Chelidonium majus

YELLOWNESS. Bilious disturbances; vomiting, jaundice, catarrhs, etc. Pains shoot backward or in all directions. Stitches. Heavy, stiff, sore, paralysed, dislocative or broken feeling. Numbness. Horror of motion. .................... Lazy. Averse to mental exertion or conversation. Despondency. Vertigo; felt in vertex. Headaches extend backward. Heavy occiput. Supra-orbital pain. Mucus in eyes. Outward, blowing, crawling, etc., in ears. Dark red or sallow, sunken face. Red nose. Flapping alæ. Bitter taste. Yellow tongue; with indented edges (Hyds.). Choking, as from too large a morsel. Left sided goitre. Craves milk, piquant or hot foods (Lyc.). Nausea. Sensitive epigastrium. Sensation as of a plug in stomach. Gnawing, scraping gastric pains, > eating. LIVER PAINS GOING BACKWARD, OR FIXED AT ANGLE OF R. SCAPULA; to r. shoulder and occiput (Kali-c. Nux-v. Sep.). Rawness in liver. Gall-stones. As of a string about abdomen or neck. Stools pasty, pale, bright yellow, clayey or hard balls. Dyspnœa, < urinating (Dul.). Cough, as from dust; with much rattling, but little expectoration, or it flies from mouth. Hepato-pectoral symptoms. Like a nail deep in r. chest. Bilious pneumonia (Merc.). Fluctuating temperature. Pain from neck to r. temple. Itching, > eating. Lethargic, DROWSY and chilly. Icy cold nape and occiput. Cold fingertips. One foot cold. Burning heat, spreads from hands over body. Sweaty, with aversion to uncover and without relief; after midnight.

Motion. Cough. Touch. Change of weather. North Easters. 4 A.M. and 4 P.M. (Ign.).

Hot food. Eating; dinner. Milk. Pressure. Hot bath. Bending backward.

Right side: Portal system. Abdomen. Lungs (lower). Mucous membranes. Bowels (R). Occiput. Kidneys. Knees.

Complementary: Lyc. Merc-dul. Related: Bry. Kali-bi. Merc. Op. CHENOPODIUM ALBUM Deafness: variable; > high pitched voice.

Chelidonium majus

Celandine. Papaveraceae.

Persons of light complexion, blondes; thin, spare, irritable; subject to hepatic, gastric and abdominal complaints (Pod.) ; every age, sex and temperament.

Constant pain under the lower and inner angle of right scapula (Kali c., Mer. — under the left, Chenop. g.. Sang.).

Ailments : brought on or renewed by change of weather (Mer.) ; all lessen after dinner.

Tongue coated thickly yellow, with red edges, showing imprint of teeth (Pod. — large, flabby, with imprint of teeth, Mer.).

Desire for very hot drinks, unless almost boiling stomach will not retain them (Ars., Case.).

Periodic orbital neuralgia (right side), with excessive lachrymation ; tears fairly gush out (Rhus).

Constipation : stool, hard, round balls like sheep’s dung (Op., Plumb.) ; alternate constipation and diarrhoea.

Diarrhoea: at night; slimy, light-gray; bright-yellowish; brown or white, watery, pasty; involuntary.

Face, forehead, nose, cheeks remarkably yellow.

Yellow-gray color of the skin; wilted skin; of the palms of hands (Sep.).

Hepatic diseases; jaundice, pain in right shoulder.

Pneumonia of r. lung, liver complications (Mer.).

Spasmodic cough; small lumps of mucus fly from mouth when coughing (Bad., Kali c.).

Affects right side most; r. eye, r. lung, r. hypochondrium and abdomen, r. hip and leg; right foot cold as ice, left natural (Lyc.).

Old, putrid, spreading ulcers, with a history of liver disease, or of a tubercular diathesis.

Gall-stones, with pain under the right shoulderblade (terrible attacks of gall-stone colic. Card. m.).

Relations. — Chel. antidotes the abuse of Bry., especially in hepatic complaints.

Compare: Acon., Bry., Lyc., Mer., Nux, Sang., Sep., Sulph.

Ars., Lyc. and Sulph. follow well, and will often be required to complete the cure.

Lecture XXVII — Sanguinaria and Chelidonium

Chelidonium majus, \ Kali carb.

I Bryonia.

[_ Lycopodium.

