-M.L.Tyler.
Poke-weed.
Introduction:
It is always a red-letter day when one makes friends with a new drug. Instead of being merely a bowing acquaintance–not much more than a name, one suddenly discovers a new Power, always at hand, opportunely suggesting itself for the precise help it can afford in appropriate cases. And it is in order to act as an Introducer, or at least a Remembrancer between Drug and Doctor that these “pictures” are penned. Have you not noticed that in any crowd (and our Homoeopathic Materia Medica is, in all conscience, a dense crowd!) there are certain persons–and drugs–which catch from the first our attention and assert themselves vividly. As on board ship, from the moment of embarking there are persons who rivet attention and get watched, whether with approval or disapproval, throughout the voyage. One comes to know that they will say and do on all occasions, though one may never care to make their acquaintance. On the other hand, on the very last day of the voyage one may discover a stranger, never noticed before, though a fellow- voyager for weeks. So with drugs: quite a number of them — the majority –are to us merely a name and no more: when, lo ! presto! they turn out to possess undreamed of characteristics and possibilities. Some one once said, on the last day of a voyage, “Why did I waste this whole voyage? Why did we not make friends before?” Thus with drugs, “Why did I not make friends with you years ago? You would have helped me with that case and this, where, not knowing you, I miserably failed.” For drug-friendship also one needs to recognize character and possibilities, to be able to rely on reactions and response. After which disquisition let us proceed to the study of PHYTOLACCA, on whose magnificent powers one has, perhaps, never drawn sufficiently in difficult conditions, acute and urgent as well as chronic. For Phytolacca fills a late but unique niche in the Temple of Hahnemann. Phytolacca is one of our newer, very powerful and promptly acting remedies. We get the most useful data in regard to this drug from Hale’s New Remedies. Like Baptisia, Gelsemium, Caulophyllum (Squaw-root) and others it comes to us from America, from domestic or native practice– but rendered useful on lines of precise indications, by provings. Hale calls it “one of our most valuable and powerful indigenous remedies”. But, he says, ” until subjected to scientific experimentation by our school and its effects on the healthy discovered by means of provings, but little was known concerning its range of curative powers.” But Phytolacca is still in need of further provings, to complete its drug picture. Hale says it has been used especially in chronic diseases, rheumatism–venereal disease–some severe cutaneous diseases “but its curative powers are not limited to chronic disease. It has proved one of our best remedies in many acute affections of the severest character.” For instance, one doctor, says Hale, “reported prompt and curative effects in diphtheria from a tincture made from the leaves gathered late in Autumn.” While recently the prompt cure of a case of diphtheria with Phytolacca symptoms, endowed in perpetuity a bed in the London Homoeopathic Hospital. The ashes of Phytolacca are said to contain over 50 per cent. of caustic potash, which accounts for some of its drug relationships. The officinal parts of the plant are the roots–leaves–and berries. We are told that “Birds which feed on the berries lose all their adipose tissue” and a tincture of the berries has been used to purposes of “slimming” and (?) as a remedy for fatty tumours. Poisoning by the berries has caused “pinching agony in the stomach with nausea and violent vomiting, followed by purging and pain, when any pressure on the stomach extorted cries. There was also dimness of vision: the tongue was coated white: there were spasmodic jerkings of arms and legs: and sore throat, the fauces congested and dark-coloured, the throat dry, and tonsils a little swollen.” Hale further says, “it affects the nervous system powerfully, also the fibrous and osseous tissues.” Again–“the sphere of action of Phytolacca includes skin, mucous membranes, fibrous tissues, the periosteum, and the cerebro- spinal nerve centres.” “In its action on the skin it resembles Arsenicum and Mercury” (Kent says it should be called “vegetable Mercury”), “and it has cured psoriasis, pityriasis, tinea capitis, lupus and squamous eruptions in general”–i.e. with Phytolacca symptoms, which we will endeavour to give later on. In the provings of Phytolacca we find, “A very peculiar tension and pressure in the parotids”; which may be an important pointer to the use of the drug-even in cases of chronic rheumatism. For among the cases of cured rheumatism which he recounts is a most interesting and suggestive one of rheumatism of joints with enlargement of the parotid and submaxillary glands, where there was “rapid subsidence of the glandular tumours also”. One gathers that Phytolacca might be more useful in the cases with peri- articular involvement than in the cases with extensive bony