Introduction
ANOTHER vehement drug of atom and stress, tamed by Hahnemann, till it acts as veritable oil on the waters, is Cantharis.
Cantharis is very liked Lilium Tigrinum in some of its symptoms,, mental and physical, and very unlike in others. It is far more inflammatory, and is rapid and destructive in its action. It is therefore curative in intense inflammatory, rapid, and destructive conditions. It should be compared with Mercurius cor. and Arsenicum.
Let us first give the black-type symptoms, from Allen’s Encyclopedia, that is to say, the symptoms repeatedly caused and cured by Cantharis.
It will be observed that, while Cantharis produces intense inflammations and burnings on mucous membranes generally, and on the skin, its great action is on the genito-urinary system, and especially on kidneys and bladder.
Diarrhoea, consisting of blood and mucus.
Violent diarrhoea, with intolerable burning;and intolerable burning in the anus.
Violent pain in the bladder, with frequent urging to urinate.
Fearful pain in the bladder.
Intolerable tenesmus (straining).
Tenesmus and strangury (spasm of bladder);the urine squeezed out drop by drop.
Violent burning, cutting pains in neck of bladder.,
Before, during and after urinating, fearful cutting pains in the urethra.
Urine scalds him. It is passed drop by drop.
Urging to urinate, with burning in urethra.
Constant urging to urinate: urine was passed drop by drop, with extreme pain.
Priapism.
The above are only the black-type symptoms, out of Allen’s 1,650 symptoms of Cantharis-many of them in italics. We may summarize here by quotations from Kent and Nash. These writers give graphic and not easily forgotten pictures of the action, and curative reactions of this magnificent medicine.
NASH says, :If I were to select the one remedy with which to prove the truth of the formula, Similia Similibus Curentur. I think this would be the one.
“There is no remedy that so surely and so violently irritates and inflames the urinary organs, and no remedy that so promptly cures such irritation when it puts on the Cantharis type or form, as it so often does.”
It is amusing (or pathetic!) to remember that we used to be taught in our student days, “Cantharides is hardly ever used internally, as it is such a powerful irritant.
“It produces severe gastro-intestinal irritation, the patient suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting The active principle is absorbed into the blood, a nd in a few hours the patient principle is absorbed in to the blood, and in a few hours the patient complains of great pain in the loins and strangury- that is to say, there is urgent desire to micturate, the effort is very painful from vesical tenesmus, and the quantity of urine passed is very small: it may contain albumen and blood. In severe cases of poisoning in there may be..
“Post mortem. Intense gastro-intestinal inflammation, consequently swelling, ecchymoses and hyperaemia of the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal. The kidneys are found to be very congested and in the early stages of acute nephritis. Also much inflammation for the genito-urinary mucous membrane.”
Old school still uses Cantharis chiefly externally to raise a blister and as a counter irritant. Even so, it has, in these days, to be cautiously used, lest it should be absorbed from the skin. “It is the basis of many preparations whose object is to stimulate the growth of hair.” (Hale White.)
Alas for the poverty of Old School in actual curative remedies!
KENT gives one of this most vivid picture of the action of Cantharis.
“The most important feature of this medicine is its inflammatory condition, and the most important characteristic in the inflammation is the rapidity with which it develops a gangrenous state. the inflammatory state terminates in death of the part with such rapidity that it is surprising.
“Taken internally it proceeds almost immediately to attack the urinary tract and establish a uraemic state which brings about the mental symptoms.It brings the patient down violently sick in a great hurry. Sudden loss of consciousness with red face. Thoughts run riot, and go whatever way the will, as if possessed by outside influence. Frenzy, delirium, great excitement and rage, paroxysms renewed by dazzling or bright objects. The mind often runs towards subjects that the inflamed parts would suggest. The bladder and genitals are inflamed and the excitement and congestion of the parts often arouse the sexual instinct, so that there are sexual thoughts and sexual frenzy.”
