Aethusa cynapium

Violent onset, profound exhaustion and lack of reaction, even speechless; as in cholera infantum, convulsions, etc. Can't stand or hold head up. Weak, nervous and prostrated; from over-work. Can't fix attention. Parts feel screwed together. Lancinating pains. Distress in occiput and nape. Violent convulsions. .................... Weepy; < as disease progresses. Dizzy and drowsy (Gel.). Squeezing headache, > passing flatus. Eyes turn down. Face sunken. Deathly aspect; blue white palor about lips. White linea nasalis. Tongue feels too long. Nibbling appetite. Regurgitates food long after eating (Kre.). Violent sudden vomiting of milk. DEATHLY NAUSEA. VOMITS LARGE, HARD CURDS, THEN LIMPNESS AND DEEP SLEEP. Retching. Digestion ceases from brain exhaustion. Stomach seems turned upside down. Bubbling at navel. Yellow-green, slimy diarrhœa. Watery menses. Lymphatics swelled, like a string of beads. Eruptions that itch from heat. Ecchymoses. Cool, clammy skin. Heat without thirst. Sweat (cold) with aversion to uncovering.

MILK. Hot weather. Dentition. Frequent eating. Over-exertion.

BRAIN. Nerves. Digestion. Occiput. Neck. Glands. Liver.

Complementary: Calc-c. Related: Ant-c. Cic.

Æthusa cynapium

Fool’s Parsley. Umhelliferce.

Especially for children during dentition in hot summer weather ; children who cannot hear milk.

Great weakness : children cannot stand ; unable to hold up the head (Abrot.) ; prostration with sleepiness.

Idiocy in children : incapacity to think ; confused.

An expression of great anxiety and pain, with a drawn condition and well-marked linea nasalia.

Features expressive of pain and anxiety.

Herpetic eruption on end of the nose.

Complete absence of thirst (Apis, Puls. — rev. of Ars.).

Intolerance of milk : cannot hear milk in any form; it is vomited in large curds as soon as taken; then weakness causes drowsiness (compare, Mag. c. ).

Indigestion of teething children ; violent, sudden vomiting of a frothy, milk-white substance; or yellow fluid, followed by curdled milk and cheesy matter.

Regurgitation of food an hour or so after eating; copious greenish vomiting.

Epileptic spasms, with clenched thumbs, red face, eyes turned downwards, pupils fixed and dilated; foam at the mouth, jaws locked; pulse small, hard, quick.

Weakness and prostration with sleepiness; after vomiting, after stool, after spasm.

Relation.— Similar: to. Ant. c., Ars., Cal., Sanic.

Aggravation. — After eating or drinking; after vomiting; after stool; after spasm.

Lecture XLIII — The Umbelliferae — Conium maculatum, Ammoniacum gummi, Asafoetida, Aethusa cynapium; the Berberidaceae — Berberis and Podophyllum

iETHUSA CYNAPIUM.

sEtkusa cynapium is a frightful poison, having narcotic properties as well as paralyzing effects. The principal use we make of the drug arises from its action on the stomach. It produces a deathly nausea and sickness, with vomiting. In the case of a child the vomit consists of curdled milk, which is often green. After vomiting, the child falls back exhausted and goes to sleep. It awakens hungry, eats and vomits again. The face is pale, and there are dark rings about the eyes. The analogue here is Antimonium crudum, which differs from sEthusa in having a white-coated tongue. Calcarea oslrearum or Calcarea acetica, has vomiting of curdled milk, and the child is apt to have diarrhoea with sour-smelling stools.

Cicuta virosa, another member of the order, when taken in any quantity produces congestion at the base of the brain and in the medulla oblongata. At first, the patient is rigid, with fixed staring eyes, bluish face and frothing at the mouth and unconsciousness. Next, there passes a shock, or series of shocks, from the head through the body. The jaws are locked, the patient bites the tongue. These spasmodic symptoms are followed by profound exhaustion. These symptoms indicate Cicuta in epilepsy, spasms from worms, and also in some forms of puerperal spasms.

We notice, too, that Cicuta, in addition to these symptoms, develops phenomena which resemble the remote effects of concussion of the brain. The pupils are dilated; there are vertigo and headache, and sometimes epileptiform convulsions.