I shall be brief in my remarks on Chelidonium, aswe have not the time to treat exhaustively of the drug. It is a unique remedy, possessing points of similarity with its congeners, Sanguinaria and Opium, and also with Nux vomica, Mercurius, Phosphorus and Kali carb. The plant yields an acrid, yellow, bitter juice, which, when applied locally, produces inflammation and even vesication. The principal value of Chelidonium lies in its action on the liver, lungs and kidneys. The patient is low-spirited, inclined to weep, but knows no reason therefor ; restless, must move from place to place, with mental anguish ; headache, with coldness extending from the neck into the occiput ; the head is so heavy he can scarcely raise it from the pillow ; pressure in the occiput toward the left ear.

Chelidonium may be indicated in many affections of the liver, from a simple congestion to a positive inflammation. It produces pains in the right hypochondrium all the way from a simple soreness to the most aggravating variety of sharp stitches, which shoot from the liver down into the stomach, or down into the back from the posterior aspect of the liver. There is marked pain under the angle of the right shoulder-blade. That is the key-note for the drug in hepatic disease. In addition to this you have the usual hepatic symptoms, swelling of the liver, chills, fever, jaundice, yellow-coated tongue, bitter taste in the mouth, tongue taking the imprint of the teeth, as you find under Mercury, and desire or craving for milk, which exceptionally agrees. There is usually also a craving for acids and for sour things, as pickles and vinegar. The stools are characteristically profuse, bright yellow and diarrhoeic, or they may be clayey. These are the symptoms of Chelidonium, and they are very definite. Let me tell you how to apply them. You may use the drug in simple biliousness ; in hepatic congestion or inflammation, and also in pneumonia with bilious symptoms, in what has been termed bilious pneumonia. The symptoms indicating it in the latter affection I will give you presently. This pain under the angle of the right scapula of Chelidonium brings to mind pains of a similar character found in other remedies. Chenopodium has dull pain lower than the angle of the right scapula and nearer the spinal column.

Ranunculus bulbosus has pain along the whole inner edge of the left scapula, at times extending below its inferior angle and through the left chest.

Lobelia syphilitica has pain under, not below, the inner border of the left scapula, worse after weeping.

Angustura has sharp cutting pain from just beneath the right scapula to the breast near the nipple.

Bryonia is very similar to Chelidonium in hepatic affections. Both remedies have sharp stitching pains,. both have pain under the right shoulder blade, both have bitter taste in the mouth and yellow-coated tongue, and both have swelling of the liver. But Bryonia differs in its stool, which is either hard, dry and brown or, if loose, it is papescent and profuse and associated with a colic very much like that of Colocynth. Sometimes the stools have an odor of old cheese. Lycopodium, which bears some resemblance to Chelidonium, is easily differentiated, especially in the rumbling of flatus in the left hypochondrium, in the sour rather than the bitter taste, in the sour vomiting, in the fulsomeness after partaking of small quantities of food, and in the character of the pains, which are dull and aching under Lycopodium, and sharp and lancinating under Chelidonuim.

You may use Chelidonium in neuralgia of the face. The pains go from the right cheek bone into the teeth or into the eye, or the pain may be located in the supra-orbital nerves. This neuralgia will not yield to Chelidonium , however, unless 3^011 have some of the hepatic symptoms of the drug present. It is a neuralgia dependent on disorder of the liver, and not an idiopathic prosopalgia.

Chelidonium is useful, as I have already intimated, in bilious pneumonia. It is also indicated in the capillary bronchitis of children when these hepatic symptoms are present, especially when it follows measles or whooping cough. The face in these cases is apt to be deep red. There is great oppression of the chest, as shown by the efforts to breathe and a fan-like motion of the alse nasi (a Lycopodium symptom, by the way), one hot and one cold foot (another Lycopodium symptom), and stitching pain under the right scapula. The cough is usually loose and rattling. The expectoration is not easily raised.

Mercurius is sometimes indicated in bilious pneumonia. It differs from Chelidonium in the character of the stool more than in anything else. The Mercury stool is slimy and is attended with great tenesmus before, during and after the stool, while in Chelidonium it is quite free. The Mercurius expectoration is apt to be blood-streaked, and there are sharp pains shooting through the lower portion of the right lung to the back, a symptom which, however, may also be in Chelidonium.

Antimonium tartaricum has yellow skin, urine and vomit, in bilious pneumonia ; stinging under right false ribs, frothy yellow tenacious sputum, rattling in chest with suffocation, fan-like motion of alse nasi, great oppression, strong heart beat.