“Running through all the remedy there is BURNING. Burning in head, throbbing, stabbing. ERuptions burn when touched. Erysipelas of the face with large blisters: of the eyes,, with gangrenous tendency. In erysipelas Rhus has the blisters and the burning, but in Canth, between your two visits it has grown black; it is dusky, a rapid change has taken place, and t looks as if gangrene would set in Cantharis corresponds to the lowest forms f disease, even gangrene and violent inflammations of bowels, bladder, brain, spine, lungs, with sinking and hippocratic countenance. Inflammations of lungs, gangrenous type and the affected lungs burns as if full of boiling water, of burns like fire. (Kent says)’ I felt a patient- he had just come out of a prolonged drunk, in such a state as I have described. Urine was suppressed. He was drooling a bloody saliva from his mouth, and he was dying. This condition had come on in one night., from being nearly frozen in a drunk. It would be Cantharis or death before morning, but by morning he was expectorating a rusty sputum and went on to a good recovery. These violent remedies are needed in those cases that will die.
“Intensity and rapidity are the features of this remedy. Its brings on a state of pain and excitement found in no other remedy.”
“Whenever the is rapid inflammation of the bowels there is diarrhoea of bloody mucus or serum: the same watery bloody fluid from the eyes. Wherever this watery fluid comes in contact with the skin, it burns and takes the skin off. The whole urinary organs and genitalia are in a state of inflammation and irritation and threatened gangrene. ”
These, then are things that Cantharis can cause, and that Cantharis only can cure.
Nash quotes H.N.GUERNSEY, “It is a singular fact, though known to most practitioners, that if there be frequent micturition attended with burning cutting pains or if not so frequent and the cutting burning pain attends the flow, Cantharis is almost always the remedy for whatever other suffering there may be, even in inflammation of the brain or lungs.,” And Nash says, “he might have added in the throat, and mucous membranes all through the intestinal tract, even to the rectum and anus, and in the pleura or on the skin.”
Guernsey also wrote, “Cantharis should always be remembered and studied in treating affections of the air pages. when the mucus is tenacious.”
This, Nash says, he verified in the case of a lady who had long suffered with bronchitis. The mucus was so profuse, tenacious and ropy that the thought of Kali bichromicum which did not even ameliorate. She got worse all the time till one days she mentioned that she had great cutting and burning on urinating, which she must do very frequently. “On the strength of which (for I knew nothing of its curative powers on the respiratory organs at that time) of its curative perverse on the respiratory organs at the time). I gave her Cantharis. The effect was magical.,”
The mental symptoms of Cantharis are as violent as its physicals symptoms.
“Furious delirium, with crying, barking and biting.
“Paroxysms of rage, renewed by sight dazzling, bright objects (Belladonna, Hyos). or touching the larynx when trying to drink water.” (These are indication for the use of the drug in hydrophobia). “Frightful satyriasis”:
Cantharis is one of the remedies to be considered in pruritis. It has all the bringing and itching, a nd inflames the vulva and vagina. it is one of the remedies that proves curative here.
Cantharis burns and vesicates, and causes painful blisters. Hence with us, it vies with Urtica urens in the treatment of BURNS And, like Urtica, it almost instantly relieves the pain of burns. Nash says that “Hering used to challenge sceptics to burn their fingers, and then cure them by dipping their fingers, and then cure them by dipping their fingers into water medicated with Cantharis, so great was his faith in it.”
And a doctor, once a student in Chicago, m was greatly struck by a case of painful burns, whose pain quickly vanished after a few globules of Cantharis, high, given on the tongue by Dr. Kent. Cantharis, internally, in Homoeopathic potency, is a very old tip for charming away the pain of burns. In our Out-patient Department persons who come up with inflammations of the bladder (cystitis in great distress from the frequent passage of drops of scalding urine, get a few doses of Cantharis 200, and that soon ends the trouble.
“Homoeopathy knows no specifies” except the specific remedy for the individual. Yet, as Hahnemann tells us, some remedies so exactly reproduce a disease conditions, as to become specific Such are Cantharis in cystitis, Bell in scarlet fever, Mercurius cor. in dysentery, and Latrodectus in angina pectoris.
