“Certain kinds of ague are so constituted that this root is their appropriate remedy, as is to be inferred from its own symptoms, in so far as they present a greater homoeopathic similarity to those of the case of ague than do those of other medicines. If the selection has not been quite suitable for this purpose it generally leaves the fever in a state in which Arnica (in other cases China, Ignatia. or Cocculus) is the remedy.”
He gives it as an antidote after long-continued abuse of Cinchona bark, or to the unsuitable employment of Arsenic.
He says only very small doses are indicated: he used to use the millionth of a grain (the third centesimal): but says that this dose should be still further diminished: and he tells us that it is a short acting remedy–from a couple of hours to hardly a couple of days. [But we know what a magnificent remedy it is, in asthma cases, for example, in the 200th potency, when it “acts” for a long time.]
GUERNSEY (Keynotes), says, “One of the best guides to the use of this remedy, is a constant but unavailable desire, to vomit; or immediately after vomiting they wish to do so again; constant nausea.
“Disgust at stomach for food. No relief obtained by vomiting, the desire still remaining.
“Suffocative attacks of breathing cough without expectoration; with bloody expectoration; without waking the patient.
“Threatened abortion; often with sharp pinching pain about umbilicus, which runs down to uterus, with constant nausea and discharge of bright red blood metrorrhagia, often after confinement, with low pulse, nausea, etc. There is a steady flow of bright, red blood, which may soak through the bed to floor, or run over foot of bed. Where there is this steady flow of bright, red blood, give Ipecac. and don’t resort to applications, manipulations, etc.”
He gives it for dysmenorrhoea with the characteristic pain about umbilicus running to the uterus.
KENT is especially illuminating in regard to the uses of IPECACUANHA. We will quote–much abbreviating.
Most of its acute complaints commence with vomiting.
All the complaints in Ipecac. are attended more or less with nausea: every little pain and distress is attended with nausea.
The cough causes nausea and vomiting: coughs till face is red, and there is choking and gagging.
With every little gush of blood from any part of the body there is nausea, fainting and sinking.
Hence its value in uterine haemorrhage: bright, red blood, with nausea.
The great overwhelming nausea runs through all the remedy with its symptoms.
Ipecac. does its work best where there is thirstlessness.
With the Ipecac. fever or chill, pain in back of head: congestive fullness: a crushed feeling in head and back of head: head full of pain.
It has symptoms that look like tetanus.
It has opisthotonos: useful in cerebro-spinal meningitis, where there is head-retraction, the whole body is inclined backwards, and there is vomiting of everything: tongue red and raw and constant nausea and vomiting of bile.
Gastritis, when nothing will stay down–not even a drop of water.
Dysentery, when patient is compelled to sit almost constantly upon the stool, and passes a little slime, or a little bright red blood: tenesmus awful: smarting, burning: with constant nausea. While straining at stool the pain is so great that nausea comes in and he vomits bile.
Infants with cholera-like diarrhoea, ending in this dysenteric state, constant tenesmus, nausea, vomiting everything, prostration and great pallor.
Re bronchitis of infancy how are you to distinguish from Ant. tart.? Both have rattling cough and breathing: both have vomiting. Ipecac. corresponds to the stage of irritation, tartar emetic, to stage of relaxation. Ipecac. symptoms come on hurriedly; Ant. tart. slowly. In Ant-]tart., when the lungs are too weak to expel the mucus, the coarse rattling comes on.
See its value in Whooping cough: the paroxysmal character; the red face, thirstlessness, violent whooping, with convulsions, and vomiting of all that he eats.
Regarding haemorrhages, KENT says, “I could not practice Medicine without Ipecac., because of its importance in haemorrhages. I do not mean those from cut arteries, where surgery must come in: I mean such as uterine haemorrhages, haemorrhages from kidneys, bowels, stomach, lungs. In the severest form of uterine haemorrhage the homoeopathic physician is able to do without mechanical means, except where mechanical means are causing the haemorrhage. This does not relate to hour-glass contractions, it does not relate to conditions where the after-birth is retained,* *Pyrogen has a great reputation in the U.S.A. for its power of expelling the retained placenta and one has seen it with cows also. or when the uterus has a foreign body in it, where manipulation is necessary but when it is simply and purely a relaxed surface that is bleeding, the remedy is the only thing that will do the work properly.
“When the uterus is continuously oozing, but every little while the flow increases to a gush, and with every little gush she thinks she is going to faint, or gasps, and the quantity of the flow is not enough to account for such prostration, nausea, syncope, pallor, Ipecac. is the remedy.”
But, he reminds us, when with the gushing of bright red blood there is overwhelming fear of death, Aconite. Or Phosphorus, where there is a great thirst for ice-cold water, and though all has gone on in an orderly way, and you have no reason to expect such haemorrhage. Or in lean women, suffering from the heat: want covers off and to be cool; with an alarming haemorrhage with clots, or only an oozing of dark, liquid blood, you can hardly do without Scale. “A single dose of one of these medicines,” he says, “on the tongue, will check the haemorrhage so speedily that, in your earlier experiences you will be surprised. You will wonder if it is not possible that it stopped itself.’
“Ipecac. is full of haemorrhages” and so on, in regard to colds, nose-bleed, asthma, and convulsions.
In regard to the latter, he says, “As a convulsive medicine, Ipecac. is not well enough known. Convulsions in pregnancy:– in whooping-cough;–frightful spasms, affecting the whole left side ” Belladonna, etc., are more often spoken of in the books and in treatises on spasms; yet Ipecac. is just as important a remedy to be studied in relation to spasms, and its action upon the spine.
In suppressed eruptions, again, where acute manifestations of stomach and bowels follow, and colds settle in chest from suppressed eruptions. He says it will also cure erysipelas, where there is the vomiting, the chill, the pain in the back, the thirstlessness and the overwhelming nausea.
And now we will let NASH speak from his experience. Here is his summary.
Persistent nausea, which nothing relieves, in many complaints.
Headache as if bruised, all through the bones of the head, down to the root of the tongue, with nausea.
Stools as if fermented, or green as grass, with colic and nausea.
Haemorrhages from uterus; profuse, bright blood and heavy breathing, with nausea.
Spasmodic, or asthmatic cough; great depression and wheezing; child becomes rigid and turns blue.
Backache, short chill, long fever, heat usually with thirst; raging headache, nausea; and sweat last; nausea during pyrexia.
Better than quinine, in intermittents, or after its abuse, the symptoms agreeing.
Ipecacuanha leads all the remedies for nausea. Any complaint, the patient being just as sick after vomiting as before:–persistent nausea. This should at once call attention to this remedy.
With Ipecac. the tongue may be perfectly clean. (Cina.)
He quotes Hering, “Nausea, distressing, constant, with almost all complaints, as if in the stomach, with empty eructations, accumulation of much saliva, qualmishness and efforts to vomit.” NOTHING RELIEVES.
In regard to the dyspnoea, wheezing, and great weight and anxiety about the precordia; and the threatened suffocation from accumulation of mucus, he says :
“This excessive accumulation of mucus in the air passages seems to excite spasm like a foreign body, and asthma, or spasmodic cough, or both together ensue. ” We may narrow down the respiratory troubles to two conditions: those with excessive accumulation of mucus: those in which spasm is the characteristic feature.
Then haemorrhages and in post-partum haemorrhage, he says, it is not necessary to use it in large and poisonous doses, for it will stop them in the 200th potency, and is quicker in its action than Secale.
One notes also among its peculiar symptoms and modalities,– Shuddering: malaise with shuddering, chilliness, yawning, flow of saliva and eructations.
Asthma that has to stand for hours by the open window.
Pain about the umbilicus, running down into uterus. (As said) Nausea and vomiting, constant, unrelieved by vomiting: especially with a clean tongue.
Bright red haemorrhages, especially with nausea.
Terrible spasms of respiration.
Simultaneous spasmodic attempts to cough and vomit causing unbelievable suffocative distress.
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
