Croton tiglium

Drawn backward feeling; in eyes; nipples, etc. .................... Neuralgia of tongue. Pressure excites rectal pain or a stool. Gurgling or swashing as of water in bowels; THEN SUDDEN, PROFUSE, GUSHING STOOL OF YELLOW WATER, < DRINKING; then prostration. Diarrhœa. Cholera infantum. Can't inhale deeply enough. Pain from nipple to back, as child nurses. Nodes in mammæ. Neck and shoulders pain. Violently itching, tense burning, red skin; sore if scratched, > gentle rubbing. Eruptions; clustered; of blisters which burst and form crusts; vesiculo-pustular (Sep.), < genitals, temples and crown of head. Eczema. Zoster.

DRINKING. Eating. Washing. Motion. Receding eruptions.

MUCOUS MEMBRANES: Bowels. Eyes. Bladder. Mammæ. Uterus. Skin: SCROTUM. FACE.

Related: Rhus-t.

Croton tiglium

Croton Oil Seeds. Euphorbiaceae.

Affects mucous membrane of intestinal tract, producing transudations of watery portions of blood, a copious, watery diarrhoea (Ver.), and develops an acute eczema over whole body (Rhus).

The bowels are moved as if by spasmodic jerks, “coming out like a shot” (Gamb.) ; as soon as patient eats, drinks, or even while eating; yellow watery stool.

Constant urging to stool followed by sudden evacuation, which is shot out of the rectum (Gamb., Grat., Pod., Thuja).

Swashing sensation in intestines, as from water, before stool (rumbling before stool. Aloe).

Drawing pain through the chest from breast to scapula, of same side every time the child nurses; nipple very sore.

Intense itching of skin, but so tender is unable to scratch; > by gentle rubbing; eczema over whole body.

Intense itching of genitals of both sexes (Rhus) ; vesicular eruption on male; so sensitive and sore is unable to scratch.

Cough ; as soon as the head touched the pillow a spasmodic paroxysm of cough set in; suffocated, must walk about the room or sleep in a chair.

infantile diarrhoea; Sil. pain from nipple through to back when nursing.

Aggravation — Diarrhoea ; every motion ; after drinking; while eating or nursing (Arg. n., Ars.) ; during summer; from fruit and sweetmeats (Gamb.) ; the least food or drink.

Lecture XXX — Coniferae — Abies nigra, Sabina, Terebinthina, Pix liquida and Thuja occidentalis; Euphorbiaceae — Croton tiglium, etc.

EUPHORBIACE^E.

The members of the Euphorbiaceae contain an acrid principle which in some cases is oily in character, in others resinous; in the latter case, the juice escapes from the plant as a milky fluid, which dries into a gum. These oils or gums have two properties. If applied to the skin they produce redness and vesication. The vesicles fill with yellowishwhite serum, and may even suppurate and form scabs of a honey color. They all act more or less intensely as purgatives, producing a watery diarrhoea, associated with colic, tenesmus, flatulence, burning, nausea and vomiting. The medicines which we derive from this order are Croton tiglium, Jatropha curcas, Yucca ftlame?itosa, Euphorbium officinarum, Euphorbia corollata, Mercurialis peremiis, Hippomane mancinella and Ricinus com?nunis.

Croton tiglium, Etc This remedy produces a diarrhoea with yellowish watery stool pouring out like water from a hydrant, often associated with nausea and vomiting. This nausea is of a very aggravating character, and is attended by faintness and loss of sight. Colic appears and is better from warm drinks. The stool returns with any effort to eat or drink. The nearest analogue to Croton tig. is Jatropha curcas, which produces a perfect picture of cholera Asiatica, with great prostration and simultaneous vomiting and purging. The vomited matters look like rice-water or the white of an egg. There are also cramps in the calves and coldness of the body.

The next similar drug is the Euphorbia corollata. This produces vomiting and purging, just like the previous remedy, with cold sweat all over the body. It has more markedly than the other members of this group a peculiar mental state—the patient wants to die. Cascarilla or Sweet-bark has abdominal symptoms relieved by warm drinks, but it seems to be useful in a different class of cases from the foregoing remedies. We use it when there are knotty stools covered with mucus, like Graphites, and associated with colic and burning just like the other remedies of the group. Cascarilla also has frequent pale red haemorrhages from the bowels. These haemorrhages do not consist of a simple oozing of blood, such as often follows a stool when haemorrhoids are present, nor is it a haemorrhage from the bowels from hepatic disease, but it comes from disease of the blood-vessels. Yucca jilamentosa has a predominance of the bilious symptoms over the gastric and intestinal. It has frontal or temporal headaches, frequent flushing of the face, yellow or sallow face, tongue coated yellow or yellowish-white, and taking the imprint of the teeth. There are also dull aching about the centre of the liver, poor appetite, distended abdomen which is sensitive to the touch, colic or colicky pains, tenesmus with frequent passage of flatus, and frequent watery or yellowishbrown stools.