joint-changes. But perhaps Phytolacca is best known for its amazing affinity for the MAMMARY GLANDS–whether for evil or good. For in medicine it is only the evil doers among drugs that can be trusted to cure, and, even so, only the precise evils that they can cause, in locality–tissue– and conditions of aggravation and amelioration. Hence the minutely-recorded provings of Homoeopathy. In the provings we find “Inflammation, swelling and suppuration of the mammae.” And KENT says, and this is so important that we will quote it in full– “It seems that the whole of the remedy centres in the mammary glands. Soreness and lumps in the breasts from each cold, damp spell: becomes chilled and a sore breast results ; sore breast in connection with the menses ; a nursing woman is exposed to cold, and the breast inflame and the milk becomes stringy and hangs down from the nipple; coagulated milk. This comes out in the proving, but poke root has been extensively used by cattle raisers when the cows’ milk became thick and there were lumps in the bag, and when the condition was brought on from the cow standing out in the rain. “Almost any excitement centres in the mammary gland ; fear or an accident ; lumps form, pains, heat, swelling, tumefaction, even violent inflammation and suppuration. No other remedy in the Materia Medica centres so in the mammary gland. If every tribulation makes the glands sore in a nursing woman, give her Phytolacca. When a mother says she has no mil, or that the milk is scanty, thick, unhealthy ; dries up soon; Phytolacca becomes then a constitutional remedy if there are no contraindicating symptoms. A bloody watery discharge which continued five years after weaning the infant, was cured by Phytolacca. The breast is so sore that, when she nurses the child, she almost goes into spasms, with the pain extending down the back and limbs and all over the body.” As Kent says, in cows it has a big reputation for “caking” of the udders: for such cases as this, “swollen indurated udders intensely hot, painful and sensitive, where not a drop of milk could be drawn : here in a few hours the milk could be drawn, the gland softened and recovery was complete.” (By the way, I was told the other day of a case on our farm. One of the cows was getting, every few weeks, attacks of stringy milk. This absolutely stopped after a dose of Phytolacca.) But it is not only in early inflammatory troubles of the mammae that Phytolacca is indicated and efficient. It has “Nipples sore and fissured. Pain starts from nipple and radiates all over body. Breast feels like a brick, lumpy and nodular. Breast stony-hard, painful. Caked breasts. Mammary abscess: pus. Large fistulous, gaping angry ulcers, discharging a watery, fetid pus. Pain in unbearable. Irritable. Restless. Indifferent to life: or death: sure she will die.” (BORLAND, Homoeopathy for Mother and Infant.) Kent tells us that Phytolacca is a very imperfectly proved remedy, but that it has some striking features; and that much of what he gives is from clinical experience. And now we will give some of the distinguishing modalities of Phytolacca, so that one may be able to prescribe with assurance, and leave it alone where another remedy better fills the picture. Phytolacca has:–Aggravation at night: on cold days: in cold damp weather; in a cold room. Kent gives also worse from heat of bed, “so that there is a controversy between heat and cold”: and in diphtheria the throat is worse from hot drinks. Exposure to cold damp weather causes or aggravates the cough, the pains of intercostal, abdominal and lumbar muscles, the stiff neck, the rheumatism generally, and the pains in joints. Pains like electric shocks–shoot, lancinate, rapidly shift: worse motion: worse night: with the Rhus “desire to move but worse motion”. In SORE THROATS, where one has most used Phytolacca, the fauces and pharynx look dry, and congested, and of a dark-red colour, utterly different from the smooth bright-red swelling of Belladonna. The pharynx is dry, rough, “feels like a cavern”, or “throat feels full, as if choked”. Hot feeling, as if a ball of red hot iron had lodged in pharynx. Deglutition is painful, difficult : and with every attempt excruciating pain shoots through the ears. There may even be regurgitation from the nostrils; inability to swallow even water–this almost impossible because the throat feels so rough and dry. Then ulceration of mouth and throat: follicular sore throat: patches in throat: even diphtheria with these symptoms, i.e. the blueness, the dryness, the pain (root of tongue and throat) shooting into ears: the worse for hot drinks. All worse for cold, except the throat symptoms, which are worse for hot drinks. Curious symptoms–not only may the throat feel “like an empty cavern”, but the chest may also feel “like a big empty cask”. Among the symptoms of Phytolacca one finds, in a poisoning case, “Extremities stiff, hands clenched, feet extended, toes flexed, teeth clenched, lips everted, firm, chin drawn on sternum, opisthotonos, tetanic convulsions.” FARRINGTON (Comparative Materia Medica) says, “Camphor and Phytolacca are very similar to Strychnia in tetanic spasms. Both of these have showing of the teeth from drawing up of the corners of the mouth. Camphor is indicated in tetanus with the ever- present deathly coldness.” Phytolacca has been found itself in scirrhus, in cancer of lips, and in “cancerous ill-conditioned ulcers of face”. Punched-out ulcers (Kali. bich.). The periosteal pains (tibia) remind one of Asaf., Dros., Lach. NASH draws attention to a queer symptom “that has been of great value to me : `Irresistible inclination to bite the teeth or gums together.’ On this indication I have often relieved the complaints of various kinds incident to the period of dentition. “I once had a case that was sent up to the country from New York City. The child had been sick a long time with cholera infantum (entero-colitis) and its physicians said it must leave the city or die. But country air and change of diet brought no relief. The little fellow was greatly emaciated, having frequent loose stools of dark brown colour, mixed with slime or mucus of the same colour. After trying various remedies I discovered that the child wanted to bite its gums together, or to bite on everything that it could get into its mouth, and the mother then told me that this had been the case all through its sickness. Phytolacca produced immediate relief of the symptoms and rapid recovery followed. I have since verified this symptom several times.” Phytolacca has also a great reputation for stiff neck, so here is a little recent personal experience which suggested Phytolacca as our Drug Picture. Of course one knew the wonderful action of Phytolacca on the mammary gland, and had again and again found it rapidly curative for acute, dull, blue-red throats, with the pillars of the fauces congested and stiff, and the throat distressingly painful, even, in one case, with the sides of the neck also swollen, sore, and stiff. But– rheumatism? It was always staring at one from text- books, and one felt that it would be well to look up its modalities here, in order to secure one more trusty weapon against this haunter of out-patient rooms: easily, with difficulty, or not, cured which last in disgraceful for the homoeopathic prescriber. But of course the cases vary. The patient comes in with a ready-made diagnosis of rheumatism, or more often the popular “neuritis”, which in many cases yields to a little manipulation–i.e. when the sciatica or pain is due to a subluxation. In some cases one has seen, under careful prescribing, severe and long-standing cases of rheumatoid arthritis improve beyond what would have seemed possible: in some NOT: which is vexatious. Well, this personal experience was merely a “stiff neck”, but a real bad one, in which the whole of the trapezius was involved, and its attachments and actions beautifully demonstrated. For the pain, only in movement, read the Ancient Mariner:– “Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched “With a woeful agony, “Which forced me” [to remain at rest] “And then it left me free.” Bry. (worse for movement), Rhus (worse on first movement, and with its reputation for stiff necks), and Cimicif. had been useless. It was as much as one could endure to slither down into bed; the trapezius refused any sideways support to head without sharp protest; and to wake in the night, and slightly turn the head, was an excruciating experience. One wondered how it would be possible to get up! Next day, “What is that remedy?” and Allen’s Keynotes were consulted. “Ah! here it is! `Phytolacca occupies a middle place between Rhus and Bry., and cures when these fail, though apparently well-indicated.'” And it did!–and oh, the joy, that night, to be able to lie down,and to move the head, and lift the head and turn over with never a twinge. By the way, not only was movement affecting the muscle so painful, but cold and draught were unbearable and there was a slight temperature, and on was feeling ill. That experience clinched one’s friendship with Poke-weed, and is only recounted that it may appeal to, and be remembered, for future triumphs, by YOU.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
When rising from bed feels faint. (Opium.) Painful pressure on forehead and upper part of both eyes. Disposition to bite teeth together. THROAT sore; the isthmus congested and of a dark red colour: dryness of throat, with some swelling of tonsils. Diphtheria ; sick and dizzy when trying to sit up; frontal headache; pains shooting from throat into ears, especially on trying to swallow; face flushed; tongue much coated, protruded; thickly coated at back, fiery red at tip, breath fetid, putrid; vomiting, difficulty of swallowing; tonsils swollen, covered with membrane, first upon left three or four patches, tonsils, uvula, and back part of throat covered with ash-coloured exudation; tonsils covered with dirty white pseudo membrane ; small white or yellow spots on tonsils coalesce and form patches of membrane; membrane has appearance of dirty wash-leather; exudation pearly or greyish white; great thirst; (