Capsicum annuum

Lecture XLI — Tabacum, Dulcamara, Capsicum and Glonoin

Capsicum Annuum.

Capsicum possesses few, if any, of the narcotic properties of the Solanaceae, but it has, highly marked, the irritating properties of the group in high degree; but little of the drug is required to produce this irritation. It is eliminated from the body through the kidneys, producing strangury with burning when passing water. This drug acts best in persons of lax fibre, rather stout in build, who do not respond readily to medicine because they are of lax fibre, and also because of impaired digestion.

The Capsicum patient has weak digestion or weak stomach, hence the whole man is weak. Such patients are irritable and easily angered. This is true of either adults or children. They are worse from the least draft of air, even though this air be warm. They are clumsy in their motions.

They are subject to chills and fever. The chill commences in the back. Although the patient is thirsty, yet drinking causes shivering. The Capsicum patient is subject to catarrhal asthma with red face and well-marked sibilant rales. He coughs, and a successful cough raises phlegm, which relieves the asthma.

Capsicum has a symptom of the chest not often met with in practice, and that is very offensive breath during the cough.

It also has a well-marked action on the ear, especially on the middle ear. It is of use in rupture of the membrana tympani from disease when there is soreness or inflammation of the mastoid process of the temporal bone.

For abscess of the mastoid process the preferable remedies are Aurum and Nit?ic acid.

For chronic suppuration of the middle ear you may think of Silicea. Capsicum is of importance in diseases of the throat. It is indicated in diphtheria or in gangrene of the throat when there are burning blisters in the roof of the mouth and when there is an odor from the mouth like that of carrion. The throat feels constricted as if spasmodically closed. The patient is worse when not swallowing and in extreme cases greatly prostrated.

The most similar remedy here is Cantharis.

Capsicum is also indicated in elongation of the uvula.

In dysentery it is indicated when the stools are frequent but small and attended with violent tenesmus and burning in both rectum and bladder. The stools are bloody and slimy and contain shaggy pieces. There is thirst, and yet drinking causes shuddering.

Glonoin.

Blood.

Glonoin. \ Trauma.

(^ Convulsions.

Glonoin or nitro-glycerine is considered in this part of the course of lectures on account of its symptomatic resemblance to Belladonna. It is a ver)' easy drug to study. Though its main point of attack is the blood, it does not affect the quality of that fluid so much as it does its circulation. It acts very quickly and very violently. The key-note to the whole symptomatology of the drug is expressed in this one sentence : "A tendency to sudden and violent irregula? ities of the circulation .

With that for our foundation we can easily work out the other symptoms. The symptoms which are traceable to the irregularities in the circulation are these : very characteristic, indeed, is a throbbing headache. The pain may be in the whole head, or it may be in the forehead, vertex, occiput or any one part of the head. This throbbing is not a mere sensation; it is an actual fact. It really seems as though the blood-vessels would burst, so violent is the congestive action of the drug. The throbbing is synchronous with every impulse of the heart. The blood seems to surge in one great current up the spine and into the head. The bloodvessels externally become distended. The external jugulars look like two tortuous cords, the carotids throb violently and are hard, tense and unyielding to pressure. The face is >deep red. This throbbing is either associated with dull, distressing ..aching or with sharp, violent pains.

We find Glo?ioi?i applicable to sunstroke, indicated either by the :symptoms already mentioned, or by symptoms which show that the prolonged congestion has produced depressing effects upon the brain. The face becomes rather pale, the pulse, which was at first full, grows soft and feeble, and the respiration labored. There is not as much pressure about the chest as about the medulla oblongata, thus interfering with the nerves of respiration. The eyes are often fixed. The patient may even be unconscious. Glonoin, then, we find to be our best remedy for the effects of heat, whether the trouble arises from the direct rays of the sun, from hot weather or from working in the intense heat of a furnace, as in the case of foundrymen and machinists. These effects of the sun or heat are not confined to the head alone, but may involve the whole body. Thus we note oppression of breathing, with palpitation of the heart and nausea and vomiting, with white coated tongue. This nausea is not gastric in origin, but cerebral, as under Rhus tox., Belladonna and Apomorphine. The appetite is gone; there is no desire for food; there is a horrible sunken feeling in the epigastrium, and often, too, diarrhoea. All these symptoms call for