Now let us study the action of these remedies on the skin. When Croton tiglium is applied to the skin it produces an erythema, soon followed by a group of vesicles which are almost confluent, and which burn and itch intolerably. If the action of the drug is allowed to continue, these vesicles form a yellowish scab much resembling that of milk-crust, in which disease it may be indicated, especially when the bowel symptoms suit.

Hippomane mancinella was first proved by Dr. Muir. Its power of producing vesicles has been utilized in scarlet fever. Its symptoms are these: delirium; sore throat, with inability to swallow on account of the constriction in the throat and oesophagus; burning of the eyes, made worse by closing the lids.

Yucca produces an erythematous redness of the skin. In two provers it produced a burning and swelling of the prepuce with redness of the meatus urinarius. An examination of allopathic text-books will show you that Yucca has been recommended for gonorrhoea.

Euphorbium officinarum differs somewhat from the others. Like them, it produces an erythematous and vesicular eruption. Its chief value, however, arises from its action on the bones. It is used in diseases of these structures with burning pains, especially after the abuse of mercury.

Ricinus communis, or Castor oil, has the effect of increasing the quantity of milk in nursing women. It is here similar to Urtica urens, which is an excellent remedy for absence of milk after confinement. Castor oil, when abused, is antidoted by two remedies, Bryonia and Nux vomica. Bryonia is useful on account of a specific relation to the symptoms of Ricinus, and Nux on account of its relation to drastic remedies in general.

Croton-oil Seed Is a valuable remedy in diarrhœa, summer complaint, and skin affections. These may alternate with each other. Feels tight all over. It is one of the antidotes to Rhus poisoning, as is evident from its wide and intense action upon skin and mucous surface, causing both irritation and inflammation, with formation of vesicles and mucous discharges. Has elective affinity for skin of face and external genitals. Burning in the œsophagus.

Worse, least food or drink; during summer; touch, night and morning, washing.

Pressing pain in forehead, especially orbits.

Granular lids; pustules of cornea. Red and raw appearance. Feel drawn backward. Eruptions around eyes. Tensive pain above right orbit.

Copious watery stools, with much urging; always forcibly shot out, with gurgling in intestines; worse, drinking the least quantity, or even while eating. Constant urging to stool, followed by sudden evacuation. Swashing sensation in intestines.

Night urine foaming; dark orange color; turbid on standing; greasy particles floating on top. Day urine is pale, with white sediment.

Drawing-pain through the left chest into the back. Asthma, with cough; cannot expand the chest. Nursing women; every suck the child gives produces pain from nipple back. Inflamed breasts. Cough; as soon as he touches the pillow must get up. Sensitive to deep breathing.

Feels hide-bound. Intense itching; but scratching is painful. Pustular eruption, especially on face and genitals, with fearful itching, followed by painful burning. Vesicles; confluent oozing. Vesicular erysipelas, itching exceedingly. Herpes zoster; stinging, smarting pains of the eruption.

Compare: Momordica charantia-Hairy Mordica––(has marked drastic properties, producing colic, nausea, vomiting, cholera-like symptoms, abdomen seems full of fluid discharged explosively, thin, watery, yellow. Great thirst). Rhus; Anagallis; Anacard; Sepia. Antidote: Ant tart.

Sixth to thirtieth potency.

Croton Tiglium

Skin: Croton oil, when applied to the skin, produces both vesicles and pustules upon an inflamed base, and the part becomes very red and sore.

The inflammation often increases until it resembles erysipelas, but more commonly the eruption produced resembles a vesicular eczema. This eruption will come on for a few days and will then desiccate, and in a few days longer it will desquamate.

When one has been overdosed, as is done in a too prolonged proving, or by the crude drug, or when the prover has been markedly sensitive, we get an alternation of states, the internal alternating with the external.

After the eruption is out the internal manifestations are not present, as is seen in the rheumatic state, the cough and the bowel symptoms. If we study these groups separately we will find they are all interesting.

Cough: First, its cough. It has an asthmatic cough, coming on in the middle of the night, often arousing the patient from a sound sleep. Attacks of violent coughing, with dyspnoea and choking, worse at night and worse on lying down, compelling him to sit up, to be bolstered up in bed, or to sit up in a reclining chair. His friends wonder if he is not going into consumption. If it is a child they wonder whether it is not whooping cough. There is extreme irritation of the air passages, so that the inhalation of air brings on the cough. Sensitive to deep breathing. Now, this will go on for a while and finally he will break out with an eruption somewhere upon the body, vesicles and pustules, in clusters and patches, that become inflamed and red and finally dry up and desquamate and disappear, and then back comes his cough. This may go on as a chronic state, and when such is the case it will be very well to know this remedy.

