Daphne Mezereum.
Introduction
ONE of Hahnemann’s precious medicinal legacies. He says the juice, when touching the skin, produces a very painful burning, which lasts for a long time: and he tells us that, since the medicinal power of this drug is not volatile, it is better to dry the plant and triturate it like all other dry substances. The bark, root and stem are used for making the tincture.
Mezereum is a hard shrub, native of Great Britain and northern countries:flowers early in spring, sometimes in the snow. Was introduced by Stapf, and extensively proved by Hahnemann and his band. The proving appears in his Chronic Diseases.
It powerfully affects skin, bones, mucous membranes. Its action is characterized throughout by VIOLENCE. Violent pains; violent itching: sudden, violent pain s in face during sleep; violent sensations of hunger; violent burning in mouth; violent pains in stomach and oesophagus; violent inclination to cough, lower down than can be reached by cough; “violent acute fever”.
And all its violence is more violent by night. It is one of the remedies that may be needed in the treatment of syphilis; also may be needed in a variety of skin conditions- very severe skin lesions, characterized by violent itching, and worse at night; from heat of bed: the one drug that has got in to the Repertory, as “eruptions itching, worse warmth of fire”
It has annoying twitchings; twitching of eyelid; twitchings and jerking of muscles of right cheek; twitching of muscles in pit of stomach.
It is one of the few remedies that love and crave fat ham; Mez. finds relief in drinking milk and eating fat bacon. (Compare Tuberculinum).
Some of its pains are violently burning” “peppery” burnings (compare Caps); and it has fiery taste; salty and peppery taste; bitter and sour taste-especially beer tastes better (not water), and causes vomiting.
The stomach conditions it has a reputation for gastric ulcer and even induration and carcinoma) are curious. Without hunger, there may be constant desire to eat and take something into stomach, whereby he has less pain. (Compare Graphites, Chelidonium, etc.) Constant longing for food, Nausea disappears after eating (Compare Sepia).
In regard to its “skins”, one never forgets a recurrent experience with Mezereum cm., when doing children’s and casualty work at the hospital during the War: the children being ill nourished, probably lent themselves to such miserable conditions. The experience was the many cases of kerion (tinea kerion), thus described in text-books: “marked inflammatory symptoms with circumscribed boggy tumefaction of the scalp. which is covered with pustules, or with gaping orifices from which exudes viscid pus. And one remembers vividly, how some of the cases were “running with lice”; One is told that kerion may fluctuate, and give the idea of abscess, but when instead of a pocket of pus, a number of pus points merely exude, the individual hair cells being the seat of innumerable small abscesses. Anyway, Mezereum never failed to rapidly cure the condition. So much so, that when appealed to from the country in regard to some children thus affected, one sent Mezereum cm., a few doses, which as one was told, rapidly cured.
“Specifies? -how dare you teach specifics? Is this the Homoeopathy of Hahnemann, which you profess to teach?
As a matter of fact, it is. Hahnemann tells us, if we would only heed, that for “miasmatic” diseases, acute or chronic, i.e. for diseases caused by parasitic organism, which have in each case the same origin, the same symptoms the same course; a specific should be found.” And doubtless kerion is a specific parasitic infection, caused by micro-organisms, and having the same origin, the same symptoms and the same course; for which, so far as epidemic experience with a dozen or so cases is concerned, Mezereum is the specific, and it proved itself so by acting magnificently in the single doses of the highest potency one had been able to lay hands on. Therefore let us once again quote Hahnemann, in regard to “Infectious diseases, caused by a peculiar contagium (a miasm of tolerably fixed character) such as small-pox, measles, true scarlet fever, etc. These seem to fixed in their course as to be always recognized as old acquaintances. They can be named, and we can endeavor to lay down some fixed method of treatment suitable, as a rule, for each of them.”
