The Asarabacca (Asarum Europaeum, L.) is a native of Europe and closely allied to the American wild ginger, Asarum Canadense. It grows close to the ground and has a creeping, knotty root; the whole plant is used fore a tincture.
General Action
Its chief action seems to be upon the nervous system; general and excessive erethism, neuralgic pains and spasmodic muscular actions predominate. Great loss of energy accompanies the general symptoms.
Allies.- (Group for study.) Piper methysticum and ingrum, Nux moschata. Moschus.
Generalities
Sensibility of all nerves, when merely imagining (which he is constantly obliged to do) that some one is scratching even slightly on linen, or some similar substance, with finger-tips or nails, a disagreeable substance, with finger-tips or nails, a disagreeable sensation thrills through him, arresting thoughts and functions. Ebullitions if blood evenings in bed, preventing sleep. General discomfort with nausea. Laziness, with slowness. Weakness every afternoon, with constant yawning; such weakness in evening as soon as he rises from a seat, with nausea, that he felt as if he would die; weakness after dinner; weariness, sometimes as if bruised all over (Arnica).
Clinical.
Very valuable in certain forms of irritable nerves (anaemia) with the above peculiar sensitiveness associated with asthenopia, nervous deafness, loss of appetite, flatulence and nervous hacking cough.
Mind
Imagines that he is hovering in air when walking, like a spirit. Thoughts so overstrained that they vanish. Mental faculties fail, (>) vomiting. Thoughts vanish when attempting to reflect, with drawing pressure in forehead. Ideas gradually vanish, as when falling asleep. Stupidity, with increase of headache and nausea when trying to reflect. Gayety alternating with calmness or even sadness. Angry and cross before the cough. Weeping, sadness and anxiety. Melancholy, fretful.
Head
Aching ( (>) vomiting); with heat of cheeks, both (>) walking in open air; with heat of cheeks, both (>) walking in open air; in different places in brain, mingled with various sensations when bending head to left, pain as if a bundle of muscular fibres had been displaced by violent exertion, the pain extending over l. temple and behind ear towards l. shoulder, increasing and decreasing synchronously with the pulse; drawing, as if it would extend into temples, at noon, (>) open air and lying done. Pressure inward over a greater part of the brain; pressure in brain, mostly forward.
Drawing (stupefying) here and there in brain, in ear and in nape of neck. Stupid feeling, with indisposition to do anything. Weight as if some wabbling body were n it, which lets its weight be felt when head is turned forward or backward; weight and confusion, with pressure on sagittal suture, as if intoxicated. Confusion and stupidity, with sensation in region of ears; confusion (>) walking, with pressure outward as with a dull point in eyes, especially below r. lid; painful tensive confusion. Vertigo morning on rising, with aching in l. forehead; (>) washing face with cold water, with headache, both returning on drying face; in evening, as if not standing securely; as from intoxication, when rising from a seat and walking.
Forehead.- Tearing after stooping and raising head again; pulsative tearing. Aching above root of nose; A. causing a stupid feeling, as after being waked too early; drawing, in brain below forehead, (<) when retching; pressing upon eyes, which then water; throbbing, morning on rising; throbbing, from stopping. Pressure downward; as from a stone in brain.
Temples.- Tearing in l. Aching, (<) l.; in l., with confusion, then below partial bones, then in occiput; compressive, in l. and behind ears, (<) walking or shaking head, (>) sitting.
Headache along coronal suture in attacks, with qualmishness in abdomen. Pressure outward in sides of head. Pressure in l. occiput, extending to side of head. Feels pulsations in arteries of occiput, then in whole body. Tension of scalp, making hair painful.
Eyes
Tearing in interior of l. synchronous with pulse. Pressure in l; as soon as he reads sensation as if pressed asunder. Warmth and pressure in, with diminished lustre. Painful feeling of dryness interiorly. Feeling of dryness and drawing. Lids, swelling of l. upper, with inability to endure much reading twitching of l. lower; paroxysmal twitching sensation in l. upper, when holding lid still, (>) raising lid; crawling under upper, (>) l.; dry, burning in lids and inner canthi (Sulphur), (<) l.; feeling in r. outer canthus as from a cold breath. Vision obscured. Does not perceive objects around him.
