The Daisy.
Introduction
OUR own lovely indigenous bruise-wort, wound-wort: our own Arnica, even to the production and cure of boils! Here we have one of Burnett’s own particular remedies, of which, scattered through his telling little monographs, he has so much to say. Clarke, his friend, admirer, and recorder, says, “The daisy is a flower which is repeatedly trodden upon, and always comes up smiling; and being the day’s eye, may be the sign of its too easy waking propensities.” He quote Burnett as saying, “It acts very much like Arnica, even to the production of erysipelas.”
Clarke gives its relations to other remedies, which are highly suggestive in regard to its uses. He says, “Compare Arnica, Calendula, Hyperic., Conium, Arsenicum, Hamam., Vanad.” Which means, when at a loss for one or other of these vulneraries, we can go out into the fields and, in its season-a very long one!-get help from the floweret from which our childish fingers used to weave daisy- chains. You may have to scramble up Leith Hill for Chelidonium; or drag your feet out of squishy marshes to obtain Equisetum for urinary difficulties; but while many precious herbs are difficult to find or recognize, no one can mistake or overlook the unpleasant stinging nettle, or the ubiquitous daisy, which makes the meadows, everywhere, to smile.
Poets have loved this flower. For Shakespeare, it is “Daisies pied” (variegated like a magpie), while Tennyson makes the unfortunate lover of “Maud” sing: “I know the way she went, Home with her maiden posy; For her feet have touched the meadows, And have left the daisies rosy.”
CULPEPPER (1616-54) writes of the “Little Common Daisy”: “The leaves and sometimes the roots, are used, and are reckoned among the traumatic and vulnerary plants, being used in wound-drinks, and are accounted good to dissolve congealed and coagulated blood, to help the pleurisy and peri-pneumonia. In the King’s evil the decoction given inwardly, and a cataplasm of the leaves applied outwardly, are esteemed by some extraordinary remedies. This is another herb which nature has made common, because it may be useful.” He also speaks of it “just boiled in asses milk, as very effectual in consumption of the lungs.”
But it is Burnett, who has, in our day, revived and rendered scientific its applications. In his Diseases of the Skin, he has a good deal to tell us abut Bellis, and we will quote rather extensively. He says: “In this little volume I am, before all things, seeking to show that Diseases of the skin have, for the most part, their origin, not in the skin itself, but are essentially cutaneous manifestations of some more or less remote organic or organismic wrongs.
“Thus Fletcher mentions Acne from Cold Drinks; and this I wish here to quote an interesting and instructive experience of my own of the curative effects of the common Daisy in complaints that are due to wet cold, e.g. acne of the face. “As I consider the observation of wider practical importance, I will give the source of my own knowledge.
“BELLIS PERENNIS AGAINST THE ILL-EFFECT OF WET COLD IN THE OVER-HEATED.
“I refer to D. Johann Schroeder’s Pharmacopoeia Universalis, with Hoffman’s remarks, 1748. The Daisy is here commended in Haemorrhage, Dysentery, as a ‘herrliches Wund kraut’, internally and externally, i.e., as a vulnerary, for the effects of falls, blows, bruises and the like, pains in the joints, rheumatism (and hence called ‘Gicht kraut’); in nocturnal cramps, angina pectoris, fevers and inflammations; for lameness; and he says that German mothers were in the habit of using it for their children as an aperient.
“An ordinary commendation of Arnica reads almost in the same terms, but I would specially call attention to this, ‘This herb is useful to such as have partaken of a too cold draught of something, for it possesses a peculiar quality, as shown by experience, of being useful in all those terrible and dangerous accidents that arise from having drunk something very cold when the body is in a heated condition.’ This important point I have verified as will be seen later on.
“Further, it would appear that Mindererus, in his Kriegs- Artzeney, cannot sufficiently praise the Daisy in such cases, for he declares that an account of this action of the herb should be written up over all gates and doors for the benefit of the poor harvesters who in the hot harvest season get ill from partaking of Cold drink; its effect in such cases he affirms is remarkable, and so prompt that amelioration sets in at once.
“Christopher Schorer in his Medicina peregrinantium, gives similar testimony, and says that he cured two men of dangerous coughs, with emaciation, that were due to their having drunk something cold when they were heated. And Schroeder affirms that it will cure dropsy due to drinking too much in ‘dog days’, i.e. hot weather.
