Veratrum album

bowels, fingers, toes, etc.; with rigidity. Progressive weakness and emaciation; in acute diseases, eg., whooping cough, ague, etc. .................... Delirium; early; with violence, loquacity or lewdness; during pain. Prays, curses and howls in turn. Acute manias, insanities, etc. Remorse. Loss of ideation. Sits in silence. Melancholia. Overpowering headache. Hair bristles; painful. Face; deathly pale on rising; bluish, pinched or distorted; frowning; terrified look. Red l. cheek, as if burnt. Jaws cramp on chewing. Heaviness in teeth. Burning thirst. Craves ice water or sour drinks. Vomits or eructates froth. EXCESSIVE VOMITING, WITH PURGING; violent retching, cutting colic, cramps in limbs and rapid prostration. Cholera; morbus, infantum, etc. Painful epigastrium. Watery, green, odorless or colorless (rice water) stool, or in large masses. Nymphomania. The air seems too hot. Dyspnœa. Tickling down throat, into lungs. Continuous, violent cough; with retching; < cold drinks. Neglected pertussis, with complications. Aphonia. Heart; cuttings at; weak; visible palpitation. Fine burnings, in arms; r. to left. Cramps in calves; during stool (Ap. Sec-c.); between scapulæ, etc. > motion. Skin feels scorched. Awakes at night trembling. Thready pulse. GENERAL COLDNESS (icy); on vertex; of nose; in mouth; of waterbrash; limbs, sweat, etc. Blood seems to run cold or internal heat with cold (wrinkled) surface. Fevers showing external coldness only. Congestive chill.

EXERTION. DRINKING. Cold drinks. Fright. During pain. Wet cold.

Hot drinks. Walking about. Covering. Lying. VIOLENT EFFECTS; PROFOUND PROSTRATION, COLD SWEAT ON FOREHEAD, FAINTNESS OR COLLAPSE. SUDDEN, EXCESSIVE EVACUATIONS. Cramps; in chest,

NERVES: ABDOMINAL. Heart. Blood-vessels. Vertex. Blood. Respiratory and digestive systems.

Complementary: Carb-v. Related: Ars. Cam. Cup. Cyanides. Tab.

Veratrum album

White Hellebore. Melanthaceae.

For children and old people; the extremes of life; persons who are habitually cold and deficient in vital reaction; young people of a nervous, sanguine temperament.

Adapted to diseases with rapid sinking of the vital forces ; complete prostration ; collapse.

Cold perspiration on the forehead (over entire body. Tab. ) ; with nearly all complaints.

Cannot bear to be left alone; yet persistently refuses to talk.

Thinks she is pregnant or will soon be delivered.

Mania with desire to cut and tear everything, especially clothes (Taran.); with lewd, lascivious talk, amorous or religious (Hyos., Stram.).

Attacks of fainting from least exertion (Carbo v., Sulph. ) ; excessive weakness.

Sinking feeling during haemorrhage (fainting. Trill.).

Sensation of a lump of ice on vertex, with chilliness (Sep.) ; as of heat and cold at same time on scalp; as if brain were torn to pieces.

Face: pale, blue, collapsed; features sunken, hippocratic ; red while lying, becomes pale on rising up (Acon.).

Thirst : intense, unquenchable, for large quantities of very cold water and acid drinks; wants everything cold.

Craving for acids or refreshing things (Phos. ac.).

Icy coldness: of face, tip of nose, feet, legs, hands, arms, and many other parts.

Cold feeling in abdomen (Colch., Tab.).

Violent vomiting with profuse diarrhoea.

Vomiting: excessive with nausea and great prostration; < by drinking (Ars.) ; by least motion (Tab.) ; great weakness after.

Cutting pain in abdomen as from knives.

Cholera: vomiting and purging; stool, profuse, watery, gushing, prostrating; after fright (Acon.).

Diarrhoea: frequent, greenish, watery, gushing;

mixed with flakes; cutting colic, with cramps commencing in hands and feet and spreading all over; prostrating, after fright; < least movement; with

VERATRUM W^^\}^~{Continued) , vomiting, cold sweat on forehead during and prostration after (Ars., Tab.).