Ears
Pinching like earache in external and middle. Pain in meatus auditorius owing to pressive tension. Pressure behind and below l. Tension and pressure on r. meatus auditorius, afterwards extending to r. lower jaw, when violent, with cold salivation on r. side Feeling in outer and inner side of l. as if cartilages were contracted. Stopped feeling in front; as if pasted up. Imagines a membrane stretched across r. meatus auditorius, also with warmth in that region, also (<) during the chill, with tensive pressure in it; imagines a membrane stretched across meatus auditorius, with a compressed sensation. Hearing worse in r. than l. Diminished hearing in l. as if closed by the hand, with feeling as if the walls of the meatus drew nearer one another, or as if ears were stopped with cotton. Distant roaring as of a wind in l., with shrill singing in r.
Nose
Tickling, as from the copper pole of a galvanic battery, causing sneezing, after many unsuccessful attempts, and discharge of clear fluid. (Violent sneezing.) Discharged of bloody mucus. (Dry coryza, with stoppage of l. nostril.)
Face
Burning stinging in l. cheek. Fine stinging in r. cheek. Contractive pain in l. cheek, with thrusts, and with drawing pain in third molar. Dryness of inner side of lower lip. Cutting cramp-pain in articulation of jaw.
Mouth
Feeling in upper incisors as from a cool breath; l. teeth feel as if hollow. Tongue coated white. Smarting of tongue and gums. Burning across middle of tongue, then burning and dryness in whole mouth, the burning (>) by washing face in cold water, but returning on drying face. Sweetish, insipid mucus. Contractive sensation, causing watery salivation. Saliva hot when discharged; saliva and breath feel hot, without dry feeling in mouth. Saliva tenacious. Cool salivation. Taste as from a foul stomach. Bitter taste to bread; to dry bread in evening; to tobacco when smoking. Smoking tobacco gives no pleasure.
Throat
Scraping. Nausea in fauces. Tough mucus, which he cannot hawk up. Dryness, with stinging. Swallowing difficult, as if cervical glands were swollen.
Stomach
Hunger in morning. Eructations frequent, empty; reaching only upper part of chest. Rising of air from stomach when walking in open air, with yawning twice, then eructations and emission of flatus. Hiccough. Nausea; with loathing and shuddering; with pressure in forehead and salivation; with disclination to attend to business, laziness and want of thinking power. Retching increases in violence in proportion as it becomes more frequent, with lachrymation; empty R., with water collecting in mouth. During the retching all symptoms increase, only the stupid feeling in head decreases.
Vomiting, with anguish; V., with diarrhoea; with exertion of stomach and compression in epigastrium and head; sourish water, with great exertion, pressure on stomach and arrest of breath; scanty, greenish, sourish juice in paroxysms, with great exertion, and with every paroxysm a sensation as if head in region of ears would burst. Cutting in epigastric region, also in places, (>) emission of flatus. Pinching; in or above it. Pressure in region and pit; in region during inspiration; as from a dull point; in pit, so that he cannot decide whether he is hungry or hot. Fulness, with hunger.
Clinical Nausea, eructations and vomiting, especially during pregnancy, with the peculiar and excessive sensitiveness of the drug. Desire for alcoholic drinks is said to be controlled by Asarum. “Strings of odorless mucus pass from the bowels;” whether this drug will prove curative fin catarrh of the bowels remains to be proven, many of the symptoms point its homoeopathicity to that condition.
Abdomen
Painless movement of flatus. Breaking of the flatus not emitted. Cutting in morning before stool, with stitches downward in rectum. Pain; l. during motion, with painful pressing; with vomiting; single painful sensations in l. side, in an oblique direction below umbilicus; raging, in l. groin, darting through urethra into glands and causing sore smarting, contractive pain in the same. Constrictive sensation in region of diaphragm. Fulness, with hunger. Qualmishness, with attacks of headache coronal suture.
Stool
Urging to, an hour and a half after a stool, with cutting in abdomen and rectum before and during the stool, which is softer than than the former. Diarrhoea; like resin and consisting of tough mucus, for six days shaggy masses of mucus, with ascarides. Whitish gray and ash-colored, with bloody mucus on top. In small hard pieces. Morning stool delayed, scanty, yellow like an egg (mucous) and in a thin string.
Born in 1837in Westminster, Vermont. . He was an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy
Dr. Allen compiled the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica over the course of 10 years.
In 1881 Allen published A Critical Revision of the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica.