Thorn-Apple.
Introduction
HAHNEMANN says: This narcotic plant shows in its primary action (with the exception of disagreeable sensations, which the prover cannot call “pain”), no actual pains.
Sensations which can strictly be called pain occur only in the secondary action, i.e. the subsequent reaction of the organism. This restores not only normal sensation as opposed to the sensation destroying action of the drug, but when given in large doses, causes morbidly exalted sensation, or pain.
Again: in its primary action it produces great mobility of voluntary muscles and suppression of all secretions and excretions; the reverse of which occurs in the secondary action- to wit, paralysis of muscles, and excessive secretions and excretions.
Therefore, in suitable doses it curatively allays spasmodic muscular movements and restores suppressed excretions in several cases in which absence of pain is a prominent symptom.
It can only cure homoeopathically the morbid states produced by its primary characteristic action.
The symptoms of the secondary action (which, as with all narcotic drugs, are much more numerous, better expressed, and more distinct than with non-narcotic drugs), teach the observant physician to refrain from its employment in cases where the patient is already suffering from ailments resembling those of its secondary action. He would never administer Stramonium in complete paralysis, or where violent pains constitute the chief feature of the disease.
He speaks “from experience” of the incomparable curative action of Stramonium “in similar natural mental maladies” and of its usefulness in convulsive ailments similar to those it causes… Its efficacy also in some epidemic fevers, with the symptoms it can excite in mind and body:-in varieties of hydrophobia, from the bite of rabid animals, which cannot all be cured with one remedy, but some of which require Belladonna, some Hyoscyamus, and yet others Stramonium, according as their morbid symptoms are more similar to one or other of these three plants.
HUGHES (Pharmacodynamics): “Stramonium is as Hahnemann points out, exquisitely homoeopathic to hydrophobia, even more so than Belladonna. He says that in China, the different species of Datura, among them the D. Stramonium, are in popular use as prophylactics against hydrophobia. It is said that enough of the plant should be taken to provoke an attack of `rage’, the patient is then safe.”
He says there are few neuroses in which Stramonium is not more or less useful. It is our chief remedy in acute mania, to which it is more homoeopathic than the more inflammatory Belladonna. It is hardly less valuable in delirium tremens, in the active form- the mania-a-potu of the older writers. The constant association of hallucinations with its delirium, make it very appropriate here. In nymphomania and puerperal mania it stands highest among remedies, owing to its special action on the sexual functions. Epilepsy, brought on by a fright. In chorea, one of the best vegetable medicines.
He quotes Guernsey, in regard to the following indication: “Parturient women show such signs of fear as to cause them to look frightened and to shrink back from the first objects they see after opening their eyes. If they have had no spasms, they soon will have, after betraying such symptoms, unless Stramonium be immediately administered. His other indications are: Great loquacity, expressing wild and absurd fancies; desire for light and society; an imploring, beseeching mood.”
ALLEN’S Encyclopedia gives six and a quarter pages of references for the 243 different poisonings and provings, whose symptoms are more or less set forth in the 1, 680 given. The majority are poisonings by the drug, but there are provings, even in high potency.
Glancing down the black letter symptoms only, apart from the important symptoms in italics, one sees hydrophobia, mania, violent delirium and delirium tremens, epilepsy, chorea, with a high degree of hallucination, and FEAR. It is not the vague fear of Aconite, but something more concrete-fear of objects seen in imagination: seen more at the side than in front, curiously.
Stramonium has much that is in common with its cousins, Belladonna, and Hyoscyamus: and comes up for consideration for many of the maladies that both mirror forth. But Stramonium seems to lack the inflammatory intensity of Belladonna.
HALE WHITE, who supplies the teaching in Materia Medica for medical students, describes in twenty-one short lines the ACTION AND THERAPEUTICS of Stramonium.