Constipation: no desire; stool large, hard (Bry., Sulph.); in round, black balls (CheL, Op., Plb.) ; from inactive rectum; frequent desire felt in epigastrium (Ign. — in rectum, Nux) ; painful, of infants and children, after Lyc. and Nux.

Dysmenorrhoea : with vomiting and purging, or exhausting diarrhoea with cold sweat (Amm. c., Bov.); is so weak can scarcely stand for two days at each menstrual nisus (Alum., Carbo an., Coc.).

Bad effects of opium eating, tobacco chewing.

Pains in the limbs during wet weather, getting worse from warmth of bed, better by continued walking.

In congestive or pernicious intermittent fever, with extreme coldness, thirst, face cold and collapsed; skin cold and clammy, great prostration; cold sweat on forehead and deathly pallor on face.

Relations.. — After: Ars., Arn., Cinch., Cup., Ipec.

After Camph. in cholera and cholera morbus.

After Amm. c., Carbo v. and Bov., in dysmenorrhoea with vomiting and purging.

Aggravation. — From least motion; after drinking; before and during menses; during stool; when perspiring; after fright.

Often removes bad effects of excessive use of alcohol and tobacco.

Lecture XXIV — Melanthaceae — Colchicum, Veratrum album, Veratrum viride and Sabadilla

Veratrum Album.

Veratrum album is not a difficult remedy to understand. It has been used since the days of Hahnemann for cholera Asiatica, cholera morbus and other abdominal affections. Its symptoms in this relation are well known, but unless you are careful you will neglect an equally important use of the drug, and that is in mental symptoms. In poisoning with Veratrum, there are very few symptoms referable to the brain. It seems to act prominently on the abdominal organs, probably through the splanchnic nerves. When these nerves are paralyzed, the blood-vessels become over-charged with blood and pour forth their serum. In this respect it is similar to Elaterium. The prostration, the coldness and the terrible sinking sensation that belong to Veratrum all start from these nerves. But Veratrum may affect the brain as well. Even then the symptoms are not unlikely to be associated with coldness, weakness, etc.

We may have Veratrum album indicated in delirium. That you should notice particularly, as, in this respect, it becomes closely allied, apparently, to Belladonna. The delirium is associated with restlessness, with desire to cut and tear the clothing, with loquacity and rapid, earnest, loud talking; he strikes those about him; anxiety ; frightened at imaginary things ; lasciviousness ; lewdness in talk ; he springs out of bed and rushes about the room as if thereby to obtain relief. Thus far the symptoms are such that you can only with difficult}- distinguish them from those of Belladonna and Stramonium. The distinction lies here : Veratrum albu?n has coldness of the surface of the body with cold sweat on theforehead. Sometimes the face is red and the lips are blue, and there is tingling through the limbs.

Veratrum album is also suitable for women when they surfer from abnormal mental impressions arising from disturbance in the sexual sphere ; in nymphomania, for instance. The patient is lewd to an extreme. She rushes about the room endeavoring to kiss every one. These attacks are especially prone to appear before each menstrual period. She is constantly framing lies of the most outrageous character.

Veratrum is also to be thought of when after fright, there is great coldness of the bod} r with diarrhoea. Gelsemium. Argentum nitricum, Aconite and Opium also have diarrhoea after fright. Under Veratmm, it is associated with coldness and prostration.

Now for some of the abdominal symptoms. Veratrum album is indicated in affections of the bowels, in cholera morbus, cholera infantum and cholera Asiatica and in intussusception of the bowels. The stools in the diarrhoea calling for Veratrum are profuse, water)' and greenish, containing sometimes little flakes that look like spinach. At times, too, they are bloody, and are always associated with sharp cutting pains in the abdomen, and often, too, with cramps in the limbs There is great weakness, almost to fainting, with every effort at stool, and copious, frothy vomiting. Cold sweat on the forehead is present.

In the various choleraic affections more particularly, Veratrum is indicated by the following symptoms : vomiting and purging at the same time, colicky pains through the abdomen with cramps, especially in the calves of the legs, profuse watery stools, rice-water stools, as they are called. They are attended with great prostration and cold sweat, especially on the forehead. It is useless to give Veratrum in choleraic affections unless there is pain. The patient is worse at night. Emaciation is rapid.

