; painful neuralgia in the lower jaw ; toothache, especially at night, with redness and rheumatic catarrh in one cheek ; painful pullings in various parts of the body, sometimes in one side of the face, at other times in one or sometimes in one side of the face, at other times in one or the other extremity ; caries of the teeth, especially the incisors ; painful teething of children ; excessive dryness of the mouth and throat, especially at night ; flow of saliva, in bed ; excoriations, with burning pain on the edges of the tongue ; loss of taste ; tobacco-smoke, which in general is pleasant during the primary action of coffee, is no longer so during the secondary action, and seems even to have an unpleasant smell, like that of burning wool ; sensation of excessive hunger, which ceases after eating a few mouthfulls; loss of appetite ; moderate thirst, generally ; phlegm in the pharynx ; excruciating pain in the pharynx during empty deglutition ; eructations immediately after a meal ; burning eructations ; sour eructations ; violent spasmodic eructations, with rising of the ingests ; heartburn in the evening ; sour vomiting ; spasmodic gastralgia ; burning pains at the cardia ; tension of the epigastric region, with sensitiveness to the touch, which does not allow one to wear tight clothes ; acute and sudden colic at night ; lienteria ; dry knotty, insufficient stools ; constant alternations of constipation and diarrhoea ; painful retention of flatulence ; acute stitches in the rectum and anus, making him cry out ; blind piles ; spasmodic contraction of the sphincter ; burning itching at the anus ; scanty, dark, and sometimes burning urine ; copious and frequent emissions of a clear urine ; stitches in the urethra, between the acts of urinating ; excited sexual instinct, with deficient erections, and even complete impotence ; total loss of sexual desire and power ; emissions without erection ; delaying menses, accompanied with acute colic-of pale color, watery and scanty ; suppression of the menses ; metrorrhagia alternating with amenorrhea ; unceasing ; acrid leucorrhoea, and sometimes coming on in the place of the menses, which have either ceased, or have become very scanty ; aversion to sexual intercourse in women ; it is painful ; the breasts are relaxed and flaccid.
– Dryness and excoriative pain in the larynx ; extinction of the voice after talking for a time or reading loud ; sensation of rawness in the windpipe ; dry barking cough, with constant tickling in the larynx ; violent and dry cough, that wakes one in the middle of the night, comes on again in the morning on waking, and attacks one in the day time in short and not frequent paroxysms ; spasmodic cough, like whooping cough, with this difference, that the spasms of the glottis are principally experienced during the inspirations, not the expirations ; violent cough, with ropy expectoration, especially in the morning ; constriction of the chest ; asthma at night ; stitches in the chest and region of the heart ; itching eruptions between the breasts ; stitches in the sternum ; chronic ulcers in the breasts, (in nurses who make an inordinate use of coffee with or without cream 😉 stitches in the extremities here and there ; vacillating gait, (in children 😉 tearings in the nape of the neck, back, region, in the flesh and cellular tissue rather than in the bones, in the parts between the articulations rather than in the articulations themselves ; rheumatic pain at the insertions of the muscles ; trembling of the hands ; stitches in the ends of the fingers ; heat in the palms of the hands, with coldness of the backs of the hands ; stiffness in the lower extremities ; itching eruption at the knees and calves ; unpleasant itching of the soles of the feet ; cold feet.
– If indicated, coffee is particularly suitable to women and children, or, as an intercurrent remedy, to male adults.
– Its action is less durable than that of causticum, but these two remedies are so nearly alike, that coffee probably does not possess a single symptom which is not likewise possessed by causticum.
– It must not be supposed that, because a drug is said, rightly or wrongly, to act only for a short period, it is, on this account, inefficacious in chronic diseases.
– With coffee and opium, the action of which is likewise supposed to be of short duration, I have succeeded in curing, in less than two months, a case of neuralgia of the head,* which had baffled all the resources of Old School practice.
– Tabacum is generally, and for all persons, the most speedily effective antidote of coffea cruda.