We may here, with advantage, give in extenso Dr. Carroll Dunham’s classical case of the cure of an almost lifelong deafness, with Mezereum. He traced it back to a severe attack of just such tinea capitis, in childhood; and, by treating that ancient condition-all those years later-he managed to restore herein, utility and happiness to a boy whose life had, till then, been blasted. It was a case, evidently, of was we may venture to call, “chronic kerion”. It bears out our contention, fully explained in No.12 Post-graduate Correspondence Course, that, in ill-health dating from some acute illness, where the patient,, apparently recovered, has never been well since we may be really dealing with Chronic Measles, Chronic Diphtheria, Chronic Vaccinosis (Burnett), Chronic Pneumonia, etc., and we may prove our case (to our own satisfaction, anyway) by seeing the rapid leap to better life and energy, after a dose or two of Diphtherinum, Morbillinum, Pneumococcin, Scarlatinum or Streptococcin, Variolinum, or Thuja, etc., according to the “past history: of the sufferer.
We make no apology for reproducing the case in full, together with the lessons deduced from it, by one of the past masters of homoeopathic prescribing: although it has been again and again alluded to by teachers of Homoeopathy.
DEAFNESS CURED BY MEZEREUM, WITH REMARKS From Homoeopathy the Science of Therapeutics By Dr. Carroll Dunham
G.W.W.(17) small but well proportioned and of good constitution, healthy since his ninth year, has been deaf since he was four years old. When three years of age, he had an eruptive disease of the whole scalp, which, after resisting for a year all the milder methods of allopathic treatment, was finally caused to disappear, in the following manner: A tar-cap was placed upon the head, and when firmly adherent to the scabs, was violently torn off. The scabs came with it, leaving the whole scalp raw. This raw surface was moistened with a saturated solution of nitrate of silver. The eruption did not reappear; but from that time the child was deaf.
The condition of the youth now excites the earnest solicitude of of his friends. His inability to move in society, or to get a situation in business, on account of his deafness, has produced a morbid state of mind. He broods over his infirmity, and secludes himself even from his own family.
Under these circumstances he applied to me to be cured of his deafness. His present condition is as follows: He is quite unable to hear ordinary conversation, a and has never heard a sermon in his life. A loud tickling lever watch can be heard at a disturbance of three and a half inches from either ear. On application of the watch to his forehead, or to his teeth, he hears it distinctly. Occasional buzzing noises in front of the ears. A physical examination of his ears reveals the following conditions: The external meatus is abundantly supplied with soft, normal wax. the membrana tympani is white, opaque, and evidently thickened. When the patient attempts to inflate the middle ear (which he accomplishes with great difficulty, by closing both mouth and nose and making a forcible expiration) the membrana tympani becomes but very slightly convex, and it is impossible to distinguish its distended blood-vessels. There has evidently been a deposit in the substance of the membrane. On examination of the throat, it appears that the orifice of the eustachian tube is free.
Feb. 3rd, 1857. Patient received a powder containing three globules of Mezereum 30, to be taken on retiring.
Feb.24th. Thinks he hears better-“every sound seems much louder than before.”. Hears my watch at a distance of four and a half inches from the right ear, and four and a quarter from the left ear. (No medicine).
March Ist. Has not improved during the last week. Mezereum 30, three globules.
March 27th. Hears my watch, with the right ears, six and a half inches, and with the left, seven inches (No medicine)
April 20th. Hears my watch, with the right ear, at a distance of ten inches, and with the left at a distance of fourteen inches. Hears ordinary conversation easily, with attention. (No medicine)
Sept.28th,. Has been steadily improving until three weeks ago, when he became more deaf again, without apparent cause. Mezereum 30, three globules, on retiring.
June 26th 1858. Hears my watch at a distance of fourteen inches from the right ear, and twenty-four inches from the left ear. Deafness returns when he takes cold, but disappears with the cold. Mezereum 30, three globules on retiring,
March 19 th. To his surprise, on going to church, although seated at the extreme end of a very large building, he distinctly heard the whole sermon-for the first time in his life. On physical examination, the opacity of the membrana tympani is found to have disappeared, and its elasticity to have sensibly increased.