Kali carb. is a remedy often forgotten in pneumonia. It is not indicated in the beginning, but later, when there is copious exudation into the lungs, with great rattling of mucus during the cough. The symptoms are worse toward two or three o'clock in the morning. The expectoration contains little globules of pus. There may even be cyanotic symptoms with pufhness of the upper eyelids.

A prominent liver remedy, covering many of the direct reflex symptoms of diseased conditions of that organ. The jaundiced skin, and especially the constant pain under inferior angle of right scapula, are certain indications. Paralytic drawing and lameness in single parts. The great general lethargy and indisposition to make any effort is also marked. Ailments brought on or renewed by change of weather. Serous effusions. Hydrocele. Bilious complication during gestation.

Worse, right side, motion, touch, change of weather, very early in morning. Better, after dinner, from pressure.

Icy coldness of occiput from the nape of neck; feels heavy as lead. Heavy, lethargic; drowsiness very marked, with general numbness; vertigo, associated with hepatic disturbance. Inclination to fall forward. Right-sided headache down behind ears and shoulder-blade. Neuralgia over right eye, right cheek-bone and right ear, with excessive lachrymation, preceded by pain in liver.

Yellow; worse nose and cheeks. Wilted skin.

Dirty yellow color of whites. Sore sensation on looking up. Tears fairly gush out. Orbital neuralgia of right eye, with profuse lachrymation; pupils contracted, relieved by pressure.

Flapping of alæ nasi (Lyc).

Tongue yellow, with imprint of teeth; large and flabby (Merc; Hyd). Taste bitter, pasty. Bad odor from mouth. Prefers hot food and drink. Nausea, vomiting; better, very hot water. Pain through stomach to back and right shoulder-blade. Gastralgia. Eating relieves temporarily, especially when accompanied with hepatic symptoms.

Jaundice due to hepatic and gall-bladder obstruction. Gall-colic. Distention. Fermentation and sluggish bowels. Constriction across, as by a string. Liver enlarged. Gallstones (Berberis).

Constipation; stools hard, round balls, like sheep's dung, bright yellow, pasty; clay-colored, stools float in water; alternation of diarrhœa and constipation. Burning and itching of anus (Ratanh; Sulph).

Profuse, foaming, yellow urine, like beer (Chenop) dark, turbid.

Menses too late and too profuse.

Very quick and short inspirations; pain on deep inspiration. Dyspnœa. Short, exhausting cough; sensation of dust not relieved by cough. Whooping-cough; spasmodic cough; loose, rattling; expectoration difficult. Pain in right side of chest and shoulder, with embarrassed respiration. Small lumps of mucus fly from mouth when coughing. Hoarse in afternoon. Constriction of chest.

Pain in nape. Stiff neck, head drawn to left. Fixed pain under inner and lower angle of right scapula. Pain at lower angle of left scapula.

Pain in arms, shoulders, hands, tips of fingers. Icy coldness of tips of fingers; wrists sore, tearing in metacarpal bones. Whole flesh sore to touch. Rheumatic pain in hips and thighs; intolerable pains in heels, as if pinched by too narrow a shoe; worse, right. Feels paralyzed. Paresis of the lower limbs with rigidity of muscles.

Dry heat of skin; itches, yellow. Painful red pimples and pustules. Old, spreading, offensive ulcers. Wilted skin. Sallow, cold, clammy.

Chelidonin.––(Spasm of smooth muscle everywhere, intestinal colic, uterine colic, bronchial spasm, tachycardia, etc). Boldo-Boldoa fragrans–– (Bladder atony; cholecystitis and biliary calculus. Bitter taste, no appetite; constipation, hypochondriasis languor, congestion of liver; burning weight in liver and stomach. Painful hepatic diseases. Disturbed liver following malaria). Elemuy Gauteria––(Stones in kidneys and bladder; grain doses of powdered bark in water or 5 drops of tincture. Pellagra). Sulph often completes its work. Complementary: Lycop; Bryon. Antidote: Chamom. Compare: Nux; Sulph; Bry; Lyc; Opium; Podophyl; Sanguin; Ars.

Tincture and lower attenuations.

Chelidonium

Chelidonium is a remedy more suitable for acute diseases, though it cures certain chronic conditions. It is not a very deep acting remedy. It is about like Bryonia in its general plane, length and depth of action.

It has been used principally in gastric and intestinal catarrhs, in acute and semi-chronic liver troubles, and in right-sided pneumonia.

Skin: The skin is likely to be sallow, and gradually increases to a marked jaundice in connection with these complaints. Semi-chronic gastritis, with jaundice.

