Eczema: raw, excoriated: thick crusts, oozing and offensive.
Burning, itching, tingling pains. Incessant itching and scratching. The more they scratch, the greater the urgency to scratch.
Acts on fibrous and muscular TISSUES.
Flesh of affected parts sore to touch.
Pain as if flesh torn loose from bones: or bones being scraped.
Pains as if sprained: disposition to sprain a part by lifting heavy weights, or stretching up to reach things.
Inflammation of tendons and muscles from over-exertion, or sudden wrenching as in a sprain.
Bad effects of getting wet, especially after being heated.
Smooth red and shining swellings, the inflamed skin being covered with small painful, white vesicles.
Glands swollen, hot, painful; indurated: suppurating.
PARALYSIS: after unwonted exertion: parturition: rheumatic, from getting wet or lying on damp ground; after ague or typhoid.
Parts painless, or painfully stiff and lame, with tearing, tingling numbness.
Twitchings of limbs and muscles.
Restless at night, has to change position frequently.
Bad consequences from getting wet, especially after being heated.
FEVER. Cough during chill: dry, teasing, fatiguing.
Slow fevers: tongue dry and brown, or red as if skinned; sordes on teeth; bowels loose; great weakness; powerlessness of lower limbs, can hardly draw them up. Great restlessness after midnight; must move often to get relief.
As we have seen, Rhus has very definite spheres of action. SKIN, to vesication and erysipelas; glands throughout the body, enlarging and inflaming them, including the parotids and Peyer’s patches (Drosera), which suggests its deep utility in typhoid. It “depresses nutritional activity; depresses the sensorium, and the capability of the mind for continuous thought; thus a patient meaning to write the number 12 will write the figure 1, but cannot recollect the figure which should follow” (DUNHAM). The Rhus powerlessness, approaching paralysis, is more pronounced in the lower extremities (DUNHAM). And Dunham sums up the action of Rhus, as follows; “It produces a kind of rheumatic affection of muscles and ligaments, alleviated by motion; a paralysis aggravated by motion; an apparent passive congestion of head, relieved by repose; a debility of the organs of nutrition marked by deficient and depraved appetite and by tympanitis; a serous infiltration of the cellular tissue in various parts, as face, fauces, genital organs, feet; a vesicular eruption generally; an acrid state of the secretions generally, tears, nasal mucus, urine, menstrual, flow, contents of cutaneous vesicles; general depression of sensorium.”
But Rhus is practically only prescribed on its peculiar modalities and that in any disease: its restlessness: its temporary relief from motion; its intolerance of damp and cold : and the etiology of most of the conditions it causes and cures–A COLD WETTING: A CHILL FROM DAMP, especially when warm (Dulcamara).
There are other species of Rhus used in homoeopathic medicine. Rhus radicans (Poison Ivy), which Jahr makes much of, and which has seemed to us a more potent remedy in lumbago, sciatica, and even headache, than Rhus tox. (Poison Oak), but which Hahnemann, as seen from our heading, has included in his provings with Rhus tox. Then there is Rhus aromatica (Fragrant Sumach), a non-poisonous shrub, which has a reputation, in the tincture, for diabetes. Rhus venenata (Poison Sumach), said to be more poisonous than Rhus tox. and which has to be handled with extreme caution, and it is said to be more actively curative in skins. It seems to affect bones more than Rhus tox. especially where bones are near the surface, “directly covered with skin”. Rhus diversiloba, again, a remedy of eczema and erysipelas, and rhus glabra–all to be found in Clarke’s Dictionary.