Bowels: The next most important symptoms are the bowel symptoms, and perhaps they are the best known of any of its symptoms outside of the eruption. It is suitable in both acute and chronic diarrhoea. It is suitable in cholera infantum. The marked feature is the extreme, suddenness with which the stool is ejected. It seems to come out in one gush of yellow, watery or pappy stool; soft, thin fÊces, coming, out with one gush, so marked is this that it is not an uncommon thing for a rural patient to describe it as "like that of a goose."

It all gushes out in one squirt.

The mother says of the little patient: "You would be astonished, doctor, at the violent rush, for it all comes out with one squirt." That is descriptive. Many remedies have a holding on and a prolonged effort at stool, until it takes quite a long time. Many of the diarrheas are prolonged with numerous little gushes of thin fÊces or water, but this particular feature is striking.

It may not always be so, but this violent gush of thin, yellow faeces or yellow water is a striking feature of the remedy.

With this the abdomen is very sensitive, and is greatly distended; there is much gurgling in the bowel, and when the physician puts his hand upon it the patient will say he feels the gurgling, as if he were full of water, and it probably is so, for the expulsion of the stool would not occur in one strong gush were it not for the fact that the colon and rectum were full of fluid.

Another peculiar thing commonly attending Croton tig. diarrheas is that pressure over the abdomen or pressure about the umbilicus causes a pain in the rectum and urging to stool, and a feeling, with the expulsion of the stool, as if the rectum would protrude. Clinically it has been described as if the pain followed the intestines all the way down to the anus.

The taking of a little water, or of a little milk, what would ordinarily be suitable food for such a diarrhea, will at times cause an instant urging to stool; he must go to stool immediately after eating.

This gives the general features of the Croton tig. diarrhoea. If it is in an infant there is great exhaustion, tympanitic abdomen, much rumbling of the bowels, great sinking, and as soon as the infant takes one mouthful of milk or draws from the mother's breast it expels a gush of liquid or pappy stool.

Eyes: Another most important group of symptoms is its eye symptoms. It has eye symptoms of an inflammatory character, and around the eyes and upon the lids are vesicles and pustules.

Pustules upon the cornea, granular lids. Inflammation of all the tissues of the eye. It has an inflammation of the iris and conjunctiva. The blood vessels of the eyes are distended, the eye looks red and raw. The eyelids when turned out are seen to be greatly inflamed and granular, covered with vesicles and pustules.

With this inflammatory condition there is a sensation very commonly present in the Croton tig. eye cases, as if the eye were drawn backwards by a string, or as if the optic nerves were dragging the eyes backwards into the head. This drawing in the back of the eye as with a string is also peculiar to Paris quadrifolia, but the conditions are different in Paris quad. In headaches from overuse of the eyes in engravers or those doing fine needle work, with much neuralgia in the head, due probably to the overuse of the eyes, when the pains in the eyes are not attended with inflammation, but are more of the type of dull aches and pains that you might call only rheumatic or neuralgic, with this sensation as if the eyes were drawl) back into the brain; in these neuralgic cases use Paris quad.

But in the inflammatory conditions such as I have described, with the same drawing back as with a string, Croton tig. is the remedy. Troublesome eczema of the scalp in infants, either purely vesicular or intermingled more or less with pustules. The vesicles dry up and then desquamate, and now there is a red, raw, inflamed surface, sensitive to touch.

After desquamation has pretty nearly finished, a new crop of pustules and vesicles comes out, and while one place is clearing off another is vesicular. This is how it goes on with a chronic eczema. The eruptions are often about the eyes, on the temples, over the face and on top of the head.

The appearance is so nearly like Sepia that the two very often cannot be distinguished. Sepia has the same vesiculation intermingled with pustules, the bleeding and rawness of the surface and the eruption of new crops. Sepia is more frequently indicated in this raw and bleeding state of the scalp, in crusta lactea, or the eruption of children that Crot. tig. Under Croton tig. infants in this state very often have attacks of gushing diarrhea, coming on from the slightest disturbance or indigestion; this is a great help in guiding to the remedy.

When the two groups of symptoms are combined, the scalp symptoms and the diarrhea, you can hardly make a mistake. You will see this also, that if the diarrhea is at all prolonged, the head will steadily improve and you will think your patient is getting well of the scalp trouble, but when the diarrhea slackens up a little out will come a fresh crop.

If the diarrhoea becomes chronic the external eruption will disappear, and if the diarrhea improves the external eruption gets worse. It seems necessary in such a constitution to have a vent. The mucous membrane is but the internal skin, and the integument of the body the external skin, and this remedy especially manifests itself upon one or the other of these, the mucous membrane or the integument.