“We know from experience the immense value of certain generalizations in the treatment of disease, as, for instance, Arnica for falls and bruises; Hypericum for wounded nerve tissue; Dulcamara for the ill effects of damp, and so on.
“Now we may add this other, that Bellis perennis is curative of complaints due to drinking cold drink when the body is heated, i.e. effects of sudden chill from wet cold when one is hot.” He then gives a case: Woman of 30, acne since 12 years old. Great bumps in the face about every three weeks, at times hardly seen, at times looking like Phlegmonous Erysipelas. Eruption coincided with the commencement of the menstruation. He elicited the following curious fact.
Just before her twelfth year she was out in sultry weather haymaking, and, when greatly heated she fell head foremost into a brook, and some days later broke out all over head and face with an eruption “just like small-pox”. Face and ears were covered, and a handkerchief had to be tied round her neck to prevent the discharge from dropping on her clothes. She was indoors eight weeks with it, and “since had had any amount of medicines and greases and all sorts of things, but they never did me one bit of good.
Burnett then argues out his reasons for his prescription-Bellis 3x, m3, t.d.s., and continues,
“In four weeks the face was quite well; not a speck on it for the past fortnight. Actually menstruating, and her face is quite free for the first time at the beginning of the flow, in her whole menstrual life, which began 18 years ago!” She had developed symptoms, constipation, and a queer shaking beginning in stomach, as if she had been running fast.
“Another month, and still well of the eruption. Last poorly time not a spot!
“She reported occasionally for two or three months, but so far it has remained permanently cured.”
Burnett adds, “My reasoning may be faulty, but I think this case shows that the Daisy is a notable remedy, and this virtue of a common weed lying everywhere at our feet deserves to be made very widely known. People of any experience do not need to be told that the ill effects of drinking cold drinks when the body is heated are very serious at times, and always inconvenient. Of course it is not confined to the drinking, as the idea is sudden wet chill to heated stomach or body surface. This property of the Daisy is the more valuable, as we know of no other remedy in our vast Pharmacopoeia that possesses it; and beyond myself, I believe no one is acquainted with it. Most of what I here write has been lying in a drawer of my writing desk for years, and this little clinical tip ought long since to have been published, for it may be a good while before another lover of the fair Daisy stumbles against old Schroeder’s generalization in a humble receptive mood. I regard this peculiar property of the Daisy as eminently important, and ask all who may read this to make it known, so that it may be available for such as travellers, tourists, harvesters, soldiers on the march, when they, being heated, have had a cold ducking, or have drunk cold liquids.
“I would recommend it also in the acute and chronic dyspepsia from eating cold ices, as the conditions here are identical, for I have, in such cases, found it an eminent curative agent the facial dermatitis, here, was one that would be classed as a Disease of the Skin, and internal treatment alone cured it.”
Five years later, in his Change of Life in Women, Burnett again takes up the tale, and tells us more about his beloved Daisy: “This morning I received a letter from a colleague in America, asking me what my indications are for the use of Bellis per.” He gives his reply:
“Bellis per is our common daisy; it acts very much like Arnica, even to the contingent production of erysipelas; it causes pain in the spleen, and generally symptoms of coryza, and of feeling very tired, a person (the writer) wanting to lie down. It acts on exudates, swellings, and stasis, and hence in a fagged womb its action is very satisfactory; indeed, in the discomforts of pregnancy and of varicose veins patients are commonly loud in its praise. In the giddiness of elderly people (cerebral stasis) it acts well and does permanent good; likewise and particularly in fag from masturbation; in old workmen, labourers, and the overworked and fagged, it is princely remedy. In the head sufferings of elderly working gardeners its action is very pretty. Its action in the ill-effects from taking cold drinks when one is hot is now well-known. It is a grand friend to commercial travellers and in railway spine of moderate severity it has not any equal so far as my knowledge reaches. I think stasis lies at bottom of all these ailings. P.S.-When given at night Bellis is apt to cause the patient to wake up very early in the morning, hence I order it by preference to be taken not too late in the day. I have often cured with it the symptom, ‘Wakes up too early in the morning and cannot get off again,’ and here the higher dilutions act much more decidedly and lastingly, as a rule, and without any side-effects, for here the action is purely homoeopathic and not simply deobstruant.”
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