"Gastro-duodenal catarrh.

Congestion and soreness in the liver, with jaundice.

Right-sided pneumonia, complicated with liver troubles, or jaundice."

This remedy seems to act throughout the system, but almost always along with it the liver is involved, and it is suitable for what the old people and the doctors called "biliousness." The patient is generally bilious, has nausea and vomiting. Distension of the veins. Yellowish grey color of the skin.

Mind: Very few mental symptoms have been brought out in its proving not enough to give us a good idea of the desires and aversions. We do not get a clear idea of the intellectual faculties. It needs further proving, yet in many regions it has had superabundance of proving.

"Sadness and anxiety."

Brooding over some sort of trouble generally runs through the mental state.

"Anxiety, allowing no rest," keeping the patient uneasy day and night.

Sadness, as if she had committed a crime; as if some dreadful thing was going to happen. So sad that she thinks she must die "Weeping despondency.

Distaste for mental exertion and conversation. If you examine those medicines that act primarily upon the liver, that slow down the action of the liver, you will find the word melancholia."

With heart troubles, great excitement, With liver troubles, slowing down of the mental state, inability of the mind to work, sluggishness of the mind, inability to think, inability to meditate, slow pulse. Sluggishness of the whole economy.

Dizziness: The sensorium is very commonly disturbed, and the patient is dizzy.

"Things go round in a circle."

Dizziness comes, and it does not let up until nausea, and sometimes vomiting, follows. "So much turning in the head that he vomits. Confusion of mind.

Loss of consciousness and fainting."

These are also common features with liver troubles.

The mind symptoms are present more or less with the following liver symptoms; there are pains of a dull aching character, "soreness." Bruised pains. Tenderness of the liver to touch. Aching pains, that seem to involve the whole right lobe of the liver; creating a sensation of fullness. Pressure upwards, with difficulty of breathing. Pressure downwards, sympathetic with the stomach, with the nausea and vomiting.

Right scapula: And then more intense pain felt under the right scapula.

"Dull aching pains under the right scapula; sharp, shooting pains under the right scapula"; these complicate themselves again with pneumonia, with pleurisy.

It cures pneumonia and pleurisy; it cures various forms of congestion in the liver, when these pains go from before backward, and seem to be felt through the back.

"Stitching in the region of the liver, extending through to back.

Hard pains felt through the back."

Some patients will describe these pains as shooting pains; some as tearing pains, and others as sharp pains, going through the right hypochondrium or through the right lobe of the liver to the back.

"Pains from the region of the liver, shooting towards the back and shoulders.

Spasmodic pain in the region of the liver. Pressing pain in the region of the liver." In congestion or inflammation, fullness and enlargement, semi-chronic cases, or even acute, this medicine proves suitable for such conditions. The right hypochondrium is tense and painful to pressure.

This remedy has cured gall stone colic. Practitioners, who know how to direct a remedy, relieve gall stone colic in a few minutes. We have remedies that act on the circular fibres of these little tubes, causing them to relax and allow the stone to pass painlessly.

In a perfect state of health, of course, there are no stones in the bile that is held in the gall bladder, but this little cystic duct opens its mouth and a little gall stone engages in it, and it creates and irritation by scratching along the mucous membrane of that little tube.

When this pain is a shooting, stabbing, tearing, lancinating pain, extending through to the back, Chelidonium will cure it. The instant it relieves the patient says:

"Why, what a relief; the pain has gone." The remedy has relieved that spasm, the little duct opens up and the stone passes out through the ductus communis choledochus. Every remedy that is indicated by the symptoms will cure gall stone colic.

A patient lying in bed, with great heat, extreme sensitiveness, cannot have the body touched, screaming with pains, red face and hot head, will gall stone colic, will be relieved in three minutes by Bell., but that is not at all like this remedy. Natrum sulph. and many other remedies have cured gall stone colic in a few minutes, when the symptoms agreed.

Now as to the pneumonia, it is generally of the right side, or right sided spreading to the left. The right-sidedness is marked, and but small portions of the left lung are involved. The pleura is generally involved, and so there are stitching, tearing pains.