The first remedy to consider here in its relation to Veratrum album is Camphor. lyike the former, it produces coldness and symptoms of collapse. Camphor is better suited to cholera when the discharges are scanty and the nausea marked. Sometimes the upper lip will be drawn upward, showing the teeth, making the nauseous expression of the face more hideous. The entire body is cold. The voice is squeaky or high-pitched.

Jatropha curcas also produces a perfect picture of cholera. It causes vomiting of ropy albuminous matters with purging like water from a hydrant, coldness, nausea and gurgling in the abdomen.

Podophyllum resembles Veratru7n album, in that it produces a perfect picture of cholera morbus. It is especially indicated when the case is characterized by the absence of pain. Herein, it is very different from Veratrum. The attacks generally come on during the summer. The stools are watery and come put with a gush and a splutter like water from a hydrant. There is marked loathing of food. The bowels are more apt to move after midnight and toward morning. The stools are very liable to vary in color, now yellow, now green, etc. There is a remedy which is, I think, better suited to the summer complaint of children than is Veratrum. I refer to Iris versicolor. It produces marked inflammatory symptoms, with excoriated raw feeling at the anus. The patient is worse at two or three o'clock in the morning. There are nausea and sour and sometimes bilious vomiting. The stools are either watery, or are yellowish-green and mixed with bile or oily particles.

Pulsatilla is called for in after-midnight diarrhoea caused by a diet of pastry, etc.; or by eating ice-cream immediately after a meal. Croton tiglium comes in when the movements are yellowish or yellowish-green, pouring out with a rush or splutter, like water from a hydrant. They are provoked by every attempt to eat or drink. Elaterium is the remedy for profuse watery stools when they are of an olive-green color.

I have often found Veratrum album useful for cardiac debility following acute diseases, when the heart-muscle becomes so weak that the pulse is thread-like. The patient faints on moving. On lying down the face is red ; on sitting up, it turns deathly pale. Often you will find the hands cold and clammy.

Melancholy, with stupor and mania. Sits in a stupid manner; notices nothing; Sullen indifference. Frenzy of excitement; shrieks, curses. Puerperal mania. Aimless wandering from home. Delusions of impending misfortunes. Mania, with desire to cut and tear things (Tarant). Attacks of pain, with delirium driving to madness. Cursing, howling all night.

White Hellebore A perfect picture of collapse, with extreme coldness, blueness, and weakness, is offered by this drug. Post-operative shock with cold sweat on forehead, pale face, rapid, feeble pulse. Cold perspiration on the forehead, with nearly all complaints. Vomiting, purging, and cramps in extremities. The profuse, violent retching and vomiting is most characteristic. Surgical shock. Excessive dryness of all mucous surfaces. "Coprophagia" violent mania alternates with silence and refusal to talk.

Worse, at night; wet, cold weather. Better, walking and warmth.

Contracted features. Cold sweat on forehead. Sensation of a lump of ice on vertex. Headache, with nausea, vomiting, diarrhœa, pale face. Neck too weak to hold head up.

Features sunken. Icy coldness of tip of nose and face. Nose grows more pointed. Tearing in cheeks, temples, and eyes. Face very pale, blue, collapsed, cold.

Surrounded by dark rings. Staring; turned upwards, without luster. Lachrymation with redness. Lids dry heavy.

Tongue pale, cold; cool sensation, as from peppermint. Dry in center not relieved by water. Salty saliva. Toothache, teeth feel heavy as if filled with lead.

Voracious appetite. Thirst for cold water, but is vomited as soon as swallowed. Averse to warm food. Hiccough. Copious vomiting and nausea; aggravated by drinking and least motion. Craves fruit, juicy and cold things, ice, salt. Anguish in pit of stomach. Great weakness after vomiting. Gastric irritability with chronic vomiting of food.

Sinking and empty feeling. Cold feeling in stomach and abdomen. Pain in abdomen preceding stool. Cramps, knotting abdomen and legs. Sensation as if hernia would protrude (Nux). Abdomen sensitive to pressure, swollen with terrible colic.