He says its action is almost the same as Belladonna, and that there is no reason why Stramonium should not be applied for the same purposes as Belladonna. And the only use he has for this
50 powerful and valuable drug, is that of a palliative to relax the muscular coat of the bronchial tubes-more powerfully than Belladonna. He describes a powder, which, burnt, gives off dense fumes, and affords great relief in asthma; and he adds that “Himrod’s Bliss’s and other `cures’ for asthma, are of similar composition”. He wisely puts cures in inverted commas, because palliatives do not cure; they relieve protem.; and as we know, such powders may have to be burnt again and again in one night. And yet Stramonium should cure some cases of asthma, because it has caused difficult breathing: especially in connection with spasm of diaphragm.
CULPEPPER (Herbal, 1653) mentions Stramonium for epileptic disorders, convulsions and madness:-its ancient reputation, as we see, amply confirmed from the homoeopathic standpoint by poisonings, provings and practice.
To get an-all-round knowledge of the uses of any drug, one has to get the impressions of many prescribers and their experience in regard to its usefulness.
BOGER (Synoptic Key) stresses: “A REMEDY OF TERRORS, BUT LACKING IN PAIN. Disorderly, graceful, or rhythmic movements. DREADS DARKNESS, and has a horror of glistening objects. Great thirst, but dreads water. Putrid, dark, painless involuntary diarrhoea. Awakes in fear, or screaming.”
GUERNSEY (Key notes), who has a talent for going straight at the main features of a drug, says, of Stramonium:
“The principal range of this remedy is found in the mental affections. In young people, sometimes hysterical, praying, singing devoutly, beseeching, entreating, etc. (Young women with suppressed menses may be thus affected.) In fevers where the patient cannot bear solitude or darkness; if they are left alone in a dark room, the mental affections are very much aggravated. Also in unconscious delirium when the patient will now and then jerk the head up from the pillow, and then let it fall-this being kept up without intermission for a long time. women in puerperal fever may have absurd notions-that they are double, that someone is in bed with them, and other strange unmeaning fancies. Affections of the intellect; madness.
`”Face red and bloated Cannot walk, or keep on the feet in a darkened room, falls.”
NASH sums up Stramonium thus:
“Wildly delirious with red face and great LOQUACITY.
“Pupils widely dilated; wants light and company; fears to be alone. Wants hand held. (Zincum met.)
“One side paralysed, the other convulsed.
“Wakes with a shrinking look: frightened afraid of the first objects seen.
“Painlessness with most complaints (Opium). Jerks the head suddenly from pillow in spasms.”
He calls it one of the trio of pre-eminently high-grade delirium remedies, differing from the other two chiefly in the degree of intensity. He says:
“The raving is something awful. Singing, laughing, grinning, whistling, screaming, praying piteously or sweating hideously, and above all remedies loquacious.”
Again the patient throws himself into all shapes corresponding to his changeable delirium, crosswise, lengthwise, rolled up like a ball, or stiffened out by turns… Things look crooked or oblique to him.
Mouth as if raw: tongue stiff as if paralysed. Stools loose, blackish, smelling like carrion, or no stool or urine. Later, loss of sight, hearing, speech with dilated, immovable pupils and drenching sweat that brings no relief. Death must soon close the scene, unless Stramonium helps them out.
He contrasts the three:
Stram is the most loquacious.
Hyos, is the most insensibly stupid.
Belladonna stands half-way between.
Stramonium throws himself about, jerks head.
Hyoscyamus twitches, picks and reaches, otherwise lies pretty still.
Belladonna starts or jumps, falling or awaking from sleep.
All have times of wanting to escape…
Now for some of KENT’S special points:-When considering Stramonium, the idea of violence comes into mind one wonders seeing a patient poisoned by, or needing Stramonium, at the tremendous turmoil, the great upheaval taking place. Excitement., rage, everything tumultuous, violent: face wild, anxious, fearful; eyes fixed on a certain object: face flushed: hot, raging fever with hot head and cold extremities. Turns from the light: wants it dark: aggravated especially by bright light. High fever with violent delirium: heat so intense it may be mistaken for Belladonna: but usually a continuous fever, while the intense fever of Belladonna is remittent always.