Cicuta also attacks the skin, producing a pustular eruption, with yellowish honey-colored scabs, particularly about the mouth, and matting the whiskers. It has even cured two cases of epithelioma when the cancerous growth was covered by these honey-colored scabs. Next, we will study the BERBERIDACE^E.

Of this order we have time to study but two drugs, namely, Berberis vulgaris and Podophyllum peltatum.

Restless, anxious, crying. Sees rats, cats, dogs, etc. Unconscious, delirious. Inability to think, to fix the attention. Brain fag. Idiocy may alternate with furor and irritability.

Fool's Parsley The characteristic symptoms relate mainly to the brain and nervous system, connected with gastro-intestinal disturbance. Anguish, crying, and expression of uneasiness and discontent, lead to this remedy most frequently in disease in children, during dentition, summer complaint, when, with the diarrhœa, there is marked inability to digest milk, and poor circulation. Symptoms set in with violence.

Worse, 3 to 4 am, and evenings; warmth, summer. Better in open air and company. Compare: Athamantha (confused head, vertigo better lying down, bitter taste

and saliva. Hands and feet icy cold); Antimon; Calc; Ars; Cicuta. Complementary: Calc.

Feels bound up, or in a vise. Occipital pain extending down spine; better lying down and by pressure. Head symptoms relieved by expelling flatus (Sanguin) and by stool. Hair feels pulled. Vertigo with drowsiness, with palpitation; head hot after vertigo ceases.

Puffed, red-spotted, collapsed. Expression anxious, full of pain; linea nasalis marked.

Photophobia; swelling of Meibomian glands. Rolling of eyes on falling asleep. Eyes drawn downward; pupils dilated.

Feel obstructed. Sense of something hot from ears. Hissing sound.

Stopped up with much thick mucus. Herpetic eruption on tip of nose. Frequent ineffectual desire to sneeze.

Dry. Aphthæ. Tongue seems too long. Burning and pustules in throat, with difficult swallowing.

Intolerance of milk; vomiting as soon as swallowed or in large curds. Hungry after vomiting. Regurgitation of food about an hour after eating. Violent vomiting of a white frothy matter. Nausea at sight of food. Painful contraction of stomach. Vomiting, with sweat and great weakness, accompanied by anguish and distress, followed by sleepiness. Stomach feels turned upside down, with burning feeling up to the chest. Tearing pains in the stomach extending to œsophagus.

Cold, internal and external, with aching pain in bowels. Colic, followed by vomiting, vertigo, and weakness. Tense, inflated, and sensitive. Bubbling sensation around navel.

Undigested, thin, greenish, preceded by colic, with tenesmus, and followed by exhaustion and drowsiness. Cholera infantum; child cold, clammy, stupid, with staring eyes and dilated pupils. Obstinate constipation; feels as if all bowel action is lost. Choleraic affections in old age.

Cutting pain in bladder, with frequent urging. Pain in kidneys.

Lancinating pains in sexual organs. Pimples; itching when warm. Menses watery. Swelling of mammary glands, with lancinating pains.

Difficult, oppressed, anxious respiration; crampy constriction. Sufferings render patient speechless.

Violent palpitation, with vertigo, headache and restlessness. Pulse rapid, hard and small. Back and Extremities.––Want of power to stand up or hold head up. Back feels as if in a vise. Aching in small of back. Weakness of lower extremities. Fingers and thumbs clenched. Numbness of hands and feet. Violent spasms. Squinting of eyes downward.

Excoriation of thighs in walking. Easy perspiration. Surface of body cold and covered with clammy sweat. Lymphatic glands swollen. Itching eruption around joints. Skin of hands dry and shrunken. Ecchymosis. Anasarca.

Disturbed by violent startings; cold perspiration. Dozing after vomiting or stool. Child is so exhausted, it falls asleep at once.

Great heat; no thirst. Profuse, cold sweat. Must be covered during sweat.

Third to thirtieth potency.

Aethusa Cynapium

Generalities: Before Aethusa was known a certain class of cases of cholera infantum, and vomiting and diarrhea in children, all resulted fatally, because there was no remedy that looked like such serious cases.

Death is stamped on the face from the beginning, and if there are any remedies in the book that save life this is one of them. It applies to the cases that come on very suddenly in hot weather in infancy, with extreme prostration.

