-TESTE A, GROUP REMEDIES, GROUP II,MERCURIUS SOLUBULIS
– Crocus autumnalis of Linne ; in Arab Zahafaran, whence safran in French, in English, saffron.
– Genus Crocus, family Irideae, Class triandria monogynia.
– This plant, which originally comes from the East, as its name indicates is now cultivated in the gardens, in various parts of France.
– Its flower, which has the general appearance of those of all other flowers of this family, differs from them in this, that the stigma alone is odoriferous ; it is these stigmata which are exclusively gathered and sold in commerce under the name of saffron.
– This substance, which, in our time, is employed much more for domestic than for medicinal purposes, was very much respected by the old Greek physicians.
– Hippocrates recommends it in various parts of his writings, and the mountain Tmolus, in Phrygia, on whose slopes, the plant which furnishes the saffron, was cultivated, owed it a real celebrity.
– As it grows old, the saffron loses its odor and appears altered ; but when fresh, its emanations are said to be dangerous.
– “They go to the head,” say Merat and de Lens, “and it is said that persons who had exposed themselves to them, have fallen into a sort of soporous fever.
– Borelli, Lacoste, Koenig, Lusitanus, have seen similar effects, which even resulted in death in some persons ; in other cases these emanations have caused convulsions, immoderate and sardonic laughter, etc.” *
– These paroxysms of immoderate laughter, seem, indeed, to constitute one of the characteristic effects of saffron.
– Murray, from whom Merat and de Lens have taken the preceding observations, relates other facts of the same kind, on the authority of Serapion, Boerhaave, Schulz, etc. ; for instance, the case of several children who were seized with an extraordinary laughing mania, from having smelled of leather bottles that had contained essence of safforn. *
– Bergius mentions a fact which goes to contradict the last mentioned, and which completes, on this account, the series of moral effects produced by saffron.
– He speaks of a woman, who, whenever she took a dose of saffron, was lunged into a deep sadness. *
– Lastly, an English physician, Alexander, who made some trials with saffron, says, that it acts without increasing the heat of the skin, and that it causes a marked depression of the pulse.
– Empirical applications.
– “Externally,” say Merat and de Lens, “saffron is a good resolvent ; it is mixed in cataplasms to scatter indolent tumors, ecchymoses ; it is added to anti-ophthalmic collyria, in cases of scrofulous engorgement of the eyelids, etc.” *
– Internally, saffron has been used as an antispasmodic, for hysteria, hypochondria, (with a view of cheering up the patients,) for spasms, whooping-cough, asthma, etc.
– Pringle praises it as an antiseptic, and recommends it as such in putrid diseases.*
– But it is especially as an emmenagogue, that it has been used and abused, as is well known ; witness an unfortunate woman mentioned by Riviere, who, for having taken too large a dose with a view of bringing back her courses which had been suppressed for some months, died three days after of uterine haemorrhage. *
– Homoeopathic applications.
– Abandoned almost entirely by modern alloeopathy, saffron has not yet, by any means, recovered in the hands of the homeopathic physicians, the therapeutic importance which is enjoyed in olden times, and which Cullen explicitly denies it possesses.*
– Nevertheless, it has rendered some service to Homoeopathic physicians and a large number of its symptoms (see the pathogenesis of Crocus in Roth’s Materia Medica pura, vol. II., p. 80,) disposes me to believe, that no remedy can replace it in many diseases of the sexual apparatus.
– In an actress, I have seen saffron cure speedily a bloody leucorrhoea of several months’ standing, which the patient though was of a syphilitic nature, although mercury had been used in various forms, but without success.
– But it is especially in active haemorrhages, and more particularly in metrorrhagia and certain forms of hysteria, (accompanied with mental derangement, violent outbreaks of passion without any adequate cause, excessive mirth, foolish laughter, etc.,) that saffron had been employed.
– I am convinced that it will prove very useful in some cases of nervous of false pregnancy, for no other drug represents more completely the symptoms of this strange disease.
– B this as it may, I have placed saffron at the end of the analogies of mercury, with an interrogation point.
– Indeed, the relations existing between saffron and mercurius, are not, by any means, sufficiently striking and convincing.
– Nevertheless, it would not be difficult to show that these relations exits.
– The future will undoubtedly shed light on this point, as on many others.
– Stapf regards opium as the antidote of saffron.