Constipation from inactivity of rectum, with heat and headache. Constipation of babies, and when produced by very cold weather. Stools large, with much straining until exhausted, with cold sweat. Diarrhœa, very painful, watery, copious, and forcibly evacuated, followed by great prostration. Evacuations of cholera morbus and true cholera when vomiting accompanies the purging.

Menses too early; profuse and exhausting. Dysmenorrhœa, with coldness, purging, cold sweat. Faints from least exertion. Sexual mania precedes menses.

Hoarse, weak voice. Rattling in chest. Much mucus in bronchial tubes, that cannot be coughed up. Coarse rales. Chronic bronchitis in the aged (Hippozanin). Loud barking, stomach cough, followed by eructation of gas; worse, warm room. Hollow cough, tickling low down, with blue face. Cough comes on from drinking, especially cold water; urine escapes when coughing. Cough on entering warm room from cold air (Bryonia).

Palpitation with anxiety and rapid audible respiration. Pulse irregular, feeble. Tobacco heart from chewing. Intermittent action of heart in feeble persons with some hepatic obstruction. One of the best heart stimulants in homeopathic doses (J. S. Mitchell).

Soreness and tenderness of joints. Sciatica; pains like electric flashes. Cramps in calves. Neuralgia in brachial plexus; arms feel swollen, cold, paralytic.

Blue, cold, clammy, inelastic, cold as death. Cold sweat. Wrinkling of skin of hands and feet.

Chill, with extreme coldness and thirst.

Compare: Veratrinum-alkaloid from seeds of Sabadilla.–– (electric pains, electric shocks in muscles, fibrillary twitchings); Cholos terrepina (cramps in calves); Camph; Cupr; Ars; Cuprum ars (intermittent, cold, clammy sweat); Narcissus poeticus (gastro-enteritis with much griping and cutting pain in bowels. Fainting, trembling, cold limbs, small and irregular pulse); Trychosanthes––(diarrhœa, pain in liver, dizziness after every stool); Agaric emetic (vertigo; longing for ice-cold water; burning pains in stomach); Agaric phalloides (cholera, cramps in stomach, cold extremities, urine suppressed). Veratrine (Increased vascular tension. It relaxes it and stimulates the elimination of toxins by skin, kidneys, and liver).

First to thirtieth potency. In diarrhœa, not below the sixth.

Veratrum Album

You will be astonished at the wonderful coldness running through this remedy.

Coldness: Hardly a group of symptoms will arise without this accompanying coldness. Coldness of discharges, coldness of the body. You would also wonder at the remarkable prostration attending the various groups of symptoms, complete relaxation and exhaustion, coldness. Profuse sweat, vomiting and diarrhea.

Profuse watery discharges. These conditions occur without apparent provocation. In cholera or cholera morbus, it seems that the fluids run out of the body.

Lies in bed, relaxed prostrated, cold to the finger-tips, with corresponding blueness, fairly purple; lips cold and blue, countenance pinched and shrunken; great sensation of cold ness as if the blood were ice-water; scalp cold; forehead covered with cold sweat; headache and exhaustion; coldness in spots over the body; extremities cold as death. Full of cramps; looks as if he would die.

This state comes out during the menses, during colic with nausea, with mania and violent delirium, with headache, with violent inflammations. Is it any wonder that Hahnemann predicted that Veratrum, Camphor, and Cuprum would become remedies in the cure of cholera; he saw in their nature the ability to cure. He saw the similitude. In cases of this sort which are characterized by superabundance of cramps, Cuprum is the simillimum. For those with coldness and blueness and scanty sweat, vomiting, and purging, Camphor is the remedy. These are called "dry cholera;" they sink down and die without exhaustive discharges. In proportion as there are coldness, blueness and scanty discharges, Camphor is indicated. In proportion as copiousness, blueness, and coldness are present, Veratrum is indicated. Secale has something of cholera in it. Podo. has exhaustive stools. Ars. anxious restlessness.

Mind: The mental symptoms are marked by violence and destructiveness he wants to destroy, to tear something; he tears the clothes from the body.