One may not practice long before be will find a Chelidonium patient, sitting up in bed with high fever, bending forward upon his elbows, holding himself perfectly still, for this medicine has as much aggravation from motion as Bry. All of the pains are extremely aggravated from motion. This patient is sitting with a pain that transfixes him; he cannot stir, he cannot move without the pain shooting through him like a knife. The next day you will see that his skin is growing yellow. If you see him in the beginning Chelidonium will relieve him and you will prevent that pneumonia. It is not uncommon in children, and it is extremely common in adults. Do not get confused with Bryonia. Both are violently worse from motion. Bryonia wants to lie on the painful side, or wants to lie on the back if the pneumonia is mostly in the posterior part of the right lung. In Chelidonium he is worse from touch and motion.

Bell. has that extremely painful, tearing, rending, of the right lung with pleurisy, but in Bell., one cannot touch that right side, cannot press it, but must lie on the other side and he cannot move. Cannot stand a jar of the bed, because of the extreme sensitiveness to motion: I mention all three in this particular way because they have some things in common, but the remedies are different.

Chelidonium has cough with chest symptoms of the right side, liver affections, and the mental affections that commonly belong to these, violent aggravation from motion. The pains are ameliorated by heat. Pain that extends to the stomach, ameliorated by heat.

Mental symptoms: ameliorated by eating. Craves hot milk; hot fluids. Eating warm food ameliorates the liver, the chest and stomach symptoms.

"Bilious vomiting. Retching; bilious eructations. Nausea and retching during an attack of anxiety."

Stomach: These are all commonly present during the complaints described. The pains, when they become severe, seem to strike the stomach and cause vomiting. Ameliorated by something hot. "A feeling of anguish in the pit of the stomach. Persistent pain in the stomach; aggravated by motion and ameliorated by eructations. Constriction and sensitiveness in the pit of the stomach."

These are all aggravated by touch and ameliorated by eating.

"Constant aching pain in the stomach, ameliorated by food.

Constrictive, pinching pain in the stomach better from drawing up the limbs and lying on the left side, ameliorated by eating."

Eye: It has many eye symptoms. Stitching pains. "Opacity of the cornea."

Inflammations.

Bruised pain in the eyes.

Right supraorbital neuralgia."

In many instances it prefers the right side. In the face the jaundice is the most marked thing that is expressed and, then, we have the dirty gray complexion.

"Pale, dirty-yellow-face."

Head: The headaches are brought on from heat, unlike the stomach and the liver, and the lungs, etc.

The head is aggravated from motion, aggravated from beat, aggravated from a warm room, aggravated from warm applications. There is where it differs from the internal or general state. There are numerous headaches.

Periodical bilious sick headaches, with vomiting of bile, brought on from exposure to beat, from being overheated, aggravated from motion, wants to lie perfectly quiet in a dark room, and better from vomiting bile.

Old-fashioned bilious sick headaches. Bilious diarrhoea. Along with jaundice, clay-like, pale, faecal, puttylike stool. Bileless stool. Stool too light colored. Stool quite white in children. Diarrhea and constipation alternate. Stool brown, white, watery, green mucus, thin, pasty, bright yellow, or gray tinged with Yellow.

Voice and respiration: Hoarseness.

"While coughing, pain in the larynx, and pressure in the larynx."

The difficult breathing comes on with liver symptoms and pneumonia and chest troubles in general.

"Difficult respiration, with short fits of coughing. Short, quick breathing.

Anxiety as if he must choke.

Difficult breathing; tightness over the chest as if breathing would be hindered."

It has also nightly attacks of humid asthma. This is brought on from every change of the weather. All its complaints are brought on from changes in the weather. He cannot stand weather changes, either too cold or too warm. Rheumatic complaints in the shoulders, hips and limbs, from changes in the weather.

With complaints of the liver, lungs and chest, there are coughs. They are spasmodic. The chronic cough is violent, spasmodic, dry, coming in paroxysms.

"Spasmodic cough, without expectoration." After it has existed a while there wilt be some expectoration.

"Repeated attacks of short cough: Short cough, with little grayish phelgm.

Rattling; fatiguing cough".

Limbs: In the limbs there are rheumatic and neuralgic pains. Neuralgia of the limbs in general, most violent. Limbs feel heavy and stiff. Limbs flabby. Later the patients runs down somewhat, weak heart, weak circulation; dropsical conditions of the limbs. Great restlessness.

"Trembling and twitching of the limbs. Weariness.

Indolence.

Indisposition to work."

The neuralgias are more common in the head and face than in the lower parts of the body, in the limbs and in the extremities.

It has sharp, febrile attacks, such as found in pneumonia with chill and in inflammation of the liver. It has cured intermittent fever, coming in the afternoon and evening.

Itching of the skin. jaundice. It has cured old putrid ulcers.