Lactation: It has another manifestation that you want to carry in mind, a group of symptoms in relation to lactation. After confinement the mother may go on a little while with all things following normally, but all at once she commences to have pains in one or the other mammary gland, and the drawing as with a string comes up again.

It feels to her as if a string were attached behind the nipple pulling backward, a sharp, drawing, stinging pain that will in some instances keep her walking the floor night and day.

Though it is but a little thing it is a very important symptom to know with Croton tig. We see this drawing, as with a string, in the eye and in the breast, and also the symptom, very like the Plumbum symptom, drawing in the naval upon pressure, somewhat like a string. Associating such things together will enable you to understand them as a part of the nature of the remedy and to keep them in mind. I once cured a woman of this painful drawing from the nipple as with a string. I watched her walk the floor and saw that the suffering must be very intense, for at times it brought tears to her eyes. She had borne it several nights, which shows that Croton tig. is capable of curing a pain that is very prolonged or tedious.

The breast had been poulticed, hot applications had been put upon it, and they did not give relief, a point which is worth remembering. In cholera infantum, we will naturally have the symptoms of vomiting, which, however, are not so common to Croton tig., although it has some vomiting, So in cases of cholera infantum, in which the vomiting is not so important a feature as the loose bowels, the remedy may be Crot. tig.

A symptom is reported that is of great value. Excessive nausea with vanishing of sight, vertigo, worse after drinking, with frequent discharges of yellowish-green water from the bowels; excessive nausea, much water in the mouth. So we note the excessive nausea and not so great vomiting.

The nausea is more like that of Ipecac, but in Ipecac. we have nothing like the stools of Crot. tig., we have only scanty little gushes, every minute a little gush with tenesmus. Vomiting is the all important symptom in the cholera infantum of Ipecac., and when the stomach is emptied there is overwhelming retching and exhaustion from it, and the stools are scanty; but in Croton tig., the stools are copious and while there is nausea the vomit ing is seldom and scanty.

Another feature to be considered in this remedy is its relation to Rhus.

It is an antidote to Rhus. Croton tig. is closely related in its vesicular eruption to the Rhus family (particularly Rhus tox.). Anacardium, Sepia and Anagallis.

Skin: The eruptions of Croton tig. very often select as a location the genital organs. Rhus does the same, and when the genital organs are the principal seat of the eruptions in Rhus poisoning Croton tig. will commonly be its antidote; also when the eruptions are most about the eyes and scalp Croton tig. will often furnish an antidote. When the symptoms, however, confine them selves to the palms of the hands Croton tig. is not the remedy, but it is Anagallis. Anagallis does upon the palms of the hands just what Croton tig. does upon the genitals. If you examine Anagallis you will find that the eruptions will come out and desquamate, and no sooner does the surface look as if it would heal than a new crop comes out. Rhus is similar in that it locates upon the palms of the, hands, but Rhus does not repeat itself. upon inflamed surfaces. In the Croton tig. eruption there is some burning, but nothing like that of Rhus.

The Rhus burning pain in eruptions that are marked is almost like fire. It is worse from the air, and it is better from dip ping the part in water as hot as it is possible to endure it. Persons who have these Rhus eruptions talk about scalding their hands to relieve the itching and burning.

So it is with Croton tig, but it is usually so sore he cannot touch it; when the eruption is so mild that he can handle it, we find that the slightest rubbing relieves the itching.

In Rhus touch aggravates the itching. In bad cases of Rhus poisoning he will hold his fingers far apart if they have very large blisters upon them, and he will not touch the place because it establishes a voluptuous itching that nearly drives him wild.

Although this is not so with Croton tig., still they are similar enough to each other to be antidotal; they do not have to be exactly alike, but they need to be similar.

It is true that remedies that are relieved by scratching are more nearly antidotal to such remedies as are relieved by scratching. The more similar the better; but medicines will antidote each other when they are similar only in general character, and they will cure disease when they are similar in general character.

It is also true that medicines while they are not similar in general character may be similar enough in special localities to remove the symptoms in these localities, while the disease will go on. The remedy in this case is not similar enough to cure the disease, but it has removed some of the symptoms. That is the most miserable kind of a prescription, as it changes the manifestations of the disease without changing its nature. In that way, a very poor prescription may hunt around and get one remedy for one group of symptoms and another remedy for another group, and the patient be worse off than before. If the remedies are similar as to their general nature, then the little superficial symptoms are not so extremely important.

"Frequent, corrosive itching on glans and scrotum."

"Vesicular eruption on scrotum and penis." It is a remedy for vesicular and pustular eruptions upon the genital organs. It is closely related to Petroleum, which has fine red vesicular and granular elevations, intermingled with fine red rash upon the genitals, itching intensely, worse at times by scratching until burning comes on and then bleeding which relieves.