The mother does not suspect the child is sick until she takes it from the crib; only a few hours before it was well; but when cholera infantum is prevalent in hot weather, this little one fills its stomach with milk and almost before it has had time to coagulate or form into curds the milk comes up partly in curds and partly liquid, and accompanying the vomiting there is a thin, yellow greenish, slimy stool.

The child has the appearance as if it were dying, pale Hippocratic face, there is a whitish-blue pallor around the lips, the eyes are sunken and there is a sunken condition around the nose. The mother is astonished and sends for the doctor hurriedly. The child sinks into an exhausted sleep.

It wakes up and again fills the stomach with milk which comes up again in a few minutes, partly in curd and partly liquid, and again there is the awful exhaustion, deathly appearance and prolonged sleep.

Without Aethusa, in two or three days the undertaker gets that child. That is pretty nearly the whole story of Aethusa.

It has delirium, it has excitement, it has mental disturbances of various kinds, but they are acute and accompany the brain troubles.

A certain class of infants come down sick in the hot weather, in the hot nights, and they get brain trouble, and from that time the stomach quits business, the bowels become relaxed, and everything put into the stomach either comes up or goes right through.

This occurs especially in those infants that have been fed as the ordinary everyday mother feeds her baby and how is that?

Every time it cries she puts it to the breast or feeds it. Well, now; let us think a bit. Every doctor ought to think a little, once in a while. Now meditate a trifle as to whether that is a wise or foolish thing to do.

It takes about two hours or two hours and a half for the ordinary baby's stomach to transact good wholesome business in digesting the milk taken, and it ought to have a rest of half an hour or so, and when we get up to three hours and the baby cries then it is probably hungry and will be glad to take some more and digest it.

Any shorter interval of feeding than that is bad practice, it would be just the same thing if the child should take half teacupful of milk and let it partly digest, and in a little while take little more, and then later add a little more.

It commences to spit up its food and it is sour, and the very first spell of hot weather that comes brings on head trouble. Only the toughest children will stand this bad method.

I have watched these children and seen them stand it until the summer. The doctor must put his foot down, and put it down violently, and make them see he means it.

The old woman comes in and says:

"That doctor does not know anything" and the baby must be fed.

Now Aethusa suits improperly fed babies. It is at the head of the list of medicines for that condition; that is, when digestion has absolutely ceased from brain trouble.

Stomach and digestion: So far as busy doctors have discovered the call for this remedy, it has been mostly among babies, but adults sometimes take on an Aethusa state, when digestion has absolutely ceased from brain trouble and from excitement.

It has cured dyspepsia from constant feeding, in those nibblers, those hungry fellows who are always eating, always nibbling, always taking crackers in their pockets until there comes a time when the stomach ceases to act.

It also suits cases of indigestion from head troubles, with hot head, vomiting, exhaustion, sweat and long sleep.

Convulsions: Aethusa has convulsions in children.

Sometimes the brain trouble does not affect the stomach, but the child goes into convulsions, with clammy hands, deathly countenance, and the sweat, exhaustion and sleep.

"Convulsions, great weakness and prostration, with sleepiness. Dosing of the child after vomiting and after stool, with convulsions." In the Aethusa patient there is much in the face and aspect to indicate a remedy; so much can be seen and comes within the observation, and so little questioning is necessary, that a sort of snap-shot prescribing can be done, but it is not to be recommended.

A busy physician, one who really and truly studies his Materia Medica, learned the principles, will in time do a great deal of what seems to be snap-shot prescribing, but he really does not do so, because he puts together many things that outsiders would not think of. Aethusa then shows itself upon the surface, whereas in many remedies there is nothing seen upon the surface because they manifest themselves in any or deeper sensations. Let me lay a case before you to illustrate this. For instance, take a robust looking fellow, who declares himself fairly well, out to lunch with you.

You have noticed for some time that his nose is all the time peeling off at once there is a star. He never talks about his health.

Pretty soon, while lunching, the door slams and he jumps. That is the second point. Then he tells you how much he eats, how well it affects him, how good he feels after eating, and you have noticed yourself that he eats a good deal. You have not said one word about his health to him. You have not asked him to tell you any symptoms. Finally you shove the pitcher of milk over to him, and he says:

"Oh, I can't drink milk; if I take milk it gives me diarrhoea; I never think of taking it." Who could not prescribe for that fellow without taking him into the office?

Who would think of anything but Natrum carb. for such a case?

Sometimes you can find out the whole story by getting a stubborn patient to go and dine with you.