Always wants to be busy, to carry on his daily work. A cooper who was suffering from the Veratrum insanity would pile up chairs on top of one another. When asked what he was doing, he replied that he was piling up staves. When not occupied with this he was tearing his clothes, or praying for hours on his knees, and so loud that he could be heard blocks away.

Exalted state of religious frenzy, believes he is the risen Christ screams and screeches until he is blue in the face; head cold as ice, cold sweat, reaches out and exhorts to repentance. Exhorts to repent, preaches, howls, sings obscene songs, exposes the person. Fear and the effects of fear; fear of death and of being damned; imagines the world is on fire.

"Mania with desire to cut and tear everything, especially the clothes, with lewdness and lascivious talk.

Puerperal mania and convulsions, with violent cerebral congestion; bluish and bloated face; protruding eyes; wild shrieks, with disposition to bite and tear.

Loquacity, he talks rapidly.

She is inconsolable over a fancied misfortune; runs around the room howling and screaming or sits brooding, wailing and weeping."

Alternate states of brooding, screaming, and screeching. A few such remedies would empty our insane asylums, especially of recent cases. Insanity is curable if there are no incurable results of disease. Full of despair and hopelessness with approaching insanity. "Despair of his recovery, attempts suicide." Insane people are not hopeless, those approaching insanity are but after they become insane, they think that everybody is crazy except themselves. Those bowed down by great grief and despair are likely to go into a state of violent mania. Veratrum carries them through the state of despair.

"Melancholia, head hangs down, sits brooding in silence."

Young girls go on for years with menstrual difficulties, and preceding each menstrual nisus is a state of despair; never smiles, the world seems blue, everything is dark; these are preparing for a marked state of insanity. Veratrum is a remedy that would keep many women out of the insane asylum, especially those with uterine troubles. Girls at puberty suffer with dysmenorrhoea, hysterical mental states, diarrhea, and vomiting. During the menses they become cold as death, lips blue, extremities cold and blue, dreadful pains, sensation of sinking, mania to kiss everybody, hysteria with coldness at the menstrual period, copious sweat, vomiting, and diarrhoea, etc.

Head: Veratrum has troublesome headaches, neuralgic, of great violence, accompanied with coldness, vomiting of bile and blood, great exhaustion, profuse sweat.

Vomiting and retching after the stomach is empty; spasmodic retching and cramping of the stomach; you can see the effort to empty the stomach and every little while a mouthful of bile comes up.

Violent rush of blood to the head, congestion of the head with coldness of the extremities. Head feels as if packed with ice, feels as if ice lay on the vertex and occiput (Calc.). Tension in the head as if the membranes were drawn tighter about the brain; compressive pains.

I remember a farmer who consulted me in the Summer. He had strange sensation when he drank water, as if it ran down the outside and did not go down the oesophagus. It was so marked that he I requested his friends to see if it did not run down the outside. Veratrum 2 M. cured him. No remedy has produced that sensation, but I figured it out by analogy.

Violent thirst for cold water and for ice. "All fruits cause painful distension of the stomach."

"Vomiting forcible and excessive.

Nausea with weakness; is obliged to lie down; hysterical cramps in the stomach; cramps in the muscles of the abdomen like colic.

Gastric catarrh, great weakness, cold, sudden sinking."

Pains: Full of rheumatic and neuralgic pains in the extremities; worse from the warmth of the bed; they drive him out of bed at night into the cold room and be must walk the floor for relief. You would naturally, suppose that heat would be comforting; so it is at times to the abdomen and other parts when there is coldness, but it aggravates the pains (Merc.).

"Painful paralytic weakness in the limbs." "Chill and heat alternating, now here, now there, on single parts.

Internal sensation of chilliness running from head to toes coming on when drinking."

Many of the complaints of Veratrum are aggravated when drinking.

Burning while in cold sweat. In the chronic mental troubles, the skin is dusky and dry with the exception of that on the forehead. But in acute complaints where physical symptoms predominate, as in dysmenorrhoea, acute insanity, etc., there is profuse sweat. Gnawing hunger in spite of nausea and vomiting. Empty, all-gone feeling in the abdomen after stool.